Wanting Sheila Dead(31)

“I don’t see why they don’t want to talk to us now,” Mrs. Vardanian said.

“Well,” Gregor said, “at the moment, there’s no real proof that a crime has been committed. We found Mrs. Mgrdchian unconscious, but the woman was very old, and you said she’d been reclusive for years. She could have been in poor health—”

“We’re all in poor health, Krekor,” Mrs. Vardanian said. “We don’t go passing into a coma in our front foyers and having strangers in the house in the meantime. Who was that woman? Do they know what she was doing there?”

“No,” Gregor said. “She says her name is Lily, but we know that from the other day. She’s not saying much else that’s making any sense. They’re having a hard time identifying her—”

“DNA,” the fat little Very Old Lady said.

“Oh, Kara, don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs. Vardanian said. “The world isn’t made of episodes of CSI. Why in the name of God would the police department have samples of this woman’s DNA?”

“Fingerprints then,” Kara Edelakian said.

“Ah, yes,” Gregor said. “There’s always fingerprints, but the police haven’t been able to come up with a clean set. Lily’s—I suppose we’ll have to call her Lily—Lily’s fingertips are badly damaged. The best guess at this moment is that she’s a homeless woman. The homeless often have hands that have been significantly damaged. It comes from being out in the very bitter cold for a long time—”

“It comes from putting your bare hands on metal in the very bitter cold,” Mrs. Vardanian said matter-of-factly. “Then when you try to pull them away, the skin tears. You don’t have to treat us like a pack of virgins, Krekor. We’ve all been around long enough not to be surprised by life.”

“And we watch television,” Kara said helpfully. “And not just CSI. Law and Order.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “Well, you do have to understand that real police departments can’t actually do most of the things you see on CSI. I mean, they sort of invent technology . . .”

“I have the parish records, Krekor,” Tibor said.

Tibor pushed a little stack of papers across the table, and Gregor looked down on them. He made out the name “Mgrdchian,” and the names “Sophie” and “Viktor.” Everything else was in Armenian.

“Well,” Gregor said.

“There isn’t much here,” Tibor said. “I know I don’t have the same training you do, and I know it would be better if you could actually read these on your own, but I don’t see what you’d find. Viktor Mgrdchian came to the United States when he was six. Sophie Karnakian came when she was four. That was the same year. Their families came right here to Cavanaugh Street. They married when Viktor was nineteen and Sophie was seventeen. Viktor was in the Army then. There was one child, born dead, about six years later. Viktor was a tailor. He died when he was only fifty-six of a heart attack at work. And that’s it.”

“Brothers and sisters?” Gregor asked. “For either of them?”

Tibor nodded. “Sophie had two sisters, Leia and Marietta. Leia died in a flu epidemic when she was three and a half years old. Marietta never married and died a few years ago—”

“Eleven,” Mrs. Vardanian said. “We went to the funeral. That was the year before Father Tibor came. It wasn’t much of a funeral.”

“Did Viktor have family,” Gregor said.

Tibor searched through the papers. “Two brothers,” he said. “There was Marco and Dennis. Both younger than he was, both married, and then they left the street. Left the state, I think. This must be where the niece comes in, or whatever she is, Krekor. It must be the daughter of one of the brothers.”

“There was only the one?” Gregor asked.

“We’re not sure,” Tibor said. “We’ve been talking about it. The boys moved away, you see, and they never came back except for the funerals.”

“Were they back for Marietta Karnakian’s funeral?” Gregor asked.

“Not for Marietta’s, but they came for Viktor’s,” Mrs. Vardanian said. “I remember distinctly. The brothers came, Marco and Dennis, and they brought wives. Sophie had a dinner, you know, afterward, for people to come to. It’s custom. But they didn’t come, the brothers.”

“Sophie said they didn’t feel comfortable,” Marita Melvarian said. “Only I don’t think that was the word she used. But she said something about how they didn’t know us anymore, and—”