Wanting Sheila Dead(22)

“You do have cause to believe a crime has been committed,” Mrs. Vardanian said. “We told you.”

Gregor pressed the bell again. He listened to the distant bell sound again. Nothing happened.

“Maybe Mrs. Mgrdchian is sick and has a nurse’s aide staying with her to do for her,” Gregor said.

“If Sophie Mgrdchian was sick and wanted to get somebody in, we’d have heard about it,” Mrs. Vardanian said. “She’d have called for the priest. You don’t take chances with that kind of thing.”

Gregor looked back at the door. Maybe Mrs. Mgrdchian was deaf, and the woman who was with her—if there was a woman with her; if this wasn’t just Mrs. Mgrdchian herself and the Very Old Ladies having vapors—maybe the woman who was with her was deaf, too.

Gregor raised his fist and pounded against the door, hard and flat, making a big booming noise that he thought almost anybody could have heard. When nothing happened yet again, he raised his fist one more time, gave one more hard pound . . . and the door popped open.

“The door’s open,” Mrs. Vardanian said. “Very good. We can go in there now and look around and nobody can blame us. The door’s open on a city street and that means—”

“I don’t really think we ought to go in there,” Gregor said.

“Oh, don’t be such a coward,” Mrs. Vardanian said, pushing her way up the stairs and next to the place where Gregor was standing. “I don’t know what’s wrong with young people today. They’ve got no initiative. They’ve got no—”

But by then Mrs. Vardanian was looking at what Gregor himself was looking at: the small, thin body of a woman lying across the foyer carpet, flat on its face. Just beyond her there was another woman, taller and thicker and wild-eyed, standing very still.

“My God,” Mrs. Vardanian said.

Gregor got out his phone and punched in 911.





2


The paramedics and the police arrived first, but only by a hair. The man from the Mayor’s Office arrived right behind them, and he didn’t care half so much about blocking the flow of traffic on the street. Of course, by that point, there was no flow of traffic on the street. The taxis had seen the logjam and had taken alternative routes, radioing in to any other drivers who might need the information. The ordinary motorists were just stopped in their tracks. Some of them had gotten out of their cars. If anybody had to go anywhere in a fast car with lights and sirens flashing, there was going to be a problem.

The man from the Mayor’s Office was somebody Gregor recognized, but not well enough. He was very young, and very white, and had that look about him that so many of John Jackman’s aides had. John liked to hire graduates of all the Ivy League schools that had once turned him down.

The young man threaded his way through the crowd and up to where Gregor and Bennis were standing, just off the now open front door. The denizens of Cavanaugh Street were out in force. Even the ones you’d expect to stay in their stores and restaurants just to keep them running were there. Gregor spotted three of the Ohanians and two of the Melajians. The Very Old Ladies were as close to the door as the uniformed personnel would let them, and closer. As soon as all the uniformed backs were turned, they crept in again.

“Murder,” Mrs. Vardanian was saying. Viola Vardanian said nothing under her breath. It had been decades since she could hear a voice pitched that low—unless it was a voice delivering really good dirt on somebody she knew, and then she could hear it coming all the way from Trenton.

The young man made it the rest of the way up the steps and held out his hand. “Mr. Demarkian? I’m David Mortimer. Mayor Jackman sent me.”

Bennis snorted a little in the background. Gregor ignored her. “How do you do, Mr. Mortimer. Except I think I’ve at least met you once, I just couldn’t place you. I hope John is well.”

“The mayor’s fine, as far as I know,” David Mortimer said. “He thought you might need some help with whatever’s going on in there.”

“I don’t know what’s going on in there,” Gregor said.

“It was murder,” Mrs. Vardanian said. She made her way across the front stairs as if nothing and nobody was in her way. She took David Mortimer by the lapels of his very expensive suit jacket. “It was murder,” she said again. “We’ve been saying it for days now, and nobody would listen to us. I knew that wasn’t Sophie Mgrdchian going in and out. I’ve known Sophie Mgrdchian all my life. Damned fool woman in a lot of ways, but she wasn’t that tall American thing coming in and out—”