The Headmaster's Wife(165)

“Look at that,” he said. “Tell me what that means.”

Tibor opened the letter, read it through—it was at least short; given the fact that Bennis’s novels ran to eight hundred pages or more, that was unexpected—and put it down on the table.

“It means,” he said authoritatively, “that she wants you to ask her to marry you.”

This was not what Gregor had expected to hear. “She does? Why?”

“Because it is getting to the stage where she feels she needs to be married?” Tibor ventured. “I’m not a mind reader, Krekor. I can only tell you what I think.”

“But if that’s what she wants, why doesn’t she say so?”

“Because she doesn’t want to say so. She wants you to think of it.”

“But I did think of it,” Gregor said, “and she stopped talking to me. For a week. I thought she hated the idea. And then, and then, Tibor, she called me while I was in Massachusetts, got me on the cell phone while I was standing in the wind on a hillside in subzero weather, and hung up on me. Hung up on me. This is insane.”

“It is possible she does not actually want to get married,” Tibor said. “It is possible that she needs only to be sure that you want to get married.”

“If you keep that up, I’m going to take to drink.”

“I’m just trying to cover all the mounds,” Tibor said. He shook his head. “Bases. All the bases. I’ve been listening to Tommy again. Krekor, really, it is all right. Tell me about your case in Massachusetts. I’ve been listening to the news, but they never tell me very much. Bennis will be back next week. You can think about it then.”

“Do you know where she’s gone?”

“No. And I am not lying, Krekor. I am no use keeping a secret. I don’t know where she’s gone. Donna might know.”

“I’ll go talk to Donna.”

“She and Russ have taken Tommy to see a musical and then to dinner. You must calm down, Krekor. It is all right. It is only that Bennis did not realize before that she loved you, and now she does. She doesn’t know what to do with it.”

“She’s been telling me she loves me for quite some time.”

“Yes, Krekor, I am sure; but that is being in love, that is not loving. You should know that yourself. Tell me about the case. It will take your mind off it.”

Gregor doubted if anything would take his mind off it. He had a sneaking suspicion that that was the point of theletter—although, he had to admit, he’d have been no calmer or less obsessive if Bennis had taken off without leaving a letter. Linda Melajian came over with the menus and two glasses of water. She put the water on the table and said, “You two need these, or do you just want to tell me what you’ll have?”

“Yaprak sarma,” Tibor said.

“A steak the size of Kansas,” Gregor said, “and french fries.”

“Yaprak sarma and oil and vinegar on the salad,” Linda said, “and something the man could have picked up in any white bread restaurant in central Philadelphia and blue cheese on the salad. Glass of wine for the father. You want me to bring you a beer and a shot just to let you finish off this little fit of yours?”

“I’ll have a glass of red,” Gregor said. “I’m not in the mood for this; I’m really not.”

“The first thing everybody on this street is going to do when Bennis gets back,” Linda said, “is tell her all about this steak.”

She walked off. She hadn’t bothered to write down a thing on her pad.

“I’m living in one of the largest cities on the planet,” Gregor said, “and I might as well be living in a village in the old country. They know my blood type around here.”

“And usually you like it,” Tibor said. “Pay attention to me, Krekor. Tell me about your case. It won’t do you any good to dwell on it. It will only make you crazy.”

He would dwell on it as soon as he got back to the apartment and found himself on his own. Gregor knew he would. It was the kind of thing he not only dwelt on, but that he was meant to dwell on. There had to be some sort of middle ground here. Women should be expected to meet you halfway. They never did. Why was that? Why did they get away with it? Why couldn’t you just tell them to make sense and have them do it?

The salads came. His had enough blue cheese dressing on it to reconstitute France on the North American continent.

He was suddenly very happy that nobody on Cavanaugh Street had gone in for renaming things Freedom Fries.

“Krekor?” Tibor said.

Gregor shrugged. “There isn’t much to tell,” he said. “It looked complex on the surface, but it wasn’t. These two women, Cherie Wardrop and Melissa Medford, had been ripping off schools for years. Cherie would get a job at some expensive private school as a biology teacher and take a place as a houseparent, which wasn’t difficult because most people would rather not be houseparents. You can’t blame them. They want to live on their own without having to be at work twenty-four seven. Anyway, they’d do that. Melissa would take an apartment in the nearest town. They’d look around and figure out the best way to skim the system, and then they’d do it: house accounts, student drawing accounts, all kinds of things. It only required patience and ingenuity, and they had both. Brian Sheehy, the police chief in Windsor, was just calling around to the other places they’d worked when I left. He’d found at least three other scams that the schools hadn’t even caught. They never stayed very long in one place just in case. And they had a bank account in the name of M. C. Medwar—that was supposed to be clever, a combination of the two names—to stuff the money in that wasn’t their own accounts, which were clean.”