“Krekor! Bennis! Just who I was hoping to see. I have a surprise for you I have been working all night to make perfect.”
“Watch out,” Bennis said, hissing in Gregor’s ear. “This has got to be a pip.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“No.”
All the refugees seemed to. They sat up expectantly, as they looked from Father Tibor to Bennis and Gregor and back again. Then Father Tibor brought his hands down to his sides, raised them up again, and hummed a distinctly off-key note. It had to be an off-key note, because Father Tibor Kasparian was as tone deaf as a brass coat stand.
“Now,” he said. “Listen. We have here, entertainment for after the dinner at Lida’s townhouse this afternoon.” Then he said a few words in Armenian, and his charges straightened up.
A very little girl in jeans and a sweatshirt stepped forward, opened her mouth and sang,
We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing
He chastens and hastens his will to make known—
The rest of the crowd took deep breaths simultaneously and belted out,
The wicked oppressing
Shall cease from distressing
Sing praises to His name
He forgets not his own.
“What is that?” Gregor hissed into Bennis’s ear, as the crowd launched into what was apparently the second verse. “What are they singing?”
“This is supposed to be a traditional WASP something for Thanksgiving?”
“Yes.”
“Good God.”
“They mean well, Gregor.”
“I mean to go up and use Donna Moradanyan’s shower,” Gregor said, “and I mean to do it right now.”
That was what he did do, too, smiling his way through the crowd, practically running up the stairs until he got to the fourth floor and Donna Moradanyan’s door.
Later that day, though, when all the refugees got together and sang that song at Lida’s—followed, as he should have suspected, by “America the Beautiful”—Gregor stayed put to listen.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by Orania Papazoglou
Cover design by Neil Heacox
978-1-4804-6249-6
This 2014 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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THE GREGOR DEMARKIAN
HOLIDAY MYSTERIES
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