Stillness in Bethlehem (39 page)

“Because one of those photos was recognizable, of course,” Demarkian said. “That’s what all this has been about from the beginning. One of those photographs was recognizable.” Demarkian turned toward the Inn and frowned again. “It’s really too bad, in a way,” he said, “because I don’t think Tisha Verek would ever have picked it up on her own. Not from what I’ve heard of her, anyway. I think the first recognition came with your mother. I don’t know. I’m making this up. From what I’ve heard of Tisha Verek, she wasn’t a woman I would have liked. So I’m trying to give your mother all the insight. Maybe I’m wrong.”

“If it’s because the picture was recognizable,” Stuart asked, “why hasn’t someone tried to kill Jan-Mark Verek?”

“Because the picture’s only recognizable to someone who’s seen the person herself. And Jan-Mark Verek does not see many people in this town. Not if he can help it.”

“That’s true,” Stuart admitted. “What about Gemma Bury? Did she see the picture?”

“No. She was looking through a window on the third floor of the Episcopalian rectory when Tisha Verek was killed. Those windows look directly down into the Verek driveway.”

“You mean she saw Tisha killed?”

“I mean she saw Tisha’s killer, although I don’t think she realized it at the time.”

“What happens now?” Stuart asked. “Do you get all the suspects into a large room and reveal the solution? Who are the suspects?”

“Right now I go over and get changed, just like I told you I was going to do. Then I make a phone call. After that, I don’t know what anybody could do. Have a good evening, Mr. Ketchum.”

“Oh, I will,” Stuart Ketchum said. “Soon as I can get my adrenaline down.”

“Work on it,” Demarkian told him. Then he turned away and walked rapidly across the street.

Stuart watched him go, a big, tall, middle-aged man totally out of place on this country Main Street, a man of long coats and hard leather shoes in a world made for parkas and cleated boots. He should have looked ridiculous, but he did not. Stuart thought he looked a lot like salvation. Before they had begun talking, Stuart had been ready to walk out—into what, or where, he had no idea, but out, away from here, away from the kind of people who could shoot rifles at women sitting in half-filled bleachers and threaten a man for no other reason than that he was mentally retarded. Now Stuart felt as if it all fit into something larger, a western movie with common sense in the white hat and hysteria in the black, and if he just put his mind to it, he could be part of it. It was silly, of course, but that was the way Demarkian made him feel. Stuart had had a sergeant like that in the army.

Sometimes, Stuart had a terrible feeling he was that sort of man himself.

Kelley Grey had gotten hold of Franklin Morrison, and now Candy George could see them both standing just inside the entrance to the dressing-room tent, talking to each other. That was all well and good, but it didn’t solve Candy’s problem, which was what to do about Reggie, who was not back home in the basement where she had left him. Candy hadn’t really expected him to be. She had told Kelley Grey all about it, and all about where the basement windows were and how strong Reggie was and also how the doors wouldn’t hold him, but Kelley was one of that alien breed, a woman who had never known a man like this. She had no idea what could happen. She had no idea what someone like Reggie could do.

Candy had a very detailed idea of what Reggie could do, and that was why she was watching him now, staying out of sight behind the flap to the dressing room she shared with Cara Hutchinson and Mrs. Johnson. He was going in and out of the dressing rooms on the other side of the corridor, the ones that belonged to the men. He was calling out to people he knew and laughing hard, as if he didn’t care who was around who might hear. He had been here before and nobody thought anything of the fact that he was here again. Kelley and Franklin didn’t know he was anywhere near them. There was a lot of noise in this tent, and they were so close to the flap they were probably hearing sounds from outside. The animals were kept back there. Every once in a while, Candy heard the donkey braying.

