Not a Creature Was Stirring by Jane Haddam Read Free Book Online

even conceived.”
    “Father Tibor,” George said, “talks a lot. But not about himself.”
    “What does he talk about?”
    “Many things. What did he talk about with you?”
    Gregor shot the old man the look he used to give subordinates who’d asked questions they’d no right to the answers to—and then stopped himself. Under the circumstances, that was a particularly stupid reflex. He wanted to talk to George, and not only because he was lonely—although he’d come down to this apartment for that reason alone often enough. George was old and basically uneducated, but he would have made a better agent than most of the men Gregor had trained. Come to think of it, Father Tibor would have, too. They were both perfect straight men, the kind who knew when and how to get creative.
    Gregor held his now-empty cup in the air, got an affirmative nod from George, and passed it over. He hated to admit it, but since he’d started thinking about Robert Hannaford, he’d been feeling better. It was like eating a really big dinner after being on a diet for months. He felt alert, awake, energized. He felt—
    George handed him a cup full of rum punch. “So,” he said, “are you going to tell me or aren’t you going to tell me?”
    “Oh, I’ll tell you,” Gregor said. “I just don’t know if it will mean much.”
    “It wasn’t just a lecture on how you should go out and do more?”
    “No.” Gregor cast around for a way to get into it, and came up with the same one Tibor had. Of course. “Do you know a man named Robert Hannaford?” he asked.
    “The robber baron?” George brightened.
    “The great-grandson of the robber baron,” Gregor said. “The one who’s alive now.”
    George frowned. “Robert Hannaford can’t have a great-grandson,” he said. “He’s only—forty something. I read it in the paper.”
    “Forty something?”
    “In The Inquirer ,” George said.
    “This Robert Hannaford who was in The Inquirer ,” Gregor said, “was he in a wheelchair?”
    “Oh, no. He’d just won—a tennis championship, I think. It was in the paper, Krekor. I read it.”
    Gregor thought it over. “That’s probably the son,” he said finally. “The son of the Robert Hannaford who came to see Father Tibor. Tibor said he, this Robert Hannaford, had seven children—”
    “Then he’s not my Robert Hannaford,” George said. “They called this one an eligible bachelor. You know what that means. Not married and making whoopie with every girl he meets.”
    “Yes,” Gregor said. “But a robber baron?”
    “A corporate raider,” George said helpfully.
    “Ah,” Gregor said. “This is getting interesting. Seven children, one of them a—robber baron. One of them a famous novelist—”
    “Bennis Hannaford,” George said, excited. “Father Tibor gave me her books. She’s very good, Krekor. Very exciting.”
    “Does everybody around here read those things?” Gregor asked. It was remarkable what cultural climate could do. He had no interest whatsoever in fantasy fiction, or in fiction of any kind, but he was getting the urge to read Bennis Hannaford’s books. He took another sip from his cup. “Mr. Hannaford asked Father Tibor to get in touch with me. He wants me to go out to his house and have dinner there on Christmas Eve.”
    “That was it? Just that you should have dinner there?”
    “That was it for the request. He gave Father Tibor his card, and Father Tibor gave the card to me. I’m supposed to make a phone call. But Tibor said Hannaford insisted, and he stressed the ‘insisted,’ that there was nothing more to it but one dinner on the Main Line.”
    “Maybe it’s because you’re famous,” George said, repeating the inaccuracy that was apparently believed by every resident of Cavanaugh Street. “Maybe he wants to impress his friends by bringing you out to dinner.”
    “Maybe.”
    George threw up his hands. “So what is it? It has to be something. What did he do, threaten Tibor with a