Hearts of Sand(87)

“I know. Somebody in the family.”

“Exactly.”

“I still say I can’t see it,” Marcie said. “She’s so mousy. It’s all well and good to have an old money name, but she doesn’t seem to have any money and she’s got almost no personality at all. Even in fancy private schools, I’ll bet you have to have personality to be part of the popular crowd. And now you’ll tell me that she was the life of the party back then, and it was all that stuff that changed her.”

“No,” Tim said. “Hope was always Hope. Not just mousy but almost morbidly self-conscious. But Marty was part of Chapin’s crowd, and Hope was Marty’s girlfriend.”

“And you were Chapin Waring’s boyfriend. I can’t see that, either.”

“I can’t see it myself at this late date,” Tim said, “but at the time, it felt almost inevitable. I get surprised sometimes at how much seemed inevitable then that doesn’t seem inevitable anymore. I don’t think Chapin and I even liked each other much. Everybody knew from dancing school that I’d be her escort at her debut, and it just went from there. I think I was a little relieved not to have to go looking for a girlfriend.”

Tim got out of the chair.

“Maybe I should take you to the parade,” Marcie said. “You’re beginning to look a little out of it.”

“I’m tired,” Tim said. “You were right. I didn’t get any sleep last night.”

“Let’s go,” Marcie said.

Instead, Tim headed on back again. When he got to the crime scene tape over the door, he reached past it and opened up so that he could see the little area outside. He could see a lot. There was crime scene tape over the stairs, at the bottom, right in front of him. He couldn’t quite get a look at the top, but he was sure there would be crime scene tape there, too. There was a white chalk outline of a body near the wall. Other than that, the little outside space looked dead.

Tim felt Marcie come up behind him, and withdrew. He had no idea what it was he had wanted to see.

“Tim,” she said, more than a little urgently.

Tim closed the door. “Sorry,” he said.

“We ought to go to the parade.”

Tim was still looking at the door. It reminded him of that part of a Harry Potter movie where there was a veil, and when you passed Beyond the Veil, you were dead. But that was not how Kyle had died. He had not passed beyond a veil. He had been knifed in the back and pushed off a retaining wall.

And he would be forever dead.





FIVE

1

Gregor Demarkian went up to Main Street to see the end of the parade, feeling restless and a little annoyed.

He stood for a while on Main Street and watched the parade come in. There were floats and marching bands and, of course, virtually the entirety of the Alwych Police Department, pounding away like soldiers on parade. Gregor spotted Jason Battlesea in a uniform so bedecked by medals and ribbons, it might as well have belonged to an Admiral of the Fleet.

The end of the parade reached the War Memorial in a little rush, the rear being brought up by a group of women in more or less Revolutionary Period costume, all playing flutes. Their music died out only fitfully, and then Evaline Veer, waiting on the podium, cleared her throat.

She had a sheaf of papers in her hands, and there was a microphone in front of her. Gregor thought she looked like bloody hell.

He backed away from the crowds and headed back to the police department. There wouldn’t be much of anybody there, but it would be more peaceful than this. He took out his cell phone. Evaline’s voice was booming out over the crowd, but he couldn’t catch any of the words she was saying. He supposed it was one of those speeches every mayor in every town gave at the end of every Fourth of July parade.

He got to the point where the sound of Evaline Veer’s voice was only thunder in the distance. He punched the speed dial for Bennis and listened to the phone ring. Then the annoying robo voice came on, telling him he was being sent to voice mail.

By that time, he was almost all the way back at the police department. He waited until he got back to the front doors and then punched the speed dial for Father Tibor. The phone rang and rang again. He went through the sliding glass doors and into the police department’s lobby. The phone sent him to voice mail again. He closed it up and put it back in his pocket.

At the moment, the entire active police presence in the town of Alwych seemed to consist of a young woman behind the reception counter and a man in plain clothes talking to her. The man was very young and very tense. When Gregor walked in, he straightened up immediately.

“Mr. Demarkian? It is Mr. Demarkian? I’m Andy—”