Free Bleeding Hearts by Jane Haddam Page B

mind,” Linda said. “Where’s old George this morning? Where’s Father Tibor? Usually you people descend on me in a gang.”
    Gregor shrugged. “Tibor had a late night with that protest of his. Old George has a cold and isn’t supposed to go out. I’m supposed to bring him back some muffins.”
    “He isn’t really sick, is he?” Linda asked quickly. “If he’s really sick, I’ll go over there myself with some hav abour. I know he likes erishtah abour better, but chicken soup is better than lamb soup when you’re sick, and old George is getting up there—”
    “Old George isn’t getting up there,” Gregor said. “Old George is already there.”
    “Right. Don’t worry about the muffins. I’ll put a box together and go myself.”
    Doonesbury had a sequence about the deficit. Gregor sighed and closed the paper. “While you’re there,” he said, “bring some of that hav abour to Donna Moradanyan. I don’t know what’s wrong with her lately. She just isn’t behaving like herself.”
    Linda Melajian looked startled. “You don’t know what’s wrong with Donna Moradanyan? Really? I’d have thought it was obvious to everybody.”
    “You would?”
    “Well, of course,” Linda Melajian said. “I mean, after all—”
    Gregor never got to hear what Linda meant, or what was after all. The plate glass door blew open so forcefully, it rattled all the other plate glass windows facing the street. A gust of wind hit the stack of folded napkins on the table where Linda had been working and scattered them across the floor. Salt and pepper shakers jumped, and copies of the Philadelphia Inquirer rippled in the breeze. Bennis Hannaford stood in the door, wearing jeans, a turtleneck, a flannel shirt, a pair of L. L. Bean Maine hunting boots, and a bright red scarf. Gregor thought she had to be freezing, out in the cold like that without a coat. Bennis didn’t seem to be noticing the temperature.
    She had a stack of computer printouts under her arm. She grabbed them in her right hand, held them in the air, and announced: “Gregor, I’ve got the most outrageously awful thing to tell you.”
2
    Gregor Demarkian had reason to know that Bennis Hannaford was not a flake. In spite of the way she liked to act in public—which was as a cross between a Barbara Stanwyck madcap debutante from a thirties movie and Agatha Christie’s Mrs. Ariadne Oliver—she was in her way a brilliant businesswoman and certainly a successful writer. What she wrote was sword-and-sorcery fantasy novels, but Gregor was not the kind of person to whom genre fiction simply didn’t count. Especially genre fiction that sold that many copies and made that much money. Of course, Gregor had never actually read anything Bennis had written. He’d tried on several occasions, but he was always brought up short by the unicorns. Bennis always had unicorns in her novels. She always had witches and dragons and sorcerers too. It made Gregor dizzy. Tibor and old George Tekemanian had read the whole series, though, and they said the work Bennis did was wonderful.
    The problem with Bennis, as far as Gregor was concerned, was not the flakiness she liked to pretend to, but the driving determination she liked to indulge. That, Gregor knew, was the key to Bennis. Out in the world somewhere, Gregor was sure, there were hundreds of other women who wrote as well as Bennis did. There were probably dozens who published as frequently and were as well reviewed. None of them had a tenth of the energy, or the bullheadedness.
    Unfortunately, Bennis did not restrict her application of drive, determination, energy, or bullheadedness to her professional life. She brought those things to everything she did, including eating breakfast in the morning. She caused herself a lot of trouble.
    Now she threw her sheaf of computer printout paper on top of Gregor’s Philadelphia Inquirer, said, “Hi, Linda” and “Could I have a pot of really muddy black coffee and a full sugar