Hearts of Sand(99)
Jason Battlesea went over to the fireplace and looked into the hole. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
“It isn’t all there anymore,” Hope said. “I burned some of it. I never liked having it here. The television news kept saying that the money was worthless because the police had all the serial numbers and if anybody ever spent any of those bills, they’d be caught right away. It didn’t even feel like real money to me. But then my parents died and I kept trying to make a living and it kept being so damned impossible and I’d take some of the money out sometimes and look at it. And then I’d burn it, so I wouldn’t try to use it. She said she’d tell the police what happened in the car if I ever used it.”
“And she’d come back every once in a while to remind you of it?” Gregor asked.
“Not right away,” Hope said. “It was maybe ten or fifteen years. And then she’d show up all of a sudden and ask me to go over to the house. And I would, because I was afraid not to. And she always had a way to get into the house so the alarm wouldn’t go off. And it was just like that. I thought she was going to ask for the money someday, but she never did.”
“But something must have changed, this time,” Gregor said.
Hope nodded. “She wanted to come back home, that’s what she said. She said she didn’t care if she had to spend the rest of her life in prison, she just wanted to stop all this and come home, and she was going to tell the police everything so that it could all get worked out and she wanted me to know that. I don’t know what she expected. I don’t know why she would have thought I’d just listen to her and nod and let anything that was going to happen happen, but that’s what she must have thought. So I said I had to go to the bathroom and she said the water wasn’t on and I said it didn’t matter anyway, and I got the knife from the kitchen and I came back in. And I stabbed her. And she had a gun. I stabbed her and she sort of reeled back and then the gun was there. I don’t know where she kept it. But it was there and she started shooting up the place and I just ran. I thought she’d follow me, but she didn’t. She just kept shooting at the mirrors and then all of that just stopped. And I didn’t know what to do. So I just waited. And there was no more noise. And I went back into the living room and she was dead on the floor. And then I just sat down and tried to think.”
“You sat there?” Jason Battlesea said. “With Chapin Waring dead on the floor?”
“I sat there until somebody came around,” Hope said. “I don’t know who it was, but I could hear them walking around on the terrace and in the bushes. I waited until whoever it was went a little bit away and then I went out through the kitchen and then across to the beach.”
“Angela Harkin saw her shoes through the glass doors to the terrace,” Gregor said. “The curtains were a little ruffled, and she saw a woman’s feet in espadrilles.”
“Everybody out here wears espadrilles.”
“I thought Angela was imagining things,” Jason Battlesea said.
“I wouldn’t have killed Kyle if he hadn’t said all those things about how we should tell the whole story and bring an end to it,” Hope said. “I really didn’t think he remembered seeing anything at all, and then he came to talk to me and said he knew what was going on, because he just knew, because he knew about Marty. I don’t even understand why he did it. He called me just after it happened and asked me to hold some things for him and said he’d pay me to hold them, some tapes he said needed to be secret, but then he changed his mind. And all that time, he didn’t say anything about Chapin or about Marty and I just thought he didn’t know. We had the crash and the shock and he didn’t remember. But then he started talking about how I’d never feel right unless we all told the truth about everything, and I just didn’t know what else to do.”
“Well,” Gregor said, “you could have told the truth about everything. You’ll have to now, whether you like it or not.”
Hope shook her head.
“I’m not going to have to say anything,” she said. “Just wait and see.”