28 Hearts of Sand (28 page)

“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.”

“Yeah,” Andy said. “There’s that. All right. We’ll do it that way.”

“Then I’ll talk to you later.”

“There’s just one thing,” Andy said.

Gregor looked at the hash browns. They were real hash browns.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It’s about Kyle Westervan,” Andy said. “He was like Joan of Arc. In that old movie, you know it? It starred Ingrid Bergman, and she played Joan of Arc. And right from the beginning, that was who Kyle Westervan reminded me of. As if he’d seen God, or talked to God and God talked back, and now he was on some kind of a crusade. He didn’t ever say that, you know. He didn’t go around talking about visions or giving speeches about justice and truth and right, but there was something about him that made me think he was thinking all those things. And that’s part of the reason why I’m so unnerved about this. Because those kinds of people, the people who are acting for justice and truth and right, well, in operations like the one we’ve been running here, those people tend to get killed. And there’s Kyle, dead.”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “That’s what he is. Dead.”

3

It took a good ten minutes to convince Jason Battlesea that he was going to have to stop whatever he was doing and get to the Alwych Police Department. It took another five to get Juan Valdez to bring around the car.

By then, Gregor was dressed and carrying his attaché case. He had his laptop and his first headache of the morning. He stepped out of the Switch and Shingle and saw his next headache gearing up. Down at the end of the driveway, there were people. There were lots of people. Some of them were a band.

Gregor gave Juan Valdez directions and sat back to see how bad the problems would be. The people at the end of the drive were gearing up for a parade, but the parade wasn’t due to start for an hour. The police keeping the road clear all knew who Gregor Demarkian was and what he was doing in Alwych. They passed him on from one watch post to the next as if he were visiting royalty.

The arrangement was worse when they got into the middle of town. The parade would be coming right down the middle of Main Street, and although that meant the police were more or less keeping Main Street clear, it really was only more or less. There were hundreds of people milling around, waiting for the parade to start. Some of these people were children, who didn’t care at all that cars needed to move or that the barriers had been put up to keep the marchers safe. Some of these people were vendors, who only wanted to sell as much red, white, and blue cotton candy and little flags as they possibly could.

They got to the Alwych Police Department, but literally at a crawl. When they got there, Gregor found most of the police force that wasn’t out dealing with the streets lined up in formation to march, too. At the head of that contingent was Jason Battlesea.

“For God’s sake,” Battlesea said after Juan Valdez got the car into an uninhabited part of the parking lot and Gregor got out. “What do you think you’re doing? We’re supposed to march in an hour and we’re supposed to be lined up to march in half an hour. You can’t tell me that this is something that couldn’t have waited until after noon.”

“Are Mike Held and Jack Mann marching?”

“They’re right over there. Are you saying you want them, too? Want them for what?”

“To look at something,” Gregor said.

“It’s the God damned Fourth of July.”

Gregor took his attaché and laptop and marched himself into police headquarters. He did not bother to go looking for the interrogation room they had used before or for Jason Battlesea’s office. He put his things down on one of the countertops and began to plug things in. He not only had the laptop up and working, but the three files he wanted them to see already running before they came in.

They landed at his side like a comedy group from a 1930s movie. They were all flustered, and Jason Battlesea was angry.

“This had better be important,” he said. “This had better be the God damned Second Coming, because we are all due somewhere or the other practically immediately.”