Deadly Beloved (37 page)

“Oh,” she said, pushing the gum around in her mouth and trying to pretend it wasn’t there. “Mr. Demarkian. Ms. Corbett said you were coming.”

“I believe we have some kind of an appointment,” Gregor said politely.

Tiffany turned her back to them and made heaving motions that indicated she was getting rid of the gum. Her bridal magazine was open on the desk, to an article on the perfect champagne toast. Did people really read articles like that? Gregor wondered. He supposed they must. The magazines were everywhere. They seemed to be successful. Tiffany turned back to them and smiled, her gum gone.

“I’ll go right in and tell her you’re here,” she said.

Tiffany could have announced them on the intercom. Gregor didn’t say so. Instead, he pointed to the bridal magazine.

“Are you getting married?” he asked.

Tiffany looked confused. “You mean now? Am I getting married now? I mean, I’m not engaged to anybody at the moment or anything, but I hope to be someday. If I meet somebody. If you know what I mean.”

“Of course,” Gregor said.

Tiffany looked down at the bridal magazine. “I just like these magazines,” she said. “They’re always beautiful. And there’s never anything in them to get you upset. If you know what I mean.”

“No,” Gregor said.

“Well,” Tiffany said seriously. “You know. About poverty. And violence. That kind of thing. And AIDS. Even the fashion magazines talk about poverty and violence and AIDS these days. But the bridal magazines don’t.”

“Oh,” Gregor said.

“I’ll just go get Ms. Corbett,” Tiffany said. “I’m sure she wouldn’t want you to be kept waiting. She told me to tell her as soon as you got in. She’s very concerned about what’s happening to Ms. Parrish.”

Tiffany Shattuck hurried off. Gregor began to pace back and forth across the waiting room. There were posters on the walls now that hadn’t been there a couple of days earlier. Somebody, probably Tiffany Shattuck, was making an effort to make this place look permanent.

“What was all that talk about the bridal magazines?” John Jackman asked. “Don’t tell me your Patsy MacLaren is getting married again.”

“No, of course not,” Gregor said. “It wasn’t anything. Donna Moradanyan is getting married. Marriage is on my mind these days.”

“I think if you told me that Patsy MacLaren was off someplace getting married right this minute, I’d go out and shoot myself,” John Jackman said. “I like it better when I know what you’re up to.”

Tiffany Shattuck came back through the inner door and walked up to the open reception window, smiling.

“Ms. Corbett says you’re to come right in,” she told them. “She’s all ready for you. Just step around that statue thing that’s in the way. I haven’t had a chance to move it yet.”

The “statue thing” was a plaster copy of Justice, blind and with scales, almost half as tall as Gregor was. Gregor wondered where it was supposed to go. He also wondered who was supposed to move it. Tiffany didn’t look strong enough. John Jackman stuck out a toe and kicked the thing, as if it were personally responsible for the mess the current criminal justice system was in.

Julianne Corbett was seated behind her big desk, papers spread out on the green felt blotter, pens and pencils strewn across the polished wood surface. When she saw them come in, she smiled, stood, and held out her hand.

“Mr. Demarkian,” she said. “Mr. Jackman. Come and sit down.”

“I’ll get some coffee,” Tiffany Shattuck said, dashing out again.

Julianne Corbett retracted her hand and reclaimed her seat. Gregor sat down in the larger of the two armchairs that faced the desk. John Jackman remained standing, looking uncertain of what he was supposed to do next.

“Well,” Julianne Corbett said, trying on a great big smile again. “I hope you’re bringing me good news. I hope Karla’s condition is at least somewhat improved.”

“Actually,” Gregor Demarkian said, “I came to tell you that I finally know where Patsy MacLaren is.”

“I know where Patsy MacLaren is,” Julianne Corbett said, “because I put her there. She’s in a grave in New Delhi.”

“Yes, I know she is,” Gregor said gently. “But just a week or so ago she killed her husband, and a little time after that she killed a harmless woman who cared too much about animals, and a little after that she killed an ICU specialist nurse named Liza Verity. For somebody who’s buried in New Delhi, she’s been very active.”

Julianne Corbett’s expression didn’t change. “You don’t know she killed Liza Verity. You don’t know she set the pipe bomb off at my reception. You’re just guessing because what happened did involve pipe bombs. Any number of people could know how to make a pipe bomb.”

