Hearts of Sand(17)

“I’d think it would be difficult to put five bank robberies and a flight from justice into the context of an international conspiracy of—did you say the Antichrist?”

“I did indeed.”

“Somehow, I don’t find Chapin Waring plausible as an agent of the Antichrist.”

“I don’t either,” Fitzgerald said. “But she sure as hell is plausible as a reincarnation of Houdini. It’s been thirty years, and nobody caught so much as a glimpse until she turned up stabbed in the back at Alwych. That’s got to be some kind of record.”

There was a noise at Gregor’s back. He turned to see yet another young woman coming in with coffee, faux cream, and sugar on a tray.

“Here it is,” Fitzgerald said. “And now we can get down to the serious business of finding out what happened to all that money.”

The young woman put the tray down on the desk and left. Fitzgerald handed Gregor a cup of very black coffee. Gregor reached for the faux cream and a spoon.

“The money,” Gregor prompted.

Fitzgerald shook his head vigorously. “Over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Quite a bit of it in bills we had serial numbers for. Gone without a trace for thirty years, just like Chapin Waring herself. Not a single bill has ever turned up anywhere. Not even once.”

“Which means nobody was spending it,” Gregor said.

“That’s what it means,” Fitzgerald said. “It also means that wherever Chapin Waring went, she either didn’t take the money with her, or she didn’t need to use it for anything. The best we can come up with is that it’s got to be sitting somewhere in a pile. It might be a couple of piles. But we want it back.”

“I can imagine,” Gregor said. “It’s a lot of money for only five robberies.”

“Yes, well, what we’re worried about now is that you’re going to go out to Alwych and solve their murder for them, and then that’s all you’re going to do. We’d appreciate it if you would look out for our problem while you’re there. We’ve got reason to think that at least some attempt may be made to keep you from doing anything but dealing with the present.”

“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.