Hearts of Sand: A Gregor Demarkian Novel (Gregor Demarkian Novels)

by Jane Haddam

  “Probably?”

  “There’s nothing to say that it did, and nothing to say that it didn’t. It wasn’t part of a set, although it was similar to the ones in the kitchen. That makes the police here think it must have come from outside, but I don’t think so. The house is—the Warings have maintained that house like something in a Faulkner story. They didn’t just not sell the place; they maintained it. They paid ground crews and maids to clean it and keep it up. All the furniture is there and dusted and in perfectly good repair. The kitchen still has all the kitchen equipment in it. The dining room has two large glass display cabinets with china in them. And that’s what I saw without doing a search. I got the impression that if I’d started opening drawers or if I’d gone up to the bedrooms, there would be clothes and bedspreads and everything else all set out and ready to go.”

  “And Caroline Holder doesn’t live there?”

  “No, she definitely does not.” Gregor sighed. “The knife had no fingerprints on it except those of Chapin Waring, but all that means is that somebody was wearing gloves. I keep trying to visualize the actual murder, and I get nowhere. How did that work, exactly? You have to get up close to stab somebody in the back. And if that person’s back is to you, then he either didn’t know you were there, or he wasn’t expecting you to do anything, or he was running away from you. And if he was running away from you, you couldn’t get too good a stab in anyway. It just goes around and around and around.”

  “And you’re still left with thirty years ago,” Bennis said.

  “I’m not going back to that again,” Gregor said.

  “I don’t blame you,” Bennis said. “If it’s any consolation, I wish you were here. This house is remarkably cavernous and creepy when I’m here on my own.”

  “You could go stay with Donna,” Gregor said.

  “Donna’s got enough going on without hearing from me,” Bennis said. “Besides, I see her all the time. She decided to decorate this house for the Fourth, and she’s only got until the day after tomorrow.”

  “What?” Gregor said.

  “She’s only got until the day after tomorrow,” Bennis said. “She wants the whole street to look good for the parade. Then we get pictures in the paper and the Ararat gets more business. So she came over today and wrapped the entire house up in blue crepe paper, and she’s got red and white to do tomorrow.”

  “The Fourth of July is the day after tomorrow.”

  “Last I checked,” Bennis said. “Are you all right?”

  “No,” Gregor said. “I put it entirely out of my mind. I mean, I did and I didn’t. Everybody has been talking about the Fourth, and I kept thinking it was somewhere in the distance.”

  “It is,” Bennis said. “It’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “That’s not nearly distant enough.”

  2

  Later, when Darlee Corn had been in to pick up the plates and bring him a glass of brandy, Gregor sat on the edge of the big old-fashioned bed and tried to get it all straight in his head. The Fourth of July meant a day of no real work, so he would have to revise his tentative schedule. It might even mean that he wouldn’t be able to get out and look around. He had no idea what Alwych did on the Fourth. He didn’t mind fireworks, if they were handled by professionals. He was generally in favor of celebrating the Fourth, but what he wanted for a celebration was a big barbecue out somewhere that also had a pavilion, and then he wanted it to rain so that everybody had to go indoors.

  Gregor was not much in favor of eating outside.

  He got up off the bed and began to pace. He expected a phone call any minute, telling him the people below him had complained. He stopped and looked at his laptop for a while. He scrolled through notes about the bank robberies, the money, the murder, everything that might be connected to this case.

  He brooded a little about what he meant when he thought about “everything” that might be connected to this case. Did anybody at all know what “everything” meant here?

  He got out Patrick’s diaries and went through them, page after page, not knowing what he was looking for. He read through long passages of what was essentially angst, of Patrick not being able to figure it all out, of leads that went nowhere and ideas that turned out to have nothing to do with anything.

  He got to the section with the pictures in it and went through those one after the other. He got to the ones that had been taken by the security cameras and started to go very slowly. The pictures were blurry. Too much was shot from over the tops of people’s heads, so that you could see hats or caps but not faces.

  He got to the ones he had found curious even the first time he saw them, and stopped. In these, he could see Chapin Waring clearly, and he understood completely why she had been identified from the photographs of Martin Veer’s funeral. The way she held her head and shoulders was distinctive all on its own.

  He moved the photographs around and tried to concentrate on the figure of Marty Veer. This was not so distinctive, and looking at the photographs he could see what everybody who had looked at them had seen, from the beginning until now. The figure of the accomplice was—distorted, sort of. It bulked in odd places, and flattened out in even odder ones.

  Gregor set the photographs out in order: first robbery, second robbery, third robbery, fourth robbery, fifth robbery.

  He looked at the figure of the accomplice over time. It was always bulky and distorted, but it was not always bulky and distorted in the same way. He didn’t see why he should think the figure was Martin Veer, or anybody else. He didn’t even see why he should think the figure was the same person each time. This was not a body type. Nobody on earth was built to look like that.

  Surely, Gregor thought, the Bureau must have thought of this at the time. There had to be some reason why they had fixed on Martin Veer as the accomplice.