“That’s true,” Gregor said. “Any number of people do. What’s more important, however, is that I know who was married to Stephen Willis.”

“You mean the woman who was calling herself Patsy MacLaren,” Julianne Corbett said. “That’s not the same thing. Unless she really was called Patsy MacLaren but she wasn’t the same Patsy MacLaren. My Patsy MacLaren is dead and buried and has been for longer than I care to remember.”

“I know who was married to Stephen Willis,” Gregor Demarkian repeated. “Do you want to know who that was?”

“All right,” Julianne Corbett said. “Who was it?”

“You.”

Later, Gregor thought about how odd it was. He must have been in this situation a thousand times. He must have seen every different kind of person there was to see in the position Julianne Corbett was in now. It turned out not to matter much if he was dealing with a two-bit drifter or a United States congresswoman. There were only three or four ways for a perpetrator to react. They could run. They could fight. They could lie. Or they could just shut up.

“Remember,” the old man who had trained him at Quantico had said. “They all think alike, no matter how much money they’ve managed to make. They all act alike. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be perpetrators.”

Behind the green felt blotter, Julianne Corbett had gone very still. The skin of her face under her makeup had gone dead white. The pallor made it suddenly obvious just how thick that makeup was. There had been picture after picture of Patsy MacLaren Willis in the Philadelphia papers, but nobody had connected any of them to Julianne Corbett—because they couldn’t. There was no way to see under all that foundation and mascara and blusher. There was no way to tell what her eyes were like under the weight of those five pairs of false eyelashes. Gregor suddenly wondered how she could wear the stuff without scratching at it all day.

Gregor reached into his jacket and brought out a little stack of clipped photographs. He had gone at the Vassar College yearbooks with a pair of scissors for hours the night before. He put one photograph on the desk and tapped it with his index finger.

“This,” he said, “is the real Patsy MacLaren. She was five feet eight inches tall. She had very red hair, very blue eyes, and very white skin. She also had freckles.”

“I remember Patsy MacLaren,” Julianne put in harshly. “I knew her for years. I buried her. I told you.”

“Oh, yes,” Gregor said. “You quite definitely buried her. In New Delhi. In 1969. I checked.” He put another photograph down on the desk. “This is the Patsy MacLaren who murdered her husband a couple of weeks ago. The matron of Fox Run Hill. She was five feet four inches tall. She had slightly olive skin. She was on the sturdy and stocky side.”

“I don’t see why that has anything to do with me,” Julianne Corbett said. “That doesn’t look anything at all like me.”

“It doesn’t look anything at all like you look now,” Gregor conceded, “but nothing looks like you now. You wear too much makeup.”

“I’ve always worn this makeup. You can check. I wore it in graduate school. I wore it when I worked in state government.” Julianne waved her hands at the newspaper photograph of Patsy MacLaren Willis. “I’ve never in my life gone around looking like that.”

“You did at Vassar,” Gregor said. He went through his photographs again and came out with one that was longer and taller than the others. It was the photograph of six girls standing in a too-formal, too-impersonal-looking living room, the common room for a dormitory somewhere. One of these girls was clearly the Patsy MacLaren of the first photograph. Her willowy delicacy was unmistakable. One of the others was what Gregor would have recognized anywhere as a younger version of Liza Verity. Liza Verity hadn’t changed much in growing older except to get a little thicker and a little grayer. Karla Parrish hadn’t changed at all. Gregor pointed at a fourth figure.

“There,” he said, “is what Patsy MacLaren Willis looks like. That woman there.”

“And you think that woman is me,” Julianne Corbett said.

“I know that woman is you. I can check this picture against the official picture in the senior section of the yearbook, but I know it’s you.”

“You can’t check it,” Julianne said. “I didn’t have a picture in the senior section of the yearbook. It cost money and I couldn’t afford it.”

“I’m surprised your friend Patsy MacLaren didn’t offer to pay for one. From everything I’ve managed to dig up about her, it sounds like the kind of thing she would have done.”

“It was the kind of thing she would have done,” Julianne Corbett agreed. “But I wouldn’t have let her. I wouldn’t have let anybody. I wasn’t built like that.”

“All right.”

