Baptism in Blood (17 page)

It was like somebody had given the place a collective cold bath. Everybody was silent. Everybody looked just faintly depressed, except Sheri Lynn, who looked blank. Betsey Henner sighed the sigh of the perpetually long-suf­fering and headed toward the back room again. Gregor hoped she was going to get his breakfast, cholesterol over­load and all.

In the quiet caused by Sheri Lynn, most of the custom­ers went back to their breakfasts and their own conversa­tions. The man a few stools down was still looking at Gregor, but he didn’t seem hostile anymore, just curious. Gregor didn’t think there would be anything wrong with satisfying his curiosity. It might even help him get the in­formation he needed. Then a woman of indeterminate age got out of her seat at one of the window booths and sat down on the stool next to him.

“Are you the Gregor Demarkian who is the detec­tive?” Her voice had just a trace of New York flat in it.

“That’s right,” Gregor told her. “Who are you?”

“My name is Maggie Kelleher. I own the bookstore.”

Suddenly, Gregor knew who this woman reminded him of. She didn’t look anything like Bennis Hannaford, but she was like her nonetheless. There was something about the way she carried herself, and the calm but chal­lenging look in her eyes—as if she spent her time demand­ing something of the universe that the universe didn’t want to give back.

Ricky Drake stirred in his booth. He was heavier than he looked at first glance, and sullen. “Maggie used to be one of us,” he said, “but then she went to New York.”

Maggie Kelleher didn’t turn around to look at him. “I’ve read about you,” she said to Gregor. “I’ve read a lot about you. Have you come down here to help the police make it look like Ginny Marsh killed her own child?”

“I take it you don’t think Ginny Marsh did kill her own child,” Gregor said.

Maggie gave him a long, slow look. Then she hopped off her stool and went back to her booth. Gregor thought she had abandoned him entirely, but in a moment she was back, with a full cup of hot coffee in her hands. She put it down on the counter next to him.

“I was up there on the day of the storm, you know,” she said. “Up at the camp.”

“And?”

Maggie Kelleher shrugged. She had very elegant, very expressive shoulders. She also had very intelligent eyes. “Half the town was up there, if you want to know the truth. Stephen and Lisa Harrow from the United Church of Christ. He’s the minister there.”

“He’s a bigger atheist than David Sandler these days,” the man a few stools down said. “Nobody knows what Stephen’s up to being a member of the clergy these days,”

“There were a lot of people,” Maggie went on. “Rose MacNeill who owns the religious gift shop. In the big Victorian house. You might have seen it on your way here.”

“I did.”

“I keep trying to remember everybody who was up there, but I can’t. It was the middle of the storm and every­thing was crazy. And of course, that’s the highest ground in town.”

“David Sandler said something about the high school.”

Maggie Kelleher nodded. “That was the official ref­uge, of course, but it was safer up at the camp and we all knew it. And Zhondra had made it clear enough that she didn’t mind company for the duration as long as the com­pany behaved itself.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning no acting like Ricky back there would act if he got around someone who was gay. It was all right. The people who felt like that didn’t come up anyway. They went to the high school or out to Henry Holborn’s place.”

Gregor frowned. “Henry Holborn. He’s a—what? Minister?”

“Something like that,” Maggie replied. “I don’t know what you know about places like this, Mr. Demarkian, but there are a lot of guys out here, they didn’t go to the seminary or get ordained in a regular religion the way Catholics and Presbyterians do. They went to Bible college—there are hundreds of Bible college all across the South—anyway, they went to Bible college and then they came home and started preaching. And if they got enough people to come listen to them, that got them the money to found and build a church. Henry Holborn is one of those. His place is called the Bellerton Full Gospel Christian Church, and it’s enormous.”

“Henry Holborn is a good man,” Ricky Drake de­clared. “He’s a messenger from God.”

“I don’t know if Henry Holborn is a messenger from God,” Maggie said, “but he is a very successful preacher, the most successful one we’ve had around here for years, and the complex he built is far enough from the water to be safe from most hurricane problems. So there were a lot of people out there. All the members of his church who could get there, for one. Except Ginny Marsh, who was out at the camp. Bobby was there, though.”

