by Jane Haddam
“Of course I never wondered,” Caroline said. “I just assumed. Didn’t you?”
“I never understood how she got caught for those robberies,” Evaline said. “I remember my mother explaining it. She was at the funeral, and for some reason the press paid more attention to her than they did to the rest of us—”
“It wasn’t ‘for some reason.’ They did because she was Chapin,” Caroline said.
“Well, that time it meant that she was on the news a lot and somebody spotted her, because she wasn’t really well disguised.”
“And then she lived in obscurity for thirty years,” Caroline said. “I couldn’t sit still all night. I even drove into town and tried to do some shopping, but it wasn’t any use. I finally just sat down on a bench in front of the hospital and let myself go limp. There was some kind of event going on. It was a pain in the ass.”
“It was a talk Virginia Westervan was giving,” Evaline said. “I was there. I wonder how she feels. I never got the impression that she and Kyle were on bad terms.”
“I think they were annoyed with each other a lot,” Caroline said. “It was like they were still married.”
“I can’t imagine she killed him, though, can you?” Evaline said. “I don’t think she gets a lot of time to herself, for one thing, and what would they be doing meeting in the parking lot anyway? They’d go out to dinner together or he’d come to her place, or they’d meet in New York.”
Evaline wondered why she’d called Caroline. Caroline was an angry woman. She’d been angry almost all the time Evaline had known her.
“Well,” Evaline said.
There was nothing at all from the other end of the line.
“Well,” Evaline said again. “I suppose I’d better go do something. There must be something to do.”
“It’s damn near midnight,” Caroline said, hanging up.
Evaline put her cell phone away, and stayed put. She didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to go anywhere she knew people.
She thought of Kyle Westervan, dead, with a knife in his back. She saw the knife rise up from the shoulder blade, just as it had when Chapin Waring died.
Then she leaned over the side of the bench and threw up.
THREE
1
When the phone rang at two o’clock in the morning, Gregor Demarkian almost didn’t answer it. He was lying flat on his back on the big bed in his suite at the Switch and Shingle. The idea that anybody would call him at this hour and after the day he’d had was somehow seriously offensive.
The ringtone and the name in the photo ID belonged to Bennis, however, and his marriage was still too new for him to feel all right about not picking up for her.
Of course, his friendship with Bennis had lasted longer than any other relationship in his life except for his first marriage, so there was something to be said for the idea that he’d earned the right to a little slacking off.
He picked up and said, “Hello?”
Bennis chuckled and said, “I knew you wouldn’t want me calling in the middle of the night, but I did call you at least twice before and you didn’t return, and then there’s this news on the CNN Web page about another murder out in Alwych. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t you.”
“It wasn’t me,” Gregor said, yawning. “If it had been me, CNN would probably have said so.”
“Only if they knew,” Bennis said. “I don’t understand how we got along before the Internet and cable news and all the rest of it. Think of all the things that happened before we had all that. The Challenger disaster. The Kennedy assassination.”
“You weren’t alive for the Kennedy assassination.”
“I know, but think about it. Three broadcast television networks and maybe PBS. And that was it. How did anybody ever get any information?”
“There were newspapers.”
“Newspapers come out a couple of times a day and then you have to wait for the next day,” Bennis said. “I got this in real time. Who got murdered?”
“A man named Kyle Westervan. He worked as a lawyer on Wall Street. He was on my interview list, but I never got a chance to talk to him.”
“And is it all part of the Chapin Waring thing?”
Gregor moved a little on the bed. It was a very good bed, and he could feel himself beginning to sink into sleepiness.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “It was a stabbing, like the Chapin Waring murder. I got a look at the knife in the body, and at the knife wound later. If you look at the pictures from the Waring murder, you see the knife in the victim’s back and it’s going slightly downward, if that makes sense. This wound was going slightly upward.”
“I know what that is,” Bennis said. “That’s height. Was Kyle Westervan very tall?”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “I thought of that, too. Kyle Westervan was tall. Chapin Waring was a little short. And both of the knifings were done from up close—”
“How could they not be done from up close?” Bennis asked.
“A knife can be thrown,” Gregor said. “I’ll admit, I’ve never seen a murder done with a thrown knife. But these weren’t thrown. Whoever it was came right up to the back of both the victims and stabbed. And that’s an interesting point.”
“Is it? Why?”
“Because the murderer would have to be very close up to make it work,” Gregor said. “Whoever this was got right up to the bodies of the victims and then stabbed. Can you imagine letting somebody get that close to you from the back?”
“You do it all the time.”
“We’re married,” Gregor said. “And I can see you allowing it with, say, Tibor, or Donna, or maybe even Linda. But even with people you know on Cavanaugh Street, I think you’d mostly get uncomfortable if they got that close. And that leaves me back where I was. The victims have to know the murderer very well. And the murderer has to be someone who would not cause fear or suspicion in any way, at least for those two people. Has to not cause suspicion in Kyle Westervan even after Chapin Waring’s murder.”
