Act of Darkness (23 page)

“Well paid isn’t the word for it. Last year, I made over half a million dollars—you look shocked. I don’t blame you. I’m a little shocked myself. What do I do, after all? I talk a lot of horse manure to a lot of corrupt politicians, and we all pretend what I’m saying isn’t horse manure and what the politicians are isn’t corrupt.”

“It’s not exactly that,” Gregor said mildly. “Its that I’m surprised the organization you work for can pay you that.”

“You mean the Empowerment Project? They can’t. They’re not the only people I work for. Although I’ve got to admit, they can pay a lot more than you would think. You’d be amazed at what a PAC can collect from a lot of people who are living barely above the poverty line, if the organization puts its mind to it.”

“The members don’t complain?”

“Why should they? They get what they want, almost always. I’m very good. Of course, whether what they want is good for the country, that’s another story. And the Empowerment Project is small potatoes next to any of the really big operations, like the teachers’ unions.”

“Teachers’ unions?”

“That’s what I was thinking about, before all this started. That I was getting a good enough reputation to pick up one of the teachers’ unions. Get one of those on your client list and you can make a million dollars a year. Half of it called expenses and untouched by the men from the income tax.” She looked back in the direction of the Mondrian study and sighed. “I was just talking to Dan Chester. It’s amazing how talking to Dan Chester can change my mind about practically everything.”

Gregor looked into the hallway, too, but there was nothing to see. The hallway was empty. All the doors along it were open. “Is Mr. Chester down there now? In one of those rooms?”

“No,” Clare said. “He left about fifteen minutes ago. I was just so—so depressed, I couldn’t move. I just sat in a chair and stared at the window and wondered what I was doing in this place.”

“What did Mr. Chester want that made you so depressed?”

“It’s not what he wanted, it’s how he was. I think there’s some nasty pop psych word for the way that man operates.”

“Maybe you ought to give up your line of work. I don’t think Dan Chester is the worst of the tenth-rate Machiavellis who infest Washington politics.”

Clare laughed again, in a more subdued way. “I don’t know about that. He’s more intelligent than most, and he’s slicker, but in a way that makes him worse. Of course, he never suggests a romp in bed in exchange for an amendment to a bill, so I suppose that makes him better. I’m sorry, Mr. Demarkian. I told you. I’m not thinking straight today. Maybe I’ll go upstairs and get cleaned up for lunch.”

“Mmm,” Gregor said.

“What is it? Is there something you want to know? That just shows you how mixed up I am today. It never occurred to me you might be looking for me.”

Of course, Gregor had not been looking for her. He had been looking for Bennis, and he still was. It had, however, just occurred to him that Clare Markey might have some of the information he wanted—and although she wouldn’t be the only one, or even the. most likely one, she was one of the few people in this house he trusted.

He looked back at her and found that she had sat down on the arm of a sofa and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Well,” she asked him, “was there something you wanted to know?”

Gregor nodded slowly. “In a way, yes. It might seem irrelevant.”

“Good. After you ask me, I can go back to my room and worry about it. You know, as if it were the kind of cryptic question Hercule Poirot would ask in a murder mystery.”

“I’m not sure it would suit even for a murder mystery. It’s about those attacks Senator Fox was having before you all came up here.”

“Senator Fox? You mean Stephen?”

“Of course, I mean Stephen.”

Clare blushed again. Gregor was beginning to think it was habitual. “Excuse me,” she said. “It’s just that—”

“What?”

“Well, I was thinking about it the day I made arrangements for this weekend. That nobody really thinks of Stephen by himself, I mean. If he does something or something happens concerning him or whatever, your mind just automatically says, ‘that’s Dan Chester.’”

“Do you think Dan Chester was responsible for the senator’s attacks?”

“I think the senator is cracking up. He was always just a hair away from it anyway. Stephen is not loo stable, Mr. Demarkian.”

“I’ve noticed. Let’s talk about the attacks, though, if you don’t mind. You were there when the first one happened?”

“I was there when the first one they’re admitting to happened. It might even have really been the first one. You can never tell with Dan.”

“This was at a cocktail party,” Gregor prompted.

