Jane Haddam - Gregor Demarkian 12 - Fountain of Death (13 page)

Gregor Demarkian was a tall, broad shaggy man in an expensive winter coat. He had an air of authority, but he was much too old—much older than Greta had imagined a woman like Bennis Hannaford would be willing to put up with. Maybe they weren’t lovers after all. Maybe they were just friends, and Bennis Hannaford had other lovers who weren’t famous or didn’t like publicity. Whatever was going on, she didn’t seem to be with him, and Greta wasn’t interested enough in Gregor Demarkian on his own to go on standing in a drafty hallway in a leotard and tights. There wasn’t as much going on as there had seemed to be at first anyway. There had been some kind of accident, and part of the balcony railing had fallen over. The police had been called in, but no one was being arrested. The real reason the police were there had to do with a mugging that had taken place in the backyard almost a month ago. Greta found it very hard to straighten out.

The part of the railing that had fallen was a mass of splinters and nails. A tall black man with a dancer’s way of moving came out onto the balcony and called for all the beginners’ smorgasbord group to get back to their classroom. If he had come out ten minutes earlier, nobody would have listened to him, but by then everybody was bored. The women from the experts’ class had already disappeared in the direction of their studio. Greta allowed herself to be herded back to work in the company of the very fat woman who stood next to her in the dance line and a smaller, older woman who was so well dressed and fierce she made Greta nervous. A lot of the women in the class made Greta nervous. Most of them looked like they had more money than she did. All of them looked like they’d had better educations.

Back in the studio, the pace suddenly seemed to be much faster and more demanding than it had been before. The black man introduced himself as Nick Bannerman, but unlike the woman who had run the first three dances the group had done, Nick Bannerman didn’t talk on about his life and his feelings. He just got to work, and they got to work with him. Greta didn’t think she had ever moved so much in her life, or come down so hard on her knees and ankles. By the end of the first dance Nick Bannerman led, her feet ached. By the end of the second one, her legs and hips felt stiff and frozen. By the end of the third, Greta wanted only to stop—and was surprised, when she looked up at the clock, to see that it was quarter to twelve. It didn’t
feel
like quarter to twelve. There were windows at the back of the studio, overlooking the downward sweep of Prospect Street, showing hedges and houses and cars and spires. The sky was gray and thick with clouds. It looked darker now than it had when Greta had gotten up in the morning.

“We must have spent more time looking at the accident than I thought we did,” Greta said to the very fat woman when Nick Bannerman had finished the third dance and gone off to drink some water from his plastic tube bottle.

The fat woman was panting and shaky. She had sweat so much, the top half of her leotard was soaked through. “Two and a half hours,” she said, when she was finally able to catch her breath. “I kept checking the time.”

Greta shook her head. “And we didn’t even do anything. I mean we didn’t accomplish anything. We just wandered around.”

“I don’t see that there was anything else we could do,” the fat woman said.

The older, thinner woman turned around now and gave Greta and the fat woman a tight little smile.

“I’m Virginia Hanley,” she said, in a mock-formal voice, like someone interviewing for a job she didn’t really want. “You two are—?”

“Greta Bellamy,” Greta said.

“Dessa Carter.”

Virginia Hanley fussed with the top of her bright red Danskin leotard and the rhinestone stretch belt she was wearing at her waist. “That receptionist was a total little fool,” she said, “screaming and screaming like that when nothing had even happened. If she’d kept her head, we wouldn’t have lost any classroom time at all.”

“I don’t think we lost any dances,” Dessa Carter said drily. Sweat was making rivers down the sides of her face. “I think we just got them crammed into a very small space.”

Virginia Hanley sniffed. “I couldn’t believe the production they were making about it down there. I mean, for God’s sake. Things like that happen in old houses like this all the time. Things get worn out.”

“It didn’t look like those nails were worn out,” Dessa Carter said impassively. “It looked like they were brand new.”

“They did look brand new, didn’t they?” Greta said, startled. “You know, all the time I was looking at them, I kept feeling that something was wrong, and I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Virginia Hanley said.

The young girl standing next to Virginia Hanley turned around. “Excuse me. It’s because of the murder. The fuss they made, I mean. I think they were worried that it might not be an accident, because somebody had already been murdered.”

