27 Blood in the Water (13 page)

“You haven’t checked?”

“I haven’t got probable cause to check,” Larry Farmer said. “I’d love to see the guy’s financial statements, though. I’d be willing to bet just about anything we’ll be seeing him back here on fraud charges in a couple of years. Either that or the feds will get him for playing games with his taxes. Or, hell, you know, the state of Pennsylvania. But I don’t have anything that sounds like he’s involved in this.”

“But you think his daughter is?”

“No,” Larry Farmer said. “It’s the people in my department. They’ve come up with this ridiculous theory that it’s LizaAnne who killed Michael Platte, because LizaAnne had the hots for him, and he wasn’t buying. He was chasing around after Martha Heydreich instead.”

“And the other body?”

“This was back before we knew the other body wasn’t Martha Heydreich’s,” Larry Farmer said. “We thought it was, and they thought LizaAnne could have killed her, too, for the same reason. Out of jealousy, I guess, or spite, or just the attitude that what LizaAnne wants, LizaAnne gets. And it’s like I said, the girl is a sociopath. It’s just that I can’t see anybody murdering anybody for a reason like that. Can you?”

Gregor shook his head. “People commit murder for a lot of completely silly reasons,” he said. “They commit murder for reasons that would sound trivial to you and me. I don’t think the apparent triviality of the reason is the problem with that theory.”

“What is?”

“You’re back to the second body,” Gregor said. “You have two bodies, both of them men. You’d have to have a reason for this girl to kill another man.”

“Maybe she was snubbed by this one, too,” Larry Farmer said. “I told you it was all just crazy. She can’t go around killing every guy who doesn’t want to date her. There’s got to be a ton of them.”

“Unpleasant personality?”

“Heavyset and not very attractive physically,” Larry Farmer said. “Back when I was growing up in this town, a girl who looked like that wouldn’t have been on the map socially. But that’s what you get when you’re stuck with a place like Waldorf Pines. It changes the entire equation. Popular used to be about being pretty and talented and socially adept. Now it’s about how much money your father has and whether he’s willing to spend more than most people would spend for a house giving you a party where you ride in on an elephant.”

“What?” Gregor said again.

“That’s how LizaAnne Marsh made her entrance at her party,” Larry Farmer said. “She rode in on an elephant. You would not believe the amount of trouble it caused. Handlers. Permits. The state animal control people. A circus license. I don’t remember all the details. But we were stuck doing days of work just so that they could make it happen, and then the party needed extra security because of all the drunken teenagers who hadn’t been invited and who wanted to get in. I just about killed somebody myself in the middle of all that.”

Larry looked out and around at the Pineville Station Police Department building.

“It’s the Waldorf Pines people,” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the way things are in places like Philadelphia. You’ve got the Main Line and all of that. It just never was the way things were out here, and I don’t like it. I just wish they’d all pack up and go away somewhere and leave the rest of us alone.”

2

The Pineville Station Police Department was like a thousand others across the United States, small, neat, and built to be “modern” in 1958. There was a long, blond wood counter where members of the public were supposed to present themselves to do their business. There were a few desks behind that counter, most of them unoccupied at this time of day. There were two small offices to the back, one of which Gregor assumed must belong to Larry Farmer. A young woman sat at a desk just behind the counter and did things on the computer. A tall man stood aimlessly next to her, talking without raising his voice and looking as if he had nowhere to go. The tall man was the most formally dressed person in the place.

“Oh, good,” Larry said. “Just who we need. That’s Buck Monaghan. Buck! Buck! I brought back Gregor Demarkian. I told you I would.”

The tall man straightened up and held out his hand to Gregor. “I hope he didn’t kidnap you,” he said. “The situation is pretty dire, but I don’t think we’re at the point where we have to start committing felonies just yet.”

“We’re not the ones committing felonies,” Larry Farmer said. “I wish you’d stop saying things like that. I know you think it’s funny, but it just gets everybody all confused, and then they’re mad at me again. Of course I didn’t kidnap him. I explained the situation, and then he agreed to come. I don’t know what it’s going to cost, but it’s better to have him here than not. You said that yourself just this morning when I asked you about it.”

