“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?”