Walter’s motivation, at the moment, was “doing something” about the Waldorf Pines governing board. He was never more explicit than that, even inside his own head, but he had no doubt that anybody who heard him would know exactly what he meant. Walter had been on the governing boards of every gated community he’d ever lived in, and every country club he’d ever belonged to, and every professional association he’d ever decided was worth his while. He’d been on every one of them, but he’d never been on any of them more than once. That was because people didn’t like reality anymore, even if they said they did. They liked fairy tales. They liked anything but to hear the truth spoken without fear or favor.
At the moment, what none of these people wanted to hear was that there was something wrong with their vaunted manager, although Walter didn’t know how they could miss it when they looked at him. Horace Wingard, for God’s sake. Walter had spoken to a very discreet private detective he knew—you had to get discreet ones; you never knew what you could be sued for. Walter had spoken to the man, at any rate, and it turned out that Horace Wingard had started his life as Bobby Testaverde in Levittown. Levittown. It was practically the symbol of post-War lower-middle-class blight, full of little houses made of ticky tacky that all looked just the same. Walter had grown up on the Main Line and gone to good private schools before being packed off to Colgate by a father who knew better. Walter thought anybody ought to know better. It was almost stunning how ignorant most people were.
Unfortunately, even the very discreet private detective couldn’t perform miracles. Walter had asked him to look into the background of that Martha Heydreich, but he hadn’t been able to come up with anything at all. It was, he wanted Walter to know, very unusual. People left traces of themselves around. They left trails.
If it had been up to Walter Dunbar, he would have required a full background check for anybody who wanted to buy a house in Waldorf Pines. What was the point in having a security system, with having cameras and locks and guards, if you were harboring a snake within your own bosom? That’s what they were, these people like Michael Platte. Snakes. That’s what that woman was, too.
Walter was standing on his deck, looking down at a garden hose. It was not his garden hose, and he had no idea where it had come from. He might even have thought it was his own if he hadn’t been able to see his own, still coiled up properly around the outdoor faucet. This one was just lying around, as if somebody had tossed it there as he walked by on the golf course. Except, of course, that nobody ever walked along the golf course with a garden hose in his hand. Most of these idiots could barely handle their own clubs.
Walter looked up the fairway, into the blank distance that was the course unoccupied by a single questing golfer.
Then he turned around and went through the sliding glass doors to his own family room. It wasn’t much of a family room. He had one of the smallest houses in Waldorf Pines. That was because his family was himself and his wife, Jessica. They had never had any children. Jessica had wanted them, the way women always did, but Walter had been smarter than that.
The family room was empty. It consisted of a cramped little room divided from the kitchen by a curving countertop. The countertop hid the sink, just in case the lady of the house didn’t feel like doing the dishes and wanted to hide the mess. Jessica would never do that, because she knew he’d pitch a fit.
Sometimes you had to yell and scream to get what you wanted. Sometimes you had to threaten. Sometimes you had to call the lawyers and be done with it. Walter thought he was at the lawyer stage.
“Jessie,” he shouted, pointing into the house and hoping he wouldn’t have to call out more than once. That almost never worked. He didn’t know where Jessie disappeared to, but she disappeared. “Jessie,” he shouted again.
There was a faint little squeaking noise, coming from back there somewhere. Jessie was over in the part of the house with the two extra bedrooms. Walter had no idea what she thought she was doing there. They didn’t have children, or grandchildren, or guests. They only had the extra bedrooms because it was always better for the resale value to have three bedrooms rather than one.
He walked off into the house. The walls were painted green. The floors were thick matte terra-cotta tile. He never really noticed where he was living, unless something went wrong with it.
Jessica was in the larger of the two extra bedrooms, changing the sheets. Walter didn’t understand why she had to change sheets in this bedroom. It wasn’t as if they had to worry about somebody complaining about the dirt.