There were five dressing rooms on either side of the corridor, all of them tiny, all of them cold. It was a blessing nobody really had to do any dressing in any of them. Since there were no costume changes, actors came dressed for their parts every night and used the “dressing rooms” just to dress, or to repair make-up when it became necessary. Candy didn’t repair make-up because she didn’t use any. She had always used a great deal, ever since she was ten or eleven years old, because her friends had used it and because her stepfather had liked to see her in it—
just like Lolita
, he used to say,
just like Lolita
—but here in this place that was hers she didn’t like it. It helped that the distance between the gazebo where she spent most of her time and the stands was such that not having any on made no real difference. Cara Hutchinson was always slathering her face with foundation and rouge, but Candy couldn’t see that anyone in the bleachers would be able to tell. Or that it would do much good even if they could.

Reggie had reached the third dressing room on the other side. Candy’s was the last on this one. She retreated behind the flap and counted to ten in her head. Then she bent over and very carefully put on the shoes she had brought with her for just this occasion. The shoes had been a risk. She had had to go back to the house and get them, moving very quietly so that Reggie didn’t hear. He had still been in the basement then and still bellowing. She’d had to sneak into the bedroom and get them out of her closet and get back into the car again. She’s done it just before she’d gone to see Kelley Grey. When it was over, her chest felt so tight, she didn’t think she would ever be able to breathe again.

The shoes were one of the three pairs Reggie had bought for her special. Candy didn’t wear shoes like these for herself, because the heels were too high and too pointy and she didn’t walk well in them, and because the toes came to so sharp a point they made her own toes ache. These were made of pink patent leather and had little straps instead of heels at the backs.

Cara Hutchinson saw her putting them on and said, “You can’t wear those on stage. They wouldn’t look right.”

“I’m not going to wear them on stage,” Candy said, whispering instead of talking.

“You should speak up,” Cara told her. “I swear, I don’t understand how anyone hears a thing you say out there. You’re always such a little mouse. You have to learn to project.”

Candy’s private opinion was that the thing she’d most like to project at the moment was Cara Hutchinson’s rear end, right out into the snow, but she didn’t have time for that now. There was serious business to take care of. She leaned toward the flap and looked out again. Kelley and Chief Morrison were still talking, still blocking the front entrance to the dressing-room tent. They should have realized that Reggie would come in from the back, the way most of the actors did.

Reggie got to the fourth of the dressing rooms on that side. Candy let the flap fall in front of her face and held her breath again and counted to ten again and tried to remember how to pray. It had been such a long time, all she could remember was “Now I lay me…” and then everything went blank. Reggie said hello to Evan Underwood in a false hearty voice that recognized how little he and Evan got along. He moved on to the fifth of the dressing rooms, and in that dressing room somebody did what Candy had been expecting all along. Somebody told Reggie where she was.

“Right across the aisle,” she heard Reggie say.

Candy stepped back into the tiny room and positioned herself so that she was facing the slit at the center of the flaps. She looked around and saw that Cara Hutchinson was absorbed in her make-up but Mrs. Johnson was quiet and watchful, alert, ready for something to happen. Just don’t get in my way, Candy told the old lady, silently, in the back of her mind, while she was still not breathing. And then the canvas flaps opened and he was there.

“Candy,” he said, the smile starting to spread across his face, the smile she knew so well. They all had smiles like that. That was the odd thing. They all had smiles that were exactly alike. Reggie filled the flap opening now, the canvas pulled back above his shoulders, his legs spread wide so that she wouldn’t have room to pass. It was beyond his comprehension that she might not want to pass.

Years ago, when she was still in junior high school and still naive, Candy had worked very hard to make the cheerleading squad. She had practiced for months doing splits and kicks. She had worked up dance routines and learned to jump three feet in the air. That was before she realized that girls like her never did become cheerleaders, no matter how good they were; they had reputations instead, and it didn’t matter how they’d gotten those reputations in the first place. She had thought that the only thing that mattered was being the best, and for the only time in her life she had worked herself to death, singlemindedly, to be the best. And it had worked. She hadn’t made the cheerleading squad, but on the day of the tryouts she had done the cleanest split, jumped the highest jump and turned cartwheels with her body so straight she looked like a spinning snowflake. She had also done the highest and fastest and most elegant kick in the history of cheerleading in Bethlehem, Vermont.

“Candy,” Reggie said again.