Buck Monaghan seemed to sigh and stare up at the ceiling, but the movements were so slight, Gregor wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined them. When Gregor took another look, the impression was gone.

Buck Monaghan leaned over the counter and picked up a manila folder. “It’s very definitely a very good thing that we have Mr. Demarkian here, and I never meant to suggest otherwise. I’ll admit I was a little surprised at how fast you got it done. Has he filled you in on anything at all, Mr. Demarkian? Or has he just been panicking?”

“I think I’m more or less filled in,” Gregor said. “Two bodies, one too damaged to identify immediately. DNA came back without providing positive identification of any person but ruling out the person who had been supposed to be the victim—”

“Well,” Buck said, “yes, but not because we’ve got Martha Heydreich’s DNA, either. I sometimes find it more than a little disappointing that the world does not work the way it does on television. If this had been
CSI,
Martha’s DNA would have been in half a dozen databases and the only reason it wouldn’t have been would be because otherwise the show wouldn’t last long enough. I used to think it would be interesting to get a case like this, a case that wasn’t completely cut and dried. I spent a lot of my time doing plea deals with idiots who think it’s just common sense to rob convenience stores being tended by some kid you’ve known since high school and then expecting he won’t recognize you in a ski mask. The ordinary run of criminal leaves a lot to be desired.”

“It’s not the criminal I’m worried about,” Larry Farmer said.

The young woman at the computer looked up. She gave Gregor Demarkian a long stare and said, “It’s Waldorf Pines. It’s always Waldorf Pines. When anything goes really wrong in this town, you can bet your wallet it’s going to have something to do with Waldorf Pines.”

Gregor shook his head. “Just a few minutes ago, Mr. Farmer here was telling me that the people who live in Waldorf Pines weren’t all that wealthy or all that influential. Car dealerships, I think he said. But if they’re not all that wealthy and they’re not all that influential, how can they cause you all this trouble?”

Buck Monaghan and Larry Farmer and the young woman all looked at each other.

It was Buck Monaghan who finally spoke. “It’s not the people who live in Waldorf Pines who are the problem,” he said.

The young woman snorted. “They’re a problem, all right. If I get my hands on that little bitch, I’ll—”

“That wasn’t the kind of problem I was talking about,” Buck Monaghan said.

“Well, it’s not just LizaAnne, queen of the universe, who’s trouble,” the young woman said. “There’s the alleged victim, the one who isn’t a victim and is probably in Monte Carlo by now under an assumed name. She was a prize and a half on Sundays, let me tell you.”

Buck Monaghan cleared his throat. “Miss Connolly’s sister wasn’t invited to the Marsh party,” he explained, “and as for Martha Heydreich—well, whatever. Let’s just say that she isn’t a very polite person.”

“She drove that car around like she wanted to kill somebody,” Miss Connolly said, “and the somebody she wanted to kill was definitely one of us peasants. Honestly, Larry, stop shushing me. Who do these people think they are? It’s not Bill Gates living out there and it isn’t the president of the United States, either. Since when does being able to borrow enough money to ride around in a pink sports car make you queen of the May?”

“Do you even know what that means, being queen of the May?” Buck Monaghan said.

Miss Connolly shook that off. “It’s something my mother used to say. And Sister Agnes Haloran at school. Why should I care what it means? The whole lot of them up there act like somebody just appointed them God, and they don’t care what kind of damage they do in the process. It’s not just that Jen didn’t get invited to the Marsh party, it’s that she tried to kill herself over it. Because that’s Waldorf Pines and they can’t just not invite you. They have to go around telling everybody at school that they shouldn’t ever talk to you again because you’re such a freak, and probably a lesbian, and then—”

Gregor straightened up. “I see,” he said. “That’s why some people had the other theory. This is about that girl again.”

“LizaAnne Marsh,” Larry Farmer said.

“She’s not a girl,” Miss Connolly said. “She’s a hatchet-faced snake and a tub of lard. And it wouldn’t surprise me if she’d killed off half the state of Pennsylvania.”