“In other words, someone Kyle Westervan has known forever.”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “I suppose so. But almost everybody involved in this has known almost everybody else ‘forever.’ Let’s say someone Kyle Westervan wouldn’t suspect of killing Chapin Waring. Or somebody who, even if he did suspect, he wouldn’t feel threatened by.”
“I take it Ray Guy Pearce isn’t the kind of person Kyle Westervan would allow to come right up behind him,” Bennis said.
“I think squirrels would be opposed to Ray Guy Pearce coming up behind them,” Gregor said, “but in this case, it doesn’t matter, because he has an ironclad alibi for Kyle Westervan’s murder. He was spouting conspiracy delusions to several hundred people in a hotel. I never liked him for the Waring murder either, though. It was all wrong. Chapin Waring was his one and only live zoo exhibit, a member of the thirteen richest families willing to tell him that everything he’d ever believed was true.”
“The Warings are hardly one of the thirteen richest families in the country,” Bennis said. “I mean, they’re members of the club, so to speak, but they’re not—”
“I’ll have to get up tomorrow morning and do a good job sorting through it all,” Gregor said. “The problem with this one is that I can’t make the thirty-year thing fit. With Chapin Waring, there were plenty of people who might want to kill her, including all the people who were involved in the robberies or affected by the robberies. But I’m positive that none of the pictures in the security tapes were of Kyle Westervan. He was much too tall. So if he wasn’t involved in the robberies, and everybody is telling me the truth when they say that Chapin Waring didn’t inform anybody but her accomplice of what was going on—”
“Well, that might just be self-protection,” Bennis said. “Nobody would want to admit to knowing. They could probably get arrested as an accessory.”
“The statute of limitations would have run out,” Gregor said. “But even if he knew about
the robberies at the time they happened, it wouldn’t necessarily help. It has been thirty years. Why would anybody want to kill him over any of that now? And why him in particular? Other people who were part of all that are still in town.”
“Have you talked to them?”
“Most of them, by now,” Gregor said. “I haven’t always had proper interviews. I’ve run into them and just asked whatever came into my head. One of them drove me home from Virginia Westervan’s house a few hours ago.”
“Congresswoman Virginia Westervan?”
“She was part of the original group. And she was in the place the murder happened only a half hour or so before it did happen.”
“That would put an interesting spin on her Senate campaign.”
“She was worried about the same thing. With her, I did do a proper interview. With Hope Matlock, I just talked a little in the car. Hope Matlock is the one who drove me home. She’s very depressed, and very fat, and very squirrely. I don’t know if I found out anything at all. But maybe I’m just too tired to check. And I want to go over the security tapes again, because something is bugging me, but I’m just too out of it to do it now.”
“I should let you get to sleep.”
“You may not have to. I’m sinking into this bed like a rock in the ocean.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“I’m not all right,” Gregor said. “I’m exhausted, and every time I figure out one thing, it makes everything else sound absurd. And then there’s the question of the money. I thought I knew where it was, but then I didn’t, and now I have no idea where it’s gone. And the reason that’s frustrating is that it should have been obvious, and now it isn’t. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The reason you steal two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is because you want money. And even if you steal it because you want the thrill of stealing it, there it is, in cash. You don’t just leave it lying around for thirty years. I can’t think of anyplace it would have been stashed that the FBI and the police haven’t searched a dozen times over. It’s just out there, somewhere, sitting around.”
“Gregor?”
“What is it?”
“You’re falling asleep.”
“I am, a little. I think I am. What’s happening to the cat?”
“The cat?”
“I’m not dreaming that, am I? You and Donna rescued a cat. A kitten. It looked like a mess and you took it to the vet.”
“You really are falling asleep,” Bennis said. “Yes, we rescued the cat. It’s staying with Hannah Krekorian on a trial basis. Hannah’s checking out how she feels about living with a pet. Donna and I are paying for all the vet stuff and we’ve promised to pay for spaying or neutering. We’ll see.”
“I’m glad you didn’t want to keep the cat,” Gregor said. “I like cats all right, but I just couldn’t imagine you as a cat person.”
“Go to sleep, Gregor.”
“I will. I’m going to dream about how when I get back from here, I’m going to have a real bedroom and a real master bath. If the kitchen isn’t done, we can just go to the Ararat.”
2
Gregor Demarkian was woken in the morning by another phone call, and the phone call came only seconds before his door was opened and Darlee Corn looked inside.
“Demarkian,” Gregor said into the phone.
Darlee Corn fluttered her fingers at him and said, “Oh, of course, you must be exhausted. Sorry for intruding. I’m going to bring you breakfast.”
“Sorry,” he said. “This is—”
“This is Fitzgerald at the New York office,” Fitzgerald said. “I’m sorry I woke you up. It is eight o’clock in the morning.”
“I was out late last night,” Gregor said.
“Chasing after a dead body,” Fitzgerald said. “We heard about it. That’s why I’m calling. We take it that the dead man is named Kyle Westervan?”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “Why are you calling me? Shouldn’t you be calling Jason Battlesea or one of the detectives?”
“We did,” Fitzgerald said. “We called, we asked questions, we got less-than-coherent answers. I don’t know what’s wrong with the people in that place, but I’ve had the same experience Andy has—”
“Andy?”