That was when Candy did it again, high and hard, as high and as hard as she had that day back in junior high school, but this time in a pair of spike-heeled shoes with the stiff sharp tips of the toes aimed straight at the one thing Reggie George had ever given a damn about in his life. He saw what she was doing and stepped back, more surprised than angry, but not fast enough. She caught him squarely in the center underneath and he screamed.

My God, Candy thought, as the scream went on and on, higher and higher. I think I’ve killed him.

She hadn’t killed him. He was lying on the floor, hunched into a fetal ball, screaming and crying, but he was alive enough. Franklin Morrison came rushing up and grabbed him by the shoulder. Candy kicked the shoes off her feet and turned away.

“I want to have him arrested,” she said. “He tried to kill me. I want to have him arrested for attempted murder.”

“It’s true,” Mrs. Johnson piped up, her round little matron’s face thrusting itself toward Franklin Morrison’s stunned one, her look of innocence so perfect that only Candy knew she had to be lying. “It’s true,” Mrs. Johnson said again. “He went for her throat. And I’ll testify to that in court.”

Candy George closed her eyes and told herself:

Your name is Candace Elizabeth Spear.

And you are going to be all right.

G
REGOR DEMARKIAN KNEW THAT
there were people in town who were afraid the killings would have the wrong effect on the Celebration. They worried that people would get nervous and leave in droves, destroying any hopes Bethlehem had of having a happy new year. He wasn’t worried. He’d spent over twenty years of his life officially involved with murder. He knew what people were like. The bleachers around the seats he shared with Bennis and Father Tibor were sparsely populated for that night’s performance, but all the other bleachers were crammed full, even fuller than they’d been the night before. The vast American public was irresistibly drawn to other people’s danger. That was why network television was full of series about violent detectives.

The second night of the Bethlehem Nativity play was full of donkeys and camels, although why that was so, Gregor was not able to explain. This was a night of imagination, where a lot of events had been added that appeared in none of the ordinary accounts of Christ’s birth. At one point, the audience was treated to at least part of a Jewish wedding. Gregor thought that whatever the writers and producers had done might be of some scholarly interest, since Tibor was intent throughout, but since Gregor had no scholarly interests of his own, he couldn’t have said. He contented himself with waiting, and being happy that Bennis seemed to have given in and decided to munch her way through one of Tibor’s brown paper bakery bags, and thinking about what he was going to have to do. He was sorry Kelley Grey was not in the seat beside him, although he’d have been surprised if she’d come, even if he hadn’t known she had something else to do for the evening. Bennis noticed her being gone, too, and remarked on it, both at the intermission and when the play was over.

“If I was that woman, I’d never sit in bleachers again,” she said. “Gregor, what are you up to? You’ve been halfway to Mars all night.”

“I’m not up to anything. Is Tibor falling asleep?”

Bennis leaned over, to find Tibor peering suspiciously at his program and not asleep at all. All the other bleachers were emptying out. Their own, already mostly empty, was the scene of a few last-minute scrambles. Tibor was ignoring it all.

“He’s trying to find out what source they used,” Bennis sighed, “and he keeps expecting to come up with someone like Raymond Brown—”

“Not Raymond Brown, Bennis, please, he’s always looking for natural explanations for miracles—”

“Whichever,” Bennis said. “Some hot biblical scholar, at any rate. And I keep telling him he’s not going to find it. Whoever wrote this play just made all that stuff up.”

“You do not make up events in the life of Christ and His Mother,” Tibor said.

“Sure you do. Think about Nikos Kazantzakis. Think about Martin Scorsese. Think about—”

“I have enough to think about, Bennis. Have you finished your muffins?”

Bennis fished around inside the bag and came up with a muffin. “Pumpkin bread,” she said solemnly. “Tibor got them for me special. I’ve already had six.”

“What was the alternative?” Gregor asked her.

“Death by hanging.” She put the muffin back in the bag. “Gregor, are you sure you’re all right? Are you sure you’re not up to something dangerous?”

“If you mean something you can help me with, no. I have to go talk to Franklin Morrison for a moment. I’d have talked to him before this but he had to take a young man to jail. Franklin’ll be free by now. Then I’m going to come right home.”