Blood in the Water(42)

“I’m afraid so, yes.”

“And there would be the legal issue,” Horace said. “It’s possible that there is some kind of protection under the Fifth Amendment. It’s possible we’re not allowed to ask him to leave when he’s not been proven guilty.”

“I don’t think that’s the case,” Miss Vaile said. “The residential agreements are perfectly plain. We may ask anybody to leave if he engages in any behavior detrimental to the reputation of Waldorf Pines.”

“Yes,” Horace said. “But the letter of the law is one thing, and the real world is another. Do you know what I’d like to know? Do you know the one thing nobody seems to be asking?”

“What’s that, Mr. Wingard?”

“If the other body doesn’t belong to Martha Heydreich, where is Martha Heydreich?”

“I think the speculation is that she’s run off,” Miss Vaile said. “At least, that was what was on the Internet this morning. She committed both the murders, and she’s run off to live under an assumed name. I’m not sure it made much sense, but it’s still early days. We’ll have new theories by tomorrow.”

“I’m sure we will. But there’s always the most obvious possibility. There’s always the possibility that Arthur Heydreich killed all three of them, and Martha Heydreich’s body is buried in his basement. Can you imagine that? Police vans and forensics teams and all the rest of it, just like before, but going through Arthur Heydreich’s basement.”

“I think the police already went through Arthur Heydreich’s basement, Mr. Wingard. I don’t think there’s anything to be found there.”

“Maybe not,” Horace said, but he was thinking, and all his thoughts were nasty. He didn’t care what the police were saying this morning. He didn’t care who the other body in the pool house had been.

He thought Arthur Heydreich had murdered Michael Platte, at least, and that if he was left at large, he’d murder half of Waldorf Pines.

2

Fanny Bullman didn’t think she had ever been as shocked in her life as she was by the way people at Waldorf Pines were behaving toward Arthur Heydreich. She wondered what Charlie would think of it, if he were here. Fanny had always thought of Charlie as the single most upright person she had ever met. It was true, some of the ways things were shaping up looked bad. There were the bodies in the pool house and everything that had gone with them. Fanny could remember standing on her deck and trying to see something of the police going in and out on the morning of the discovery of the bodies.

Women from all over the complex had come out onto their decks to look. Women Fanny had never seen had gathered in little clutches and cliques to talk about it. And it had looked bad. Of course it had looked bad. There were the two bodies, one of them burned so badly it was unrecognizable. In fact, it was burned so badly, it wasn’t even really a body. Maybe they shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions that way, thinking that it had to be Martha Heydreich who was dead, but then it had made so much sense. If Charlie were here, Fanny was sure he would agree with her, because he always agreed with her, except when he didn’t.

And lately, of course, he didn’t. He didn’t because he wasn’t here. Fanny could walk around the house and feel him, but he was really somewhere else. Sometimes she wished he’d come back. Sometimes she thought that if he did come back, she would pick up a knife and carve her initials on his face. Those were not times she liked. She wasn’t used to having strong emotions. She didn’t think she wanted them.

And there were all the other things, too—the fact that Arthur had been right there on the scene, the one who had discovered the bodies and the only one, as far as anyone knew, who had entered the pool house in days. Well, the only person who had done that and was still alive. And then there had been the smell of him. People who went over there after the alarm was sounded, back when it looked like all that was happening was a fire—well, those people said that Arthur Heydreich absolutely reeked of the smell of nail polish, and the accelerant that was used to make the fire burn so quickly was something to do with nail polish.

Fanny still didn’t think it was right, the way people just assumed that Arthur Heydreich must be guilty of murder. That was not the way it was supposed to be in the United States of America.

Fanny heard the news on the radio just after she’d dropped the children off at the bus stop. She came into her own kitchen and heard the announcer’s voice doing that breathless “breaking news” thing that sounded as if he were having an asthma attack. She tried to make sense of it and found herself wishing the man would be replaced by a robot, or by anybody, someone who could talk and not sound as if he were having an orgasm.