by Jane Haddam
“They said there was a break-in yesterday at the house.”
“It wasn’t exactly a break-in,” Caroline said. The light turned green. She inched forward in the traffic.
“They said it was a break-in on the news,” Cordelia said. “I would have called you last night, but then I remembered you go to bed practically before sundown and I wanted to be considerate.”
“It wasn’t a break-in,” Caroline said, thinking that Cordelia had never been considerate a day in her life. “The alarm went off. When everybody got out there, the front door was open. That was it. Nothing had been taken that I could see, and the house hadn’t been broken into—”
“What?”
“According to the police, the house hadn’t been broken into,” Caroline said. “Nobody forced a lock. Either somebody got in there with a key, or the police didn’t lock up the last time they were there.”
“But that’s terrible,” Cordelia said. “How many people can possibly have keys to that house? And isn’t that a creepy idea, the cleaning lady or whoever it was going to look around when you’re not there? When was the last time we changed those locks?”
“I changed them the day after Chapin’s body was found,” Caroline said, “and you should remember it. You were on the phone with me most of the day. And yes, they’re being changed again as we speak. I’m on my way to meet the locksmith right now.”
“Still, you have to wonder,” Cordelia said. “Why would anybody want to do something like that? Going into the house and—what? Just walking around? What could they possibly have expected to find?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” Caroline said.
Cordelia snorted. “There’s no money in that house, and you know it. I don’t even believe there ever was that much money. It was just a lot of hype they put out to make people take it more seriously. You know what it’s like when rich people are involved. It’s always our fault.”
“They didn’t have to hype anything to make people take it seriously,” Caroline said. “Two people died. And Chapin shot at least one of them. It’s on tape.”
“That’s what the real problem is with this country,” Cordelia said. “Half the population lives on jealousy and spite. And then, of course, when something like this comes along, they blow it all out of proportion.”
“Two people died,” Caroline said. “I don’t think anything is out of proportion.”
“It would be better if you went and lived in that house yourself,” Cordelia said. “God only knows it’s a better house than the one you’re living in, and the children would be right there on the beach. And then we wouldn’t have these problems with people breaking in.”
“I have a perfectly adequate house, and what we ought to have done, years ago, is sell the one on Beach Drive.”
“You never understand these things. You really don’t. I suppose I ought to let you get on with getting the locks changed. Maybe we should hire a security guard until this thing blows over. If the police can’t have somebody there even when the place is a crime scene—”
“Hire a security guard, then,” Caroline said.
“Oh,” Cordelia said. “I meant you should. You should hire a security guard.”
“Yes, I know that’s what you meant,” Caroline said.
She snapped the phone closed. She tried to concentrate on her driving. She stopped at another traffic light and saw Gregor Demarkian in the backseat of a car. He didn’t notice her, and she didn’t make herself known.
One block up, the car with Demarkian in it went on and Caroline turned left, going the short way out to the start of Beach Drive. The houses got bigger and bigger. The haze in the air that was high humidity and evaporated seawater got heavier.
Beach Drive looked deserted, as always. Caroline pulled into the driveway of the house and cut her engine. There was no sign of the locksmith’s van. She started to gather up her things, and then the phone went off again.
This time it was the song “Cruella de Vil,” along with a picture of Glenn Close in a fright wig. Caroline put her forehead on the steering wheel and counted to ten.
The phone did not stop ringing. Caroline picked it up and said, “What do you want? I’ve already had Cordelia. I really can’t take much more.”
“Do you know you’re always like this these days?” Charlotte said. “It’s not healthy for you.”
“I’m sitting in the driveway of the house on Beach Drive, waiting for a locksmith for the second time in two weeks. I’ve got a lot to do, and I’ve got no patience with any of this. Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything,” Charlotte said. “I’m just very worried about what’s going on out there. You never call me. You never tell me anything. Do you know a reporter ambushed me right after I got out of work yesterday?”
“Reporters ambush me all the time,” Caroline said. “Honest to God, Charlotte, there’s nothing I can do about any of this. Cordelia wants to hire a security guard for the house. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, but if somebody’s going to do it, it’s not going to be me—”
“But you’re right there.”
“I may be right here, but that is absolutely no justification for landing all this crap on me. And I do mean crap, Charlotte. First-rate, unrelieved crap.”
“I don’t understand why you don’t live in the place,” Charlotte said.
Caroline hit the steering wheel so hard, the horn blasted. It sounded like the muffled screech of somebody else dying.
“I don’t want to talk about this now,” she said. “We’ve talked about everything a hundred times over. I’m not going to move into this house. I never liked this house. I don’t want to live on Beach Drive. I don’t even want to live in Alwych. I thought, apparently futilely, that if I just lived my own life and minded my own business, I could just get on with—with being normal, for God’s sake. What’s wrong with the two of you?”
“We weren’t the ones who stayed in Alwych,” Charlotte said. “If you didn’t want to live in Alwych, you should have gotten out.”
