Bleeding Hearts (27 page)

Unfortunately, even if Candida did have a usable key to Paul Hazzard’s house, that didn’t let Hannah off the hook. There was still the blood to consider. There was still the motive to consider. Candida DeWitt might very well have hated Paul Hazzard. The newspapers and magazines all liked to pretend she did. Still, the sequence of events that had brought her to hate him was over four years old. There had been six stab wounds in Paul Hazzard’s chest. This was a crime committed in hot blood. Would Candida’s blood have been that hot after all this time? She hadn’t been raving or upset by the time the crowd reached Hannah’s bedroom
after
the murder. In fact, except for Gregor himself and Bob Cheswicki, she had been the most levelheaded one there.

Gregor sat in the chair next to the desk that belonged to Russell Donahue in the big bull pen of a squad room in the police station that served Cavanaugh Street—a much cleaner and nicer and less ominous place than the one where Gregor had met Bob Cheswicki earlier that morning—and tapped his fingers against Russell’s copy of
Halberstam on Contracts.

“Mary Ohanian,” he said. “And Helen Tevorakian.”

“You said that before,” Russell told him. “We called. They’re meeting you at two.”

“Yes, I know. Russell, listen. If you could do anything at all at this moment, what would you do? Arrest Hannah Krekorian?”

“I don’t know,” Russell said. “I suppose so. Maybe I’d wait a few days. Maybe I’d talk to the district attorney first. I’d have to talk to the district attorney first in a case like this. There are a couple of things I might want to straighten out. There are one or two things about this case—”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “I understand that. What I was thinking, though, was that it might be in the best interests of everybody involved if you did arrest Hannah Krekorian. Right away.”

“What?”

Gregor stood up. “Not right away,” he said. “Not right this minute. There are a couple of things I want to check out first. Mary Ohanian and Helen Tevorakian. Candida DeWitt.”

“What about Candida DeWitt?”

“We have to talk to her. Today. But after that I think the best thing to do, assuming that everything still stands more or less as it stands now, is to arrest Hannah and get it over with.”

“But why?”

“Because you would have arrested her if I weren’t here mucking up the process. Because once you arrest her, everybody else in this case will relax.”

“Except Mrs. Krekorian. She won’t relax. It’s no fun to be arrested.”

“We’ll work the timing right,” Gregor said. “We won’t let her spend any actual time in jail. We’ll get the judge set up and the bail and all the rest of it. I don’t want to persecute her, Mr. Donahue.”

“Russ,” Russell Donahue said. “It still won’t be pleasant. Getting fingerprinted. Getting photographed. That woman will go all to pieces.”

“She might,” Gregor admitted, “but she’ll go to pieces even worse at a trial. We want to avoid the trial.”

“One way or the other, she’s going to have to be at the trial.”

“I’m trying to ensure that she won’t have to be there as the defendant,” Gregor said. “Let’s try to get in touch with Candida DeWitt. Let’s see if we can’t go out there this evening and ask her a few questions.”

“I’m not on duty this evening.”

“You are now.”

“I’ve heard about you.” Russell Donahue sighed. “Sit down again, Mr. Demarkian. I’m going to go out and have Mary Lee Espicci call Candida DeWitt. She’s better at getting appointments than I am. I’ll be right back.”

“Right,” Gregor said.

He sat down again. Russell Donahue disappeared. Gregor picked up
Halberstam on Contracts
and noted that Russell’s place was marked by a course registration receipt from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Russell Donahue must be good. Penn didn’t make allowances for students who worked full-time jobs in urban police departments. Penn didn’t make allowances for anybody. If you wanted to be treated like a special case, you went to Penn State. Still, Russell must have convinced the law school to allow him to attend part-time. That was remarkable enough in itself.

Russell came back from wherever it was he’d gone and sat down again behind his desk.

“All taken care of,” he said. “We’re set up for seven-thirty tonight. I may even get to grab a hamburger for dinner. She’s got Fred Scherrer with her, by the way.”

“He came to pick her up last night,” Gregor said. “I’m not interrupting a class?” He tapped
Halberstam.

Russell Donahue shook his head. “I do contracts Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at nine. The department works around me. They’re very good about things like this here, except sometimes for women. Lady working Burglary had to threaten a sex discrimination suit to get her schedule arranged.”

“I’m surprised the law school admitted you as a part-time student.”

“They didn’t. I got shot. About three years ago. I was in the hospital for months, and then when I came out I couldn’t work and nobody knew if I was ever going to. So I took my disability and I got myself into the law school and I did two years straight. Then I got better and I could work again and I was running out of money and I was second in my class—”

“Right,” Gregor said. “I’m impressed.”

