Blood in the Water(37)

“Who’s the Marsh girl, and what’s the nonsense about her?”

Larry Farmer sighed again. “LizaAnne Marsh lives in Waldorf Pines. She goes to high school. She’s a senior, I think. She’s one of those people. She’s a sociopath in training, if she isn’t full blown there yet. She had one of those parties, those sweet sixteen parties, that they show on television.”

“What?”

“It’s a reality television show,” Larry Farmer said. “My Super Sweet 16. Girls have sweet sixteen parties and they film them, the preparations, the party itself, everything. I don’t know how to explain them to you if you haven’t seen them. The families spend a ton of money on them, hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“Seriously?” Gregor said. “Then this Waldorf Pines place is, what, an enclave for multimillionaires?”

“No,” Larry Farmer said, “not at all. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the course of my life, Mr. Demarkian, it’s that people with real money would never let some television show come and film some big party they gave for their daughter, and they really wouldn’t let some television show make a big fuss about what everything costs. The people who live at Waldorf Pines are well off, more or less, but it’s nothing like that. LizaAnne Marsh’s father owns a bunch of car dealerships. High-end cars, multiple dealerships, he’s definitely making money. It’s just not that kind of money.”

“And yet he gave his daughter a party that costs a hundred thousand dollars?”

“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars by the time they added up the final tab,” Larry Farmer said. “But you know what people like that are like, Mr. Demarkian. They like to throw it around. Old Herb Marsh likes to throw it around, and as much of it in public as he can. He’s probably in debt up to his eyeballs.”

“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.”