“If I’d gotten out, you wouldn’t have had anybody to run your errands on the house for you. What would you have done then?”
“Listen,” Charlotte said. “Cor just called me. You got her so upset, she forgot to tell you what she wanted to tell you, and you were so grumpy, she didn’t want to call back. You affect her energy charge. She doesn’t want to be negative first thing in the morning.”
“I don’t see why not,” Caroline said. “She’s negative enough the rest of the time.”
“It’s about the funeral,” Charlotte said.
“I’m not staging any funeral,” Caroline said. “I told you that already.”
“Yes, I know you did,” Charlotte said, “but Cor and I didn’t take it seriously. How could we? You can’t just say you’re not going to stage a funeral. You have to do something. If you don’t—well, what’s going to happen to the body?”
“I have no idea what’s going to happen to the body,” Caroline said. “And I don’t care.”
Charlotte let out a long stream of aggravatedly aggrieved air. “You have to care what’s going to happen to the body,” she said, “because something is going to have to happen to it. It’s ready to be released. It’s sitting there in the morgue, ready to be released.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“And the police called us after they talked to you,” Charlotte said, “because they said you said you didn’t care what happened to it, and you wouldn’t do anything about it. Do you realize what’s going to happen if that gets into the papers?”
“If you want to do something about it, you’re welcome,” Caroline said.
“Cor and I talked about it. We think you should call a funeral home and have the body sent there, and then set up for a service at the house. I don’t mean a public service, of course. It would be a zoo. But you could have the casket there in the living room, it’s big enough, and whoever is pastor at the Episcopal Church th
ese days could come and do something, and then you could bury it with all the rest of the Warings. I mean, we’ve got a huge plot out there, and there would be room for it.”
“At the house,” Caroline said.
“Of course.”
“And out near Mother and Daddy at the cemetery.”
“That’s where she would have been buried if none of this had happened. It would be perfectly natural. There wouldn’t be anything odd about it. And you wouldn’t have to announce it to the public. It could be just you and the reverend.”
“While the two of you stay off wherever you are and pretend it isn’t happening.”
“We’ve been over this before,” Charlotte said. “We really can’t come out for a funeral. It would be too complicated.”
“Then I don’t see why my solution isn’t the one that makes sense,” Caroline said. “Let the police have her. Let them bury her wherever they want.”
“At some point in this thing, you really have to start being reasonable. This is going to get out and then we’re all going to look like monsters. Is that what you want?”
“What I want,” Caroline said, “is to be left alone by all of you. And that includes the police.”
“Well,” Charlotte said, “I’m just trying to tell you to be careful. Of course, it didn’t occur to me right away, because why would it, but now—well, with everything that’s been happening. And people in the house and all of that. Well, I’m sure you get my drift. And it’s not like it was the first time. They’ve got all this technology now. They’ve got cell phone records and security cameras and cell phone towers and I don’t know what else.”
“They can even pick up cell phone conversations while you’re having them,” Caroline said.
“Oh, God,” Charlotte said. “I’d forgotten about that. I’d better get off the phone. All I’m saying is that you have to take care of yourself. Because even if you don’t care about yourself, you’ve got children and a husband to worry about. Any kind of really adverse publicity will just kill you.”
“And you,” Caroline said. “And Cordelia.”
“Well, of course, but I wasn’t thinking of us. We’re not there, so—”
“You know,” Caroline said, “if I actually admitted to knowing what you were talking about, I’d have to stop talking to you. Not just now. Forever.”
“Honestly,” Charlotte said. “You’re so melodramatic.”
“I was eight when all that happened,” Caroline said. “Try to remember that.”
“How could I not remember that?”
“I’m going to hang up now,” Caroline said.
Charlotte went on squawking. Caroline clicked the phone shut again. Her brain felt as if it were boiling inside her skull. Honest to God, she thought. Honest to God. Honest to God. Honest to God.
She put her forehead down on the steering wheel again and closed her eyes. When she looked up, the locksmith’s van was just pulling into the driveway. She took a deep breath, counted to ten, and tried to drive everything out of her mind but the locks.
She didn’t want to kill the locksmith just because he was handy, and she could no longer control herself.
3
Virginia didn’t support the programs she supported because she was kinder or more nurturing. She supported those programs because they made sense, and because they were moral. You didn’t leave people to die in the street, no matter what way they ran their lives, and you certainly didn’t leave their children to die in the street. You treated people like people. You didn’t consign them to little boxes with labels on them and say that their lives could never be more than the labels said they could.
She had always found The Right Thing To Do perfectly obvious. This morning, she was thinking about them because the newspapers that had been delivered to her front door were full of stories about Tim’s clinic and the danger posed by the “assault” on it by the Office of Health Care Access and the Office of the Health Care Advocate. Virginia wanted to kick somebody. Then her phone rang.
