Free Stillness in Bethlehem by Jane Haddam Page A

self-effacing. Countermen and bureaucrats took him at face value, and they really shouldn’t have. In spite of what he looked like, meaning just plain old, Tibor was actually four years younger than Gregor Demarkian. His grizzledness had been earned the hard way. First, he had preached Christianity underground in Soviet Armenia. Then he had preached it quite publicly in one gulag or another. Then he had found his way to Israel, and Paris, and finally America, and it had almost been too much. Holy Trinity was supposed to be Tibor’s reward for all the suffering he had done for the Faith, and it was. Tibor liked being pastor and he liked America the way Garfield the Cat likes lasagna. He liked Cavanaugh Street, too, which was an upper-middle-class Armenian-American enclave in a city that sometimes seemed to be falling apart in every other way. The truth was, he really wasn’t fitted to survive in the rough and tumble of an openly aggressive society. He had spent too much of his life making himself invisible. He had spent too much of his time thinking about the true meaning of Christian humility, which he had decided must be absolute. There were people who called Father Tibor Kasparian a saint—and Gregor agreed with them—but what he also was was a mouse, and mice stood in lines forever while the cats got served before them.
    Gregor Demarkian was the other kind of Armenian, big (almost six-foot-four) and broad (carrying twenty extra pounds that drove his doctor crazy) and forceful when he wanted to be. He was a modern American man in a camel’s-hair topcoat and good cashmere-lined gloves, but he carried the seed of a wild and savage manhood, a masculinity of the steppes. At least, Bennis Hannaford said he did. When she did, Gregor always wondered if she could possibly be on drugs.
    Up at the check-in desk, Bennis seemed to have finally gotten someone’s attention and held it less than a minute. The words were indistinguishable, but Gregor caught the rhythm and the timbre. There was nothing in the world like Bennis Hannaford’s voice. It was Main Line to Farmington to Smith. It was as maddeningly, gratingly elitist as the one Katharine Hepburn had sold to her adoring and oblivious public all through Gregor’s childhood. It should have driven Gregor’s democratic soul totally insane—but it didn’t. It was just Bennis’s voice, and Gregor was so used to it, it had begun to sound comforting.
    It cut off in the middle of what seemed to be a lecture, and Gregor looked up. Bennis had moved away from the sour-looking woman and gone back to Tibor, who had taken a seat next to a chicly decorated Christmas tree near the fireplace. All the Christmas trees at the Green Mountain Inn were decorated chicly. The one next to Tibor held gold balls and gold satin bows and nothing else. The one near Gregor’s elbow had received the same treatment in blue. Gregor preferred the Cavanaugh Street kind of Christmas-tree decorations himself. Lots of tinsel. Lots of blinking colored lights. Lots of candy canes. Lots of kitsch. That was what children liked. To Gregor’s mind, there was something inherently wrong with a Christmas tree that had been decorated to satisfy adults.
    Bennis finished talking to Tibor, straightened up and came across the lobby to Gregor. Gregor stuck his finger in his book and watched her. For the trip to Vermont, Bennis had added something extra to her everyday uniform of jeans, turtleneck, flannel shirt and down vest. This was an oversized thick-weave cotton sweater in a color she insisted on calling “pumpkin.” It reminded Gregor of really good pumpkin pie. It made Bennis look like a street waif with the face of a Botticelli angel.
    She came to a stop at Gregor’s side, shoved a hand into the great black cloud of her hair and looked down at Gregor’s book. It was dog-eared into twice its original thickness and stuffed full of small scraps of paper. Through the space created by Gregor’s finger, Gregor knew