Dear Old Dead (35 page)

“Take that silly thing off your head,” the nun said, pulling at the stocking. “I know who you are.”

That was when Hector Sheed decided to join the festivities. The huge detective stumbled out of the closet, tripping over the equipment that came cascading after him like a metallic waterfall.

“That trench coat,” Hector said. “Where did he get that trench coat?”

“It’s not a he,” the nun replied with contempt. “It’s a she, of course.
Anybody
could tell.”

The small nun tugged at the stocking mask again, and now the figure decided it was time to bolt. It crouched into a ball and swiftly shot up again, knocking the Sister backward. Then it spun around and sprinted for the door. This was definitely not Gregor Demarkian’s strong suit. He not only couldn’t sprint, he could barely walk at what Bennis Hannaford called “a normal pace.” Still, what had to be done had to be done. He couldn’t just let this person go sailing out of here before they’d had time to make a positive identification. He reached out as the figure sped by.

It worked. Gregor Demarkian had no idea how it worked, but it worked. He caught hold of the trench coat’s sleeve. Unbalanced, the figure tottered on her high platform heels and began to fall sideways. Then Hector Sheed was there, pulling the stocking mask apart.

“Goddamn it,” he bellowed. “I’ve had enough of this, I really have. I’ve had enough of this.”

“I’ve had enough of this, too,” Victor van Straadt said, appearing in Robbie Yagger’s doorway. “Is it over now? Doesn’t she get away with it this time?”

“Who is she?” Hector Sheed exploded.

Gregor would have told him, but he didn’t have to. The stocking mask Hector had been ripping at gave way. It tore into pieces and fell back off the figure’s head.

At that point, everybody could see that the woman in the trench coat and the platform heels was Ida Greel.

The Cardinal Archbishop of New York

Is in a Very Bad Mood on Father’s Day Morning

T
HAT YEAR, FATHER’S DAY
came on the twentieth of June, and the twentieth of June was hot. Gregor Demarkian got up early and stood at the window of his living room, looking down on Cavanaugh Street and watching it start to happen. Father’s Day was not as big a holiday as Mother’s Day on Cavanaugh Street—nothing was as big a holiday as Mother’s Day on Cavanaugh Street—but Donna Moradanyan had done her best. In fact, in the week and a half that Gregor had been in New York, Donna had exploded in a riot of creativity, strewing ribbons here, blowing up balloons there, wrapping Lida Arkmanian’s town house up in crepe paper and paper foil until it looked like the principal present at a surprise birthday party. Not that Lida was there to see it. Lida was out in California somewhere, on vacation. It was the second vacation she had taken since Valentine’s Day. It had Gregor a little worried. Was Lida sick? It was the only reason he could think of that she would take so many vacations.

Bennis Hannaford sat cross-legged on Gregor’s couch, wearing a shawl in defense against his air- conditioning and paging through the
People
magazine story on the murders of Charles and Rosalie van Straadt. There was a picture of the Cardinal Archbishop of New York there, too, and she had stopped to look at it.

“Tibor doesn’t like him,” she said, meaning the Cardinal Archbishop. Tibor was Father Tibor Kasparian, priest at Holy Trinity Church and Gregor’s best friend on Cavanaugh Street. “Tibor says he’s a very learned man, but very cold. Can you imagine Tibor calling someone cold?”

“I didn’t like him either,” Gregor said. “I’d gotten so used to John Cardinal O’Bannion, I thought that was what a Cardinal was like. He called here this morning, by the way.”

“Who? John O’Bannion?”

“No. The Cardinal Archbishop of New York. He wasn’t in a very good mood. I’d done it all wrong, you see. The murderer wasn’t supposed to have turned out to be a relative of the van Straadts’.”

“Do you mean he brought you in hoping to see the arrest of Michael Pride?”

“I think he brought me in hoping I’d give him an excuse to end the Archdiocese’s involvement with the Sojourner Truth Health Center. Michael Pride or anybody else in authority over there, even one of his own nuns, and he could have pulled his funding and his permissions and washed his hands of the whole thing. He can’t do that now, of course. It would look as if he were kicking Michael Pride when he was down.”

“That’s exactly what it would be, too. You look cute in this picture, Gregor. Very tousled and hot. But you’re gaining weight again.”

