Deadly Beloved (26 page)

Tiffany Shattuck put her magazine down and blinked at them. “Mr. Demarkian,” she said. Then she frowned at John Jackman. “You were at the explosion the other night. You’re some kind of policeman.”

John Jackman sighed.

Just then the door behind Tiffany Shattuck’s desk opened. As always, Julianne Corbett seemed to Gregor to be less a person than an advertisement for Max Factor. She was wearing enormous gold earrings made of nesting circles of hammered metal. Her eyes had been made up to look like wings.

“Mr. Demarkian,” she said. “Mr. Jackman.” She turned to Tiffany Shattuck. “Do you think you could get me a printout of that health care thing from Holland and send a copy to Mort Elstain in Bethlehem? I promised him I’d do it last week and I just haven’t gotten around to it.”

“Okay,” Tiffany said.

Julianne Corbett made a face at
Modern Bride
magazine. “Why don’t the two of you come in here,” she said, looking straight at Gregor Demarkian. “Tiffany can get us all some coffee and we can be comfortable.”

Gregor followed John around Tiffany Shattuck’s desk to the door Julianne Corbett was holding open. He went through into her private office expecting some kind of revelation of the woman’s character, or at least a significant change from the faceless blandness of the waiting room. He got neither. Julianne Corbett’s private office was eerily reminiscent of a bad room in a second-rate motel. Even the carpet looked like the kind of thing that belonged outside near a wading pool, installed instead of tiles because it was less likely that someone could slip on it.

Gregor sat down in one of the Danish modern chairs. Julianne Corbett’s desk was empty except for a single photograph in a frame. Gregor leaned forward and turned the photograph around. It was the picture of six young women arranged in a living-room-like setting that looked like it might be the common room of a college dormitory. Most of the young women were unrecognizable. One of them was definitely Karla Parrish.

“Are you in this photograph?” Gregor asked Julianne Corbett.

Ms. Corbett shrugged. “I suppose that depends on the sense you mean that. Sometimes I think I didn’t really come into existence until I was practically forty. Until then I was nothing but a bundle of neuroses. Karla’s in that picture though. Did you recognize her?”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “I did. She seems remarkably unchanged from a picture that must be—how many years old?”

“Oh, more than twenty-five. I hate counting these days, but that was taken at Jewett House at Vassar College in 1967, I think. We were all juniors then.”

“Then you are in this picture?” Gregor asked.

Julianne Corbett waved it away. “I haven’t kept up with those people the way I should have. We all just sort of drifted apart after graduation. Karla too, of course. It had been years since I’d seen her.”

“You’ll be glad to hear that the word from the hospital is better than expected,” John Jackman said. “She is expected to come out of it. Eventually.”

“But ‘eventually’ could be years from now,” Julianne Corbett said.

“I’m afraid so.” Jackman shrugged. “The doctor I talked to kept saying he was getting very good signs. Whatever that means.”

Gregor picked up the photograph again. “You must have been in some kind of contact with her,” he said. “You arranged this reception in her honor. You knew she was coming to Philadelphia.”

“Actually, it was Tiffany who found out that Karla was coming to Philadelphia,” the congresswoman said. “She keeps up with things like that. She’s a very good assistant, really, in spite of the hair and the name and the brides’ magazines. Not that Tiffany is in any danger of becoming a bride anytime soon. I hadn’t even known that Karla was famous for being a photographer.”

“She had a bunch of pictures in the Sunday
Times Magazine
,” Jackman put in helpfully. “And she had lots and lots in
Vanity Fair
. Don’t ask me why
Vanity Fair
wanted to publish a lot of photographs of starving Rwandans.”

“It’s compassion as a consumption item,” Julianne Corbett said wryly. “You have to bleed for the wretched of the earth or your new Ralph Laurens won’t be the right color red.”

“When did you decide to give this reception for Karla Parrish?” Gregor asked.

“Oh, immediately after I knew she was coming,” Julianne Corbett replied, “except, it was like I told you, it was all Tiffany’s idea. Karla was asked to speak at Penn, did you know that?”

“Yes,” John Jackman said.

“Well,” Julianne Corbett said, “we thought it would be a good idea, you know, good for me in terms of the publicity, good for me because I’d get a chance to see an old friend, and good for Karla too, because it would introduce her to some important people locally. I don’t care what kind of famous photographer Karla has turned into. She’s still the same old Karla. Socially awkward. Not a thing to say for herself.”

