Somebody Else's Music(129)

“Senior citizens,” Mark said solemnly. “These guys who are like sixty-five and seventy. They hate it that they’ve been sending their stories in for years and couldn’t get published and there she is. They hate losing to a girl.”

“I don’t think that means they’d kill her,” Jimmy said.

“Even if the killer didn’t mean to murder her in the first place,” Mark said, “couldn’t he be meaning to do that now? There has to be some reason he killed Grandma’s dog and left the body on her lawn. It’s not like Grandma’s house is convenient to anything.”

“Maybe it is,” Jimmy said. “There could be any number of things in the area.”

“You have to drive to all of them,” Mark said. “Ask Mr. Demarkian.”

“Nobody is going to kill anybody for the rest of the day,” Gregor said firmly, “at least, nobody involved in this case is. You don’t have any idea at all where Ms. Toliver has gone? And Bennis?”

“I thought she might have gone to the hospital to visit Grandma,” Mark said. “I mean, she’s been agitating over Grandma all day. I don’t know why. The woman’s a complete bitch—”

“Jesus,” Jimmy Card said. “She’s going to blame me for your language. She always does.”

“I’m being accurate,” Mark said. “Grandma is a bitch. Especially to Mom. It’s like she hates her or something. Except you wouldn’t think a mother would hate her own daughter, but she does. I don’t understand women. I mean, guys just do what they do, you know? Women get psychotic.”

“Women are born psychotic,” Jimmy Card said.

“Listen,” Gregor said. “We just came up to make sure that everything was all right. We need to get back to the hospital and see if Emma Bligh is ready to be interviewed. If you give me the number, we’ll call in when we get to the hospital. I really would like to know when you know that Bennis and Liz are all right.”





3


Goldfish, Gregor thought as he and Kyle went down the elevator again, this time to the second floor.

“It’s incredible, don’t you think?” Kyle said. “A whole floor. What do you think that costs? What do you think Jimmy Card makes in a year?”

“I think this is our floor,” Gregor said, although he had wondered the same thing.

The elevator let them off, and they headed for the east wing. 217E was the number on Gregor’s room key, which was not a room key at all, but a little plastic square like a thick credit card. Gregor hated those.

At 217E, Gregor got the card out and pushed it horizontally into a slot opening in the middle of the door. He pulled the card out and tried the knob. It was still locked. He put the card into the slot again and pulled it out again. He tried the knob again. It was still locked. He put the card into the slot again.

“Here,” Kyle Borden said. “If I let you do that, we’ll be here all day.”

Kyle pushed the card into the slot, pulled it out quickly, grabbed for the doorknob with his other hand, and turned. The knob did, indeed, turn. The door swung open.

“How did you do that?” Gregor said.

“You have to be fast.”

“Obviously,” Gregor said. He pushed through the door and looked around inside. The front room was pleasantly furnished with a good carpet and decent furniture and a very impressive television set, but it was also empty. He went through it to the inner room and found that much more like what he expected. The bed was covered with clothes, all Bennis’s. There was a blue bathrobe hanging over the bathroom door that belonged to him, but it wasn’t the one he had brought with him from Cavanaugh Street. It was the one he’d left home. Bennis must have brought it.

“I’m going to have to do something about getting hold of my clothes,” Gregor said. “They’re out at the Toliver place. I wish we knew where they’d gone.”

“I thought you said there was nothing to worry about,” Kyle said. “You told Jimmy Card and that kid—”

“Mark. I told them she was in no danger of getting murdered. She isn’t. There are other things to worry about. The first is the reporters. I do think they’re still around.”

“I haven’t noticed them. Maybe they’ve gone home.”

“What do you think the chances of that are?”

“Nil,” Kyle said. “This morning before you got to the station, they were asking me when I was going to hold a press conference. I’ve never held a press conference in my life. I wouldn’t know how to start.”

“When the time comes, I’ll tell you how to set up a press conference. There’s the possibility that Elizabeth Toliver has decided to act on what she knows, which is not a very good idea at all. It won’t get her killed, but it might get her tangled up in something more than she needs to be. I don’t think I’ve ever met a woman, especially not a famous woman, who is this—vulnerable—to the claims of other people. Most of them learn to put a wall up around themselves fairly early in the game. You should see Bennis when she’s attacked by what she calls a psychofan.”