  He went through Patrick’s notes again, and found it: Once Chapin Waring had been identified as one of the robbers, there were search warrants issued for all six of the kids in that tight little group. In Martin Veer’s house, police had found one of the bags from the Fairfield County Savings Bank—just the bag, not any money, and nothing else.

  On the other hand, they had found nothing at all in the houses of any of the others.

  Gregor looked around for more, but couldn’t find it. They had found the bag with Martin Veer, and nothing else with any of the others, and they had decided on Martin Veer as the accomplice.

  Gregor got up and walked around to where he had dumped his bags this morning when he checked in. The big picture book on the Waring case was lying on the floor near a wing chair. He picked it up and walked back to the other side of the bed to sit down.

  The picture book, unlike the case notes from the Bureau, included a lot of photographs of Chapin Waring and her friends that were not in any way connected to the robberies.

  Gregor found a caption that identified the group by name, and picked Martin Veer out from that. Then he went back over the rest of the pictures and checked out each one Martin was in. There was Martin at the beach in a bathing suit. There was Martin in tennis whites with a racket. There was Martin sitting at a table with all the rest of them, drinking something in a tall glass.

  Gregor went back to the security pictures. He went back and forth.

  The accomplice could have been Martin Veer. In fact, faced with this same evidence, if he’d have been on the case at the time, that’s the way he would have bet. There was still something about it he didn’t like.

  He went back to the picture book and paged through slowly, looking at photographs so wildly divergent, they might have had nothing to do with one another. Some of those photographs were of the principals as small children. In those, Martin Veer was freckled and awkward. There was another set that consisted of baby pictures. Gregor looked through the Bureau file and found that the agents had picked up on this the first time Ray Guy Pearce published them, and had discovered that these same photographs were genuine.

  After t
hat, the file contained a lot of references to Ray Guy Pearce and his publishing company, but in the end they had come to nothing. It was obvious somebody was feeding him material, but nobody had ever discovered who that was. The last note suggested that Ray Guy Pearce might be getting fed by more than one person, especially if he was paying them.

  He paged through more photographs, one coming after the other with only the slightest nod to organization.

  He put the book away and thought for a moment.

  The day after tomorrow was the Fourth of July. If he was going to get something done, he would have to do it fast.

  There were at least two things that would make sense if only you worked them right.

  The first of those things he would have to deal with tomorrow.

  FOUR

  1

  Evaline Veer hadn’t been able to sleep all night. She’d finally given up trying at half past four, and at quarter to six she’d started into the center of town again. The walk was eerily quiet, as if lots of people were taking the day off before the Fourth.

  Evaline was just coming around the corner at the depot when she saw a very tall, massively built man get out of the backseat of a car and come around to the depot’s front door. She hesitated. There was no mistaking who the man was, even though she had never met him. In the natural order of things, she would be introduced to him by Jason Battlesea, or one of the detectives. She was a little miffed that Jason hadn’t brought him over yesterday.

  There was a lot to do yesterday, she told herself as Demarkian walked through the station’s doors. Evaline went in after him. She looked for him at the single open ticket window, but he wasn’t there. She spotted him at the newsstand. He was taking an absolute armload of books and putting them on the counter.

  Evaline thought it over for a split second, and then walked right over to him. The books he’d laid on the counter were all books about Chapin Waring.

  She leaned close to him without touching and said, “Mr. Demarkian? We should be introduced. I’m Evaline Veer.”

  Gregor Demarkian looked up from his apparent attempt to buy one copy of every title of what the newsstand had of those books.

  “Evaline Veer,” he said.

  “I’m the mayor,” Evaline said helpfully. “I just thought I’d come over and introduce myself.”

  “It’s very good to meet you,” Demarkian said. “Give me a second here.”

  Evaline watched as he turned away from her and took out his wallet to pay for the books. The man behind the counter found a big bag and piled them all inside.

  “Boy,” the man said. “You must be taking the train to Hawaii.”

  Evaline waited until Gregor Demarkian turned back to her and tried a smile.

  “Is that what you came in here for?” she asked. “I was worried you were taking the train back to Philadelphia. I know we must seem completely clueless out here. Jason indicated that you might be a little—annoyed.”

  “Not annoyed, exactly,” Gregor said. “A little exasperated might be more like it.”

  “Because of the forensics, and all that kind of thing?” Evaline asked. “I do know that the state crime lab has lost its accreditation. Connecticut prides itself on being very sophisticated, but the truth is we’re mostly suburbs with a few small urban spots that are going completely to hell. It’s not New York out here, even if most of the people in town work in New York.”

  Gregor Demarkian tilted his head, as if he were trying to think something through. Then he straightened it again and said, “I don’t mind the weakness of the forensics, or even the lack of acquaintance with serious crime. It’s my job to help people out with just those things. No, what was getting me a little exasperated was the lack of interest in the crime at hand. All anybody seems to want to talk to me about is the crime that happened thirty years ago.”

  “Ah,” Evaline said.

  “It does look like a very interesting crime,” Gregor said, “but contrary to what everybody seems to think, solving it will not necessarily solve this one.”

  “I didn’t think it had to be solved,” Evaline said. “Everybody already knows who committed those bank robberies. Martin Veer was my brother, do you know that?”

