Somebody Else's Music(93)

“I don’t know. Had they remained friendly with Chris Inglerod? We can’t just assume that the solution here will be restricted to the people we already know were at Elizabeth Toliver’s house. What about these two? Do we know where they were? Are we going to talk to them?”

“Oh,” Kyle said. The rain was drumming on the roof. He rubbed his hand against the side of his face and shook his head. “We could talk to them if you want. But it wouldn’t be a very convenient time, right now.”

“Why not?”

“They work at the high school. Peggy teaches something, I don’t remember what. Nancy is the principal. She’ll be superintendent a couple of years from now if she has her way.”

“All right,” Gregor said. “So, what, school’s in session until three o’clock? We can see them after that. But you still haven’t answered my question. Were they still friendly with Chris Inglerod?”

“Nancy was,” Kyle said. “Peggy—” He shrugged his shoulders. “Peggy married Stu Kennedy. I told you what that was like. He doesn’t like her to leave the house.”

“But she must leave it, for work if nothing else.”

“Oh, he doesn’t mind work,” Kyle said. He popped his door open and got out into the rain. Gregor got out, too. “He does mind socializing. Funny how things work out, don’t you think? She chased his ass for years, all through kindergarten, all through grade school. She chased and he ran. When they finally started going out, we were all betting it would last a week and Stu would be off looking for his freedom. And now he won’t let her out of his sight.”

“It’s the way men like that work,” Gregor said. “It’s an issue of control.”

“I know what it’s an issue of,” Kyle said sourly.

They headed to the back door of the police station. They were both so wet, there didn’t seem to be any need to run. They got into the back corridor and Gregor took his jacket off to hang on a peg. Sharon stuck her head in from the main room and said, “That Miss Hannaford called for Mr. Demarkian. She left a number where she could be reached. She said it wasn’t urgent.”

“Ah,” Gregor said. He and Kyle came out of the corridor into the main room. There was now only a single reporter waiting on the bench in the reception area, and he seemed to be paying more attention to what was on his laptop than to what was going on with them. Kyle led the way into his own office. Gregor looked around. “Could I make a phone call somewhere? Privately?”

“Want to call Ms. Hannaford, do you?”

“No,” Gregor said. “I want to call long distance back to Philadelphia. Don’t worry about it. I’ll use my phone card.”

“Use the phone, for all I care,” Kyle said. “You close yourself in here. I’ll go see if I can get somebody to go get coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts.”

Gregor wondered where the Dunkin’ Donuts was—he could use some Dunkin’ Donuts—and then, when Kyle was gone, picked up the phone. He did use his phone card. He didn’t want to get into the habit of making personal calls on police telephones. He heard the phone ring on the other end and almost held his breath. You could never tell when anybody on Cavanaugh Street would actually be in and available to answer his phone, unless you called dead in the middle of the night, and even that might not be good enough for Tibor.

The phone rang. Once. Twice. Three times. Six times. Eight. Gregor checked his watch. It was after Tibor’s usual lunch time. When it’s rung twenty-two times, I’ll hang up, he promised himself. Then the phone was lifted on the other end, and he heard a rough gravelly voice say, “Hehn.”

“Tibor?”

“Oh, Krekor, excuse me. I forget my manners. In American, you don’t answer the phone by saying ‘hehn.’ Of course, to say ‘hehn’ is to be more polite than the Greeks are. They answer the phone by screaming and they scream ‘embross!’ It means ‘talk!’ It’s very intimidating.”

Gregor assumed that Tibor was talking about the modern Greeks, not the ancient ones, a good bet since the ancient Greeks hadn’t had phones. He had been talking to Tibor for less than thirty seconds, and already he was off track.

“Listen,” he said. “Bennis is here. Did you know that?”

“I knew she was going up to you, yes, Krekor, she told us all about it. At length. Also, Donna helped her to pack something, I don’t know what, Lida and Hannah put it together. They say there is never any decent food in these small towns.”