Free Murder Superior by Jane Haddam Page B

on up the steps to the second floor.
    It was odd to think about it now, but back when Elizabeth died, the last thing he’d thought he would do was come back to Cavanaugh Street. He hadn’t even thought there would be a Cavanaugh Street to come back to.
    What would his life have been like without this place?
2
    G REGOR DEMARKIAN HAD MET Bennis Hannaford in a way he would once have refused to believe he would ever meet anyone—in the course of investigating a murder for whose solution he had no official responsibility. In fact, back in the days when he was still with the Bureau, the idea of getting involved in murder investigations—or in criminal investigations of any kind—as what amounted to an amateur would have sounded to him absurd. Like most professional policemen—and that was what a Bureau agent was, really, a professional policeman—Gregor had scant use for amateurs. Unlike so many professionals, he didn’t mind amateurs in fiction much. Bennis gave him novels by Agatha Christie and Rex Stout and he read them with a fair degree of amusement. There was something about the way in which he himself had become involved in other people’s murder cases, though, that made him uneasy. It made him uneasier that he had no hold on that part of his life. So far, he had been tangled up in seven of what he called his “extracurricular murders.” He had become the darling of the Philadelphia Inquirer and People magazine. If one more person dared to call him “the Armenian-American Hercule Poirot,” he was going to commit a murder of his own. The problem was, if he didn’t commit a murder of his own, he had no guarantee that he would ever be involved in another case. It was worse than odd. It was like being visited by fairies, or having to rely for your Christmas presents on a very capricious Santa Claus. Of course, he didn’t think of murder cases as Christmas presents. It was just that he sometimes wished he had more stability in his life.
    “Get married again,” Father Tibor Kasparian would have told him. “Marry Bennis,” the women said—including Donna Moradanyan, Lida Arkmanian, Hannah Krekorian, Sheila Kashinian, Mary and Deborah Ohanian, Linda and Sylvia Melajian, Christie and Melissa Oumoudian…
    “Get a private detective’s license,” Bennis Hannaford said.
    Bennis’s door had a single chiffon heart on it, meaning she had come out early this morning and taken off whatever else Donna had decided to put up. Gregor pressed the buzzer on the door frame and waited.
    “Come right in,” a voice called from inside. “I’ve got goddamned plaster of paris in my goddamned hair.”
    Of course she had goddamned plaster of paris in her goddamned hair, Gregor thought. She’s always got something going on that makes no sense and interferes fatally with whatever she’s supposed to do next What Bennis was supposed to do next was to accompany him to this party at St. Elizabeth’s College, where the Sisters of Divine Grace would open their first-ever nuns’ convention. When Gregor had originally been told about the nuns’ convention, he’d thought it was the first ever, but that had turned out not to be the case. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet had held one in St. Louis back in 1988.
    Bennis Hannaford’s foyer was taken up in large part by a plaster of pans model of Queen Zahvea’s castle from Sorcerers of Zed , Witches of Zedalia . What Bennis Hannaford did for a living was write sword and sorcery fantasy novels, of which Sorcerers of Zed , Witches of Zedalia was the seventh or eighth, Gregor couldn’t remember which. He wasn’t disturbed by the castle because it had been where it was now for quite a while. Bennis had constructed it and then stashed it in the foyer, meaning to throw it out or donate it to one of the fan organizations. That she had never gotten around to either was entirely typical. One of the scale-model knights had fallen off his horse. Gregor put him back on and called