by Jane Haddam
“Tim said he’d been pushed off the wall at the back of the overflow parking lot at the hospital.”
“Again,” Gregor Demarkian said. “Apparently.”
“I know,” Virginia said. “Apparently. For God’s sake, who would want to do something like that? If it wasn’t for Chapin, you’d assume this was a random mugging. Except we don’t have muggings in Alwych. Not even on the Fourth of July.” She walked away. “You want to know about my visit to Tim. Well, we do visit every once in a while. Sometimes he comes to see me, and sometimes I go to see him. It’s a little complicated. You’d be amazed at how many people—my supporters and his—think we shouldn’t speak, because we’re on different sides of the abortion issue. We’re supposed to hate each other. Except I don’t hate him. I’ve known him, quite literally, all my life.”
“What made you decide to visit him tonight?”
Virginia shrugged. “I’ve been thinking about him. I’m running for Senate. There were the inevitable clashes because the Saint of Alwych who is my own twin brother wouldn’t endorse my run. I didn’t expect him to, of course, but the press make a big deal of it. It annoys both of us. Anyway, I was there, and my night was mostly free—”
“Just a minute,” Gregor said. “When you say you were there, where were you?”
“Oh,” Virginia said. “I was at the hospital. I’m doing nearly wall-to-wall campaign events these days. About five o’clock I gave a talk to the staff at the hospital about the importance of ensuring universal health insurance.”
“Is that what you talked to your brother about?”
“No,” Virginia said. “Did he tell you that’s what we talked about?”
“He said you talked about politics, and morality.”
Virginia smiled. “That’s about right. He thinks morality resides in denying women their full humanity, and I think he’s wrong.”
“And that’s what you talked about? Denying women their full humanity?”
“Something like that,” Virginia said. “He’d put it differently.”
“Do you know when you got there?”
“No,” Virginia said. “Not exactly. I finished the talk, and then I was on my way out and Evaline was there.”
“Evaline Veer? The mayor.”
“She’s the mayor now, yes,” Virginia said. “She was there, and she was agitated, so I stopped to talk. And then the talk sort of went on for a while, so I told my people to go on to dinner, and they did. They know when I want to be left alone.”
“What did Miss Veer want to talk about?”
“She wanted to talk about Chapin being murdered. You coming. The publicity. Evaline’s always been the jumpy sort, but this thing has hit her hard. She’s called me at least five times in Washington, as if I could do something about it.”
“So you talked to Miss Veer,” Gregor said. “Then what?”
“Then nothing, really. I got her calmed down, more or less, and then I started to walk over to the restaurant where my people were having dinner. Except I didn’t really feel like going. And I knew the stairs were there and Tim’s place was there. So I called my assistant, told her what I was going to do, and went down to see Tim. It worked out better than I expected. He was right there. Sitting on the wall.”
“And Kyle Westervan was not there? Lying in the shrubbery right against the wall?”
“Is that where he was found? Right next to the retaining wall?” Virginia almost laughed. “Mr. Demarkian, Tim was sitting on the wall. He’d have seen a body. I’d have seen a body. It’s not like there’s much there to hide something in, even something small.”
Gregor Demarkian nodded. Virginia could not decide if she liked him or not.
“Tell me something,” he said. “Can you think of any reason why somebody would kill Kyle Westervan?”
“Not a one,” Virginia said. “But I haven’t seen him all that often in recent years. He has a whole life I know nothing about.”
“What about a reason connected to the events of thirty years ago?”
“The robberies? Mr. Demarkian, I can’t even think of a good reason connected to those that would make anybody want to kill Chapin Waring. I know that’s the most fashionable theory at the moment, but all of that happened thirty years ago. I don’t know if I would have known Chapin if I’d run into her on the street. And it wasn’t like she took off and left an accomplice behind. Marty was her accomplice, and he was already dead. There was nobody left holding the bag.”
“Did you know anything about the robberies when they were occurring?”
“No,” Virginia said. “And neither did Kyle. The two of us were completely out of it. Tim was dating Chapin, and Hope was dating Marty—so they at least had some connection to the crimes, even if it was secondhand. But Kyle and I had no connection at all.”
“Do you think your brother knew about the robberies while they were going on?”
“He’s always said he didn’t,” Virginia said. “And I believe him. Hope always said she didn’t, too. I never knew her as well as I knew the rest of them, but I’ve got no reason to think she was lying, either. This was Chapin Waring’s baby. Except for roping Marty in and taking him for a ride, she never breathed a word of it to the rest of us.”
“She never asked you to participate?”
“No,” Virginia said. “I think she knew better. She knew I wouldn’t go along with it.”
“And she didn’t ask any of the others?”
“It’s as I’ve said,” Virginia said. “They always said not, and I’ve got no reason not to believe them. It’s not like this wasn’t all checked out at the time. They questioned all of us, endlessly, for months. They got search warrants and searched our houses. It was a very bad and frightening time, made worse by the fact that it all took place right after the accident, and Marty was dead and Kyle had fractures and I don’t know what else. It’s incredible that Marty was the only one who died. And it was years before I could get into a car without panicking. I stopped driving for half a decade. But neither the police nor the FBI ever found anything to connect any of the rest of us to those robberies, and I still think that was because there was nothing to find.”
