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

by Jane Haddam

  “Really?” Gregor said.

  “Really,” Fitzgerald said. “Do you remember the name of the person who hired you to go out to Alwych?”

  “Jason Battlesea?” Gregor said, thinking about it. “I think he’s the chief of police.”

  “Well, this guy may have called you, and he may have made the arrangements, but he couldn’t have hired you without the permission of the mayor. And it’s the mayor who worries us. Her name is Evaline Veer. Martin Veer was her brother.”

  3

  On the way back to his hotel in the cab, Gregor tried looking first at the picture book he’d bought, and then at the paper file of everything Fitzgerald thought he might need to help the FBI with what they wanted. There was also another file, firmly fixed in Gregor’s laptop, but it might take him a while to get to that.

  The book was more interesting every time he looked at it. Gregor had never seen a more eclectic collection of pictures. The photos with credits were all grainy in the way newspaper photographs were thirty years ago. The uncredited ones ran the gamut from posed school photographs to family snapshots to a few that looked as if they might have been taken by a telephoto lens.

  That was an interesting point. The Waring case was so famous by now that nobody thought twice about the idea that some investigative journalist manqué had been following Chapin Waring around with a camera and taking pictures of her in secret. But at the time these photographs had to have been taken, there was no Waring case. If Chapin Waring was “famous” at all, it was only among a small group of well-off teenagers on the Connecticut Gold Coast.

  In fact, until the case did break, Chapin Waring looked to be on track to be just another one of those women: house in the suburbs and two kids by the time she was thirty; drinking problem (if not worse) by the time she was forty.

  There was no reason for anybody to have been stalking and taking pictures of Chapin Waring before she was revealed as one of the two people who were robbing those banks.

  And yet, as a slow page-through of this book made clear, somebody had been doing just that. It had been a fairly thorough stalking, too. There were pictures of Chapin Waring in a bedroom, getting ready for bed—although no nudity, and no pictures of her prancing around in her underwear. There were pictures of Chapin Waring in what looked like a breakfast room, having orange juice and coffee. There were pictures of Chapin Waring sitting in the driveway of a big house in the driver’s seat of a little convertible.

  He put the book aside and picked up the file. He wondered if the FBI had checked out Ray Guy Pearce as well as Fitzgerald had said they did. Had they noticed the stalking photographs?

  Gregor put the file back in his attaché case. More than $250,000 just gone into thin air.

  Which left the question of where that was. In that thick file folder, Gregor had the reports of all the search warrants over the years, and there had been plenty of them. Houses had been searched. Cars had been searched. Safe deposit boxes had been searched. Leads had been followed up.

  Nothing.

  The cab came to a stop under the canopy of Gregor’s hotel. Gregor paid the fare and got out, handing the driver a tip as he went. He went in through the lobby and stopped at the desk. There were no messages for him.

  Gregor went to his room and put the book and his attaché case on the little table in the sitting room. He went into the bathroom and washed his face until it didn’t feel full of grit. Then he went back into the sitting room. Sometime while he was out, somebody had sent up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. It was sitting on a tray next to an ice bucket and some glasses.

  There was only one person who would send Gregor a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue.

  Gregor opened the bottle and poured himself a short glass neat. Then he got out his cell phone and called Bennis.

  “I keep telling you I’m not enough of a scotch drinker to know the difference between Black and Blue,” he said when he got her on the line.

  “I know the difference between Black and Blue,” Bennis said.

  “Yes, and you take a drink every couple of years. Thank you for the bottle, anyway. I’ll carry it around in my suitcase like a private eye in a forties novel. Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right,” Bennis said. “I wasn’t going to leave the cat in the snow. It’s going to be back here tomorrow morning. Then it’s going to stay awhile until Donna and I can find somebody to live with it. Didn’t I already tell you that?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, anyway, Donna’s got her sights set on Hannah Krekorian. Old lady. Lives alone.”

  “She’s no older than I am,” Gregor said. “She and I went to school together.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Bennis said. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. But she’s older than you are in spirit, if you know what I mean. And her landlord allows cats.”

  “Howard Kashinian?”

  “Let’s just say he’d better allow cats, or Donna will make his life miserable for an eternity. Anyway, that’s where that is now. Are you sure you’re all right.”

  “I’m fine. The case is a mess, and I haven’t even gotten to the part I’m supposed to be investigating. Let me ask you something. You were a debutante, right?”

  “Do we really have to do this again?”

  “I’m not trying to dredge up your embarrassing past. I want to know something. Can you think of any reason why somebody would stalk a debutante? Or would have, in Chapin Waring’s day? Followed her around. Taken her picture.”

  “On a personal level, or a professional one?”

  “There’s a professional one?”

  “Well, considerably before my day, debutantes were to the general public what celebrity twits are now. They were celebrity twits. People like Brenda Frazier. They came out in big spectacular parties that were reported in the press. Photographers followed them around the way the paparazzi follow Paris Hilton now.”

  “Did Chapin Waring have that kind of coming out?”

