Hearts of Sand(45)

When the train came to a stop, Hope got off onto the cement platform and then made her way to the stairs to the depot. She got to the depot waiting room and made for one of the benches at the front. She sat down and closed her eyes. She was still hugging her pocketbook. There was sweat on her forehead. She could feel it. She was having trouble breathing. This was all she needed. She’d pass out here and be hauled off to the emergency room or Tim’s clinic, and somebody would steal her purse.

She was willing herself not to pass out when a familiar voice said, “Hope? Is that you? Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m fine,” Hope said, opening her eyes and looking into Evaline Veer’s. Evaline was bending over her.

Hope sat up a little straighter in her chair. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “I was just getting myself psyched up for the long walk home.”

“Walk?” Evaline said. “You walked all the way here from your place? Whatever for?”

“Parking around the depot is ridiculous,” Hope said. She meant parking around the depot was expensive, and she didn’t have one of those monthly parking passes. “And I knew I was going to be back before dark.”

“Oh, you went in to the city,” Evaline said.

“Just for lunch,” Hope said. “I’d forgotten how tiring it was. And now I’m back and all I want to do is go to sleep.”

“Well, go to sleep in your own bed,” Evaline said. “I’ll walk you out to your place and make sure you’re settled. You really don’t look all that well.”

“I”m fine, really.”

“Nonsense,” Evaline said. “And the walk will do me good. I’m beyond agitated, I hate to tell you. Gregor Demarkian got here.”

“I heard it on the news this morning,” Hope said.

“Yes, well. I still haven’t met the man, and he’s already made my life one huge complication. I’ve had Jason Battlesea on the phone all day, reporting in when so much as a leaf falls in the forest, and then of course there had to be an Incident. There always has to be an Incident.”

“What kind of incident?” Hope asked, stalling for time. She really didn’t want to get up and get moving just yet.

“Oh, the alarm went off over at the Waring house,” Evaline said. “I know we’re all supposed to be on hyperalert since the murder, but that alarm goes off all the time and everybody knows it. The police had to go check it out anyway, of course, and then Caroline Holder came roaring in, being her usual Waring self. And then Caroline came to see me, right at the end of the day, as if I had nothing to do in the world except listen to her screech about how the police are complete idiots.”

“I remember going off to college and then to graduate school and coming back, and almost nobody ever talked about Chapin,” Hope said.

“Oh, of course they did,” Evaline said. “They just didn’t talk about it around us. I think they’re all crazy, all the Warings. Holding on to that house all these years. What did they think was going to happen? Chapin was going to walk through the front doors one day and then—what? Go on trial for murdering two people in a bank robbery?”

“I don’t think they did,” Hope said. “Mr. and Mrs. Waring, I mean. I don’t think they wanted her to come back.”

“I always thought they wanted her dead.” Evaline said, “I’d have wanted her dead if I was them. But you knew them better than I did.”

“It wasn’t the way everybody is always saying it was,” Hope said. She was getting her wind back. She felt better. “Everybody talks about it as if we all knew about the robberies when they were going on. But we didn’t. I didn’t. And I don’t think Tim did, either.”

“And you think I knew?” Evaline said. “Is that it?”

Hope shook her head. “I think it was a secret, just between the two of them,” she said. “I think they liked having a secret so they could laugh at the rest of us.”

“Well, that would have been in character.”

“Do you know what the very worst thing about the murder is?” Hope asked. “The very worst thing is that you can’t stop thinking about it.”

“And,” Evaline said, “you’re right, I can’t stop thinking about it. Although mostly I remember what came just before we knew about the robberies. I remember the police coming to the door of the house to tell us about the accident, and that Marty was in the hospital. I remember thinking that the hospital was a good sign, because you didn’t take someone to the hospital if he was dead. And then he was dead. It turned out that you did take somebody to the hospital if he was dead, because the morgue was in the hospital basement.”