Bleeding Hearts (16 page)

Alyssa didn’t have the same trouble with the women who ran the benefit balls because the women who ran the benefit balls did not know that she was Alyssa Hazzard. They knew her only as Mrs. Nicholas Roderick, informally called Ali, which she had allowed to be assumed to be a diminutive of Alice. Her picture had appeared in the newspapers quite often during the trial. Her picture had appeared on the television news too. She had stuck by her father throughout it all. She wasn’t unhappy that she had done it. In this crowd it did her no harm. None of these women ever read anything in the papers that didn’t mention their own names. None of their husbands looked at anything but the front pages and the financial sections.

Alyssa did more than hide her home life from the women she worked the charity circuit with. She hid the charity circuit from her family as well. Nick, of course, she did not hide. She needed him as an escort when she went to parties and she needed him to figure out the money when there was money to figure out, because she wasn’t very good at it. Caroline and Paul and James were another matter. Alyssa supposed they knew she did these things. Their newspaper reading was as selective as everybody else’s, but Paul at least glanced through every page of any paper he bought, just in case he saw something that inspired him. Caroline probably restricted her reading to Dear Abby and Ann Landers and Dr. Joyce Brothers. As for James—there was no telling what James did, but once he had made a joke about the company she kept, so Alyssa assumed he had heard or read something. The point was that no member of her family except Nick knew anything
in particular
about what she did, and Alyssa wanted to keep it that way.

Alyssa had every reason to believe that her family was no more interested in learning about her life than she was in having them learn about it. That was why she was so shocked when she came out of The Silver Unicorn after her luncheon meeting for the steering committee for the Turkish ball to benefit the American Heart Association and saw That Woman waiting at the curb. That That Woman was waiting was undeniable. As soon as Alyssa came through The Silver Unicorn’s doors, That Woman straightened like a soldier and walked half a step forward.

That Woman was how Alyssa Hazzard Roderick tended to think of Candida DeWitt. It was not for the usual reasons. Candida didn’t look like the Other Woman. She looked like a Main Line matron. Alyssa had not cared for her stepmother, Jacqueline. In her opinion, Jacqueline was so awful, Paul was a saint for not having had affairs with every female he’d come across during the entire course of his second marriage. Except, of course, that he may have. The problem with Candida DeWitt, to Alyssa’s mind, was when she had surfaced. Just around the time Jacqueline died. Just around the time the police were looking for a good motive to hook on to Paul. Alyssa was sure Paul would never have been arrested if Candida hadn’t been on the scene, making such good newspaper copy.

It was too bad, really. On a metalevel, so to speak, Alyssa rather liked Candida DeWitt.

Candida moved forward again, getting closer. Women from the committee were coming out of The Silver Unicorn in little clubby clumps. They all seemed to be laughing in that oddly harsh way women do when they reach middle age and go to too many parties. Candida came up to Alyssa’s side and said, “Alyssa? I don’t know if you remember me.”

“Call me Ali,” Alyssa said in a pleasant voice, very much lower than the one Candida had used. “Or call me Mrs. Roderick.”

Candida’s eyes lit with understanding. “I see. They don’t know who you are. You seem to have done better with that than I have.”

“Done better with that?”

“You don’t think it’s been any different for me, do you?” Candida asked. “I try to put my lack of social engagements these days down to the fact that I’m getting older, but I know it’s not that. None of the kind of men I’m attracted to is the least bit interested in having a mistress who might very well have killed her last lover’s wife.”

“But you couldn’t have killed her,” Alyssa said. “That was proved absolutely at the time.”

“So what? People just cough politely and say, well, you never really know. And they’re suspicious enough to believe it. Will you walk with me a little while? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Why me? Why not Caroline or James? Why not Paul?”

“I don’t know why you,” Candida said, “but you’re the one I seem to talk to. And I will admit I think you have the most sense. If we go west, we’ll be heading in the right direction for you to find a cab when the time comes. All right?”

It was true. When Candida DeWitt wanted to talk to one of the family, Alyssa was the one she talked to. When the family wanted to talk to Candida, they sent Nick. Cars had begun to pull up at the curb. Nobody offered to give Alyssa a ride. They knew she always refused.