“Who’s Bobby?”

“Ginny’s husband. Tiffany’s father. That’s the usual thing, isn’t it? When a mother is supposed to have killed her children. People usually say it was the husband’s idea.”

“Actually,” Gregor said carefully, “people usually say it was the boyfriend’s idea. In the two most famous cases of this kind that I know of, there was a boyfriend in the background, a man they wanted to marry who didn’t want to support another man’s children. Does Ginny Marsh have a boyfriend?”

“Not that I know of. And this is Bellerton, North Car­olina, Mr. Demarkian. If she had a boyfriend, I’d know.”

Gregor took another long sip of his coffee. This was not strictly true. In spite of the legendary nosiness of small towns, they were often utterly unaware of the most outra­geous things. It might be impossible to find privacy in a place like Bellerton, but it would be easier than Bellerton realized for one of its citizens to keep a secret.

“You say you were up at the camp,” Gregor said slowly. “Let me ask you this, then. Did you see anything that might indicate that Ginny Marsh was not lying? Was there some kind of Satanic ritual going on? Was Ginny in your sight all along?”

“Ginny wasn’t in my sight all along. But it doesn’t matter, Mr. Demarkian. I don’t think you’ve understood me. I said that I didn’t think Ginny killed her baby. And I don’t.”

“I know you don’t.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t think Ginny was lying,” Maggie Kelleher went on. “I do think she’s lying, Mr. Demarkian. I think she’s lying through her teeth. About the Satanic rituals. About the way the baby died. About everything.”

“But why?” Gregor asked. “If you’re trying to tell me she’s covering up for her husband—”

“I told you, her husband wasn’t there.”

“—or for anybody. Miss Kelleher—”

“Ms.”

“Ms. Kelleher, collusion in murder is almost as bad as murder. In the eyes of the law, there’s not a great deal of difference. In some states, you can get the death penalty for it.”

“I don’t think Ginny’s colluding in murder,” Maggie Kelleher said in exasperation. “I don’t think she’s covering up for anybody, not in the way you mean. You don’t under­stand my point.”

“No,” Gregor said. “I don’t. But I’m trying. What is your point?”

Maggie Kelleher came to some sort of decision. She hopped off her stool and picked up her cup of coffee. She hadn’t drunk much of it while she was sitting next to Gregor, but it had cooled off a little. It was no longer steaming.

“Never mind,” she said. “I don’t know what point I’m trying to make either. I should never have started this conversation. And I’ve got to go.”

“But—” Gregor said.

At that moment, Betsey Henner came out of the back room with Gregor’s breakfast. It was on a big, thick, oval white porcelain plate, the kind that Gregor thought must have been invented just to supply diners everywhere. Bet­sey put the plate down in front of Gregor and stepped back.

“There you go,” she said.

“Jesus Christ,” Maggie Kelleher said. “What are you trying to do, give yourself a heart attack?”

I
N GREGOR DEMARKIAN’S EXPERIENCE
, there were two kinds of small-town police departments: the kind that was all uniforms and noise, and the kind that knew what it was doing. The Bellerton Police Department seemed to be the latter kind. It was only quarter after seven when he got over there, after eating his breakfast and wandering down Main Street for a second time. By then there were children on the sidewalks and young women hurrying onto porches to put mail in their mailboxes. A couple of Main Street stores hung out their American flags. The police department was in the basement of Town Hall. Standing on the Town Hall lawn, Gregor could look into the window well and see the department, or what there was of it, in operation. A big man in a uniform shirt and khaki pants was working at a desk. He wasn’t wearing a hat of any kind, and if he was wearing a gun, Gregor couldn’t see it. A smaller man, also in a uniform shirt and khaki pants, was typing on an ancient machine at a long counter. Gregor couldn’t see a gun on him, either, but he was wearing a holster. There were neither prisoners nor anyone else in the small room. There weren’t even any reporters. In fact, Gregor thought, he had managed to get lucky, waking up early the way he had. There were no reporters anywhere in Bellerton, as far as Gregor could see.