“I’m going to go get myself some coffee. Some black coffee. While I’m in the kitchen, I think I’ll eat an entire plate of
loukoumia.”

“Do you have an entire plate of
loukoumia?”

“That and a whole pile of
banirov halvah.
Sofie Oumoudian came to visit me yesterday. I think she wants to turn me into her term paper for her civics class. Crime, punishment, and criminal investigations in the American urban jungle.”

“Get me a couple of pieces of
loukoumia
while you’re there. I want to read the article in
USA Today
before I go downstairs to change for church.”

“You ought to convert to the Armenian Church,” Gregor told her. “That way you could receive communion and all the rest of it, instead of being a kind of non-participant observer every Sunday.”

“If I converted, I’d have to show up every Sunday whether I wanted to or not,” Bennis told him. “Get me some
loukoumia.
I’m absolutely starving.”

Bennis was always starving. Gregor went into his kitchen, filled his kettle full of water, and took the jar of instant coffee off his counter. The
loukoumia
was on a plate on the kitchen table. The
banirov halvah
was in the refrigerator, in spite of the fact that it was supposed to be eaten warm. That was what microwaves were for. Gregor looked at his wall calendar and saw the square for next Sunday marked over in green and red.
“DINNER AT TIBOR’S,”
said the green, and the red said,
“BRING SKATEBOARD.”
Life was back to normal.

The water in the kettle boiled. Gregor got a coffee mug, filled it full of water, and dumped in instant coffee. He dumped in too much. He always dumped in too much. He could never remember how much he was supposed to use. He got a paper plate out of the cabinet next to his sink and piled it high with pieces of
loukoumia.
Then he felt like an idiot. Why had he bothered with the paper plate? He should be bringing all the
loukoumia
he had into the living room, right on the original plate. He and Bennis were going to eat it all anyway.

Gregor went back into the living room, coffee in one hand,
loukoumia
in the other. Bennis had passed
USA Today
and gone on to the
Philadelphia Inquirer.
The
Inquirer
had a Sunday supplement special titled,

DEMARKIAN IN MANHATTAN:

Philadelphia’s Armenian-American Hercule Poirot

Goes to the Big Apple.

Gregor put the
loukoumia
down on top of it and walked back to the window. Bennis started eating.

“You know what I don’t understand,” she said after a while. “It’s this business with Charles van Straadt changing his will. Why didn’t Ida just wait a day and let him change it?”

“Because he wouldn’t have changed it in her favor,” Gregor said. “This is the tricky part, I know. It’s giving the New York DA’s office migraines. But it’s perfectly reasonable once you understand what was really going on. Charles van Straadt was going to change his will the next day, yes, but he wasn’t going to change it in Ida’s favor. He was going to cut her out of it.”

“Out?”

“Okay,” Gregor said. “Start from the beginning. Victor van Straadt is not too bright. He’s never been too bright. All he’s ever wanted to do is to keep out of trouble, make his grandfather at least not annoyed with him, and go to a lot of parties. So, he graduates from college and he needs a job. His grandfather wants him to go to work on the New York
Sentinel.
He goes to work on the New York
Sentinel.
It doesn’t take any time at all for the editors there to realize that Victor is hopeless as a newspaperman. They look for something to keep him busy and they find—”

“The contests,” Bennis said. “Yes, I know that, but—”

“No buts. Wait. The thing about Victor is, he’s not only not too bright, he’s not too energetic. In fact, he’s lazy as hell. He takes a look at the contest setups and he’s confused as hell. He could probably figure it all out if he wanted to take the time and make the effort, but he doesn’t want to do either. Instead, he does what he has always done. He goes for help to the women of his generation, to Rosalie who is good with money, and to Ida, his sister, who has always been good at everything. Who has always made a point of being good at everything.”

“Made a point of it,” Bennis said. “That’s important. You said that in two of the interviews.”