Clare nodded. “Oh, yes. Not exactly a purely social occasion. Stephen was supposed to be announcing his plans for the Act in Aid for Exceptional Children. It cost me twenty-five hundred dollars to get in.”

“The senator charges a lot for his time.”

“Dan Chester does. And why not? With Stephen in the Senate, he’s got the nuts of the American taxpayer in a paper bag.”

This, Gregor thought, was no simple case of burnout. This was a case of internal revolution.

“Can you remember,” he asked her, “who was at this cocktail party? Of the people who are here?”

“Of course I can. We all were.”

“You’re sure?”

“Very sure. I talked to Kevin Debrett and Stephen myself. And Dan was there, you couldn’t miss him. Janet went up with Stephen when Stephen was supposed to make his little speech, just before he keeled over. As for Victoria and Patchen Rawls—well. All I can say is that it was like a cat fight in the abstract. Victoria held court in the middle of the room, and Patchen held court on the terrace.”

“Were you there the second time? Dan Chester told me it was at a dinner for contributors.”

Clare’s smile was thin. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I was there. That one cost fifteen thousand dollars, what with buying a whole table and feeding people I didn’t even know, just to make a decent showing. Stephen was supposed to get up and make a speech at that one, too, because it was a fund-raising dinner specifically for expenses involved in getting the act passed. Funny how that works out. Nobody ever tells you what those expenses are.”

“What about the rest of the people here this weekend? Were any of them at that dinner too?”

“They all were, but I don’t think Patchen Rawls was supposed to be. Even Stephen looked upset when she showed up, Dan tried to stick her at a table in the back, but she made a scene, so she ended up on one end of the dais. Dan tried everything he could think of to hide her except put a paper bag over her head.”

“What about the third time?”

“That was the Citizens’ Coalition for Education,” Clare said promptly. “Now, that was odd.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t have to pay for that at all. Nobody invites lobbyists to public functions unless they’re looking for a contribution, but they invited me. I couldn’t understand it. It was a speaking engagement, for God’s sake. Stephen went and talked silliness for fifty minutes, and the Citizens’ Coalition paid him a lot of money he didn’t need.”

Gregor thought about this. “If it was so odd,” he asked her, “why did you go?”

“Because I assumed it was a command performance. It always is when Dan asks a lobbyist to show up at something.”

“It was Dan Chester who invited you?”

“I assume so, yes. Victoria’s name was on the invitation, of course, because it was an invitation to a private table. But Victoria wouldn’t have asked me without Dan’s having asked her first. She doesn’t even know me.”

“How does that work? The Citizens’ Coalition is giving the dinner, but Victoria has a table—does she pay for it?”

“It would have been assigned to her complimentarily. Stephen had a place on the dais with Janet, and Victoria had a table she could fill with friends at the Coalition’s expense. It’s part of the payout. I mean, everybody knows how Victoria and Janet feel about each other.”

“What did Senator Fox talk about?”

“I told you. He talked silliness. And he put in a plug for the act. I assumed that was why I was there. People were supposed to look at me and think of the Empowerment Project and forget that all I am is a lobbyist.”

“Which of the people here was there?”

Clare grinned. “All of them,” she said, “again. And you should have seen Dan Chester’s face. Kevin Debrett and Victoria Harte and Dan were all at the table with me, and then at the last minute, so was Patchen Rawls. Janet must have found out she was coming whether anyone wanted her or not, and got Victoria to put her at our table and keep an eye on her. I thought Stephen was going to have a cow.”

“I think that young woman is going to end up getting herself in a lot of trouble,” Gregor said, “if she hasn’t done that already.” He couldn’t think of anyone he had ever disapproved of as much as he disapproved of Patchen Rawls. The woman was insensitive to the point of madness. “According to Dan Chester,” he said, making himself stern to make sure he didn’t stray from the subject, “Stephen Fox spoke at least two other times during that period. Once—”

“Once was at the American Osteopathic Association,” Clare said quickly. “I was there. He was getting an award and it was one of those things where you had to buy tables, but Stephen didn’t get any money. Dan just wanted there to be a good showing.”

“He asked you to go?”

“He told me to be sure to be there. He told me in person.”

