Wanting Sheila Dead(43)

“I’m wandering around in the city,” Gregor told Mortimer, “and I was wondering if I could come over and talk about things for a bit. I’ve just been with Dr. Halevy.”

“Ah,” Mortimer said. “Yes, I talked to her this morning.”

“Well, there’s that,” Gregor said. “And a few more things.”

“Come on over. Maybe we can go to lunch. I’ve been here since five-thirty and I’m dying.”

Gregor put the cell phone back in his pocket. He didn’t like the fact that phones didn’t just ring anymore. He was less attuned to the modern than Miss Jane Marple.

Ack, he thought.

Then there was a cab, and he was raising his arm in the street and watching it slow down.





3


There was no murder, and therefore no murder mystery, and that mattered. But something was going on, and Gregor didn’t like the way it felt, so he was here. Or something. Maybe he was just bored being without something professional to do.

Gregor watched the floors go by as the elevator went up and thought that he would have to poke his head in to say hello to the mayor before he left. He’d known John Jackman too long not to do that. Then the elevator stopped and the doors slid open, and David Mortimer was right out there in the hall, waiting for him.

“Mr. Demarkian,” he said. “Come on back with me for a while. I’ve got some information printing out for you.”

“As far as I can tell, there isn’t any information,” Gregor said. “At least there isn’t any from the doctor. Is there anything about this Lily woman?”

“Not really.” David Mortimer was moving fast. Gregor watched offices go by, and then a big office full of cubicles, and then a little door at the end. Mortimer opened that door and ushered Gregor into a space that must once have been a biggish closet. It did not have a window.

There was a visitor’s chair. Gregor sat in it. Mortimer sat behind the desk and looked into the little tray of the printer.

“Here we are,” he said, picking up a little pile of papers. “And in case you’re wondering, yes, this was indeed a closet. But the mayor wanted his special liaison to have an office, not a cubicle, so here we are.”

“That’s what your title is? Special Liaison?”

“Yeah. Personally, I think Mr. Jackman just likes the word ‘liaison.’ You’ve known him forever, haven’t you?”

“Something like that.” Gregor did not say, “He dated my wife before I did,” because he found that idea uncomfortable.

Mortimer placed the papers on the desk as close to Gregor as he could get them. “We’ve done a preliminary search for the two brothers,” he said, “given the information you’ve given us. And for the niece, I think you said she was. So far, we don’t have much, but then we don’t have much, if you know what I mean. We’ve asked for a search warrant so that we can go into the house and look through the papers there to find some clue to where the rest of the woman’s family is, but it’s harder to get warrants like that than you’d think. There are privacy concerns, and legal concerns, and constitutional concerns. You weren’t really serious when you suggested that we just let this, um, this Mrs.—”

“Vardanian,” Gregor said.

“Vardanian,” Mortimer said. “You didn’t really mean we should turn a blind eye to her going into the house and rooting around?”

“No,” Gregor said. “Not really. But she suggested it, and I thought I should pass it along. She’s—maybe I should say understandably concerned.”

“Yes, well,” Mortimer said. “Look. If this Mrs. Mgrdchian were any younger, we’d probably have homicide detectives assigned to the case already. Not that there’s been a homicide, but we don’t really know that there hasn’t been an attempted one. This whole thing gets odder the longer it goes on. We did check the public records, and we have birth data on Sophie and Viktor Mgrdchian and draft information on Viktor and his two brothers, plus records of the baptism, but not the birth, of a Clarice Ann Mgrdchian, who seems to have been Marco’s daughter. But Clarice Ann couldn’t be Lily. She’s too young by nearly thirty years.”

“And you don’t know where she is?”

“We’ve got a couple of people working the Internet,” Mortimer said, “but it’s not as easy as you think, especially when you don’t really know where to start geographically. And we don’t know. Those women you sent us to are very sharp, sharper than I expect to be at their age, but they don’t really know anything. Seeing somebody at a funeral more than a decade ago isn’t—”