Blood in the Water(12)

Horace Wingard put his hands down flat on his desk. He thoroughly hated computers and everything that went with them, but that was not the same thing as saying that he didn’t understand them.

“Are you saying the entire security system went down? For nearly two hours in the middle of the night?”

“I don’t know,” Miss Vaile said. “I don’t think so. He didn’t mention anything about the alarms. I think he would have if they had malfunctioned. What he said was that it looked as if somebody had turned the system off and then turned it back on again.”

“Turned it off and then turned it on again,” Horace Wingard said.

“It could have been done,” Miss Vaile pointed out. “It was only necessary to flip the switch in this office. It might have been an accident.”

“If you mean I might have had an accident, Miss Vaile, I can assure you I didn’t. And what’s left after that? Possibly one of the residents just waltzed in here when I wasn’t looking—”

“It really isn’t out of the question,” Miss Vaile said. “Especially at that time of night. There are always a lot of people in the club house, playing bridge, that kind of thing. And if you’re here at all, you’re out and around, not sitting at your desk. And I, of course, am not here at all. And I do think the man would have mentioned if something had gone wrong with the alarms.”

“I don’t think he would have,” Horace said. “He’d be scared to death we’d move to another company on the spot. We can’t have things like this. The whole point of Waldorf Pines is that we provide security twenty-four/seven. There aren’t going to be any home invasions here. There aren’t going to be any incidents, either, where your ex-wife shows up ready to blow your head off. We can’t afford to have a system in place that goes down and leaves us vulnerable for two hours in the middle of the night. Can you get that man up here to talk to me right away?”

“Of course,” Miss Vaile said.

“This is terrible,” Horace said. “This is worse than terrible. Have you heard anything? Was there any kind of break-in? I don’t believe a system just went on the glitch like that for no reason. Has there been a robbery?”

“Not that I’ve heard about.”

“Has there been anything else?” Horace shuddered. “I hate to think of what else we could have had last night. But somebody must have done it deliberately. It’s the only explanation. And if that isn’t the explanation, we’ll be in court with a suit in five minutes. We may be there even if somebody did it deliberately. Go get him, Miss Vaile. Go get him. I have to think.”

Miss Vaile pinched her nose again, then turned on her heel and was gone. Horace got up and walked to his windows, looking out on what seemed to him to be a perfectly tranquil scene. None of the houses that ringed the golf course had burned down. There was no sign of vandalism on the tennis courts. The caution tape was still up in front of the pool house. Best of all, there was no sign of little clutches of women with their heads together, gossiping about everything.

If there had been an incident overnight, those women would know about it. Those women would talk about it. Those women would get him into an enormous amount of trouble with the governing board.

Horace Wingard had no use at all for the governing board, or for any governing board anywhere. They were all alike, these things. Everybody was convinced that democracy was the answer. Everybody was always wrong. You couldn’t leave the governing of a place like Waldorf Pines up to people who cared only that they got to say they lived here.

Horace went back to his desk, sat down, and brought up his file on the security company on the computer. People thought he was a silly little man, but they underestimated him. He hadn’t gotten this job because he’d changed his name or bought his suits at J. Press, custom tailored so that he looked as much like Clifton Webb as possible. He’d managed three other luxury developments before he’d landed at this one, and he was very good at his work.

If it turned out that somebody who shouldn’t have been was on the grounds of Waldorf Pines last night, he’d find him, he’d get hold of him, and he’d make his life not worth living.

Horace Wingard knew a lot about making people’s lives not worth living.

6

Walter Dunbar did not rely on the Waldorf Pines security system to keep himself and his family safe. Walter Dunbar did not rely on anybody for anything, if he could help it, and he could usually help it. It was the army that had made him that way, back when the army was something everybody had to put up with, whether they wanted to or not. If it had been up to him, they would have reinstituted the draft years ago, and sent young idiots like that Michael Platte off to South Carolina to march with packs on their backs. That was what was wrong with these kids these days. They didn’t have any sense of discipline. They didn’t have any sense of purpose. They didn’t have anything to hate to the very bone, and that was why they didn’t have any motivation.