Hearts of Sand(18)

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.”