Alyssa and Candida began to walk west, not hurrying, not strolling exactly. It was far too cold to stroll.

“Did you tell the family about my book?” Candida asked after a while. “I suppose they might have known under any circumstances. It was announced in a few places.”

“I told them,” Alyssa said. “They weren’t very happy.”

“I wouldn’t have expected them to be.” Candida shrugged. “Really, there’s no way to make everybody happy in situations like these. You just have to go ahead and do what’s right for you. That’s all I’m doing, you know.”

“I know. It still isn’t very pleasant for the rest of us.”

“Yes,” Candida said. “The question in my mind is, is it something more than just not very pleasant for one of you?”

“What is it exactly that you mean? They’re upset, Candida. They’re very upset. So am I.”

“It’s odd, you know. With all the nonsense Paul spouts about thinking with your heart and not your head, he’s a very controlled man. All of you are very controlled people, really. Even Caroline.”

“If you expect to get an argument out of me over that, Candida, you’re very wrong. It’s always been my contention that Caroline puts it on more than she really feels it.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I just meant she isn’t an abandoned, spontaneous, spur-of-the-moment sort of person. She thinks things through.”

“I suppose she does.” Alyssa didn’t suppose anything of the kind. To her, Caroline was not the sort of person who “thought things through.” Caroline was not the sort of person who thought. Caroline was the sort of person who planned. There was a difference.

Candida was biting her lip. “What I’m trying to say,” she said carefully, “is that I don’t think, if I knew one of you had done something, oh, unkind, say, or threatening, I don’t think I’d put it down to a moment of impulsive spite. I think I’d have to assume it was very deliberate.”

It was worse than cold. It was freezing. Alyssa shoved her hands into her coat pockets. She had her best cashmere-lined gloves on, but they didn’t help.

“Is there a point to all this?” she asked Candida. “Has somebody done something? Has Caroline taken to calling you up in the middle of the night and threatening to do you in?”

“Nobody’s called me up in the middle of the night.” Candida seemed to be contemplating some kind of revelation and then deciding not to reveal. Alyssa was intrigued. Candida went on. “I want you to look at something. It arrived in my mailbox just this morning.”

Candida snapped open the button clasp on her bag and brought out a clean white envelope. Alyssa knew from its size and shape and the quality of the paper that it was an engraved, or at least thermoplated, invitation. She took it out of Candida’s hand and opened it up.

“ ‘The pleasure of your company is requested at a reception,’ ” she read. “It’s one of those all-purpose invite cards the jewelry stores make up. For a party for this Friday night. So what? Who’s Hannah Krekorian?”

“Hannah Krekorian,” Candida said judiciously, “is the woman your father took to dinner
last
Friday night.”

“Is she really?” Now Alyssa was more than intrigued. “She has to be reasonably loaded. I wonder why I’ve never heard of her.”

“I don’t know if she’s loaded or not,” Candida said. “What I want to know is how this invitation ended up in my mailbox.”

“She invited you to a party.”

“I don’t see why. I’ve never met her. And even if she wanted to meet me, which she might, given one thing and another, she wouldn’t invite me to this party. She’s already invited Paul. In fact, unless I’ve gotten very bad at reading this kind of thing at my age, which I don’t think I have, she’s in the way of giving this party in honor of Paul. Not that she would tell Paul that, of course.”

Alyssa handed the invitation back. “I can never get over how good your sources of information are. They’re much better than James’s, and he says he’s channeling one of the oldest souls in the universe.”

“They’re good because they have to be good.” Candida dropped the invitation back into her bag and snapped the bag shut again. “There are only two places this invitation could have come from, you know. One of them is Paul’s study, or wherever he put this invitation when he got it. It was handed to him, I expect. That’s why the envelope was blank when whoever sent it to me wanted to write my address on it.”

“I see,” Alyssa said. “You think one of us sent this to you. Me or James, maybe, but not really. You’re much more likely to suspect Caroline or Paul. I think Paul has more sense than this, you know.”

“Maybe he does.”

“I don’t see why any one of us would want to bother, just to embarrass you. We’d embarrass Paul as well. We’ve all had more than enough embarrassment.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“Where was the other place it could have come from?”

Candida looked at her oddly. “Hannah Krekorian, of course.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know Hannah Krekorian.

