Hearts of Sand(35)

“That included the lights in the Waring house,” Gregor said.

“Absolutely,” Angela said, “but that didn’t mean much, because the lights there are on a timer. They go on and off at set intervals, and the intervals are changed every once in a while. I’m not sure what the Waring girls think they’re doing, though, because it’s not like everybody on earth didn’t know that that house was empty. It’s been empty for decades.”

“But well taken care of,” Gregor said.

“Oh, yeah,” Angela said. “Really well taken care of. If you didn’t already know, you’d never guess from looking at the place from the outside. They’ve got people who do the snow in the winter. They’ve got people who do the grass in the spring and summer. They’ve got a cleaning service that comes in once a month to dust things. They’ve got a repair service that checks every week. They repaint the house every three years. They take care of it as if they were going to move back in, but they never have.”

“Do they have a security system?”

“Yep, and a good one, too,” Angela said. “One of those private outfits you pay significant money to so that if the alarm goes off, they call the police.”

“But nobody called the police on this night?” Gregor asked.

“Nobody called the police from the security service,” Angela said, “and nobody called the security service. Those two checked. But somebody on Beach Road did call earlier in the night, to say she thought she saw odd lights there, and then heard something she was sure was a gun going off. If it had been anywhere but the Waring house, somebody would probably have been sent over immediately. But the Waring house is our own private haunted house. We get a lot of calls about that house that turn out to be nothing.”

“The way you get a lot of calls from people who think they’ve seen Chapin Waring?” Gregor asked.

“Absolutely,” Angela said again. “And it had been that kind of day, from what I’d heard. People calling in, saying they saw her, I mean. So, when I made the round, I slowed down and looked hard at the house.”

“And?” Gregor asked.

Angela looked uncomfortable. “And I don’t know,” she said. “There were different lights on than what I thought ought to be there, but it’s like I said. They’ve done this well, and it’s not always the same lights. It was just—I don’t know. It felt wrong. So I pulled into the driveway, way up until I was near the house, and I got out to look around.”

“There’s no security in the drive?” Gregor asked. “There’s no outside alarm system?”

“No,” Angela said. “I walked around the house for a while and there didn’t seem to be anything. I stood on the terrace in the back and looked at the beach. There were footprints on the beach, leading up to the house.”

“You’re sure of that?” Gregor asked.

“Yeah, positive,” Angela said. “There were footprints coming up, but none going down. And I didn’t know if I was supposed to think that was odd or not. People have private beaches here, but they’re not really private. They run into each other, and all you have to do to walk along the shore is just walk. There are chain fences, but they don’t go very far out into the water, and at low tide you’d have a great big open space to walk in. And I’d bet anything that people walk along those beaches and then come up to the Waring terrace to look inside.”

“But there were no footsteps leading away from the house,” Gregor said.

“No, there weren’t that I could see,” Angela said. “But I just might have missed something.”

“Do you really think you missed footsteps going away from the house?” Gregor asked.

“No,” Angela said.

“All right,” Gregor said. “That’s good. What next?”

“I didn’t want to jump the gun. The house is empty, but it has owners, and one of them lives in town. The family does come in on and off and check the place out.”

“They never stay there?”

“I don’t know,” Angela said, “but I wasn’t going to barge in there before I knew what was going on. I was on the terrace, and the terrace has this big wall of glass looking out onto the ocean. It’s also got curtains, but I went up to the glass to see if I could see anything at all, and it turned out I could. I could see a foot in a pair of canvas espadrilles. And right then, I thought it was going to turn out that I only thought I saw a foot, and it was really just an espadrille on the floor. So I looked again, and it still looked like a foot. So I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to check it out, that maybe somebody had gotten in there and started squatting, so I went around to the front door.”