The front door to the Town Hall was locked. Gregor had tried it. He had gone around to the side of the building in search of another door, and found instead a statue in honor of Bellerton’s Civil War dead. The statue was of a slouching Confederate soldier with a ragged coat standing on a pedestal. The pedestal had six names engraved into the side of it. Gregor went around to the back and found a small parking lot with three cars in it. He also found a door, although not a door to the basement. You had to go up a rickety set of steps to get to it.

Gregor was just wondering whether to try this door or to go around to the one side of the building he hadn’t seen yet when the door opened, and a well-preserved middle-aged woman came out, wearing a flowing flowered dress and very high heels. Gregor worried about women in heels, especially when they were trying to negotiate steep stairs like this set. This woman sailed down them without looking at her feet, and hardly touching the banister. The banister was just a thick metal pipe anyway, tacked on, it looked like, at the last minute, because somebody less surefooted than this had fallen.

The woman was looking him over without pretending not to be. Her gaze seemed to be neutral. Gregor stepped away from the stairs and put his hands behind his back.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked, when she got to the little patch of sidewalk at the bottom of the steps. “Are you looking for something?”

“I’m looking for the police department,” Gregor said. “I found it, in a way. I looked straight into one of its windows. It seems to be open. I just can’t figure out how to get in.”

“The police department’s always open,” the woman said. “Not that there’s a lot of crime out here. But we’ve got drunks just like every place else.”

“I’m sure you do.”

The woman cocked her head. “I thought you were another of those reporters, but you aren’t, are you? You’re that man they wrote about in the paper, the one who’s a friend of David Sandler’s. Gregory—”

“Gregor Demarkian.”

“That’s right. The world’s most famous detective. So what is it now? You and Dr. Sandler don’t think the police department in a place like Bellerton is up to investigating a thing of this kind?”

“I think the police department in Bellerton is doing a wonderful job.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because David Sandler asked me to come. Because I got a letter from a man—Clayton Hall, I think the name was—saying it would be a good idea if I came. In his opinion, that is.”

“Clayton knew you were coming? He thought it was all right?”

“He wrote me a letter. He said he thought it was all right.”

“We get tired of it, you know,” the woman said. “All this hogwash about what a backwards little place we are. Oh, they don’t come out and say it. They don’t stand up there on the six o’clock news and announce that Bellerton is a hick little hollow full of mental defectives. But they imply it. They go out of their way to imply it.”

Gregor cleared his throat. “I’m sorry if they do,” he said. “I’m afraid I haven’t had much time to watch the news of this on television.”

“It’s the people they pick to talk to,” the woman said. “I learned that when I was up at the university in Chapel Hill. This town has dozens of good people in it. Dozens of intelligent people, too. So who do these television people put in front of a camera as soon as they have a chance? Bobby Marsh and Ricky Drake.”

“Isn’t Bobby Marsh the child’s father?”

The woman ignored this entirely. “None of them un­derstands any of it anyway. They don’t understand what it was like down here, just twenty-five or thirty years ago. They don’t understand where these people are coming from.”

The woman seemed to snap out of it. “Never mind,” she said, smoothing her hands along the sides of her dress skirt. “It doesn’t matter. You want to see Clayton Hall?”

“If he’s in. I want to go to the police department.”

“You just go around the side of the building there. There’s a little set of steps going down, like cellar steps except right out in the open and they’re made of concrete. There’s a police car parked around that side, too. That’s how you can tell.”

“I was just going to check that side. Thank you for telling me.”

“The first four or five days, there were reporters just spilling out of there, and all over the Town Hall steps, and everywhere else you could see. And equipment with cables, too. You’ve got to worry about children around cables, you know.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“Do you think Ginny Marsh killed her daughter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Clayton Hall thinks she did. Damned idiot. Anybody with a brain in his head could see that Ginny Marsh never did any such thing.”

“She could be covering up for somebody who did. For her husband. Or her boyfriend.”

“Bobby Marsh was out at Henry Holborn’s place when the baby was killed. Everybody knows that. Even Clayton knows that. Do you believe in religion?”

“Believe in it?”

The woman snorted. “Well, I’m not going to ask you if you’ve accepted Christ as your personal savior, am I? I mean, do you think religion is good for people?”