Wanting Sheila Dead(53)

“Yes,” Tibor said.

Tibor answered the phone the way people did in Italy and Greece—Pronto! Embross!—but never in Armenian, so Gregor had always wondered. Gregor identified himself and then ran down the story of the day.

“So,” he said, “where we’re at the moment is where this woman claims to be Karen Mgrdchian, the wife of Marco Mgrdchian, who she says died last year. Is there any way we can check any of that out?”

“I’d think the police would be better at checking it out, Krekor,” Tibor said. “Don’t they have ways to run down identities, and things like that?”

“I was thinking of other kinds of checking out,” Gregor said. “There’s got to be a church, right? People of that generation went to church.”

“Yes, Krekor, there could be a church. But what church? This woman’s name, Karen, that is not Armenian for that generation, or even for yours. Maybe she was not a member of our Church. Maybe she and her family went to another church. That’s very common, the family goes to the wife’s church.”

“I thought you said that there was a marriage certificate. That they got married on Cavanaugh Street.”

“Ah. Krekor, I’m sorry. I don’t remember. I can look.”

“Thank you,” Gregor said. “Would you? And there’s a daughter, I think, to that marriage. I should have paid more attention when the Very Old Ladies were talking. I didn’t really think this could be anything like a crime—”

“You think now that this is a crime, Krekor? Why do you think it is a crime?”

“I don’t know,” Gregor said. “I can’t put my finger on it. And I may be crazy. But I’d like to get it all checked out. The best thing would be if we could find the church they went to in, where was it, Ohio, I think, if we can find that church and find out if they know anything about them. About the two of them. The couple. No,” Gregor thought. “The best thing would be to find the daughter.”

“All right, Krekor, I will look through the parish records. Maybe I will find something.”

“And maybe you can ask Bennis to do one of those Internet searches for obituaries of Marco Mgrdchian. Maybe for the last eighteen months, say, to make sure she isn’t being careless about the time. I want to know what he died of.”

“Krekor. The man must have been around eighty.”

“Yes, I know,” Gregor said. “But we all do that, don’t we? That was in one of the Agatha Christie’s you gave me. A Caribbean Mystery.”

“What was?’

“The fact that we don’t tend to pay too much attention when somebody dies, if we think it’s to be expected that he died. The old, you see. The very sick. We’re not surprised. We don’t look too closely.”

“I am no longer sure that Agatha Christie was such a good idea.”

“You have to get past the fluffy,” Gregor said. “All the villages and the costume party constables and that sort of thing. If you can ignore all that, the woman had some good ideas. And this is definitely a good one. I want to find that church, I want to find that obituary, and then I want to talk to the police in whatever town it is. I didn’t get much information at the hospital, because Karen Mgrdchian’s lawyer had me out of the room as soon as she could. You can hardly blame her. That’s her job.”

“No, Krekor, you can hardly blame her. You do not want to talk to Bennis yourself?”

“I’ll talk to her when I get home. I’m in a cab.”

“In a cab coming home?”

“It’s a long story,” Gregor said. “Would you mind going ahead with all of that? There’s just something—I don’t know.”

“All right,” Tibor said. “But possibly you should make the cab bring you home. I don’t like the way you sound.”

Gregor closed his phone and put it back into his pocket. They were way out into the suburbs now. The first time he had come out here, Bennis’s father had sent a car for him, complete with a driver in livery. It was incredible the way some people lived, right through inflation and taxes and all the rest of it. Bennis had shown him a picture, once, of her coming-out party—the real one, not the public cotillion that was apparently just for show. There was the terrace and the back lawn decked out in lights, and two bands, and a champagne bar. Bennis was wearing an ice blue dress and a necklace that looked like it should have come with bodyguards.

Gregor wondered what had happened to the necklace. Bennis had not inherited it, because Bennis had not inherited anything. There had been a little something from her mother, but that was all.