Baptism in Blood (21 page)

They have everything and they want everybody else to have nothing, he thought, and then he crushed the mouse in his hands, twisted it and twisted it, until its flesh tore and blood began to spurt out onto his fingers.

The blood was red and hot and warm and almost invis­ible under the pine trees, and Bobby Marsh suddenly found it all so sad, he started to cry.

T
HE FIRST THING GREGOR
Demarkian noticed about Zhondra Meyer’s place was that it had a name, threaded into the wrought iron scrollwork at the top of the gate: Bonaventura. The next thing he noticed was that there was a certain Phil­adelphia Main Line sensibility going on here. This house was not a camp, or a lodge, or even a mansion. It was some sort of palace. The roof was as spiked as a Viking warrior’s helmet. The walls were made of dark gray stone and twisted into peaks and arches more Gothic than anything to be found on an Ivy League campus. The drive curved around a large stone fountain where a curving stone whale spewed water from its spout. Gregor found himself wonder­ing if the man who had built this place had been ignorant of what whales used their spouts for, or if he had had some artistic reason for making this spout do what it did, or if he just hadn’t cared, because people with money like this didn’t have to care. Clayton Hall drove them through the gate, in his little Ford Escort, oblivious.

“They used to open this place to the public when Zhondra’s grandmother owned it,” Clayton said. “They had it all set up like a museum, like one of those palaces in England, and people came through and looked at the furni­ture. They had Christmas parties, too, with the place all decorated inside and out and the children’s choirs from the school in to sing carols. It was a very nice setup. Brought a lot of tourist money into the town.”

“And Zhondra Meyer changed that?”

“Not exactly. The grandmother died and Zhondra was off in college or something. So the place closed and stayed closed until a couple of years ago, when Zhondra started in with this. First thing she did was give an interview to
Town and Country
magazine that made all the wire services and ended up on
The CBS Evening News.
About lesbians.”

“Mmm,” Gregor said.

“One thing about Zhondra,” Clayton said. “She’s no shrinking violet. She likes to stick your face right into it.”

Clayton pulled his car right up to the curve in front of the front doors and cut his engine. Gregor assumed there must be a back lot somewhere, with a garage. Clayton climbed out onto the gravel drive and stretched. Gregor climbed out and looked around. The big front doors were carved from top to bottom in what looked like curvaceous leaves. On either side of them were tall narrow windows made of stained glass.

“Look at this place,” Clayton said. “Man who built it—not the grandfather, I think; the great-grandfather—his wife was dead and his children were grown. He put this place up and came down here to vacation for six weeks every year, mostly by himself. With a dozen servants, but they slept out over the garage. If you see what I mean.”

“Did he have guests?”

“He must have had guests,” Clayton said. “I remem­ber in the brochures they used to give out, it talked about the parties he gave. People down from New York. Caviar brought in from I don’t know where—and there weren’t planes to fly it in, not readily available. I don’t think people build places like this anymore even if they can afford it.”

“In Hollywood, maybe,” Gregor said. “Or one of those new billionaires, like Donald Trump or Bill Gates.”

“There was this guy Michael Milken once. I thought he’d have a place like this. I don’t know how many hundreds of millions of dollars he made every year. Turned out, all he had was an ordinary house, not even very big. I could have owned it myself; if it was built out here instead of in California.”

Clayton climbed the steps to the front door and rang the bell. There was a rope to pull instead of a button to push. The rope was made of something shiny and gold, and it was very well kept.

“Zhondra Meyer can’t be letting down the side en­tirely,” Gregor said. “Somebody’s keeping this place up. Somebody’s keeping it up very well. I think you have to rake gravel drives to make them look like that.”

“You surely do. Half the town seems to work up here in one capacity or another. I didn’t say Ms. Meyer didn’t keep the place up.”

“So what is it that you disapprove of so much?” Gregor asked. “It’s obvious that you disapprove. I can see it in your face.”

“Well,” Clayton Hall said, “it’s like this—”

But he didn’t have time to finish. The bellpull wasn’t only pretty. It worked. One of the big double doors was drawing open. Gregor stepped back politely to wait. A mo­ment later, he saw the figure of a small, dumpy woman in ragged jeans that bagged out at the knees and thighs. She was peering out at them, worry written all over her face.

