by Jane Haddam
“That’s since the murder?” Gregor asked.
“No,” Caroline said. “As far as I know, the police have had a set at least since my sisters took over caring for the house. We want them to be able to get in and out of here if there’s a problem.”
“And all those people also have the code for the security system?” Gregor asked.
“I suppose so,” Caroline Holder said. “I do and the police do and the cleaning service does. I’m not sure about my sisters.”
“How about the family lawyer, say, or the repair people—?”
“The lawyers—and it’s plural—do not. If there are repairs needed to the interior of the house, I let the repair people in myself.”
“Interesting,” Gregor said.
“You really do think one of us killed Chapin,” Caroline said. “Well, I suppose I can’t stop you thinking it. It might have worked if we could have done it and hidden the body somewhere, but that isn’t what happened. Now there’s all this, and it’s not going to make anything better. It’s making everything worse. And besides, why would any of us want to kill her? You don’t kill someone you haven’t seen in thirty years. You don’t have enough in common.”
3
Caroline Holder left without spewing gravel, which Gregor told himself was a good thing. He wouldn’t want to have to deal with the woman in that state of anger for very long.
He waited until she was all the way out of the driveway and then went back into the house, through the foyer and into the large living room beyond. He went to the sliding glass doors and checked the sliders for the rods. They were there. He moved from room to room, checking every door he found. None of the doors to the exterior looked as if it had been in any way tampered with. He went back to the front door and checked that again. It still looked pristine.
“Well, that’s interesting,” he said.
Mike Held and Jack Mann waited for him to go on. Officer Crone looked positively entranced.
“Sometimes,” Gregor told them, “you have to pay attention to the obvious. Can’t you see the obvious here?”
“Nothing about this case looks obvious to me,” Mike Held said. “That’s why you’re here. If you see something that tells you exactly who committed this crime and why they committed it, you ought to come right out and say so.”
“I don’t see who committed the crime,” Gregor said, “but I do see a circumstance that’s interesting. On the night of the murder, the alarm didn’t go off, and the security service wasn’t alerted.”
“No,” Jack Mann said.
“So,” Gregor said, “on the night of the murder, both Chapin Waring and at least one other person got into this house without setting off the alarm. It’s possible they got in from the sliding glass doors, which didn’t have the rods at that point, but even if they did, someone had to have entered the security code, or the alarm would have gone off. If Chapin Waring had a key to the house and the security code, then the other person or persons could be anybody at all. If she didn’t, then the other person or persons had to be among the people who did have those things.”
“How could Chapin Waring have the keys and the code when nobody had seen her for thirty years?” Jack Mann asked.
“We only have Caroline Holder’s word for it that nobody in the family had seen her sister for thirty years. She could be lying. Even if she isn’t, her sisters could be lying to her. There’s been nonstop Federal surveillance, and that would have made contact a lot harder, but it wouldn’t have made it impossible. And then we come to today.”
“What about today?” Mike Held asked.
“Today,” Gregor said, “either whoever came here didn’t have the security code but did have a key, or they had the security code but didn’t use it. Why would they not use it if they had it?”
“Maybe it was tourists,” Mike Held said.
“A tourist wouldn’t have had the key,” Gregor said. “No one would have the key but not the security codes, unless, as I said before, the key had been stolen. And no one could use the key without having the security codes.”
“I’m getting dizzy,” Officer Crone said.
“I’m getting dizzy, too,” Gregor said. “I can see why everybody around here wants to concentrate on a thirty-year-old crime. At least we know what happened in that one.”
TWO
1
The fourth call of the day from Jason Battlesea came through at just about three o’clock, and Evaline Veer almost didn’t take it.
She stared at the blinking light on her telephone and sighed. A part of her had never been happy at the idea of bringing Gregor Demarkian into this case. She’d never said that out loud, to anyone, but it was true.
She picked up the phone and punched the flashing button to get the line. She said “Yes” without giving out any other kind of information, on the assumption that Jason knew whom he’d called and recognized her voice.
Jason’s voice boomed out over the wire, loud and steady.
“Evie!” Jason said, “I’ve got another update for you! He wants to know about the keys!”
“Are you using a bullhorn?” she asked Jason. “You sound like you’re standing on Main Street, trying to disperse rioters.”
“I’m at the station,” Jason said just as loudly. “Hell, Evie, where would I be? I thought you’d like to know that he’s asking about the keys to the Waring house. If they’ve ever been changed. How often they’ve been changed. When was the last time they were changed.”
“Well, of course the keys have been changed,” Evaline said. “What does he think the Warings are, hillbilly hicks? As for the last time they were changed, I don’t know. Do you?”
“Yeah, it was back in January,” Jason Battlesea said. “Caroline Holder came over and gave us a set. I don’t know what prompted it that time. Sometimes I think that that woman has the locks changed on a random basis, you know, so nobody can get an idea.”
“That wouldn’t be stupid,” Evaline said. “Although God only knows who wants to get into that house now. Or did want to get in it before the murder. I blame it on the Internet.”
