Free Great Day for the Deadly by Jane Haddam Page B

done. That was why he was feeling so abandoned, illogical though it might be. The rest of them had virtually disappeared. Father Tibor had gone back to Independence College to teach another course. Lida Arkmajian and Hannah Krekorian had taken Donna Moradanyan and her infant son to Lida’s house in Boca Raton. Even old George Tekamanian was in the Bahamas, floating around on a cruise ship with his grandson Martin, his grandson Martin’s wife, and his three great-grandchildren.
    The truth of it was simple: In the year and a half since Gregor had been back on Cavanaugh Street, he had learned to rely on these people as completely as he had ever relied on Elizabeth. When they stepped out of his life even temporarily, he felt as if he’d had the foundation knocked out from under him. It was something he was going to have to do something about someday. He just didn’t want someday to be today. Or ever.
    He went over to one of the sinks and washed his hands, just to feel that he had done something practical in the men’s room, instead of just hiding from Dave Herder’s prattle. Then he made his way back into the lobby. There were three restaurants on this level—or accessible from this level—as far as Gregor knew, but the only one Dave and Schatzy would be in was at the back, on the other side of the building from the wall of glass doors. Gregor passed the baggage check and the check-in desk and was making his way along the wall opposite the guest services desk when he heard his name called out.
    “Mr. Demarkian?” the high feminine voice said. “Mr. Demarkian, please? If you have a minute?”
    Gregor looked over to the guest services desk and saw a small woman—tiny, really—jumping up and down behind the counter. While he watched, she pushed herself up against the counter with her hands and called again.
    “Mr. Demarkian?”
    “I’m coming.” He walked across the hall until he came to her, and smiled. She had let herself down from her perch and was looking a little sweaty and flustered.
    “Oh, Mr. Demarkian,” she said, “you don’t know what we’ve been through. We didn’t know where you were, you see.”
    “Of course you didn’t,” Gregor said. “Why should you?”
    “That’s what I said,” the woman told him in a confidential voice, “but you just can’t get away with saying that kind of thing when you’re talking to the Archdiocese of New York. Oh, I’m sorry. That’s what this is about. We have a message for you from the Archdiocese of New York.”
    “A message.”
    “Just a minute.” The tiny woman rushed to the back, made her way along a row of severely high-tech-looking pigeonholes, and came up with a large manila envelope. It wasn’t what Gregor would have called a message, but it was from the Archdiocese of New York. The letterhead was big and bold enough to read all the way across at the counter where he was standing.
    “Here,” the tiny woman said, thrusting the thing at him. “It came in about two hours ago, and right after it did we got a phone call, and you wouldn’t believe how insistent they were. It’s stamped all over with urgent, too. They must have a crisis on their hands.”
    If they did, Gregor didn’t see what it would have to do with him. He didn’t know anybody at the Archdiocese of New York. He opened the envelope and peered inside. Inside there was another envelope, a padded mailer, with a note taped to its side. Gregor pulled the mailer out and read the note.
    “This arrived this morning from Cardinal O’Bannion” the note said. “He has impressed on us that the matter is urgent.”
    “The matter is urgent,” Gregor said out loud.
    “What?” the tiny woman asked him.
    “Never mind,” Gregor said. “Thank you. I’ll take care of this now.”
    “I’d find a phone if I were you,” the woman said. “They really were very, very insistent.”
    “I’m sure they were.” Gregor hardly blamed them. Cardinal O’Bannion was a very insistent man.