“Excuse me?” she said in a high, tight little voice. “Can I help you?”

“It’s Clayton Hall, Alice,” Clayton said patiently. “I called Zhondra a few minutes ago. She knows we’re com­ing. This is Gregor Demarkian.”

Alice turned her head in Gregor’s direction and squinted. She was wearing contact lenses. They were tinted ones, a little off center, so that Gregor could tell. She still seemed to be having trouble seeing him. She looked him up and down and paused for a long moment to stare at his shoes. Then she stepped back even farther and motioned them both in.

“We have to be very careful,” she said primly, mostly (Gregor assumed) for Gregor’s benefit. “We’re always in danger here. We never know what we’re going to find when the doorbell rings.”

“Now, Alice,” Clayton Hall said. “You know that isn’t true. You haven’t had a single spot of trouble since Ms. Meyer opened this camp.”

“We’ve had rhetoric,” Alice retorted self-righteously. “And rhetoric matters. Rhetoric can turn to action at any moment.” She shut the door firmly behind them and turned to Gregor. “We send people into the churches, you know, undercover. People they don’t think belong to us. We tape them.”

“Tape them doing what?” Gregor was startled.

“We tape the sermons,” Alice said. “You should hear some of the things we get. Especially down at Henry Holborn’s place. They’re all crazy, down there. In any truly just society, free from patriarchy, they’d all be locked up.”

“Henry Holborn talks the same way about beer as he does about you,” Clayton Hall said, “and he isn’t rampag­ing around the countryside, shutting down liquor stores.”

“People did,” Alice said. “There was a woman named Carrie Nation who went around smashing up bars with an ax. Ideas have consequences. You wait and see.”

“If Henry Holborn starts running around with an ax,” Clayton Hall said, “I’ll know it long before he gets here. We did come to talk to Zhondra, Alice. We even called in advance.”

“Zhondra is in her study.”

“Yes, well. Would you please go call her for us?”

“I’ll go see if she can be disturbed. Sometimes she does her spiritual exercises in her study. If she’s doing her spiritual exercises, I won’t be able to get her for you.”

“If she’s doing her spiritual exercises, Alice, we’ll sit down right here in the foyer and wait until she’s ready.”

Alice’s face seemed to twist into a corkscrew. “This is private property you’re standing on, you know. You don’t have a search warrant now. You have no right to be here if we don’t say you can be here.”

“Zhondra did say we could be here. Alice, for God’s sake—”

“It’s the hallmark of the patriarchy,” Alice told Gregor. “Men under patriarchy always proceed with vio­lence and intimidation. Life under patriarchy is always a brutal competition for position in the hierarchy. It would be different in a gender-reimaged society. That’s what we do up here. We reimagine ourselves and the world we live in. We strike a blow for equality.”

“By reimagining?” Gregor asked.

Alice turned her back on both of them. “I’ll go see if Zhondra can be disturbed,” she said. “But don’t fool your­selves. We’ve not stupid up here. We know what happened with that baby. We know Henry Holborn or one of those people murdered it and planted it up here just to make it look like it happened in the middle of worshipping the Goddess. Nothing like that could happen in the middle of worshipping the Goddess. The Goddess is a goddess of life.”

“Oh,” Gregor said.

Alice seemed to think about turning around to face them again and then decided against it.

“I’ll go talk to Zhondra,” she told them. Then she started off down the hall to the left, walking with that odd rolling gait some almost-fat people have, the back of her churning like the back of a cement truck.

Gregor turned to Clayton Hall and raised his eye­brows. “What was that all about?” he asked.

Clayton sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve been listening to it for the past three years, and I just don’t know. It’s like they’ve got a language of their own, and nobody else can understand it.”

“Do you think they really are sending undercover peo­ple into these churches they’re talking about? Fundamen­talist churches?”

“I don’t see why not. Anybody can go to church, Mr. Demarkian. All you have to do is show up.”

“I don’t think that’s a situation I’d like very much, if I were in your position. That’s a situation that’s likely to get dangerous on very short notice.”