“Can you guess at all what time you got to the clinic? Did you stay long?”
“I stayed about ten minutes,” Virginia said. “Say seven to seven ten. It couldn’t have been much past seven ten, because after I left I did go to the restaurant, and most of my people were still there.”
Virginia felt ready for more questions, but it appeared there would be no more. Gregor Demarkian was getting to his feet. Virginia made herself rise, too, and hold out her hand to him. He took it.
“Thank you,” he said. “I’m supposed to send a text message, and then my ride is supposed to appear outside and pick me up. Your brother thought having me go in my own car would be too conspicuous.”
“My brother is a very cautious human being.”
“I suppose that’s one way of putting it,” Gregor Demarkian said.
2
Hope Matlock had spent the entire time waiting for Gregor Demarkian wishing she had something to fend off the cold, and then worrying, because it was July, and it was not cold. The truth was that she hated this idea of Tim’s. She hated the idea of taking Gregor Demarkian anywhere. All the way over here from the hospital, he had sat beside her in the front seat and stared through the windshield as if he had X-ray vision. Then he’d made a few comments that made no sense at all. Then he’d thanked her, and she had said “You’re welcome,” without knowing what he was welcome to.
When the text message came saying Hope could pick him up again, she turned on the engine of her car and left it in park for a minute or two. Then she inched carefully out into the street and around the corner. She was so enormously stressed, she could barely breathe.
She saw the tall man coming down the walk toward her and sped up just a little. There was no reason to crawl down the road as if she were casing the condominiums.
Gregor Demarkian was almost at the car. Hope looked up and down his incredibly tall body and shivered a little. Then she pulled the car to a stop. Demarkian opened the passenger side door and got in.
“Thank you,” he said. “This was very good of you.”
There it was again, the thank-you. Hope drove carefully through the streets of the complex and then out onto the two-lane blacktop that she knew would swing around and end up near Beach Drive. There shouldn’t be many people on Beach Drive tonight.
Hope slid a look at Demarkian. He was staring straight ahead out the windshield. It was unnerving.
“You’re at Darlee Corn’s place, aren’t you?” Hope said, because she really couldn’t stand the silence any longer.
Demarkian nodded. “The Switch and Shingle,” he said. “I still don’t know what that means.”
“I don’t know that it’s supposed to mean anything,” Hope said.
“I hope I haven’t gotten you at a bad time,” Demarkian said. “He was a friend of yours, wasn’t he? The man who died tonight?”
“We grew up together,” she said. “We used to hang around together in high school. It was a long time ago.”
“You didn’t see him recently?”
“Well, I did see him,” Hope said. “I mean, we lived here, you know, and he was around. And sometimes we ran into each other.”
“Did I take you out of your way?” Demarkian asked her. “Did you have to come out and pick me up?”
“Oh, no,” Hope said. “I was at the emergency room. I didn’t used to go to the emergency room when my heart didn’t feel right, but Tim says it’s important now that if we have emergency room problems we go to the one at the hospital. It’s very expensive. And it isn’t true what they say about how you go to the emergency room and you never get charged. You get bills, and big ones. And they don’t go away.”
“Are you feeling all right now?” Demarkian asked. “Should we get you someplace?”
“No, no,” Hope said. “I’m fine. It was just stress. And, you know, I’m confused.”
“Confused about what?”
Hope took in enough air to power a sailboat and had at it. “The rumors around town say you already know who killed Chapin. That it was that man, Ray Guy Pearce, the one who publishes all the conspiracy books. But why would Ray Guy Pearce want to kill Kyle?”
“I don’t think he did kill Kyle Westervan,” Demarkian said. “In fact, I know he didn’t. And for what it’s worth, I don’t think he killed Chapin Waring, either.”
“Really?” Hope said. “Because I’ve been worried about it ever since I heard.”
“Why?”
Hope felt her body squirming against the wheel, and tried to make it stop. “It was just,” she said, and then decided she was going after it the wrong way. “I know Ray Guy Pearce,” she said finally. “I mean, I’ve met him. I went in to see him just this week.”
“Did you? Why would you do that?”
The squirming now felt like some kind of fit. Hope didn’t know what she was going to do if she didn’t learn to keep herself in check.
“I needed the money,” she said finally. “And he would pay for things. If you told him things. If you gave him an interview about the robberies, you know, and knowing Chapin and that kind of thing. And if you had pictures.”
“And you’d been going to see him for quite some time?”
Hope blushed. “No, no,” she said. “He asked me right after it all happened, of course. He asked all of us, but none of us agreed to it. After a while he stopped asking. Then after Chapin was murdered, he started asking again. And I—well, I didn’t get any summer teaching, and summer is always really bad, so this time I said yes. And I went into the city, you know, and talked to him.”
“What did you talk to him about?”
