Free Bleeding Hearts by Jane Haddam Page A

it’s half over you want a club chair and a great big mug of old George Tekemanian’s hot buttered rum.
    It was ten minutes to seven on the morning of Saturday, February 2, and Gregor was in no danger of being asked to go to church. He had just come out the door and down the stoop steps of the brownstone where he had his apartment—and where old George Tekemanian, Bennis Hannaford, and Donna Moradanyan had theirs. He began walking up the street toward the Ararat. He stopped every once in a while to check out the decorations Donna Moradanyan had put up for Valentine’s Day. If he hadn’t known that Donna went to church regularly, he might have suggested she go. As it was, he thought he ought to suggest something. Donna was definitely off her feed. These decorations—the big silver-and-red heart on their front door; the red and white metallic streamers wrapped around every lamppost; the crepe paper cupid with his crepe paper bow and arrow on the façade of Lida Arkmanian’s place between the first and second floors—these decorations were nice, but they lacked Donna’s usual obsessiveness. It was as if she just hadn’t been able to work up any enthusiasm for hearts and flowers this year. Always before, Donna had loved Valentine’s Day.
    Gregor got to the Ararat, tugged at its plate glass front door, and found it locked. Linda Melajian looked up from where she was folding napkins at a table in the center of the room and nodded. Linda Melajian was what the old people on Cavanaugh Street called a success story. She had gone away to an Ivy League college in New England and gotten a wonderful education—but then she’d come back again. Now she helped run the family business and taught English to new immigrants two nights a week in the basement of Holy Trinity Church.
    “Sorry,” she said as she turned her keys in the lock and got the door open. “I’m running late this morning. Don’t ever tell my mother you caught me still folding napkins at seven o’clock. Or nearly seven o’clock. What time is it? Hannah Krekorian woke me up at quarter to six, if you can believe it, all hot to place an emergency catering order for a party she wants to give next Friday night. I’d keep an eye out for her today if you don’t want to go. I think she’s going to ask the whole street.”
    It was customary in this neighborhood that anybody who gave a party asked the whole street. Gregor shrugged off his overcoat and slid it down the wall-side bench of the window table where he had his breakfast almost every morning. The coat bounced against the glass with the softest of ricochets. Gregor went back to the front desk and took one of the copies of the Philadelphia Inquirer that were kept for sale next to the cash register. Linda would put it on his bill.
    “A party next Friday night,” he said, going back to his booth. “With such short notice, will anybody come?”
    Linda laughed. “This is Cavanaugh Street in February. They’ll come in costume if they’re asked to. Hannah wants fifteen pounds of loukoumia, can you believe it? Mickey’s going to have to cart the stuff over there in a wagon. In several wagons.”
    Loukoumia was the Greek and Armenian name for what the rest of the world called Turkish delight—but in Armenian neighborhoods, and Greek ones, nothing was ever called Turkish anything, unless somebody was trying to start a fight. Gregor opened the paper, saw the headline (DEFICIT GROWING WORSE), and decided to read the comics instead. He hated parties. He especially hated the kind of parties where the hostess felt it necessary to have fifteen pounds of loukoumia.
    “Let me see,” Linda said. “A ham and cheese omelet, three eggs. A side of hash browns, a side of breakfast sausage, two orders of rye toast with butter, and a pot of coffee. Did I leave anything out?”
    “Could I have it ham and cheese and mushroom?”
    “Sure. I didn’t think you ate mushrooms. No cholesterol.”
    “Now, Linda.”
    “Never