“He wasn’t murdered,” Virginia Hanley said. “He was mugged.”

Dessa Carter was looking drier and more amused by the minute. “He died,” she pointed out. “Someone killed him. That usually adds up to murder.”

“It adds up to murder legally,” Virginia Hanley said. “This girl was making it sound like Perry Mason or something.”

“This girl” was very thin, thinner than Greta had ever seen anybody except in television documentaries about AIDS, and she looked extremely tired. There were dark circles under her eyes and deep hollows under her cheekbones. Her skin was far too white. Impulsively, Greta stuck out her hand again and said,

“Greta Bellamy.”

“Christie Mulligan,” the thin girl said. She pulled on the arm of the plump girl next to her and went on, “This is my friend, Michelle Dean. We came together.”

“We came as a trio,” Michelle said pleasantly. “The third one is Tara Corcoran. She went to the bathroom.”

“Right before the last dance,” Christie said. “I think she was fed up.”

“I’m fed up,” Michelle said. “I just don’t have the guts to play hooky.”

Christie Mulligan rubbed the top of her left breast reflexively. “It was because of the murder,” she said. “It had to have been. I mean, we live not very far from here—”

“At Jonathan Edwards College. At Yale,” Michelle put in.

“—and the story’s been all over the place for weeks. I don’t think the police are treating it like a normal mugging. For one thing, there are all these rumors. About how he died, I mean. What we heard was that he wasn’t shot or strangled or anything, he was poisoned.”

“That’s why there was never anything about cause of death in the papers,” Michelle said.

“And muggers don’t poison people,” Christie said. “But the other thing is, they’re really going back and checking up on him, on the guy who died, I mean. He worked at Yale one summer at one of the cafeterias and they had police over there asking questions about him. He worked during one of the school years at one of the parking lots and they had police over there, too. I don’t think they’d go back that far if they thought his death was nothing but your usual thing. I don’t think they’d expend the energy.”

“I’d heard they were checking up on him, too,” Dessa said. “One of the women I work with has a brother who’s a cop. She said he said they were really covering this guy’s life, going back over everything he did and everybody who ever knew him.”

“It will turn out to be about drugs, then,” Virginia Hanley said dismissively. “It won’t have anything to do with people like us.”

Greta bent her knees a little, straightened up again, bent again. Her knees were stiff.

“I wish I knew what was going on,” she said. “We’re just standing around again. I wish I knew what was supposed to come next.”

“We’re supposed to go to lunch,” Dessa Carter said. “At twelve-oh-five.”

“Can you just imagine what lunch is going to be like in a place like this?” Michelle said. “Carrot sticks. Bean sprouts. Tofu. Gruesome.”

Up at the front of the room, Nick Bannerman reappeared and surveyed the class.

“We’re going downstairs to the first floor to the dining room now,” he announced in a very loud voice, a kindergarten teacher roping in a class of tantrum-prone toddlers. “After we have lunch, you will all be given a free half hour to shower if you want to or just to rest. On your way downstairs, please be careful on the balcony. We’ve installed some safety board in the place where the railing collapsed, but I wouldn’t want to count on it to keep me from falling. All right. Let’s go.”

“If I were Magda Hale,” Virginia Hanley said, “I’d install a guard out there. I wouldn’t put it past somebody to fall deliberately just to be able to file a lawsuit.”

Virginia Hanley was walking out ahead, toward the door Nick Bannerman had already gone out of. Christie Mulligan caught Greta Bellamy’s eye and winked elaborately. Greta bit her lip, hard, to keep herself from giggling.

“Oh, dear,” she said, as Christie and Michelle came up beside her.

“Just wait till Tara gets a look at that one,” Christie said, almost in a whisper. “Tara Corcoran is not the sort of person who sits still for phonies.”

“Is that what she is?” Greta asked. “I thought she was just a bitch. You know. With money.”

“Rhymes with rich,” Michelle said, laughing out loud.

They were all walking toward the door together now, at the very back of the crowd.

“No matter what that silly old woman thinks,” Christie Mulligan said, “I’m sure this murder isn’t your ordinary kind of thing. I mean, your ordinary drug pusher doesn’t kill his enemies with cyanide or whatever it was.”

