Blood in the Water(40)

“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.

The car passed through the gate. Horace switched to another monitor and saw the sedan begin the long curving drive around the outside of the complex. He wondered how many people would be out there, standing at their windows, waiting to see what would happen next. It was a small mercy that it was already after the rush hour, and most of the men, at least, would be at work.

The Ford sedan went out of sight behind a small cluster of trees. Even this late in the fall, some of the trees were still full of leaves, bushy and obstructing. Horace went back to his desk and buzzed Miss Vaile.

“Could you come in here?” he said. “We have things to discuss.”

Miss Vaile was an excellent secretary. She was in his office and by the side of his desk in an instant. She carried the notepad she never used. She looked as if hell could overrun Disney World and she wouldn’t have batted an eye.

“Mr. Wingard?” she said.

Horace looked across the room at the monitors. He couldn’t really see them from the desk. It might not have mattered if he could, since there was no security camera directly on Arthur Heydreich’s front door. He wondered what it was like over there: Arthur getting out of that awful sedan in the drive; Arthur walking up the steps to his own front door; Arthur going inside. He wondered if women were looking out their windows now. There would be if Arthur went out to the back deck. Somebody would almost certainly be taking pictures.

Miss Vaile was waiting. Horace had a terrible urge to ask her if her first name was Vicki. Then he couldn’t remember if that was the right way to spell “Vaile.”

He sat down behind his desk and put the palms of his hands down on either side of the green felt blotter. Miss Vaile continued to wait.

“Well,” he said. “Have you heard the news this morning?”

“Yes, Mr. Wingard. I keep the window to the WKVT Web site open at all times when I’m at work.”

“WKVT is a local station?”

“That’s right, Mr. Wingard. It’s the local Fox affiliate.”

Horace Wingard made a face. He had no politics to speak of, but in his mind, Fox was definitely downmarket. Fox was the kind of thing plumbers listened to. Horace would have been happier if Miss Vaile were monitoring NPR.