She picked up the receiver and said, very cautiously, “Yes?”
There was a low chuckle on the other end of the line, and Kyle said, “Ah. Worried I’m going to be somebody from the Stamford Advocate?”
“Oh, God,” Virginia said. “How did you know I was here?”
“I guessed. It’s Fourth of July weekend coming up and you’re running for the Senate. Even if you weren’t, you’d have to be here.”
“That’s true,” Virginia said. “Do you remember if people made a big fuss out of the Fourth of July when we were growing up? I was thinking about it in the shower this morning. I can’t remember a single parade.”
“The parade didn’t go down Beach Drive,” Kyle said, “and we didn’t belong to the kind of organizations that participated in it. There were no Boy and Girl Scouts at Alwych Country Day.”
“I think I always thought of that stuff as being part of the Midwest,” Virginia said. “Little towns where nobody ever makes much of anything of their lives and all the men are trying to relive their youth as high school football stars. Did you play football in high school?”
“It was prep school, and I rowed crew.”
“I didn’t do anything. They made me play field hockey and I spent all my time wanting to kill somebody. I never actually made a team. There’s something nobody ever talks about. The way private schools make everyone run around doing sports as if they were going to make the Olympics.”
“It’s in the aid of physical fitness, and nobody talks about private schools. Have you or your people been in touch with Jason Battlesea?”
“No, of course not,” Virginia said. “Why would I be?”
“Because there’s about to be something of an issue, and if you’re not aware of it, you should be.”
“If you’re talking about this thing with Tim’s clinic, I am aware of it. And I’m staying out of it.”
“I’m not talking about Tim’s clinic.”
“What is it, then?”
“The body of Chapin Waring.”
“What,” she asked, “do I have to do with the body of Chapin Waring?”
Kyle let out another of those enormous sighs. “Of course you don’t have anything to do with it,” he said, “but it’s going to be an issue, and things being what they are, you’re going to be asked about it. It doesn’t matter if it has nothing to do with you anymore. It had something to do with you once.”
“It had something to do with you, too.”
“I’m not running for anything,” Kyle said. “But yes, it had something to do with me once, too. Not the least of which being that it’s a damned miracle that I’m not dead. Maybe it’s a damned miracle that we’re all not dead.”
“I was in the backseat,” Virginia said. “I was in no danger of being dead.”
“Tim was in the backseat, too, and I broke my arm upfront,” Kyle said. “But no, that’s not the point. The point is that the police are ready to release Chapin Waring’s body to her family, and her family is refusing to take it.”
“Seriously?”
“Definitely seriously,” Kyle said. “I’m working on sources here, you understand. I don’t have a direct link into the Alwych Police Department. I never thought I’d need one. But from what I hear, the coroner’s office called Caroline Waring Holder and she said that she didn’t care if they left it out for carrion. Then they called the other two sisters, and they said that of course Caroline would be handling it. They don’t live in the area anymore.”
“What in the name of God is Caroline thinking of? She’s got to know that everybody on the planet is going to hear about this. And the publicity is going to be awful.”
“It is if it isn’t handled. I thought you might like to get your people working to handle it.”
“Handle it how?”
“The story doesn’t have to be how awful the Waring family is,” Kyle said. “It could be how awful Chapin was. It doesn’t have to be about how the family was cold a
nd heartless and turned Chapin into a criminal. It could be about how Chapin was always such a sociopath that even her family couldn’t handle her. If it runs as how the family made Chapin a criminal, you know what’s going to happen. They’re going to start in on all our families, and we’re going to sound, all of us, as a group—”
“Yes,” Virginia said. “I know. Why won’t Caroline take the body?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her in years. I wouldn’t be surprised if Caroline thinks that Chapin ruined her entire life.”
“She’s a grown woman,” Virginia said.
“Grown women have been known to harbor grudges. I’m just telling you that this could work out very badly. It could be exactly the kind of story we were all worried about when this started. You may be running for office, but it wouldn’t be good publicity for me, either. Or for Tim. Or for Hope. Or even for Evaline. The papers like stories about psychopathic preppies way too much.”
“I know,” Virginia said.
She looked down at the paper again. There was a sudden silence between them. It was a deep and abiding silence, and it was the way they ended nearly all their conversations since they’d gotten their divorce. When they were married, there had been a different kind of silence that came between them. Virginia had liked that one better.
She started to look for something to say that would get them both off the hook when Kyle started up again.
“About that other thing,” he said.
“What other thing?”
“Let me just say that I think you’d better have your ass completely and irrevocably covered on that one,” Kyle said. “It doesn’t matter what your rationale is. It doesn’t even matter if you’re right. It’s going to look like hell, and it’s going to kill you politically. Even in the state of Connecticut.”
“I haven’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m going to get off the line now,” Kyle said. “There’s no point in you and I playing that particular game. We know each other too well.”
Kyle hung up. Virginia looked at the phone for a minute and then hung up herself.