Hearts of Sand(79)

When she knew she wasn’t getting to sleep, she got a cotton sweater and went out.

She walked across the center of town, all the way to the Green, and sat down on one of the polished wooden benches near the War Memorial. She got her cell phone out. There was nobody else on the Green within hearing distance.

Evaline flicked through her address book and found Caroline Holder’s number. Then she pressed the Call button and waited.

The phone was picked up by Caroline herself, and Evaline relaxed a little.

“I’m sorry to call you so late,” she said, “but I thought—well, I thought you’d like to know. And I didn’t know if anybody would tell you.”

“If you mean did anybody tell me that Kyle Westervan is dead,” Caroline said, “I’d say you’re about the twentieth call I’ve had.”

“Demarkian was right there, on the scene, when it happened,” Evaline said. “He was talking to Tim Brand, and then two of the girls from the clinic went out back, and there was Kyle on the ground. Jason Battlesea says Demarkian thinks that Kyle was killed in the overflow parking lot at the hospital and then pushed over the retaining wall, and that the ME’s people thought that seemed likely, too, on first look. But we won’t really know for days.”

“I don’t understand why they still run my life,” Caroline said. “It’s been thirty years, for God’s sake.”

“It keeps feeling to me as if I should have done something about all this long ago, but I don’t know what,” Evaline said. “I felt that way when Marty died, too. I remember sitting in the pew at the church during the funeral and wondering what I was supposed to do next. I never came up with anything.”

“I remember sitting in California while the entire world was looking for my oldest sister and wondering if I’d ever be able to have a normal life again,” Caroline said. “And do you know what the answer to that is? The answer is that I never was able to, and I’m still not. And now there’s this, and earlier—did you hear about earlier? That man was sneaking into our house and taking our photographs? And of course we never noticed, because we don’t like looking at photographs. We’ve got too much we don’t want to be reminded of. My whole childhood is a big wash of stuff we don’t want to be reminded of.”

“Mine just stopped when Marty died,” Evaline said. “Did you ever wonder if they all knew about it? Not just Marty and Chapin, but all of them. Kyle and Virginia and Tim and Hope Matlock.”

“Of course I never wondered,” Caroline said. “I just assumed. Didn’t you?”

“I never understood how she got caught for those robberies,” Evaline said. “I remember my mother explaining it. She was at the funeral, and for some reason the press paid more attention to her than they did to the rest of us—”

“It wasn’t ‘for some reason.’ They did because she was Chapin,” Caroline said.

“Well, that time it meant that she was on the news a lot and somebody spotted her, because she wasn’t really well disguised.”

“And then she lived in obscurity for thirty years,” Caroline said. “I couldn’t sit still all night. I even drove into town and tried to do some shopping, but it wasn’t any use. I finally just sat down on a bench in front of the hospital and let myself go limp. There was some kind of event going on. It was a pain in the ass.”

“It was a talk Virginia Westervan was giving,” Evaline said. “I was there. I wonder how she feels. I never got the impression that she and Kyle were on bad terms.”

“I think they were annoyed with each other a lot,” Caroline said. “It was like they were still married.”

“I can’t imagine she killed him, though, can you?” Evaline said. “I don’t think she gets a lot of time to herself, for one thing, and what would they be doing meeting in the parking lot anyway? They’d go out to dinner together or he’d come to her place, or they’d meet in New York.”

Evaline wondered why she’d called Caroline. Caroline was an angry woman. She’d been angry almost all the time Evaline had known her.

“Well,” Evaline said.

There was nothing at all from the other end of the line.

“Well,” Evaline said again. “I suppose I’d better go do something. There must be something to do.”

“It’s damn near midnight,” Caroline said, hanging up.

Evaline put her cell phone away, and stayed put. She didn’t want to go home. She didn’t want to go anywhere she knew people.