“Andrew Corben. I don’t remember what name he uses for cover, but it’s still Andrew. Never mind. He’s not doing anything connected with the Chapin Waring case.”
“So why are we talking about him?”
“Because he is doing something on a major case involving securities fraud,” Fitzgerald said, “and his main contact, the guy who informed the Bureau of the problem to begin with—”
“Was Kyle Westervan.”
“Exactly,” Fitzgerald said. “Excuse us for going for the obvious, but a number of us out here are wondering if the man might be dead because of something connected to the securities case. There’s a lot of money involved. A lot. In the ten- and eleven-figures range.”
“That is a lot,” Gregor said.
“You mind talking to Andy directly?” Fitzgerald said.
“Not at all.”
Gregor got out of bed and found his robe where he’d left it, over a chair near the table near the sliding doors. “Just a minute,” he said. Then he put the phone down and put the robe on. The last thing he wanted was for Darlee Corn to come in and find him in his boxer shorts.
He picked up the phone again and headed out onto the deck. The town was fully decorated for the Fourth of July and there was band music, all of it at various stages of the national anthem, coming from all directions.
He sat down at the table on the deck and said, “Okay. I’m here. Is this Mr. Corben?”
“Andy,” a strange voice said. It sounded young. “I am absolutely losing it. You have no idea.”
“I think I do,” Gregor said. “If it helps any, I don’t think you have to worry that Kyle Wetervan was killed over any of the work he was doing for you. Would you mind telling me, if you can, what that was?”
“It’s practically impossible to catch these guys if we don’t have anything on tape. He was running tapes for us. Westervan was wearing wires sometimes, but usually it was just something he had in his briefcase. Oh, and he was picking up cash. A lot of it, sometimes. Mostly it was six or seven thousand here or there, but once it was over fifty. And we had participation.”
“What kind of participation?”
“The CEO and the CFO both of two of the largest U.S. banks, the CEO and CFO of a huge international brokerage based in Switzerland, and several politicians, including a U.S. senator from a Southern state.”
“That’s a mess.”
“Yeah, it really is. It’s a very big deal. Big enough for somebody to hire an assassin.”
“And Kyle Westervan was what? Participating in this fraud? And you caught him?”
“No, no,” Andy said. “That’s the weird part. He wasn’t participating at all. He was clean as a whistle. We checked. He just walked into the office one day, opened the briefcase, and took out an absolute mountain of paper. Then he sat down and explained it all to us. It was the oddest thing. I think the guy was downright, rank furious.”
“Furious?”
“Yeah. It made him angry that the people he was working with were doing the things they were doing,” Andy said. “He did agree to wire himself up, get hold of all the papers he could—he was collecting copies of papers before they were shredded. I don’t know what else he was doing. If anyone had known he was feeding us information, it would be a very good motive for murder.”
“Just a minute,” Gregor said as Darlee Corn burst into the room with a tray full of just about everything—hash browns, sausages, bacon, orange juice, coffee, and what looked like three scrambled eggs.
“You didn’t look to me like the fruit cup type,” she said.
Gregor waved her a thank-you.
She sailed out again, and Gregor heard the snap of his door as she passed through it into the hall.
He took a long sip of coffee and said, “You were saying it was a good motive for murder. And I agree with you. But I don’t think it was the motive for this murder.”
“You’ve got something better?”
“There are facts here,” Gregor said, “and I don’t think the facts fit a hired assassin. For one thing, he was stabbed.”
“A knife in the back,” Andy said. “The symbolism is incredible.”
“I agree with that, too,” Gregor said, “but you see what kind of problem it makes for a theory like yours. The person who killed him had to be somebody he neither feared nor mistrusted. He wasn’t in a crowded room when he was killed, or in a crowd of people. He was in a deserted overflow parking lot at the local hospital. He’d have heard virtually anybody coming up behind him, and he wouldn’t have allowed somebody to come up behind him if he thought he had any reason for fear.”
“Okay,” Andy said. “But—”
“No buts,” Gregor said. “I didn’t say I was dismissing your idea outright. I think we ought to look into it, and so should you. I’m just saying that, right now, my best guess is that this isn’t going to be your problem, but Alwych’s. That whatever happened, to both Kyle Westervan and Chapin Waring, is personal.”
“Personal? You mean not even connected to the robberies?”
“I don’t know,” Gregor said. “I think I dreamed my way through several possible solutions, and then lost them all when I woke up. And it’s the Fourth of July.”
“So?”
“Nobody’s really working,” Gregor said. “My guess is that the ME’s office is off at the same parades as everybody else, on the assumption that there isn’t anything that can’t wait for twenty-four hours. And I don’t know if I can get hold of anybody on the police force here. The uniforms are going to be out directing traffic and conducting the parades.”
“Yeah,” Andy said. “I see that.”
“Just be patient and let us sort this out,” Gregor said. “I suppose you’re going to want to come down here eventually—”
“Yes, I definitely will.”
“So come down and get it over with,” Gregor said. “You might want to wait, but that’s up to you. I’m sure once you explain it to local law enforcement, they’ll give you what you need.”