28 Hearts of Sand (26 page)

“She’ll probably recognize you on sight,” Tim said. “But you’ll have no trouble recognizing her. She weighs nearly five hundred pounds.”

“Ah,” Gregor said.

“She’s got an absolute crap of an old car. It’s reasonably reliable, but it’s not the kind of thing for Alwych. But nobody will pay attention to it tonight, and nobody who knows her will pay attention to it at any time. She’ll drive you to Virginia’s. She’ll go park somewhere that doesn’t look connected. Then you just text her when you’re done and she’ll come get you. Virginia is waiting for you, and she is more than ready to talk.”

“And you think nobody will know I was there?”

“I think nobody will have a clue,” Tim Brand said. “Trust me. I know Alwych. And I know Alwych on the Fourth of July.”

TWO

1

From the moment Tim had called her to arrange for Gregor Demarkian to visit, Virginia Brand Westervan felt as if she had been shot through with methamphetamine. Everything inside her was speeded up, so speeded up that the fact that Kyle was dead was almost like a dream. The fact of it was there, and it was a raw pain that would not stop aching. But the pain felt old. The ache felt familiar. It was as if all this had happened years and years ago, and hurting had become as natural to her as eating breakfast.

Virginia heard the car out in the parking lot, the edgy humming of it that announced an old and not very well cared for vehicle. She went to the window and looked out. Nobody was out there. There were no paparazzi in the bushes.

She heard a step outside the front door and went to it immediately. She flung it back without bothering to double-check through the peephole. The man who stood in front of her once the door was open was very tall, taller even than Tim and Kyle, and they’d both been six foot three. Virginia stepped back and let him come in. She closed the door behind him and watched him look around the room. She wondered what, if anything, the room said about her.

“Sit down,” she said, gesturing at the living room with its deeply cushioned couch and even more deeply cushioned club chairs. “I don’t think I ever thought about the way I furnished this room before. It’s not a place I entertain. It’s usually only me here, or staffers. Sometimes it’s Tim or Kyle. I can’t really picture Kyle dead. He isn’t the sort of person who dies.”

“Everyone dies,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“I know that.” Virginia thought her voice was too sharp. She tried to soften it. “Maybe I just meant to say that he isn’t the kind of person who dies young.”

Gregor Demarkian took a seat on one of the chairs. He sank into its cushion like a lead weight sinking in pond water. He looked a little disconcerted.

Virginia took her seat on the edge of the couch. “Do me a favor,” she said. “Before we start getting into things, tell me how he died.”

“It’s a little too early to know exactly how he died,” Gregor said. “There will have to be an autopsy. He
apparently
died by being stabbed in the back with a kitchen carving knife.”

“Like Chapin,” Virginia said.

“Possibly,” Gregor Demarkian said. “Or possibly somebody was just hoping to make it look like Chapin Waring’s death. Killers do tend to be creatures of habit. They do the same thing over and over again if they kill more than once. On the other hand, copycats are common, if for no other reason than because a copycat killing often throws the police off the real scent. We’ll have to see.”

“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.