“It sounds more like half the state of Pennsylvania has a reason to kill her,” Buck Monaghan said, “and she’s very much alive, and at her usual business. And that may be very unfortunate on a number of levels, but it is not our problem at the moment. Our problem is Waldorf Pines.”

Miss Connolly had turned back to her computer. “They’re not worried about the people who live there,” she said, “they’re worried about the people who run the place. Not that anybody really knows who runs the place. It’s a private corporation.”

“People have a right to form private corporations,” Buck Monaghan said. Miss Connolly shuddered, and he frowned at her back. “But as it turns out, it’s not the owners of the corporation we’re concerned with immediately, it’s the man they hired to manage the place. Waldorf Pines is a private, gated community where anyone who buys a house must be a member of the golf club. You’re from Philadelphia, so you’re probably thinking of how those traditionally work, places where there’s been a club in place for generations and then the members decide to build residential housing on the grounds. This isn’t like that. Waldorf Pines was invented pretty much out of whole cloth not more than fifteen years ago. They built the club, they built the golf course, they built the houses, they worked up the club rules, they did the whole thing like they were making a set for a movie. The rumor, and it’s a reliable rumor, is that they sunk a ton of money into doing it, and they’ve got a continuing interest. I’ve been trying to get some information about exactly how the financial arrangements go for the people who are living there, but so far all I’ve heard is that the arrangements don’t have anything to do with this murder and I don’t have an excuse for getting what is supposed to be privileged communication. But there’s something, some way in which the company is continuing to be financially involved, because they’ve got a full time manager out there and he seems to be charged with protecting their interests.”

“Horace Wingard,” Larry Farmer said.

“Horace Wingard,” Buck repeated. “He was right in our faces the moment we made the arrest, and he’s been in them ever since. Until today, we were able to fend him off, because we had Arthur Heydreich in jail and the situation looked fairly straightforward. Now nothing looks straightforward, and my guess is that we have maybe an hour or two before he’s back down here ready to clean our clocks. At the very least, he’ll sue the town, and whoever’s hired him will make sure he has the resources to do it. And it won’t really matter if he wins or loses, either. He doesn’t have to win. He just has to bankrupt us.”

“Waldorf Pines,” Miss Connolly said, without turning around again.

“You’re here,” Buck Monaghan said, “so that we can be sure that they’ll either back off, or that we’ll have good grounds to recouping our expenses in a countersuit. If you could manage to make the murderer Horace Wingard himself, none of us would mind. But we’re not expecting to be that lucky.”

FIVE

1

Horace Wingard heard the news on the television in his office at the club, and as soon as he heard it he jumped out of his chair and started pacing. Pacing was not good for much of anything, and he knew it, but it was the only thing he could think of. He’d never been under the illusion that he’d be able to get what he really wanted out of all this. That was because the best-case scenario was that no body should ever have been found on the grounds of Waldorf Pines at all. Still, he’d thought the very least he could expect was that the police would be competent at their jobs, the “mystery” would amount to anything but, and the perpetrator would be taken off the grounds and stuffed away in jail as quickly and as quietly as possible. That would be less quickly and less quietly than it might be under other circumstances, but that came with being associated with a place like Waldorf Pines. People were always much more interested in richer people committing crimes than in poorer ones. That was because, with poorer people, crime seemed almost inevitable.

It took him a few minutes after hearing the news to figure out what was going to happen and why. In the end, there were always two all-important factors: the publicity and the money. The money was always more important than the publicity, but the publicity could cause money, and it could cause it to go away. There were also different kinds of publicity. The publicity about a resident of Waldorf Pines having murdered his wife and her teenaged lover was bad, but it was by no means as bad as it could possibly get.

He was standing at the window of his office when Arthur Heydreich came into the complex. His window looked out on the golf course, but he had television sets following security cameras along one wall, and he could see the whole scene at the gate. Arthur was not driving his own car. He was being driven by somebody in a battered Ford sedan. Nobody at Waldorf Pines had a car like that sedan. Even the residents who had Fords had big, new, and shiny ones. This thing looked like it belonged to a social worker who lived with the very clients she served in South Philadelphia. Either that, or to a high school teacher who couldn’t quite get a job in a decent neighborhood.