“Arsenic is what I heard,” Michelle said.

“It doesn’t matter. Have you seen the papers?” Christie turned to Greta. “They had pictures of him just after it happened, and there’s going to be a story in
Connecticut
magazine. Tim Bradbury.”

Greta Bellamy started. “Tim Bradbury?” she repeated. “Are you sure that was the name?”

“What’s the matter?” Michelle asked eagerly. “Did you know him?”

Greta was at a loss. “I didn’t exactly know him,” she said, feeling unbelievably stupid, “and I’m sure it’s not the same person anyway, I mean, it’s not exactly an uncommon name—”

“It’s not exactly a common one, either,” Christie pointed out. “The only other Bradbury I know of is the science fiction writer.”

Greta had never heard of a science fiction writer named Bradbury. They were on their way out the door into the hall again. The hall was darker than the studio had been. Greta ran a hand through her hair in exasperation.

“I’m sure it couldn’t have been the same person,” she murmured.

Christie Mulligan shook her head emphatically. “I don’t think you ought to trust yourself about that. Not if you knew somebody named Tim Bradbury. I think you ought to find out the name of that police detective who was here and go tell him all about it.”

“You know what happens in books when people keep information like that to themselves,” Michelle said. “They get murdered, too.”

Greta ran a hand through her hair again. A couple of college girls from Yale, she thought. What could they possibly know? They were so damned young. People in real life didn’t get murdered for “knowing too much.” They especially didn’t get murdered for not knowing if they knew. Greta didn’t even watch cop shows and murder mysteries on television, because she found them so unreal.

“I’m sure it couldn’t have been the same person,” Greta said for the third time—but she said it to herself.

Christie and Michelle had found their friend Tara, and gone off to collect her.

T
HE FIRST TIME MAGDA
Hale had felt the pain in her hip, it was only halfway through the first dance of the morning. It was an awful pain, too—stabbing, sharp and undeniable. Magda had been well into a high kick when it hit, and she had almost fallen over. High kicks were Magda’s specialty. She had performed them on all three of the exercise videos she had made, and on local cable television, and at mall demonstrations from Connecticut to New Hampshire and out in California. She was scheduled to do a demonstration routine, with high kick intact, on Oprah Winfrey’s show at the end of March. When the pain hit, the air in front of her changed colors. Her whole leg felt as if someone had doused it with gasoline and set it on fire. Her breath stopped and her heart seemed to stop with it. It took the most massive effort of will she had ever made in her life to get going again.

The second time Magda Hale felt the pain in her hip, it was right before lunch, after all that uproar with the broken railing on the balcony, and she was trying to get her advanced class through their last routine in time to pack them all off to the dining room. This time, the pain was not only sharp and stabbing it had staying power. It hit hard and spread quickly down her leg—but then it stayed, and stayed and stayed, no matter how she moved or what she put her weight on. There was one last cycle left in this routine: step, kick, step, kick, bend, turn, jump, repeat. After that, there was only the cooldown, which consisted of two and a half minutes of the kind of flowing waterbaby motions five-year-olds did in their first ballet recitals. Magda fully expected the pain to cease when she got to that part. There was nothing high impact about waterbaby motions. This time, though, they didn’t help. Magda was sure she was imagining it, but sweeping hand movements and slow head rolls actually seemed to make the pain worse. By the time she got through the go-limp-and-relax phase, she was very close to throwing up. If she had had anything in her stomach, she would have thrown up. Her stomach was a rolling mass of cramps.

When the dance was over, Magda gave her usual speech about how wonderfully they had all done—a little breathlessly, but without abridgement—then told them they could go downstairs to eat. Usually, during promotional courses like this one, Magda made a point of eating lunch with each of the classes in turn, just as she made a point of teaching each of them in turn. Today, she couldn’t have managed it. She got herself out into the hall without trouble. After that, she couldn’t keep herself from limping. She had let the class go on ahead of her. None of them saw how badly she was hurt, or how slowly she was moving. Magda went down to the opposite end of the hall from where the class was going and let herself into the service stairwell. She had to hold onto the railing with both hands to get down the stairs. The pain was getting worse. It had spread to both hips and both legs. It had begun to climb up her spine.