“From what I recall,” Gregor Demarkian said, “she wasn’t standing in the receiving line the night of the reception—”

“Well, that isn’t entirely fair,” Julianne told him. “There really wasn’t much of a receiving line. Karla was standing next to the punch bowl in the main room. It was much the best place for her. Everybody had to pass by the punch bowl. And as soon as the arrival crowds died down, I was going to stand there too. That was the plan.”

“So everybody knew in advance that Ms. Parrish would be standing at that table,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“Everybody who had any part in the planning of the reception,” Julianne Corbett agreed. “Tiffany. And the other assistants. And the caterers and those people.”

“What about this plan to have you stand there yourself? Was that generally known?”

Julianne Corbett looked honestly bewildered. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘generally known.’ This wasn’t a secret, you know, Mr. Demarkian. This wasn’t as if we were planning campaign strategy or something like that. This was a party.”

“You weren’t worried about security?” John Jackman asked.

Julianne Corbett snorted. “In spite of the things you see in Clint Eastwood movies, most members of the United States Congress are not followed everywhere by Secret Service officers and have no need to be. Really. I’m just me. A middle-aged, middle-of-the-road woman who is going up to Washington to do her best. I’m not even on a committee yet.”

“You’re pro-choice, aren’t you?” John Jackman asked. “This is a pretty pro-life state. And there has been violence against pro-choice advocates in other places.”

“In the first place, what violence there has been on that score has been almost universally against abortion providers,” Julianne Corbett said, “and pro-choice or not, I couldn’t provide anybody anywhere with any kind of medical procedure. I can’t even look at the blood when I cut my legs shaving. In the second place, there is a lot of pro-life sentiment in this state, but it runs to the bleeding-heart let’s-get-down-and-pray-for-everybody variety. We don’t have a lot of radicals in Pennsylvania. Not of that stripe.”

“But pipe bombs do suggest radicals,” Gregor Demarkian put in. “In fact, pipe bombs were first used in this country in an anarchist bombing in New York City. I think in the popular imagination, radicals is exactly what it looks like we have here.”

“Maybe.” Julianne Corbett was skeptical. “But what about that woman last week or whenever it was? The one who blew her car up in a parking garage? She wasn’t a radical, was she?”

“Patricia Willis,” John Jackman said. “She was a middle-aged housewife from a place called Fox Run Hill. It’s—”

“I know what it is,” Julianne Corbett interrupted. “It’s one of those gated communities. Let’s all huddle together and put a fence up to keep the barbarians out.” She grimaced.

“Did you know that Mrs. Willis made several significant contributions to your campaign?” Gregor asked her.

Julianne Corbett bobbed her head vigorously. “Oh, yes. Tiffany found that out. It’s like I said. Tiffany’s a very good assistant in spite of the addiction to bimbo style. It was because of that that I asked Bennis Hannaford to make sure to bring you to the reception. I really am very sorry about Bennis, Mr. Demarkian, I didn’t mean to get her caught up in some sort of mess.”

“I don’t understand why finding out that Mrs. Willis had contributed to your campaign would lead you to ask Bennis Hannaford to bring me along to a party,” Gregor Demarkian said.

Julianne Corbett shrugged. “It’s because of the exposure. Everybody’s very worried about exposure. Anything at all, no matter how small, can sink you in politics these days. God only knows what I thought. That Mrs. Willis was stealing the money from her husband to contribute to my campaign. That she killed her husband when he found out about it. There’s a scenario for you. How can I tell how people are going to behave?”

“Fair enough,” Gregor said. He pointed at the picture on the desk. “You said that was taken at Vassar College. Did you graduate from there?”

“Yes, I did. Years and years ago.”

“Did you know that Mrs. Willis graduated from there?”

“Did she? No, I hadn’t heard that. What class was she in?”

“Class of 1969,” John Jackman said.

Julianne Corbett looked bewildered. “Are you sure? I was in the class of ’69. I saw her picture in the paper. She didn’t look like anybody I had ever met.”

“Would you have met every woman in your class?” Gregor asked.

“No, of course not. I wouldn’t necessarily know all of them by sight either. It’s just… odd.”

“Maybe you knew her by her maiden name,” Gregor said, “MacLaren.”