“He’s sitting in the conference room, going over the notes with Mike and Jack,” Jason said. “It’s a little depressing. I don’t know what I thought he’d do, but I guess I thought it would be something different from the usual.”
“You expected him to come and pull a rabbit out of his hat?” Evaline asked.
“Maybe. Something.”
“I really do have something I’m working on here,” Evaline said.
“I think Mike and Jack are going to go crazy if he keeps on like this,” Jason said. “He’s going through those notes line by line. There are a lot of things we didn’t think of, apparently. Really basic things. It’s going to make us look like idiots if it gets out.”
“I doubt he makes a habit of making his clients look like idiots,” Evaline said.
“He doesn’t have to make a habit of it. Somebody just has to hear about it.”
“Like what?”
“Like Caroline Holder telling them about it,” Jason said. “You know how she gets when she gets mad.”
“Yes,” Evaline said. “I know how she gets. I’ve known her all my life. I knew her before you did.”
“I wouldn’t put it past her to call The New York Times.”
“Could I please get back to work now?”
“I’m just keeping you updated,” Jason said. “You said you wanted to be updated, and I’m doing it. If you don’t want to be updated anymore, you can always just say so.”
“No,” Evaline said. “No, of course not. Of course I want to be updated. I need to be updated. Maybe just not every four seconds.”
“He wants to meet you.”
“Fine. He can meet me anytime. It’s just that now—”
Jason hung up.
She put the receiver of her own phone back into the cradle. Then she got up, walked to her office door, and locked it.
There was, she th
ought, absolutely nothing that she knew anymore that could hurt anyone. It had all happened so long ago, and then things she had known and never told could not reveal where Chapin Waring had been for thirty years, or why she had decided to mastermind those robberies, or where the missing money was. The things she knew were personal, and of importance only to herself. There was still something about the whole thing being raked up again that made her neck feel as if it had been injected with cement.
Sometimes she just wanted to be away from people, away from talking, away from the endless gossip that was the core of Alwych.
It was bad enough having to deal with Tim and Virginia.
It was worse having to deal with something that should have died a few decades ago.
Evaline got up again, went back to her door, and unlocked it.
She had no idea what she’d been doing when she did that, but she did know it was entirely ridiculous.
2
It was only four thirty when Kyle Westervan showed up at Tim Brand’s clinic. It was only an accident that Tim was here this early himself. There was nothing at the clinic Marcie couldn’t handle if he let her.
Tim watched Kyle walk up the long driveway to the clinic.
Kyle was looking the clinic over as he came. He did not seem to be surprised by anything he saw, and he didn’t seem to be put off by it. Tim sent up a thank-you to God for both those things, and then just waited at the top of the rise for Kyle to get to him. He also checked out the suit. The damned thing had to have cost four thousand dollars if it cost a dime. It broke all of what Tim had always thought of as Kyle’s rules.
Kyle reached the top of the rise and took off his sunglasses. He lifted his briefcase in the air and said, “I’ve come loaded for bear. You told me to.”
“I didn’t know if you’d ever been here,” Tim said. “Most everybody else has been at one time or the other. I hit them up for donations.”
“Is that what I’m here for? You’re hitting me up for donations?”
“No,” Tim said. He looked up and down the line. “Let’s go back to the office. I really didn’t expect you this early. It’s a miracle I’m here myself. Don’t you have to put in hundred-hour weeks to get that salary they’re paying you?”
“Most of the time. I’ve been having a rather odd day.”
“I’ve been having a rather odd week,” Tim said. “Come around back. We can actually get some peace and quiet, if not for long.”
“Are they always this patient, the people who stand in line? I’ve seen bank lines that have been more agitated.”
“They’re calm this time of the day,” Tim said, leading Kyle between gurneys and equipment and nurses and cubicles to the corridor in the back where the closest thing to quiet was. He opened the door to his office and stood back to let Kyle pass.
Kyle walked in, looked at the cramped space, and smiled slightly. “I was wondering where the hair shirt was,” he said.
Tim walked in, too, and closed the door behind them. “It’s not a hair shirt, it’s a matter of necessity. You need a big office to impress clients. I have no clients to impress. We need space for other things.”
“You could always spring for a desk,” Kyle said, sitting down at the little round laminated table.
Tim went to one of the big cardboard boxes he used as filing cabinets when he needed to keep paper records. This was a new cardboard box, with almost nothing in it. He opened it up and took out the letters from the Office of Health Care Access and the Office of the Health Care Advocate. He threw them down on the table in front of Kyle.
“Take a look at those,” he said. “I know this isn’t the kind of law you do. And I don’t expect you to handle this case for me. But you’re a smart lawyer. And I was hoping you’d give me your thoughts.”
Kyle picked up the first of the letters and read through it. Then he picked up the second and read through that. Then he put them both back down on the table.
“Well?” Tim said.
“It’s Virginia,” Kyle said.