  “Not that I remember,” Bennis said. “The last real celebrity debutante I remember was Cornelia Guest, and that was 1982. And it never quite reached the level of a Brenda Frazier or a Gloria Vanderbilt. Time has moved on, Gregor. I don’t think anybody cares anymore.”

  “What about the personal?” Gregor asked. “Would it make sense for some lone guy, or woman, I suppose—for somebody to follow around a local debutante and take pictures of her with a telephoto lens, for private reasons?”

  “You mean ordinary stalking? That can happen to anybody at any time, last I checked.”

  “Yes, but would Chapin Waring, as a debutante, have gotten the kind of publicity that would have drawn in somebody from the outside, maybe way from the outside—not even in the same state?”

  “I don’t think she would have had national publicity, if that’s what you mean,” Bennis said. “I think I’d have noticed that. But there’s always Town and Country.”

  “The magazine?”

  “Exactly. Town and Country always covers all the deb stuff, and a fair amount of the subdeb stuff. If you’re talking about someone who was following the circuit, then he or she would have probably been able to read about her coming out in Town and Country. And then there would be the local newspapers. Although, to tell you the truth, Gregor, there’s not a lot of coverage even in those anymore. Time really has moved on.”

  “I’m not sure it had moved on thirty years ago.”

  “Well,” Bennis said, “maybe it hadn’t. But it really wouldn’t have been the kind of thing it used to be, not even the kind of thing it was in my day. What’s the matter? Did Chapin Waring have a stalker?”

  “I think so.”

  “And you think it’s connected with everything else? With the way she died? And with the bank robberies?”

  “I don’t know,” Gregor said. “I just find the whole thing very odd. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a guy named Ray Guy Pearce.”

  “Sure I have,” Bennis said. “Knight Sion
Books. The gold standard in conspiracy theories. Don’t tell me he’s involved in this, too.”

  “He seems to be publishing books about the Chapin Waring case. The old one.”

  “Of course he is,” Bennis said. “But, Gregor, for God’s sake. You can’t take Ray Guy Pearce seriously. He thinks the world is being run by reptilian life-forms who are the descendants of the coupling of human women with Satan’s demons. I don’t think he’s entirely sane.”

  FIVE

  1

  Evaline Veer was not a stupid woman, and she was not nearly so naïve as some people thought she was. When the reappearance of Chapin Waring in Alwych had been nothing more than a series of rumors about sightings up and down Beach Drive, she’d had reason to hope that the whole thing was just mass hysteria. Alwych had never gotten over the Waring case, and probably never would. Schoolchildren talked about Chapin Waring as if she were a cross between a ghost and a bogeyman. Girls at Alwych Country Day pretended she was their role model.

  As soon as the body had turned up, Evaline knew she would have to go ahead whether she wanted to or not. It had been odd, getting that phone call. Chapin Waring was back, but she wasn’t wearing big black sunglasses at a fruit stand out on Route 7 or stopping for ice cream at the little place next to Lanyard’s. No, she was dead, with a knife up to its hilt in her shoulder blade. Evaline had known, as soon as she heard that, that all the reports would say that Chapin had been “stabbed in the back.”

  It’s more like she stabbed us all in the back, Evaline thought, pulling into her space in the Town Hall parking lot. She walked around to the steps leading to the Town Hall’s side door. Jenny’s car was parked right next to the steps.

  Evaline let herself into the building. The Town Hall wouldn’t be officially open for another half hour. The tax collector’s office was empty. The long plastic shade was pulled down in front of the payment window. The probate judge’s office was empty, too.

  On the second floor, there were finally signs of life. The door to the Office of the Mayor was open, and inside Jenny was singing something to herself about how all you had to do was put a drink in her hand. She stopped at the door to Jenny’s office and looked in. Jenny was wearing heels high enough to be stilts and a tight, straight skirt so short, it could have served as shrink-wrap. The skirt was sky blue. Her hair was neon green.

  Evaline knocked against the doorframe to get Jenny’s attention. Jenny looked up and took the earphones out of her ears.

  “I don’t understand what the point of the earphones is,” Evaline said. “I can hear everything you play. You must be blasting your eardrums to pieces.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re in,” Jenny said. “I already have a pile of messages on your desk. The FBI called again.”

  “What did they want?”

  “They never want anything,” Jenny said. “They just go on and on about cooperation and being on the same side. Are we on the same side? I can never tell when we’re talking about Chapin Waring. I wish I was old enough to have known her.”

  “There was nothing to know,” Evaline said. “She was like every little snotty party girl you’d meet at Alwych Country Day.”

  “I didn’t go to Alwych Country Day.”

  Evaline let this pass and went through into her own office. Light was streaming in through the two tall windows at the back. Her desk was pristine except for the little pile of messages. Evaline looked through them.

  “Jenny?” she said.

  “What’s up?” Jenny appeared in the doorway.

  Evaline passed on the opportunity to give a lecture on the proper way to respond to a superior in a business setting.

  “There’s nothing here from Gregor Demarkian,” Evaline said.

