Glass Houses (45 page)

“Oh, look,” Alexander said, “here's something. Isn't this the oddest thing.”

B
ennis had been asleep
again when Gregor got home that night, and he hadn't had either the heart or the stomach to wake her. At least this time she was asleep in bed and not on the couch, so he didn't feel as if she were poised for flight. In the morning, though, she was up before he was, and as he got into the shower he could hear her in the kitchen, muttering to herself. For a moment he thought it might be possible for them to go back to where they had been before she left, without talking about it.

Of course, where they had been before she left had apparently not been such a good thing. If it had been, she wouldn't have left. Or something. Gregor made the shower hot enough to peel the skin off his back. Murder investigations were easier than Bennis. Even this murder investigation was easier than Bennis.

He finished his shower, and got dressed, and came down the hall toward the living room and the kitchen. Bennis was still in the kitchen, humming. Gregor could not tell what she was humming because Bennis was—. It was wrong to say she was tone deaf because she wasn't. She knew how bad she sounded; she was just bad.

He went into the kitchen and found the table heaped with stuff: computer printouts from Martha and Betty; one of Bennis's papier-mache models of one of her character's Zedalia houses; a foam container of something from the Ararat. Bennis was making coffee. She was using the percolator, not the coffee bags.

“I could have just gone down to the Ararat and had breakfast,” he said. “You could have come with me.”

“It's almost ten o'clock,” Bennis said. “You seemed to need the sleep more than the time, so I let you have it.”

Gregor thought about the possible uses for that particular idiom and decided not to pursue it. He sat down at the table and pushed the printouts away from him. There were more here than he had brought back the night before.

“Did I get a delivery,” he asked, “or a phone call?”

“You got both.” Bennis poured coffee for him, then for herself, and sat down across the table. There was a huge pile of printouts between the two of them. She picked it up and put it on the floor. “There were a bunch of these things that came around eight thirty. There was a note stuck to them. It's around here somewhere. I think it was from John Jackman.”

“What did it say?”

Bennis gave him a look. “It said ‘SEE? WORKING NIGHT AND DAY.' And don't look at me like that. It was written on a Post-it and stuck to the envelope. It wasn't exactly a secret. It wasn't signed though; I just thought I recognized the handwriting.”

“You probably did.”

“And there was a phone call from Alexander Mark. He's one of those men you just sort of look at and think, What a waste.”

“What a waste?”

“That he's gay,” Bennis said. “I mean, not that I'm against his being gay, you know, but if he were straight—I'm putting this very badly.”

“I think I get the drift. That was all?”

“You've got an eleven o'clock meeting on the body find the other day. Rob Benedetti's office called and said to make sure you were at his office at eleven thirty. He said to tell you you were right, only one of them counted. Was I supposed to understand what that meant?”

“Not necessarily,” Gregor said. “Did Alexander Mark leave a message?”

“Yes,” Bennis said. “He said to tell you that he didn't find anyone else among Dennis Ledeski's clients, but all the ones he knew about before lived in Green Point buildings. Was that supposed to mean something to me?”

“I don't know. I don't know what you know and what you don't know,” Gregor said.

“Do you know?” Bennis asked him. “Do you know who killed them, I mean? I'm a little out of the loop on this one. I don't think I always was.”

Gregor opened the foam container from the Ararat. It had eggs and bacon and sausages and hash browns in it. He didn't say anything about the fact that he had spent most of the last month or so eating salads because he missed her nagging him about it.

“Is this going to be cold?” he said.

“Give it to me and I'll heat it up in the microwave,” Bennis said. “Although what you've been doing with the microwave is beyond me. It looks like the Keebler elves had a food fight in there and everything burned to a crisp.”

“I wasn't sure I was allowed to get it wet,” Gregor said.

Bennis put the foam container in the microwave and pushed a lot of buttons.
She did not turn around to give him a funny look, but Gregor thought she wanted to.

“Here's the thing,” he said. “I don't really believe you'd believe I couldn't get along without you, in the physical sense. That I wouldn't know how to run the apartment or get my clothes together in the morning.”

“That's true.”

“So I won't try that,” Gregor said. “But I don't want to get along without you. I never have. So there's that.”

“I never wanted to get along without you either,” Bennis said. “I don't know how else to explain it. I didn't leave because of anything you did or because I was dissatisfied with you or because the relationship was going bad. I don't blame you for Anne Marie. Anne Marie's only real problem was Anne Marie. I was just—I really don't know how to explain it.”

“If you don't know how to explain it, how do you know it won't happen again?”

“I don't.”

“Well,” Gregor said, “that's a problem. Because it was upsetting. And inconvenient, I assume you're not interested in having children—”

“Gregor, for goodness sake. I'm at the tail end of the point where I'd be able to have children, and it would be one hell of a risk to take with the health of the child.”

“I know. That was what I meant. I assume you aren't interested in having children, or we'd have had one by now. So there's no risk you'd walk out on a child—”

“I wouldn't anyway,” Bennis said. “I've got some sense of responsibility. Some people think I have a significant sense of responsibility.”

“My problem is that I want you to have a sense of responsibility to me,” Gregor said. “I do have one to you. I know I do because the first thing I thought when you left was that you were in some kind of trouble. I was scared to death.”

“I left you a note.”

“Yes, you did,” Gregor said, “but the note could have been an attempt to get me not to worry. Which would have failed, by the way. Or it could have been written under duress. Which, given your history and your really bad taste in picking up acquaintances, wasn't out of the question either.”

“You thought I was in trouble with the
Mafia?”

“Why not? You've gone out with rock stars with arrest records that make most of the Gotti family look like saints.”

“Used to,” Bennis said. “I haven't ‘gone out' with anybody at all since I started this thing with you.”