“Are you?” Russell Donahue suddenly looked distinctly odd. “That’s good.”

“Well,” Gregor said. “I guess I’d better be getting out of here. Mary and Helen will undoubtedly be early.”

“We’ll get a police car to take you over. I’ll bring a car and pick you up too. Six-thirty be all right?”

“That’s a little early, isn’t it?”

“We’ll be going out to Bryn Mawr and there’ll be the weekend traffic.”

“Okay.”

“Go right on downstairs and out the front door. I’ll have a patrol car waiting for you.”

“Okay,” Gregor said again. Russell Donahue still looked distinctly odd. Now, what was this about?

Gregor got his coat off the back of his chair and shrugged it on.

By the time he got to Cavanaugh Street, Gregor Demarkian was feeling more than a little guilty about his plans for Hannah Krekorian. They made sense in the long run, but Russell Donahue had been absolutely right about the short run. Hannah was going to hate everything that happened to her. She wasn’t going to remain calm. The whole scene was going to be an enormous mess, but he didn’t see any way to get around it. If he didn’t do something drastic soon, Hannah Krekorian was going to be arrested, tried, and convicted of the murder of Paul Hazzard.

Mary Ohanian and Helen Tevorakian had agreed to meet him at the back of Ohanian’s Middle Eastern Food Store. Mary couldn’t take the time away from work to go over to Helen’s. Besides, Hannah was at Helen’s. Nobody wanted to bring Hannah into this more than they had to.

Gregor had the police car pull up to Ohanian’s directly. He thanked the patrolman and got out. Cavanaugh Street was empty except for a florist’s van in front of Lida Arkmanian’s town house up the street. A man was climbing the steps to Lida’s front door with what looked like a million roses in his arms. Gregor wondered why. Valentine’s Day was almost a week away. He wondered who the flowers were from, too. Lida’s children were usually more cutesy about Valentine’s Day than that. They sent pink teddy bears with balloons that said, “I’m a fuzzy wuzzy bear and I wuv you!”

The display in front of Ohanian’s window had changed a little. Now it consisted of a gigantic outline of a heart cut out of red cardboard and hung with white crepe paper streamers, inside of which was a collection of letters Gregor found it impossible to pronounce. He even found it impossible to concentrate on them. “Bdembrbdra Borgander!” Maybe. Maybe it was “Debgrvwzk Dekobgdr!” Gregor assumed whatever it was was something Valentine’s Day-like in Armenian. Of course, the Ohanians had been in America for a couple of generations by now. They might not have gotten the words right.

Gregor let himself into the store, checked out a display of
pideh
tortured into heart shapes, and decided that the real danger in having Donna Moradanyan depressed came in the form of the efforts of other people to take her place. Gregor was positively nostalgic for the days of waking up to find his front door wrapped in pink metallic ribbon and dotted with sugar-candy cupids firing arrows at chocolate-chip-cookie hearts.

Krissa Ohanian was standing behind the counter when Gregor came in. She looked up and said, “They’re in the back there. Mary’s supposed to be doing a pastry inventory. I think they’re talking instead.”

Krissa Ohanian was Mary Ohanian’s aunt, and one of those big, solid Armenian women who in another place and time would have been relied on to keep the family together through war and famine. Gregor didn’t know if Krissa was married. He did know she clucked over Mary as if Mary were her own. Mary was barely eighteen years old. To Krissa, that qualified as being hardly out of diapers.

“Her father’s absolutely livid,” Krissa pointed out. “He was going on and on this morning about how he should have let Mary go to Wellesley instead of keeping her here at home, at least she wouldn’t be mixed up in a murder. And he’s livid at Hannah too. For inviting that man.”

“Do people on the street think Hannah killed him?” Gregor asked, curious.

Krissa said no. “They all think it was that other woman, that Mrs. DeWitt. I’d never seen a fancy piece up close before. It was very interesting.”

“Candida DeWitt looks like a suburban matron on the verge of being elected president of the garden club.”

“It’s not what she looks like, Gregor. It’s what she is like.”

If Krissa Ohanian had met Candida DeWitt on the street without knowing who she was, Krissa would have thought Candida was a very pleasant woman with good WASP social connections. Gregor was sure of it.

“I’m supposed to go in back here?” he asked, pointing behind the counter at a curtain.

“I’ll let you through.” Krissa pulled up the hinged countertop and stepped close to the cash register to let Gregor pass. “They’re all the way in the back there. Just follow the light.”