Julianne Corbett shifted a little in her chair. “If you think you’re going to make this one of your grand murder plots, give it up,” she said. “I didn’t kill Patsy MacLaren. I didn’t even want Patsy MacLaren to die. She died of dysentery.”

“I know.”

“It was terrible, really.” Julianne Corbett shook her head. “It was all Patsy’s idea to go to India and Pakistan and places like that. I wanted to go to Europe. But Patsy had been to Europe. She thought it was too bourgeois. She wanted to seek enlightenment.”

“Did she find it?” Gregor asked.

Julianne laughed. “She didn’t find anything. Neither of us did. Practically the first thing that happened to us in Pakistan is that our packs got stolen, and Patsy had to wire home for money. Money for both of us, of course. I didn’t have anyplace to get money. And it was all awful. Really awful. Everything was dirty and everyone was poor. And we had so little cash we kept eating from the stalls and the stalls weren’t safe. Not for people like us. Not for people who had never been exposed to those kinds of germs.”

“So Patsy got sick.”

“We both got sick,” Julianne corrected Gregor. “I got sicker.”

“And Karla came to try to help out,” Gregor said.

Julianne got up and walked to her office window. Rain was being blown in gusts against the glass.

“Karla was taking photographs,” she said, “and she came to see us by a kind of prearrangement, except that instead of being in the hotel we were supposed to be in, we were at the hospital, and Patsy was dying. So Karla tried to do all the practical things. I’m usually very good at practical things, but I wasn’t that time. I was sick.”

“You didn’t tell the embassy that Patsy had died.”

Julianne turned away from the window. “Patsy MacLaren was a friend of mine,” she said positively. “I didn’t kill Patsy MacLaren.”

“I never said you did.”

“Then what did you say?”

“I said you became Patsy MacLaren,” Gregor said gently. “Not all the time, not every minute of every day, but when you needed to. You called yourself Patsy MacLaren when you dealt with the trustees who handled Patsy’s money, so that you could use that to put yourself through graduate school.”

“I worked when I was in graduate school,” Julianne Corbett said quickly. “I had two fellowships.”

“I’m sure you did. It was probably a very good thing, because Patsy MacLaren didn’t have all that much money, and what was being spent was the principal. You used the principal. And you used Patsy MacLaren’s name when you started seeing Stephen Willis.”

“But why would I? Why would I?”

“I don’t know for certain,” Gregor said, “but what I guess is, Stephen Willis was a kind of insurance policy. You were ambitious even then, but you weren’t sure that you would be able to realize your ambitions. And you didn’t want to go back to being what you had been before you went to Vassar. So you did what a lot of poor girls have done. You married a man on his way up.”

“I could have done that under my own name,” Julianne Corbett said. “I could just have married Stephen Willis and gone on being Julianne Corbett.”

“I don’t think it would have suited you. I don’t think it would have given you enough latitude to do the things you wanted to do.”

“I don’t see how I could possibly have had any latitude, as you put it, at all,” Julianne said. “Marriage is not usually a liberating institution, you know, Mr. Demarkian. Husbands tend to like to know where their wives are and what they’re doing.”

“Your husband was on the road,” Gregor pointed out. “Stephen Willis traveled in great six-week blocks of time several times a year. In fact, he was away most of the time.”

“And while he was away I was running around pretending to be myself,” Julianne said.

“That, and siphoning off his money. It’s expensive to get places in politics these days. It’s expensive to get anyplace at all in any business at all. I think Stephen Willis’s money came in very handy.”

“And you think he just sat still for it.”

“I think you were very good at hiding it, and would have gone on being very good at hiding it right up until the conditions of Stephen Willis’s job changed. That’s what had happened right before Stephen Willis died. He finally got something he was looking to get for a long time. He finally got assigned to a stationary job where he wouldn’t have to travel. At that point you had to get rid of him. Practically everything you have now is dependent on nobody ever finding out that you have spent the last twenty-five years being two people.”

“And so I killed him.”

“That’s right.”

“And then I blew up a Volvo station wagon with a pipe bomb.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?” Julianne Corbett demanded. “Why make all that fuss? Why call attention to myself?”

“But you weren’t calling attention to yourself,” Gregor said. “You were calling attention to Patsy MacLaren. And Patsy MacLaren was about to disappear. For good.”