Gregor thought he might do nothing more than see spots, but they were at the top of the stairs, finally, and he had a chance to stand still and breathe in. When Bennis was first quitting smoking, she used to say that there were times when she thought she would never be able to get enough air. He thought he now knew what she meant.
Kyle Borden knocked hard on the single door on the floor. Gregor heard a bustling and a coughing on the other side of the door.
“If you’ve lost your keys again, I’m going to scream,” a woman said, and then the door swung back, and Gregor was faced with one of the oddest-looking people he had ever seen. In some ways, she was still a child. Her dress was frilly and pastel. Her hair was dyed blond and curled up and back in a way that was thirty years out-of-date, and even when it had been in style it had been a style for a teenager. In other ways, she was peculiarly ancient. Her skin was a mass of wrinkling and deep trenches. Her hair was far too thin on her scalp. Her eyes drooped. She looked them up and down and said, “Kyle, for God’s sake. I thought you were Maris. Come on in. Who’s your friend?”
“Gregor Demarkian,” Gregor said.
“He’s a consultant,” Kyle said, coming in and signaling Gregor to come after him. “He’s a consultant to the police department. We thought you might be at work.”
“I’m only at work sometimes,” Belinda said. “Honestly. It’s only fifty dollars a week, and no matter how I try, I can’t get anything else. How I’m supposed to live on fifty dollars a week, I don’t know.”
“Did you say that Ms. Coleman lost her keys?” Gregor asked.
Belinda blinked. “Oh. Well, I don’t know. I mean, she did, about a week ago, when she first came. Lost them in the Sycamore one night when we were all there to catch up, you know. Before Betsy Wetsy came back to town. We all went one afternoon right about five, and of course I drove her, because Maris won’t drive, even though the car she’s got is better than mine, it’s new and mine has a hundred thousand miles on it. She didn’t even realize she’d lost them for two days, and then she had to go back over everything and trace her steps and like that, and I had to drive her out to the Sycamore, and there they were. It’s just selfishness, if you ask me. She just likes riding around like she’s got a chauffeur. It drives me crazy.”
By now, Gregor and Kyle were fully into the apartment.
“Listen,” Kyle said. “Maris had her keys last night, didn’t she?”
Belinda blinked again. “I suppose so. I don’t know. I didn’t see her. She went out to Betsy Wetsy’s around five o’clock or so and she didn’t come back. She probably spent the night over there. She’s got to suck up to Betsy because Betsy has money now. It really isn’t fair.”
“Right,” Kyle said.
Belinda sat down in a big overstuffed armchair upholstered in white violets and cherries on twigs and gestured for the two of them to sit down, too. “This is all my own furniture,” she said. “I brought it from the house. It was all I could hold on to. It was terrible the way that worked out. He should have been arrested.”
“What did he do?” Gregor asked, curious.
“He refused to go on paying the mortgage,” Belinda said. “He just stopped paying it, as soon as he moved out. The bank came and padlocked the house. It was humiliating. The only good thing was that Hayley was grown and out on her own, because if she’d still been a child I think I would have killed him. And then the lawyer said there was nothing I could do about it. It was only his name on the deed and only his name on the mortgage. Imagine that. I mean, of course I didn’t work when Hayley was small. I’m not one of those lesbian feminists like Betsy Wetsy. But everybody knows that a husband and a wife own everything together. That’s what marriage is all about.”
Kyle cleared his throat. Gregor sat down on the edge of the couch, which was some kind of pink.
“So,” Kyle said. “We were just over talking to Emma. About how you and she took Mark DeAvecca home from the library yesterday.”
“DeAvecca? Is that his name? I thought his name was Toliver. Betsy Wetsy kept her name after she got married. I read it in the newspapers.”
“Just because she kept her own name doesn’t mean her children wouldn’t have her husband’s name,” Kyle said patiently. “Now, the thing is—”
“I think it’s really terrible, the way she behaves,” Belinda said. “I mean, who is she, anyway? She’s nobody at all. Nobody even said hello to her in high school except to tell her what a jerk she was being. It’s Maris who should be the famous one.”