“It does look like a very interesting crime,” Gregor said, “but contrary to what everybody seems to think, solving it will not necessarily solve this one.”
“I didn’t think it had to be solved,” Evaline said. “Everybody already knows who committed those bank robberies. Martin Veer was my brother, do you know that?”
“I did know that,” Gregor said.
“From the FBI?” Evaline said. “I suppose they thought it was some kind of conflict of interest.”
“Something like that.”
“Well,” Evaline said, “I don’t see it. I was very young when those robberies happened. I wasn’t even out of grade school. And they don’t stick in my mind at all. Every time somebody says something about the crime that happened thirty years ago, I have to stop myself. Because we’re never thinking about the same crime.”
“There was another crime that happened thirty years ago?” Gregor asked.
Evaline shrugged. “Not in that sense, no,” she said. “But what sticks out in my mind after all this time is the accident. Maybe if Marty had lived, and there’d have been a massive manhunt like there was for Chapin—except if he’d lived, they might never have caught Chapin or Marty either. The only way anybody put two and two together was because somebody saw Chapin on television at Marty’s funeral.”
“They would have caught them eventually,” Gregor said. “Once those two people were killed, there would have been a lot of scrutiny and enhanced security. If they had done any more robberies, they would have ended up getting caught.”
“Oh, I suppose I know that,” Evaline said. “I knew my brother fairly well, and when I heard about everything, it sounded plausible enough. I could see him doing those things. Things got out of hand and they did things they didn’t expect to do. But Martin really wanted to be part of Chapin Waring’s crowd. And of course, it was very important to Hope.”
“Hope,” Gregor Demarkian said. It was not a question.
Evaline plunged ahead as if it had been. “Hope Matlock,” she said. “She was Marty’s girlfriend at the time. She’s still in town, you know. I talked to her only yesterday. She’s from an impossibly old New England family. They’ve been here—and I do mean here, in town or right around it—since somewhere in the 1690s. Hope still lives in the family place. It was built before the Revolutionary War. But there isn’t any money. Hope’s mother had to tie herself in knots just to send her to Alwych Country Day. I don’t know how they managed Vassar. Hope wanted to be part of Chapin Waring’s crowd, too. I used to think Chapin kept her around for a pet.”
“That’s a little harsh.”
Evaline shrugged. “It’s like I said. When I think of the crime that happened thirty years ago, the crime I think about is the accident. The six of them all piled into that car, and all at least partially drunk. Marty driving. And then there was the weirdness of it. The police came and talked to my parents after the funeral. They said the car had just veered off the road and into that tree as if Marty had been aiming at it. They didn’t think he had, you know. They didn’t think he’d done it on purpose or was trying to commit suicide or anything. He was just young and drunk and stupid. But still.”
“I can see that,” Gregor said.
“And then he was the only one who was really hurt,” Evaline went on. “All the rest of them walked away from it with minor injuries at most. Oh, I think Kyle Westervan broke his wrist. He was the third person in the front seat. You couldn’t even do that anymore. You can’t get three people in a front seat.”
“But they’d all been drinking,” Gregor said.
“Oh, yes,” Evaline said. “They found absolute buckets of stuff at the accident site. Bottles of scotch. Bottles of, of all things, rye whiskey. I tell myself that if Marty had lived, maybe he and Chapin would have been caught, and then he would have gone to jail and his life would have been ruined anyway. But I’d still rather have him alive to visit in jail than dead. And that probably makes me a fool.”
“I don’t think so,” Gregor said.
Evaline looked down at the very full bag Gregor Demarkian was carrying.
“I don’t think you’re going to get very far with those,” she said. “There’s some idiot in New York that’s been putting them out for years. The FBI itself investigated him. He seems to just make the stuff up. I can find you some more accurate accounts, if you want them. There was a time when I bought every account I could find.”