“I don’t. It’s who else this Hannah Krekorian knows that makes me think there’s a chance, an outside chance, that this invitation might have come from her. Do you know who Gregor Demarkian is?”

“Of course.”

“Hannah Krekorian is a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of Gregor Demarkian’s.”

“So?” Alyssa was blank. What could the woman be getting at? “I don’t see why this woman’s friends are an issue. And you just said, just a second ago, that she’d never invite you to this party.”

“Well, that’s true enough, as long as you assume that the purpose of this party is to put something on for Paul. But what if the purpose of this party is altogether different? What if it’s to put something on for Gregor Demarkian?”

“But why?” Alyssa insisted. “Why would Demarkian want to cause embarrassment to you and Paul? Do you know Demarkian?”

“Of course I don’t know Demarkian,” Candida said in exasperation. “But Gregor Demarkian is a detective, Alyssa. And the Philadelphia Police Department is not happy leaving the murder of your stepmother as an officially unsolved crime. If you would just put two and two together—”

“But why?” Alyssa demanded again. “Why now?”

“I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“No,” Candida agreed. “It doesn’t make sense. So that brings us back to square one. Somebody at the house sent me this invitation, hoping I’d use it and wind up with egg on my face. It wasn’t a very good idea.”

“It obviously didn’t work.”

“No, it didn’t work. It did get me angry. That’s not a very good idea either, Alyssa. I’m not a very pleasant person when I’m angry.”

“Well, go be unpleasant to somebody else,” Alyssa said, tugging her collar up against the wind. “I didn’t send you that thing. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want the trouble it would get me into. Go pick on Caroline or Paul.”

“I’m not going to pick on anybody,” Candida said.

They had reached an intersection, how many blocks west of The Silver Unicorn, Alyssa didn’t know. Candida stepped to the edge of the curb and shot her hand into the air. A taxi appeared out of nowhere and pulled up beside her.

“I’ll let you take this one,” she told Alyssa. “I want to walk awhile longer. You should think of the things we were talking about.”

“What things?”

“What we were talking about,” Candida insisted. She had the cab’s door open. She was waiting politely.

Alyssa got in the cab and recited her address mechanically. Now, what was this all about?

But the driver pulled out into traffic, and Alyssa didn’t have a chance to ask. She looked back at the sidewalk. Candida had disappeared. She thought of the invitation. She decided it made no sense at all.

Even Caroline, who hated Candida with even more venom than she hated most women, wouldn’t do anything like this.

If Caroline wanted to make Paul look like a world-class horse’s ass, she’d find a way to do it in worldwide syndication.

T
HE ENGRAVED INVITATIONS THAT
Hannah Krekorian had sent out to everyone she knew on Cavanaugh Street had not been made up especially for this party. They were stock invitations with blanks on them for date and time. They could be ordered from Tiffany’s by the hundred. All the older women in the neighborhood had them. There had been a craze for them about a year before Gregor Demarkian moved back to Philadelphia. They went out of local fashion almost as quickly as they had come in. Almost nobody used them anymore. That Hannah did struck most of her friends as very odd. It also struck Gregor Demarkian as useful. The nice thing about stock invitations that hadn’t been especially made up was that there were always more of them hanging around somewhere. All Gregor had to do to get one for Bob Cheswicki was to call Hannah and ask her if she minded if he brought a friend. Of course, Hannah thought he was talking about a woman. Gregor could hear the alarm in her voice. Everybody on Cavanaugh Street expected him to come to his senses and marry Bennis Hannaford one of these days—in spite of the fact that both Gregor and Bennis thought any such move would mean they were equally certifiable. Hannah couldn’t help herself. No matter how much she might want to discourage Gregor from veering from the path that local gossip had already laid down for him, she couldn’t bear the idea of
not
seeing who he would bring. Gregor asked for the extra invitation when he ran into Hannah in Ohanian’s Middle Eastern Food Store on Wednesday morning. Hannah brought it over to Gregor’s apartment herself on Wednesday afternoon. Gregor didn’t tell her what he was up to. He knew perfectly well she wouldn’t want a police officer who was still vitally interested in the case against Paul Hazzard at the party she was giving for Paul Hazzard. Even if she said the party wasn’t for Paul Hazzard.