“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.”