“Yes, I did. And it is important. It was Ida’s primary motivation for just about everything. Victor is exceptionally good looking. So was Rosalie. Martha is rather plain, but her personality tends toward the phlegmatic. She’s never looking to make a splash. Ida, though, Ida is different. Ida likes to be the center of attention. It’s very noticeable when you meet her. She likes to set herself apart. She has, however, always had one handicap. She’s very plain. She has never had any of the physical qualities, the appearance of femininity, that young women in her position can trade on for notice and esteem. Instead, she’s had to compensate, and she’s compensated very well. I don’t know how often I was told, by her cousin Martha especially, that it was unbelievable that Ida was going to medical school. In the beginning I thought that meant that Martha found it unbelievable that anybody would go to medical school, but that wasn’t it. What was unbelievable was that
Ida
would go to medical school. Medicine wasn’t enjoyable for her. Medicine isn’t enjoyable for a lot of doctors, of course, but those doctors have other motivations, most often money. Ida didn’t need money. Why would she do it? Well, she did it for the same reason she did everything else. To show off the one thing she did have to offer. Her intelligence. Ida Greel is a very intelligent woman.”

“I don’t call killing two people and trying to kill a third intelligent,” Bennis said. “I mean, for goodness sake, Gregor. There’s no way to avoid an investigation in a situation like this. And there’s no way to know how an investigation will turn out.”

“Yes, Bennis, I know. But Ida Greel never intended to murder anybody. She got forced by circumstances into that. No, what Ida Greel set out to do, when Victor first came to her with those contests, was to pull an underhanded little trick on her grandfather and pay him back for the attention he was paying to Rosalie. And to get away with it, of course. That was key. Ida didn’t want to steal a lot of money from the New York
Sentinel
and wave it around in the air in front of her grandfather and go
nyah, nyah, nyah.
Charles van Straadt was never supposed to know.”

“But he did.”

“Oh, yes, he did,” Gregor said, “eventually. But only eventually. Before Charles van Straadt found out what was going on, Ida had rigged five separate contests and defrauded the New York
Sentinel
of six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. All of it tax free, by the way. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office found the stuff last week, down in the Cayman Islands. She was gearing up to rig the Father’s Day contest, too, until Charles van Straadt found out what she was doing. Her method was really very simple. She never worked the straight drawings. Lottery fraud is really very difficult and easy to detect. She worked the contests where people had to answer questions and only the ones with the perfect scores would be a part of a drawing at the end. On two of those contests, she devised the questions in such a way that no one could answer them but herself. On the President’s Day quiz, for example, there was a question about a president who never existed. Ida submitted an entry in the name of Miss Sharon Cortez from Queens, and of course Sharon Cortez won. She had to. Sharon Cortez also decided that she didn’t want to be photographed for publicity purposes, and the check was mailed to her. The New York police checked out the address. It was an accommodation house. You know, one of those places nobody lives, but everybody gets mail.”

“Nice,” Bennis said.

“Ida fixes a couple of small drawings, too,” Gregor went on, “but that was a lot easier to do than fixing a lottery number pick. Her big coup was what the paper called the Christmas Supercontest last year. The payoff was a quarter of a million dollars. The qualifying puzzles were masterpieces of convolution and deception. The winner was Mrs. Esther Stancowycz from Brooklyn, whom nobody from the paper ever saw. The phony winners were always women, by the way, because Ida liked to take care of business by herself. Ida would set herself with a fake identity and open a bank account about three weeks to a month before the contest went off. Then she would deposit the check, wait for it to clear, and deposit the cash in the Cayman Islands. Then she would close the bank account and start again somewhere else. Different banks, different boroughs, different names. Middle-aged ethnic ladies. That was her specialty. She was good at it.”

“She must have been,” Bennis said. “But Gregor, how do you know that Charles van Straadt knew that Ida was stealing from the paper?”

“Because he told Michael Pride. Not in so many words, of course, but he did tell him. I took Michael Pride to dinner, when I first came to New York. He told me that on the afternoon before the night on which Charles van Straadt died, Charles called him up, ostensibly to talk about some trouble Michael had been having—”

“I’ve read about that.”

“The population of the United States has read about that by now, Bennis. The point is, Charles van Straadt got off the subject fairly quickly. He told Michael Pride that somebody had been trying to cheat him and that he had that somebody caught. He said that he had the perfect revenge, too. He was going to give this person something that this person didn’t want, but this person was not going to be able to say he didn’t want it, because it would sound crazy.”