  “Oh, I know,” Jenny said. “It was the police department who contacted him, so his messages go there. I don’t think we’ve ever talked to him directly, have we?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry. He’s coming in on the noon train, and the chief of police himself is going to meet him.”

  “Has anybody told him that the state forensics lab lost its certification?” Evaline asked.

  “I don’t know. Do you want me to call the police and ask?”

  “No, really, that’s all right. If he doesn’t know already, he’ll know soon enough. Did we remember to get him his car and driver?”

  “Yes,” Jenny said. “Of course. You checked all that out last week.”

  “I just want to make sure everything is in order,” Evaline said. “When this is over, I never have to see any of it again.”

  “Right,” Jenny said, teetering a little. “There’s something I forgot. We got a call from the Office of Health Care Access.”

  “The Office of Health Care Access. That’s one we haven’t dealt with before.”

  “The woman who called is sending over some papers,” Jenny said, “so I suppose we should read those. It was something about something being wrong at Tim Brand’s clinic.”

  “Something being wrong that has to do with health care access? Really? The man provides free health care services to strays who wander in from Bridgeport.”

  “She said something about the rules for emergency rooms.”

  Evaline had been leafing through the messages, putting aside the ones she thought might be important. When she heard “emergency rooms,” she looked up.

  “Somebody called from something called the Office of Health Care Access, talking about Tim Brand’s clinic and emergency rooms?”

  “Exactly,” Jenny said. “But Tim Brand runs a clinic, not an emergency room. There’s an emergency room at the hospital. I tried to explain that to her, but she wasn’t listening, and then she said that she’d send over these papers. So I figure we just have to get the papers and read them.”

  “It makes perfect sense,” Evaline said.

  “I don’t see how.”

  “I knew she was going to do something,” Evaline said. “I just didn’t know what. I wonder if she really thinks she’s going to get away with this.”

  “Who’s going to get away with what?”

  “She can’t imagine nobody will trace it back to her,” Evaline said. “The only hope she’s got is that it will take longer to trace than it takes her to get elected to the United States Senate. And I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  Jenny brightened. “Oh, you mean Mrs. Westervan. Is she head of the Office of Health Care Access?”

  “No,” Evaline said.

  She got up from behind her desk and started pacing.

  Evaline Veer had never much liked Virginia Brand Westervan, and she liked her less and less as the years went by.

  “Damn,” Evaline said, sitting down again.

  Jenny looked uncertain. “Are you all right? Can I get you something?”

  “Yes,” Evaline said. “Get me Tim Brand. Get him out of bed. I don’t care. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll be in this office in under half an hour.”

  2

  There were two times in the last two weeks when Kyle Westervan thought he might have pushed this thing too far, and both times he turned out to be wrong.

  The first time was, of course, the night Chapin Waring had been murdered. There was no scenario on earth that started with Chapin Waring being murdered—even thousands of miles away in a brothel in Bangkok—that didn’t end in a hailstorm of Federal agents from one end of Connecticut to another.

  He’d sat in his office in New York for days, waiting. He’d ridden home in his Saab every night very late, waiting. He’d woken up every morning in his bed at home, waiting. The waiting had felt like one of those long, slow nightmares where you know you’re asleep, but can’t make it out the other side no matter what you do.

  And then nothing had happened. The Waring house was cordoned off as a crime scene. There were two officers stationed at the end of the drive at all times. There was another officer stationed on the patio in back, where the house overlooked the sea. People came an
d went, but nobody knocked on his door or called his office to ask anything about where he had been at the time of the crime.

  The other time Kyle had been sure everything was about to fall on his head was last Saturday, when Hope Matlock called. Kyle got the impression that Hope was living hand to mouth these days. She was obviously not skipping any meals, but he thought that might be because she was skipping out on the utilities or making some other accommodation he found completely outside the pale. She was also very nervous. Talking to her was like plucking on a taut elastic band. She jumped if you did anything unexpected. She always seemed on the verge of tears.

  In a way, it was because of all that—because he felt sorry for her—that Kyle had suggested the arrangement to begin with. At that point, Chapin Waring had just died, and he thought it made a certain amount of sense to stop carrying so much cash on him all the time. In a lot of ways, it couldn’t be helped. For a certain kind of client with a certain kind of problem, cash was all that would do.

  Kyle regretted making the suggestion to Hope as soon as he’d made it. He regretted it even more on Saturday morning, when she’d gotten him out of bed and sounded completely hysterical. Hope was not a person who could be trusted in any situation in which stress was involved. She lost her nerve almost immediately.

  For a couple of days after Hope woke him up that morning, Kyle had waited. He had waited at home and in the office, just as he did after Chapin Waring was killed. There was nothing but the usual.

  Finally, Kyle had had to accept it. The Alwych Police Department didn’t think he was enough of a suspect to interview, never mind to demand an alibi from. He didn’t know if this was because they really hadn’t considered the obvious, or maybe they just didn’t want to bother the congresswoman’s ex-husband. The hiatus had given him just long enough to make sure he had nothing on him that could lead to the wrong kind of questions.