“What?” Julianne Corbett said.

“MacLaren,” Gregor repeated. “Her full name was Patricia MacLaren Willis. She was usually known as Patsy.”

“Patsy,” Julianne Corbett repeated.

“Is something wrong?” John Jackman asked.

“Let me get this straight,” Julianne Corbett said. “What you’re trying to tell me is that this woman who murdered her husband out in Fox Run Hill and then blew her car up with a pipe bomb in a municipal parking garage, this woman was the same Patsy MacLaren who graduated from Vassar College in 1969?”

“That’s right,” Gregor said.

“That’s wrong,” Julianne Corbett said. “Mr. Demarkian, I knew Patsy MacLaren. I knew her quite well. She was my closest friend. We were so close, in fact, that I was with her on the night she died—in New Delhi, India, four months after we graduated.”

S
ARAH LOCKWOOD KNEW SHE
had to be careful. At this stage in things—the almost-but-not-quite, the just-next-to-done—anything could happen to screw it all up, and the last thing she wanted was for something she did or said to bring the whole thing crashing down on her head. Because of that, she was even grateful to Patsy Willis for killing her husband and bringing a pack of detectives down on their heads. The detectives made Kevin nervous, but Sarah saw them as a distraction. Joey Bracken was so fascinated by the things that were going on in the Tudor across the street, he was barely looking at the papers Kevin had spread out in front of him on the breakfast room table. The papers were the most impressive Sarah had ever seen. God only knew where Kevin had gotten them. They went on for pages and pages of utter incomprehensibility. There were maps too, but Sarah knew where Kevin had gotten those. They had been copied out of an ancient edition of the
World Book Encyclopedia
they had in the basement and then run through the computer so that they would look official. Now one of them had a “lot” outlined in red highlighter and marked with an X. Joey’s cashier’s check was paper-clipped to the page just above the X’s top left tip. Joey was leaning sideways in his chair, trying to see if something was happening at the Tudor, although nothing was. It was too late in the day for policemen and too late in the week for anybody to be much interested in Patsy Willis. The explosion in Philadelphia at Julianne Corbett’s party had taken everybody’s mind off spousal murder.

“Do you think she did it?” Joey Bracken was saying, his pen poised above the paper he was supposed to sign like a safe poised to fall on Daffy Duck’s head in an old cartoon. “Tried to blow up Julianne Corbett, I mean. They all say she probably did it.”

“I don’t see why Patsy would want to blow up Julianne Corbett,” Sarah said. “From everything I’ve heard, she worshiped the woman.”

“Yeah, I’d heard that too,” Joey said. He sounded eager. Sarah thought he looked awful being eager. His eyes bugged out. The fat line across his stomach seemed to pulse. It made Sarah crazy to think that Joey and Molly had more money than she and Kevin did. Joey looked like he ought to try out for the starring role in a movie about a guy who spends his whole life in a diner and Molly—

—but Molly wasn’t there. Sarah got up from her chair at the table and went into the kitchen, looking for Perrier water, looking for a way to calm down. She also took some nuts out of a cabinet near the stove, because unlike most of the people she knew, Joey Bracken ate most of the time. He had been in her kitchen for half an hour now and he had already gone through an entire bowl of potato chips and half a cheese roll.

“The way I see it,” Joey was saying, “is that she’s not quite right in the head. Patsy, I mean.”

“That’s the way we all see it,” Kevin said. “Jesus Christ. We wouldn’t want to think she was right in the head. We wouldn’t be able to go to sleep next to our wives.”

“What?” Joey Bracken said. “Oh. Oh, yeah. I never thought about it like that.”

Joey Bracken’s cashier’s check was for thirty thousand dollars. It was made out to himself, as if he had asked a lawyer for advice about it—but Sarah didn’t think he had. She thought he had just asked somebody he worked with at his bank. She wondered what Joey really did there. She couldn’t believe he had a serious job. He was just too stupid. She wondered what Molly’s father did too. Maybe it was Molly’s father who had the money, and he was with the mob, which was the kind of organization Sarah could imagine Joey succeeding in.

“The thing is,” Joey said, “if you look at it this way, then she’s likely going to try to strike again, right? The question is, where?”

“You mean Patsy Willis is going to try to blow somebody else up?” Kevin looked shocked.