“After everything that’s happened, I should think you’d know better than to get upset at every little thing,” Caroline said. “And it is a little thing, Susan. The situation hasn’t really changed. There are still two dead bodies, and the police still think they know who the murderer is. It’s just a different murderer.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Susan said. “How can they know who the murderer is? They let Arthur Heydreich go.”
“Yes, they did,” Caroline said. “They let him go, because now they’re looking for Martha. There are two dead bodies and Martha’s missing, so naturally they think it was Martha who killed them. It’s what I’d think.”
Caroline watched Susan try to process this. It was like watching an old woman trying to knead bread dough. It was painful. Susan thought about it. Susan thought about it again. Caroline wanted to tear the hair out of her head.
“Do you think that’s possible?” Susan asked finally. “Do you really think Martha could have done something like that, killed two people?”
“I think Martha could have had sex with the devil if it would have gotten her where she wanted to go,” Caroline said.
Susan shuddered. “I didn’t like that movie. I never like movies with the devil in them. I just can’t see it. They said Michael Platte was hit over the head and thrown into the pool. I know Martha was athletic, but could she have done something like that? And what about the other one? Whoever it was. Burned to a crisp is what they said on television. Burned down to nothing but ash. It just sounds crazy, that’s all.
“It doesn’t matter if it sounds crazy,” Caroline said. “It’s what happened.”
“But how would she do that?” Susan insisted. “She must have been there at the same time Arthur was. To start the fire. Or almost at the same time, anyway. He must have seen her. Somebody must have. It was the middle of the morning commute. There are people everywhere. And you know what people are. They pry.”
“Well, these people didn’t pry,” Caroline said. “Maybe they were talking on their cell phones. Maybe they were texting while driving. What does it matter? Let the police do their jobs. Sit tight. Don’t talk too much. Let it pass. They’ll find Martha. They’ll put her in jail. Nobody will have paid the least attention to us.”
“What if they don’t find Martha?” Susan said. “What if she’s dead, too?”
Caroline had wanted to scream. “Then,” she’d said, “maybe it will turn out that Arthur Heydreich killed all three of them. It has nothing to do with us.”
Maybe, Caroline thought now, it would have been easier to convince Susan if it had been true. Susan had been up all night with it, pacing around in her room, crying when she thought Caroline couldn’t hear her. There had been times during the night when Caroline had wanted to burst into that bedroom and have a complete and unalloyed fit. Only the possibility that somebody might hear her and call security had stopped her.
It didn’t help that, if somebody called security, Caroline knew who it would be. Everybody said they could make a list of the people willing to kill off Martha Heydreich, but Caroline was willing to bet that the list of people willing to kill off Walter Dunbar would be longer.
She got coffee going in the percolator and set out the cups and saucers on the kitchen table. She had always been careful to set the table for breakfast as she was used to having it set, just as she set the table for dinner as she was used to having it set. She sometimes thought of herself as one of those representatives of the British Empire in the deep jungles of Africa. It didn’t matter if there was no toilet and lions were lurking in wait just outside the comforting ring of the fire. She would don her tuxedo and be served like a gentleman.
Except that lions didn’t live in the jungle. They lived in the grasslands. She remembered that from The Lion King, which was the last movie she had seen in a theater. She had been with her youngest son that day. She had not been angry at him.
Susan was moving slowly this morning, as if she hated the idea of coming downstairs to start the day. Fortunately, there were no committee meetings to attend today. There had been very few committee meetings since the murders. People didn’t like the idea of spending time with each other when one of them had two bodies on his conscience.
“It’s going to get worse now,” Caroline said, not meaning to say it out loud.
Susan appeared in the kitchen and blinked. “What’s going to get much worse now?” she asked. “You said yesterday that it wouldn’t matter. You said it had nothing to do with us. You said the police had already decided it was Martha who committed the murders and then ran away.”