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Wanting Sheila Dead(30)

By:Jane Haddam


There was enough rain to prompt banalities about Noah and his flood. Gregor made his way through it, holding an umbrella very carefully over his head, and went down the small, clean alley to the back of Holy Trinity Armenian Christian Church. When they’d rebuilt here after the old church had been destroyed, they’d been careful to have everything done exactly right. The “alley” looked like one of those small pedestrian paved streets in London, and they didn’t leave its maintenance to the city. They hired a firm to come in and clean it and the two courtyards at each end of it, and another firm to dig it all out of the snow, when the snow came.

Gregor went into the courtyard and saw that Father Tibor’s apartment was lit up as if it were midnight. The apartment above it, being empty, was dark.

Gregor rang the bell and waited to be let in. He had no idea why he did that, since Tibor didn’t actually expect him to, and Tibor also never kept the door locked. Gregor had talked to him about that a million times, but it did no good.

Tibor came to the door and opened up. Gregor put his umbrella down, shook it off, and dropped it into the umbrella stand just inside the door.

“I have them all here, Krekor,” Tibor said. “And I have all the papers I could find on the kitchen table. Watch the books. I made the stack the night before last and I meant to put them away, but I forgot.”

The books included the usual collection: Areopagetica by John Milton; Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons; something in Greek. Gregor was careful going around them.

“I wish we’d find somebody for that apartment upstairs,” he said. “I don’t like it sitting empty. I know it’s not the usual sort of thing, but there’s always a danger of getting squatters in there. Or worse.”

“We’re not going to get squatters in,” Tibor said. “And if we did I think it could be argued that we had the responsibility to serve them. That is what a church is for, Krekor, not just a beautiful liturgy but to help us live as Christ lived. That is more books, Krekor. Be careful.”

There were indeed more books, dozens of them, stacked against the wall between the small dining room and the kitchen. There were books stacked on every wall. The parishioners of Holy Trinity had built this apartment particularly for Father Tibor. They had put built-in bookshelves on every available inch of wall space, including in some of the bathrooms. It hadn’t been enough. There would never be enough wall space for Tibor’s books. He read everything—in six languages.

Tibor swung back the door to the kitchen and Gregor went through to find the three Very Old Ladies sitting together at Tibor’s kitchen table, drinking coffee that looked like black mud and probably had enough caffeine to keep the entire United States Army awake for a year. They had brought their own coffeemaker. Gregor could see it sitting on Tibor’s kitchen counter next to the microwave, which was virtually the only kitchen appliance Tibor could operate without setting it on fire. On the other hand, Tibor had set the microwave on fire once. Gregor remembered it. Gregor wondered which of the Very Old Ladies had brought that coffeemaker from Yerevan, and which of her grandmothers it had once belonged to.

The women looked up when he came in, but they didn’t stand. Gregor got the small folder he’d been carrying out from under his arm and dropped it on the table. Then Tibor motioned him to a chair, and he sat.

“I will make you some coffee, Krekor,” Tibor said.

Mrs. Vardanian looked skeptical. “Better have some of ours. That stuff he makes tastes like dirty water.”

Gregor looked into Mrs. Vardanian’s small cup. Black mud was putting it mildly. The stuff was—Gregor didn’t know what. Alive, maybe.

“I don’t think my blood pressure can take it,” he said. He opened the folder in front of him and looked at it. He didn’t have to look at it. He’d spent the morning talking to the police, and the hospital, and David Mortimer, and he knew everything he was about to say.

“Well,” he tried. Tibor put a cup of something down in front of him. Tibor’s coffee did taste like dirty water. On the other hand, it wouldn’t actively kill him. “First,” Gregor tried again, “you might already know, Mrs. Mgrdchian is not dead. She wasn’t dead when we found her, and she’s not dead now.”

“Is she conscious?” the smallest of the three Very Old Ladies said.

“Of course she isn’t conscious, Marita,” Mrs. Vardanian said. “If she was conscious, he would have said so. And he wouldn’t have needed to talk to us. Isn’t that so?”

“Ah, sort of,” Gregor said. “Even if she was conscious, she might not remember anything. And there could be other reasons to want to talk to you. The police are definitely going to want to talk to you, eventually.”