“What thing?”

“What do you mean, ‘what thing'?”

“Just that,” Gregor said. “What thing? What is this thing? What do we call it. And don't call it a ‘relationship.' The word makes me crazy. I'd like to know what we are to each other.”

“I did ask you to marry me,” Bennis said.

“Technically, you suggested we should get married. That's not quite the same thing. But I've got you on that one because I asked you first. A couple of years ago.”

“I didn't turn you down.”

“You didn't accept me either,” Gregor said. “You've turned neurosis into an art form. I don't understand why we can't just come to some kind of resolution. You tell me what all this was about, and it was about something, Bennis, not hand me that nonsense about it being something you can't put your finger on. Tell me what it was about, what sent you away for months, and why you're sure it won't happen again. Then we'll get married and honeymoon somewhere where they don't have murders.”

“You've got tickets to Saint Peter's gate?”

“I was thinking something more like Maui. I can go in disguise. I'm really not kidding around, Bennis. There's got to be some way that you can just tell me what's wrong here. If it's something to do with me, I'll see if I can fix it.”

Bennis was standing in the middle of the kitchen, her hand still resting on the door of the microwave. The microwave had beeped. His food was ready. She didn't seem to have heard it. She didn't seem to be moving.

“Are you going to feed me?” Gregor asked.

Bennis looked at him. “I had a breast cancer scare,” she said.

“What?”

“I had a breast cancer scare,” she said. “I found a lump in my breast, and I didn't say anything because those can be lots of things, and they're not necessarily cancer. So I had a biopsy, and the biopsy was inconclusive. So the doctor thought the best idea was for me to have it out. And it wasn't anything, Gregor. It wasn't. It wasn't even a cyst. But I know how you feel about women and cancer. And I didn't want to—. I don't know. I was afraid you'd hate it. Hate me for it. Something. I was afraid we'd never be the same with each other again.”

B
y the time Gregor
got to Rob Benedetti's office, he felt a little as if he had been blown to South America in a hurricane. Everything looked the same, but nothing was. Bennis had it wrong on at least two counts. He didn't hate her, and he didn't hate the idea of seeing her. There was just a part of him that didn't believe that there were such things as cancer “scares.” There was cancer, but that was something else again.

He had none of the computer printout information that had been on his kitchen table when he woke up this morning. He did have the chart he had made in the evidence room the day before, with a couple of notes. He looked around and saw that it promised to be a better day than the one before, if only because it wasn't raining.

It was, however, getting colder. This had been the worst winter for getting colder.

He went up in the elevator and down the hall without bothering to go through the rigamarole required by security. Security knew him by now. He got to Rob's office and was waved through by a young woman he had never seen before. If he didn't know it was impossible, he'd think Rob went through secretaries the way a man with a cold went through Kleenex.

Rob and three men he didn't recognize were standing around Rob's desk, looking at what seemed to be even more printouts.

“Oh, thank God,” Rob said. “These two are Kevin O'Shea and Ed Fabereaux. They're taking over from Marty and Cord.”

“Hi,” the tall one said.

“Hi,” the other one said.

Gregor wondered which was which and let it go.

“We've been over and over these things,” Rob said. “We've looked for everything you told us to. We got Betty and Martha to run more computer searches. What's all this supposed to be in aid of?”

“Sometimes it helps to know where the similarities are,” Gregor said, “and the connections. For instance, Arlene Treshka, Sarajean Petrazik, and Elizabeth Bray were all clients of Dennis Ledeskis. And Elyse Martineau was his secretary.”

“Assistant,” the tall one said. Then he blushed. “We don't call them secretaries any more; we call them assistants. They prefer it. Or they get upset.”

“Thing is, nobody intelligent wants to be a secretary since women's lib,” the other one said. “So we changed the name.”

Gregor decided that the two of them weren't fighting, which automatically made them better than Marty and Cord, but beyond that he wasn't willing to go.

“There's something else they were,” Gregor said patiently. “They were all residents of apartments in buildings owned by Green Point.”

“Oh, so were a couple of the others,” Rob said. “I mean, I didn't check that, you didn't say anything, but I know because I know the buildings. Rondelle Johnson was one. So was Debbie Morelli. So was Faith Anne Fugate. So was this one, now that I think of it.”

“This one?” Gregor said.

“The woman from the house on Curzon Street where we found all the bodies,” the tall one said.

“Skeletons,” the other one corrected.

“There was one body,” the tall one said.

Gregor cleared his throat. “One body and the skeletons of several more,” he said. “Where did the skeletons come from?”

“Oh, they were there,” Rob said. “You were right about that. Back in the Depression there was a church behind that house, and it had a graveyard. As far as we could find out, they just razed the church and built right over the graveyard. I think they were supposed to move things, but it was a different era. People cut corners.”

“Which leaves the body,” Gregor said. “I take it you've found out who and when.”

“Who and approximately when,” Rob said, “and that gives us a very interesting piece of information. The who is a woman named Beatrice Morgander. She rented an apartment in the house for three years, and then things seemed to have gone to hell. She had a nephewT who wras a drug addict. He'd show up every once in a while and beat her up until he could get her money. He'd make a lot of noise and break things. The other residents would complain.”

“It didn't look like the kind of building,” Gregor said, “where that sort of thing is unknown. In fact, in that neighborhood, I'd expect there was quite a lot of trouble with drug addiction and casual violence.”

“Oh, there is,” Rob said. “But according to Kathleen Conge, the supervisor—”

“I met her,” Gregor said.

“Yes,” Rob said, “well.”

“We met with her,” the tall one said. “She thinks the perpetrator is one of the tenants, Bennie Durban. And he's missing.”