Wanting Sheila Dead(54)

The cab was slowing down. The driver opened the privacy shield and said, “Is this it? Engine House?”

The name ENGINE HOUSE was engraved on a plaque bolted into a rock next to the tall gate. It had once been engraved directly onto the stone, but erosion had taken care of that. The house was close to a hundred and fifty years old. It was a little unnerving to think that there were houses in America like that.

“This is it,” Gregor told the driver.

The gate was open. Gregor wondered if that was usual, either for Bobby Hannaford or for these television people. Gregor watched as long columns of trees went by on either side, towering up into the air and blocking out the sky. It was an already dark day. It felt spooky. He’d witnessed the effect at night. It was spookier.

They drove up into the roundabout in front of the front door and stopped. Gregor got out and handed the driver what felt like all the money in the world. The driver handed Gregor a business card.

“Call me if you have to get back,” he said.

Gregor thanked him and put the card away. The ride had cost an arm and a leg, but it had gotten him where he wanted to go. He had to make allowances if he didn’t want to drive himself and he didn’t want to ask Bennis to drive him. He never wanted to drive himself. He thought it must have been five years since the last time he’d tried it. He never wanted Bennis to drive him, either. She thought of speed limits as minimums and brakes as largely unnecessary.

He looked around. He could hear the cab retreating up the drive. There was a black limousine off to the side, in the direction of the garages. There was still rain coming down. The house felt empty and looked it, but he knew that didn’t mean anything. Houses this large often felt and looked empty when they weren’t actually full of people.

He pressed the doorbell and waited. The door was opened a few seconds later by a very young girl who looked as if she had been crying. Gregor didn’t think she was a maid. She wasn’t dressed for it. She wasn’t acting like it, either.

“Excuse me,” Gregor said. “I’ve come to see a Miss Olivia Dahl.”

All of a sudden, the door was pulled back in a jerk and Olivia Dahl was standing there, looking a little disheveled and completely wild.

“My God,” she said. “It’s Gregor Demarkian. I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it. Get out of the way, Coraline. What do you think you’re doing?”

Olivia Dahl grabbed the crying girl and jerked her out of the way. Then she grabbed Gregor Demarkian by the wrist and pulled him into the house.

The foyer was full of people, most of them young girls, many of them hysterical. Gregor wondered why he hadn’t heard any of it when he was standing on the step.

Then a tall, thin, black-haired woman walked up to him and grabbed his lapel. “Get in there,” she said. “What’s the good of you anyway, if you can’t prevent something like this? Don’t you see somebody’s trying to kill me?”

“For God’s sake, Sheila,” Olivia said.

“Somebody is trying to kill me,” Sheila Dunham said. “That’s the truth. It really is. Do you honestly think that anybody cares about whoever that is? And what’s she doing out, anyway? She was in jail. She was supposed to stay in jail. How do you live with yourself if you let dangerous criminals out in public when you’re supposed to keep them in jail?”

“Sheila, make sense,” Olivia Dahl said. “This is Gregor Demarkian. He’s not part of the police department. He’s—”

“One of these filthy little whores is trying to kill me,” Sheila Dunham said, “and you’re all standing around talking about it.”

“It’s over here,” Olivia said, pulling Gregor toward the right of the foyer.

That was when Gregor Demarkian got the oddest feeling of déjà vu. There was the door to the study. There was the study. When they opened the door to the study they would find a man on the floor in front of the fireplace, his head bashed in with a bust of Aristotle, his wheelchair pushed back a little toward the desk.

But that was not, of course, what they did find. Olivia opened the door and there was no man and no wheelchair and no bust of Aristotle.

There was a small, thin blond girl lying across the stone hearth.

She had been shot at least three times in the chest.





PART II




It is never right to do wrong.

—G. K. Chesterton





ONE



1


By the time the police arrived, Gregor Demarkian had managed to get himself past the point where he felt that he was living in one of his own nightmares. He even called Tibor to talk about it, twice.

“I can’t call Bennis,” he pointed out. “I mean, she wanted me to come out here and talk to these people about what happened in Merion, but you’ll notice she didn’t come out here herself. She never comes out here. I thought, after Bobby got the house back—well, I thought with childhood memories, and that kind of thing. But it didn’t happen. She hates it out here.”