  “I did know that,” Gregor said.

  “From the FBI?” Evaline said. “I suppose they thought it was some kind of conflict of interest.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well,” Evaline said, “I don’t see it. I was very young when those robberies happened. I wasn’t even out of grade school. And they don’t stick in my mind at all. Every time somebody says something about the crime that happened thirty years ago, I have to stop myself. Because we’re never thinking about the same crime.”

  “There was another crime that happened thirty years ago?” Gregor asked.

  Evaline shrugged. “Not in that sense, no,” she said. “But what sticks out in my mind after all this time is the accident. Maybe if Marty had lived, and there’d have been a massive manhunt like there was for Chapin—except if he’d lived, they might never have caught Chapin or Marty either. The only way anybody put two and two together was because somebody saw Chapin on television at Marty’s funeral.”

  “They would have caught them eventually,” Gregor said. “Once those two people were killed, there would have been a lot of scrutiny and enhanced security. If they had done any more robberies, they would have ended up getting caught.”

  “Oh, I suppose I know that,” Evaline said. “I knew my brother fairly well, and when I heard about everything, it sounded plausible enough. I could see him doing those things. Things got out of hand and they did things they didn’t expect to do. But Martin really wanted to be part of Chapin Waring’s crowd. And of course, it was very important to Hope.”

  “Hope,” Gregor Demarkian said. It was not a question.

  Evaline plunged ahead as if it had been. “Hope Matlock,” she said. “She was Marty’s girlfriend at the time. She’s still in town, you know. I talked to her only yesterday. She’s from an impossibly old New England family. They’ve been here—and I do mean here, in town or right around it—since somewhere in the 1690s. Hope still lives in the family place. It was built before the Revolutionary War. But there isn’t any money. Hope’s mother had to tie herself in knots just to send her to Alwych Country Day. I don’t know how they managed Vassar. Hope wanted to be part of Chapin Waring’s crowd, too. I used to think Chapin kept her around for a pet.”

  “That’s a little harsh.”

  Evaline shrugged. “It’s like I said. When I think of the crime that happened thirty years ago, the crime I think about is the accident. The six of them all piled into that car, and all at least partially drunk. Marty driving. And then there was the weirdness of it. The police came and talked to my parents after the funeral. They said the car had just veered off the road and into that tree as if Marty had been aiming at it. They didn’t think he had, you know. They didn’t think he’d done it on purpose or was trying to commit suicide or anything. He was just young and drunk and stupid. But still.”

  “I can see that,” Gregor said.

  “And then he was the only one who was really hurt,” Evaline went on. “All the rest of them walked away from it with minor injuries at most. Oh, I think Kyle Westervan broke his wrist. He was the third person in the front seat. You couldn’t even do that anymore. You can’t get three people in a front seat.”

  “But they’d all been drinking,” Gregor said.

  “Oh, yes,” Evaline said. “They found absolute buckets of stuff at the accident site. Bottles of scotch. Bottles of, of all things, rye whiskey. I tell myself that if Marty had lived, maybe he and Chapin would have been caught, and then he would have gone to jail and his life would have been ruined anyway. But I’d still rather have him alive to visit in jail than dead. And that probably makes me a fool.”

  “I don’t think so,” Gregor said.

  Evaline looked down at the very full bag Gregor Demarkian was carrying.
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  “I don’t think you’re going to get very far with those,” she said. “There’s some idiot in New York that’s been putting them out for years. The FBI itself investigated him. He seems to just make the stuff up. I can find you some more accurate accounts, if you want them. There was a time when I bought every account I could find.”

  “Maybe I’ll take you up on it after the Fourth.”

  “Well,” she said. “I think I’d better get to my office. I couldn’t sleep last night, and now of course I’m a mess.”

  “I used to pull all-nighters on the job,” Gregor said. “But it was a long time ago.”

  “And now you’re busy,” Evaline said, “and I’ve kept you. Have a good day, Mr. Demarkian. We’ll probably see each other later.”

  “I’m sure we will.”

  They stood there, stock-still, looking at each other. Finally Gregor Demarkian nodded to her one last time and turned away, heading out of the station.

  Evaline watched him go through the station doors. It was not just her tiredness talking. He really was a massive man.

  2

  Cordelia was the first one on the phone this morning. Caroline Waring Holder heard the sound of the Chopin funeral march before she saw the picture of Maleficent flash up on the caller ID.

  Caroline considered just not picking up. She considered it just long enough to realize that Cordelia would just call back later, and not much later, complaining that Caroline was ignoring her.

  “Yes,” Caroline said into the cell phone. She knew she sounded snappish. She didn’t care. “I’ve just dropped off the kids, Cordelia, and I’m in the car and this red light isn’t going to last forever. We can talk later.”

  “We need to talk now,” Cordelia said. “I thought they’d bring in this Gregor Demarkian and it might calm things down some, but that’s not what’s happening. They had a whole segment on the thing out here just last night, and not just about the murder. They’re bringing it all up again.”

  “Of course they’re bringing it all up again,” Caroline said.