Jane Haddam - Gregor Demarkian 12 - Fountain of Death (42 page)

Father Tibor Kasparian’s apartment was around the back of Holy Trinity Armenian Christian Church. Once Gregor and Bennis were on Cavanaugh Street proper, they couldn’t see the lights in its front windows or over its front door. The streetlamps that lined the sidewalk didn’t seem to give off enough light. I don’t like looking at Cavanaugh Street in the dark, Gregor realized. It makes me sense as if the whole place has died.

“I think everybody is going to be a lot calmer after the wedding is over with,” Bennis was saying, “especially Donna, who doesn’t want to have a big wedding to begin with. Russ has suggested that they just take Tommy and elope to Bermuda or someplace, but Donna is afraid of her mother.”

“Mothers like to give weddings,” Gregor said. “Especially Armenian mothers.”

“Donna’s mother isn’t Armenian, Gregor. She grew up on Cavanaugh Street. If you ask me, what she really wants is to have a lot of fancy pictures to send to Peter Desarian.” Peter Desarian was Donna’s former lover and Tommy Moradanyan’s father. “Donna and I keep trying to figure out how she’s going to con the
Inquirer
into calling Russ a ‘prominent attorney’ in the wedding announcements.”

Gregor Demarkian had not known Bennis Hannaford growing up. He had met her on the Main Line, during his first case of extracurricular murder after his retirement from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Walking under the dim light of the streetlamps with her wild black hair and high, wide cheekbones and her enormous blue eyes, she looked at once familiar and exotic. Bennis could have been mistaken for an Armenian more easily than Donna Moradanyan—with her blond athleticness—could have been identified as one. At the same time, she was so obviously what she was born to be: an unadulterated WASP, a Main Line debutante, a daughter of the Philadelphia railroad rich. Sometimes Gregor wished that that part of her didn’t put him off so much.

“Gregor?” Bennis said. “Are you listening to me?”

They were right in front of Lida Arkmanian’s townhouse now, in the middle of the block, nowhere near the walk lights or the designated crossing. Gregor looked both ways in spite of the fact that he couldn’t hear any traffic anywhere in the city. Then he started to jaywalk. Bennis jaywalked with him, without looking.

“I’m listening,” he said. “I just feel like I’ve been living with Donna Moradanyan’s wedding for most of my life.”

“She’s only been engaged for six months, Gregor.”

“Yes, I know, and she’s going to be engaged for six months more. Maybe I’ll follow Lida Arkmanian’s example and take a nice long vacation until I have to show up in a tuxedo jacket.”

“At least she’s having the wedding here and not out on the Main Line,” Bennis said. “Can you imagine what a mess it would have been, with all of us trucking out on the train or carpooling or whatever?”

They had reached the steep front stoop to their brownstone. Gregor got to the top of it and tried his key in the lock, only to find that the door hadn’t been locked in the first place. Bennis and Donna never locked the damn thing, no matter how many times he told them how dangerous it was for them not to. At least Bennis locked the door to her own apartment. Half the time, Donna forgot to do that.

“One of these days, we’re all going to get burgled,” Gregor said, holding the door open for Bennis.

Bennis passed inside without commenting and turned on the light in the hall.

“Gregor,” she said, “do you ever think about giving it up, investigating murders and that kind of thing?”

“I don’t think about giving it up and I don’t think about staying with it. It just happens.”

“What if it stopped happening?”

“I don’t know. I don’t suppose it will unless I want it to. And I don’t have anything else right now that I’d rather do.”

Bennis climbed the stairs to the second floor with Gregor right behind her. When she got to the landing, she got out her keys and started to fiddle with her door.

“Well,” she said. “Happy New Year. I probably won’t see you again before I leave for California.”

“You’ll see me tomorrow,” Gregor said. “You’ll start to pack and find fifteen things you have to borrow from me, starting with my shirts.”

Bennis opened her door and turned the light on in her foyer. “I’m thinking of giving up your shirts,” she said. “I’m thinking of taking up with your sweaters instead.”

The light on the landing was even dimmer than the lights on the street had been. The pale glow of it shimmererd over the top of Bennis’s head, making her hair look lit from within. Gregor Demarkian suddenly got one of the strangest urges of his life.

“Bennis?” he said.

“What is it? Bennis turned toward him.

Gregor leaned forward quickly and gave her a kiss on the tip of her nose.

“Happy New Year,” he told her.

Then he turned and went as quickly as he could up the stairs to his own apartment.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1995 by Orania Papazoglou

cover design by Heather Kern

ISBN 978-1-4532-9338-6

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