“I’d be a lot more worried if Henry Holborn was sending people up here,” Clayton said. “Alice is one of the calmer people in this place, if you can believe it. The women who come up here are really wound up, and they seem to get more wound up the longer they stay. If you want to know the truth, I wasn’t all that surprised when I first heard there had been a murder up here.”

“You mean you think there really was some kind of devil worship? That Tiffany Marsh really was killed as a blood sacrifice?”

“Oh, hell, no, Mr. Demarkian. It’s not that. It’s just that for months now, I’ve been thinking that—”

There were footsteps in the hall again. Alice chugged back in their direction, looking sourer and angrier than ever. She had her arms folded across her very heavy breasts, making her look out of proportion and unsteady on her feet.

She stopped a few feet from them and dropped her arms. “Zhondra says she’s ready to talk to you,” she said. “You should come along this way.”

“Thank you very much,” Clayton Hall said. “I appre­ciate your help.”

“Oh, don’t give me
that
,” Alice said furiously. “I’ll bet you just love this. Getting some woman you hardly even know to show you around a house like a servant. I’ll bet you just live for moments like this.”

Alice whirled away from them again and marched off down the hall she had just come to them from, not bother­ing to look back to see if they were following her. On the other hand, the hall seemed to be a straight shot without curves. Gregor didn’t see what they needed a guide for.

“Well?” he asked Clayton Hall.

Clayton was shaking his head. “I know where the study is,” he said. “I don’t know about you, Mr. Demarkian, but I find these women completely bewildering. I mean, why would anybody want to live like this?”

Gregor didn’t have an answer for that, either, so he let it go.

A
FTER ALICE, ZHONDRA MEYER
came as something of a surprise. Without realizing it, Gregor had simply assumed that everybody who lived at the camp would stay true to type, and that that type must have been set by Zhondra Meyer herself. Instead, in no time at all, he found himself face-to-face with a tall, willowy woman with abundant dark hair that fell to just above her shoulders, enormous gray eyes, and the kind of cheekbones fashion models have sur­gery to get. She was dressed in a long, batik-printed skirt and a silk T-shirt that flowed and clung in all the right places. The outfit had been put together at inexpensive places—Gregor had learned enough from Bennis Hannaford by now to be able to work that out—but in an odd way it suited both the woman and the room. The room was as spectacular as Zhondra Meyer herself, or maybe more so. The ceilings seemed to go halfway into space. The marble fireplace was big enough to roast a calf in. The ormolu clock on the mantel was old enough and fine enough to fetch five figures at auction at Sotheby’s, and probably had come down to Zhondra from some relative or other. Almost nobody went out and bought things like that.

Zhondra Meyer was barefoot. There was a pair of sim­ple thong sandals lying on the fireplace hearth, so simple that Gregor knew they must have cost a great deal of money. Gregor found it interesting to contemplate the things Zhondra Meyer did and did not choose to spend her cash on.

She came forward and held out her hand to Gregor. “Hello, Clayton. How do you do, Mr. Demarkian, I’m glad you’re here.”

Alice still hovered in the doorway. Zhondra nodded gently. “It’s all right, Alice. I can take it from here. Why don’t you go find yourself something to eat?”

“No woman should ever be alone with two male po­lice officers.” Alice’s face was stony. “You remember we talked about that in meeting last week.”

“Yes,” Zhondra said. “I know we did. But this is different, Alice. There isn’t any need for that kind of pre­caution here.”

“How can you possibly know that? You’ve never seen that Demarkian person before in your life.”

“
Alice
.”

Alice suddenly looked close to tears. “All right,” she said. “All right. But you be careful. Keep your whistle on you just in case.”

“I’ve got my whistle on me,” Zhondra said.

Alice went out the door, but she didn’t shut it. Gregor imagined her lurking in the hallway, listening for the first sounds of violence.

“Is she always like that?” he asked Zhondra Meyer.

Zhondra moved to sit down behind her desk. “Yes,” she said, sounding exasperated. “Alice is always like that. You see, she kept trying to divorce her husband. Every time she filed papers, he would show up and break enough of her bones to put her in the hospital, and when she got out he would stalk her until she didn’t dare try to go on with the proceedings. It took her six years to get a decree, and then do you know what happened?”