Gregor followed the light. The back of Ohanian’s Middle Eastern Food Store was like a cave with stalagmites of cardboard boxes rising from the ground. Some of the boxes had words printed on them in English, but most of them didn’t. A great many of the boxes had import stamps plastered all over their sides. Greek, Hebrew, Arabic—when the Ohanians said “Middle Eastern,” they weren’t fooling around.

The light led to an open space at the very back, where three boxes had been laid side to side and covered with a pair of worn terry-cloth dishtowels to make a table. Krissa had been absolutely right. Mary wasn’t doing a thing about taking an inventory. Mary had a bottle of Coke. Helen Tevorakian had a bottle of 7-Up. They were both bent over a sheet of paper placed carefully on Mary’s clipboard. It was not a sheet of paper that would tell anybody how many bags of pignolia nuts were on the shelves.

Neither Mary nor Helen looked up when Gregor came through. Helen was murmuring something about how Lida couldn’t have been getting it right, it had to have been much earlier than seven twenty-two. Then Mary said no, seven twenty-two was just right, Helen forgot how early everybody was getting to the party.

Gregor Demarkian coughed. Mary Ohanian jumped guiltily and nearly fell off the packing box she was using as a stool.

“Don’t sneak up on people like that,” Helen Tevorakian chided him. “You could kill somebody.”

“I wasn’t sneaking at all,” Gregor told her. “I walked right up to you two and you didn’t even notice. What are you doing?”

“Making a timetable,” Mary Ohanian said. “We thought, you know, that since you wanted to talk to us about what happened last night, we’d get it all written down. All the times and that kind of thing. We called people.”

Gregor held out his hand for the sheet of paper. “I don’t suppose it occurred to either one of you that you could leave the detecting to me? Or to the police?”

“Well, we don’t want to leave the detecting to the police in this case, do we?” Helen demanded. “The police think Hannah killed that stuck-up little jerk.”

“He wasn’t little,” Mary Ohanian said. “He was very tall. He was the thinnest person I ever saw in my life who didn’t have an eating disorder.”

“Maybe he did have an eating disorder,” Helen said indignantly.

“Let me see that thing,” Gregor insisted. “Right now.”

Helen Tevorakian took the paper off the clipboard and handed it up. “It’s just a rough outline. We know we’re not professionals, Krekor. We’re just trying to help.”

“And you know what people in this neighborhood are like,” Mary put in. “Always hearing omens and sensing prophecies. You should hear Mrs. Kashinian on the subject of ghostly presences from the other side.”

“Sheila says she heard a ‘desperate moan’ at just about seven o’clock.” Helen Tevorakian was being as diplomatic as she could. “Sheila says it was coming from upstairs.”

Gregor looked at the sheet of paper they had handed him. Amateur or not, it was a pretty fair job. That expensive private school the Ohanians had sent Mary to must have done some good. Gregor thought Mary’s father ought to be ashamed of himself. He ought to have let Mary go on to Wellesley. Maybe they could get a few people together on the street and convince him to let Mary go next year.

The outline went into considerable detail. It was very neatly printed. And it was very well organized. “
6:45 to 7:05
—
MAJORITY OF PEOPLE ARRIVE AT PARTY
,” it said, and then:

7:00 to 7:05
—
SHEILA KASHINIAN HEARS MOAN FROM SECOND FLOOR
(?)

7:00
to
7:20—EVERYBODY EATS AND TALKS

7:22—CANDIDA DEWITT ARRIVES

7:27—HANNAH BURSTS INTO TEARS AND RUNS UPSTAIRS

7:33—PAUL HAZZARD RUNS UPSTAIRS AFTER HANNAH

7:36—MARY OHANIAN GOES UPSTAIRS TO CHECK ON THE SITUATION

7:39—MARY OHANIAN COMES DOWN

7:33 TO 7:48—CANDIDA DEWITT TALKS TO GREGOR DEMARKIAN

7:42—HELEN TEVORKIAN GOES UPSTAIRS TO CHECK

7:48—HELEN TEVORKIAN COMES DOWNSTAIRS

7:48 TO 7:50—DISCUSSION IN THE PARTY ABOUT WHAT TO DO NEXT

7:50—CANDIDA DEWITT GOES UPSTAIRS TO CHECK

7:52—HANNAH KREKORIAN STARTS SCREAMING

7:52:02—EVERYBODY RUNS UPSTAIRS TO SEE WHAT’S GOING ON