“What about the rest of these people?”

“All there. This time I think Patchen Rawls was expected. She wasn’t at Stephen’s table that time, either, but neither was I. Neither was Kevin Debrett, for that matter. I think Dan thought that would have looked too—cozy.”

“Dr. Debrett was on his own?”

“He had a table of friends. Including a woman. I had a table of strangers, as usual. Patchen Rawls was at a table with Victoria Harte, if you can believe it. I thought at the time that Dan was probably trying to make it look as if Patchen were Victoria’s friend, and Victoria was going along with it because she didn’t want Janet humiliated. Patchen can be an unmovable object when she wants to be. And she caused a lot of trouble later, of course. She always does.”

“Caused trouble how?”

“There was a break between the end of dinner and the beginning of Stephen’s speech, and there was a lot of mingling. Patchen attached herself to Stephen’s arm and couldn’t be pried loose.”

“Tell me when this event was, after the cocktail party but before—”

“After the cocktail party and after the contributors’ dinner, too, but before the speaking engagement thing.”

“What did he talk about to the American Osteopathic Association?”

Clare shrugged. “How wonderful osteopathy is. How wonderful osteopaths are and what good work they do. How any group made up of such caring, concerned, selfless people deserves—”

“Never mind,” Gregor said.

Clare rubbed her knee absently and sighed. “I know. I know exactly how you feel. I didn’t used to, but I do now. Maybe it is time I looked for another line of work.”

“Maybe it’s time I got back to what I was doing when I ran into you,” Gregor said. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Bennis Hannaford around. I’ve been looking for her for half an hour.”

“I haven’t seen anybody but Dan. Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Did all those questions you just asked me have anything to do with anything? Is there some connection between Stephen’s attacks and Kevin’s death?”

“I don’t know. Right now I wouldn’t say there is.”

“You mean you were just asking out of curiosity?”

“Not exactly.”

“I think you are like Hercule Poirot,” Clare Markey said. “That was the first thing I thought of, when Kevin told me who you were.”

At ten minutes to one, Gregor Demarkian let Clare Markey go. She disappeared up the stairs as he went out to look at the beach. Five minutes later, when he came back, she was gone, but standing in the beach room he could now hear someone else on the stairs. He came into the foyer, but whoever it was had gone. Over his head, the balcony of the second-floor guest wing was quiet.

He headed upstairs, not sure what he intended to do next, or even what he wanted to do. While he had been talking to Clare Markey, or not long after, the rain had stopped. He looked at the skylight to see if the sun had come out too, but it hadn’t. The sky up there was as gray as it had been when he first came down that morning.

He started down the balcony toward Bennis’s room and his own, picking up steam and hope along the way. He was going to find her. He was going to lecture her. He was going to wring her neck if she kept going on with things like this.

He was halfway to where he wanted to go when he heard a sound that made him stop, not because it was so odd but because it was so ridiculous.
“Psst,”
it went, and he found himself thinking of
Cagney and Lacey.

He looked at the door to Bennis’s room. It was closed and blank. He looked at the door to his own. That was closed and blank, too. He looked up and down the balcony. It might as well have had a sign on it—closed and blank.

Gregor turned around slowly, looked out over the balcony rail, and then turned back again. There was another
“psst,”
but he still couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Then Bennis said, “Gregor, I’m over here, for God’s sake please,” and he swung to face Stephen Whistler Fox’s door.

For a moment, he thought he was looking at nothing but another closed door, that the acoustics had played a trick on him, that he had been deceived by sound. Then the door swung open, and Bennis was standing there, looking small and very white. There was nothing
Cagney-and-Lacey-like
about her at all. Gregor thought she looked ready to faint.

“Bennis. What are you doing in there? That’s—”

“It’s Stephen’s room,” Bennis said. “Yes, Gregor, I know. You’d better come in here.”

“But what are you doing in there?”

“I’ll tell you later. Come in here, please. I’ve got—I’ve got another body.”

For a half second, he thought it was a joke. He couldn’t take in what she was telling him. It didn’t feel real. Then her face cracked and he found himself watching a sudden spill of tears, flowing down out of her eyes and across her cheeks in a gush.