Hearts of Sand(95)

There was a sound of a car, and Hope thought she was hallucinating it.

Then she turned and saw a sedan parked at the curb, with its motor idling.





SEVEN

1

In the beginning, Gregor Demarkian was sure that Hope Matlock was going to fall down dead on the sidewalk. She was swaying the way people did when their hearts were giving out and their heads were like balloons and just as stable. Jason Battlesea thought something was wrong, too. He stuck his head out toward the passenger side window as soon as he pulled to the curb.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asked. “Should we be getting her to a hospital?”

“I don’t know,” Gregor said.

He pushed the button that rolled down the window and stuck his head into the thick, humid air. Hope Matlock had come to a stop, if she could be said to have been walking before that. She looked at him with puzzlement.

“Are you all right?” Gregor asked her. “Do you need medical attention?”

The look on Hope Matlock’s face said he might as well have been speaking in Mandarin. She stood swaying where she was and looking. She answered nothing.

Gregor made a decision. He looked around behind him to make sure the back passenger door was unlocked. Then he twisted his arm around and popped it open.

“Why don’t you get in,” he said. “We were headed over to your house in any event. We can drive you home.”

There was more swaying, and more of that faraway vacant look. Gregor came close to deciding that she hadn’t heard him. Then Hope shuddered, and moved.

She was, Gregor thought, a very lumbering person. She walked by swaying back and forth and sort of pitching herself forward.

Hope got into the backseat, folding herself up very carefully. She had a small purse. She put it on the floor. Then she closed the door behind her and waited.

“We can take you to the hospital, Miss Matlock,” Jason Battlesea said. “Gregor Demarkian here has a few questions he wants to ask you, he says it will sort of clear things up, but we can take you to the hospital instead if you need to go. You don’t look well.”

“I’m fine,” Hope said, rasping a little.

Gregor thought “not looking well” was something of an understatement. The woman’s face was both flushed and gray. Gregor hadn’t even known that was possible. There were large round beads of sweat on her forehead.

“I’m fine,” she said again.

Jason Battlesea got the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. “You’ll be better in the air-conditioning,” he said. “Do you have air-conditioning in that house of yours?”

“I’m fine,” Hope Matlock said yet again.

This time, Gregor thought she was approaching telling the truth. Sitting down and the cold air were doing her good. The gray was leaving her complexion, even if the flush was not. She took a great deep gulp of air that sounded as if she hadn’t had oxygen for hours.

“We were surprised to see you,” Jason Battlesea said, moving through the side streets and the neat little neighborhoods of neat little houses. “We came this way because we wanted to avoid all the fuss left over from the parade. I never would have thought anybody was crazy enough to walk this way. I mean, it’s out of your way, isn’t it? And you’re on foot.”

Hope looked out the window. “I just started walking,” she said. “The parade was over and I wanted to go home. I don’t think I was paying attention to the way I was going.”

“Well, you must not have been,” Jason Battlesea said. “You could have killed yourself. Even a young person who was relatively healthy—I’m not saying you’re not healthy, Miss Matlock—could get heat stroke in this weather.”

She was looking out the car window as the streets went by. They were going by very quickly.

“When we get home, I want you to put your feet up,” Jason Battlesea said. “Is there any air-conditioning in your house?”

“It doesn’t need air-conditioning,” Hope said. “These old houses, they were meant to keep out the weather.”

“The weather is ninety-three degrees and humid as hell,” Jason Battlesea said. “Do you at least have ice? Lots of nice big ice cube trays full of ice?”

“Of course there’s ice,” Hope said, but she didn’t sound certain.

“I’ve got Jack and Mike coming over. Mr. Demarkian here wanted them on hand. I’ll have them pick up some ice at Lanyard’s or somewhere. You’ve got to take care of yourself.”

Hope was still looking out the window. Her eyes did not look glazed, but they did not look focused, either.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said finally. “I’m all right. I’m going to be all right. I just need to sit down at home and rest for a while.”