“I know it’s Virginia,” Tim said. “The only thing I’ve known for sure since those letters came is that Virginia was behind them.”
“You won’t find her fingerprints on them,” Kyle said. “You won’t find a scrap of paper to so much as hint that she knew this was going to happen, or that she talked to anybody about it before the fact. Or am I stating the obvious again?”
“Somewhat,” Tim admitted. “I guess what I was hoping for was some kind of legal strategy that would allow us to resolve this without going to court. I’ve been advised that if this does go to court, the state will not be able to prevail. That’s a wonderful word, isn’t it? Prevail. But they don’t have to prevail, and I think Virginia knows it. If they did, I would shut the clinic down voluntarily. I wouldn’t operate it if I was required to give out morning-after pills to rape victims or anybody else. The court case will gut us. Even if we walk out in victory, we’ll also walk out dead broke and unable to go on. I’ve got a fair amount of money, but not enough money to fund half this clinic and a major court case at the same time.”
“Do you really fund half the clinic?”
“Just about,” Tim said. “Donations have gotten better and better over the years, but every time donations get better, I think of four more things we need to have.”
“I was surprised when I heard you were opening this up in Alwych,” Kyle said. “I kept thinking it would make more sense to open it in Bridgeport.”
“If you think there isn’t need out here, you’re crazy,” Tim said. “Especially since the financial crash, but even before. You’d be amazed at how many people, even people we grew up with—well, never mind. I really didn’t bring you here to give you a fund-raising speech.”
Kyle thought about it. “You could start a legal fund,” he said. “You could explain the situation. It’s not like you’ve been accused of diddling the choirboys. People know what you do here. If they’ve been giving you money, they almost certainly approve of it. Most of them probably hold the same views you do about abortion and the morning-after pill. That might not cover everything you need, but it would go a long way, I’d think.”
“Except that if they’re giving to the legal defense fund, they’re not giving to the clinic,” Tim said. “Money only goes so far. And the kind of people who give to the clinic tend not to be, how do I put it? In your financial position.”
“You mean most of your donors are small donors.”
“Exactly,” Tim said. “And we don’t take any government money—not Medicare, not Medicaid, nothing. We can’t. As soon as you take their money, they think they have the right to tell you how to run your clinic.”
“I don’t think that’s all that outrageous,” Kyle said.
“I don’t either,” Tim said. “But it does bring us back to being in that same position.”
Kyle picked up the letters again. He glanced through them again. He put them down again.
“Was Virginia like this when we were all growing up?” he asked. “This doctrinaire.”
Tim was surprised. “You were married to her.”
“I know I was married to her, but that doesn’t tell me much, does it?” Kyle said. “I get along with Virginia. I always have. Married or divorced, it never made any difference. But lately, it’s like she’s turned into petrified wood.”
“She’d say I’ve turned into petrified wood,” Tim said.
“I know. She’d be right. You both have. I don’t think either of you understands how completely alike you are.”
“And now Chapin is dead,” Tim said, “and there’s a world-class detective consultant the town is paying God only knows what to do something about it.”
“Have you met the Great Detective?”
“No,” Tim said. “I have been keeping up on the gossip. He’s apparently closeted himself in the records room of the police department and is reading through every scrap of paper he can find. The word is that our particular local police for
ce isn’t much good at collecting evidence and analyzing it.”
“Have you had a call to go and talk to him?” Kyle asked.
“No, of course not,” Tim said. “Why would I?”
“They’re going to have to come along and talk to everybody who was involved in that other thing, even if ‘involved’ only means that they were part of the same deb party circuit as the principals. Didn’t the local police come and talk to you after the murder?”
“For a couple of minutes,” Tim said.
“They got me for a couple of minutes, too,” Kyle said. “But it’s all going to come back around. If I were you and I were going to worry about something happening to the clinic, I’d worry about the blowback from that.”
Tim watched him stand up, moving carefully so that he didn’t tip over books and papers and make something fall. Tim got the impression that Kyle was almost completely exhausted, that he’d had so little sleep for so long, he was about to fall over. For a moment, Tim was actually frightened.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “I know you’ve got perfect health insurance and you don’t come here, but if you need something—”
“I’m fine,” Kyle said, looking even less fine. “Do you still give the same answer, when people ask you why you do what you do?”
“The same answer?” Tim asked.
“I remember it from the first interview I read,” Kyle said. “Something in Latin, about—”
“Ad maiorem Dei gloriam,” Tim said. “‘For the greater glory of God.’”
“That’s it,” Kyle said. “At least it’s a reason.”
“You really are sick,” Tim said. “Do you have something I don’t know about? Because you look like you’re about to fall over.”
“I am about to fall over,” Kyle said. “I’ve been working late forever, and I’ve gotten to that age. I’m just overworked, and I don’t think any good can come of this.”
“Can good come of this thing with Chapin?” Tim asked. “She was murdered. Of course no good can come of it.”
“Well, somebody thought some good could come of it,” Kyle said. “It’s the only reason why anybody ever murders anybody else.”