“About what you’d expect,” Hope said. “Growing up with Chapin. What Chapin was like. What I knew about the robberies. Except I didn’t know anything about the robberies. I think I was disappointing all around. He wanted to know what it was like to grow up in one of the ‘thirteen richest families,’ but I hadn’t grown up in a rich family at all. My family had lots of history, you know, but we never had very much money. I got to do everything because my mother really worked at it, that’s all. And I was only part of Chapin’s group because of Marty. She just put up with me.”
They had reached Beach Drive. They were all the way on the wrong end of it, but just being here made Hope feel better.
“When I heard Kyle was dead, I thought—well, I thought there might be some connection. You know, that something I said, when I talked to him, might have set something off. I couldn’t think of what it could be. We just talked a bit about all the old stuff. I didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. It felt strange that he’d give me money for it.”
“Did you give him any pictures?”
“I brought some with me,” she said, “but they weren’t the kind of thing he was looking for. He wanted pictures of people in their deb dresses and people riding horses and all that kind of thing. My mother did the best she could, and I even came out, but mostly we couldn’t manage it. I spent four years in boarding school as the only person in my house who wasn’t boarding her horse.”
The Switch and Shingle was right up ahead. Hope felt so relieved, she almost cried. She turned into the drive and slowed to a crawl again. The hedges went by her on either side, looking dark and blank, like the trees that lined the drive at Manderley.
The house came into view, lit up at the front door and in several of the windows on the second floor. Hope cut the engine.
“I was just worried,” she said again, “that it was something I said, something I did, going to see Ray Guy Pearce. I thought, you know, that I may have said something I didn’t realize, and now—now Kyle is dead—and—”
“I can absolutely assure you that Ray Guy Pearce did not kill Kyle Westervan,” Gregor Demarkian said. “It would have been entirely impossible. I can’t be exactly that positive with the murder of Chapin Waring, but I’d give you odds that he wasn’t in any way involved. I don’t think you have to worry about the kind of information Ray Guy Pearce was looking for.”
“Really?” Hope said.
“Really,” Gregor Demarkian said.
He opened the passenger side door and got out onto the gravel driveway. “Thank you for chauffeuring me around,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” Hope said automatically.
Gregor Demarkian slammed the passenger side door shut and walked away without looking back.
Hope took a few moments, and then she turned the car around very carefully.
She drove slowly back down the drive, trying to ignore the hulking darkness all around her. She got out onto Beach Drive and found that it was a little more crowded now. There were people on foot on their way out to see the fireworks.
She wondered what time it was.
What felt like a few moments later, but must have been longer, she began to wonder where she was. She was back on the two-lane blacktop. She didn’t remember getting there.
She pulled off to the side of the road and cut the engine.
She put her head down on the steering wheel and closed her eyes. She had forgotten to turn the headlights off. They were gleaming into the distance, like lighthouse beacons. She kept her eyes closed and her head down.
Then she started to cry.
3
Jason Battlesea called Evaline Veer and from the moment Evaline hung up the phone until the moment the midnight fireworks began to go off, she brooded.
When she knew she wasn’t getting to sleep, she got a cotton sweater and went out.
She walked across the center of town, all the way to the Green, and sat down on one of the polished wooden benches near the War Memorial. She got her cell phone out. There was nobody else on the Green within hearing distance.
Evaline flicked through her address book and found Caroline Holder’s number. Then she pressed the Call bu
tton and waited.
The phone was picked up by Caroline herself, and Evaline relaxed a little.
“I’m sorry to call you so late,” she said, “but I thought—well, I thought you’d like to know. And I didn’t know if anybody would tell you.”
“If you mean did anybody tell me that Kyle Westervan is dead,” Caroline said, “I’d say you’re about the twentieth call I’ve had.”
“Demarkian was right there, on the scene, when it happened,” Evaline said. “He was talking to Tim Brand, and then two of the girls from the clinic went out back, and there was Kyle on the ground. Jason Battlesea says Demarkian thinks that Kyle was killed in the overflow parking lot at the hospital and then pushed over the retaining wall, and that the ME’s people thought that seemed likely, too, on first look. But we won’t really know for days.”
“I don’t understand why they still run my life,” Caroline said. “It’s been thirty years, for God’s sake.”
“It keeps feeling to me as if I should have done something about all this long ago, but I don’t know what,” Evaline said. “I felt that way when Marty died, too. I remember sitting in the pew at the church during the funeral and wondering what I was supposed to do next. I never came up with anything.”
“I remember sitting in California while the entire world was looking for my oldest sister and wondering if I’d ever be able to have a normal life again,” Caroline said. “And do you know what the answer to that is? The answer is that I never was able to, and I’m still not. And now there’s this, and earlier—did you hear about earlier? That man was sneaking into our house and taking our photographs? And of course we never noticed, because we don’t like looking at photographs. We’ve got too much we don’t want to be reminded of. My whole childhood is a big wash of stuff we don’t want to be reminded of.”
“Mine just stopped when Marty died,” Evaline said. “Did you ever wonder if they all knew about it? Not just Marty and Chapin, but all of them. Kyle and Virginia and Tim and Hope Matlock.”