Blood in the Water(67)

Walter got all the way to the pool house and stopped. From his own house, it was difficult to see the burned part, because the burned part was around the other side. From where he was standing now, he could see the blackened edges of the roof and the walls where the fire had come through before the fire department had made it onto the scene. Then there had been a lot of trouble at the gate, because nobody had notified the gate guard that there was a fire. Idiot. The fire was right there, right in front of his nose. He was just waiting for orders.

Walter stopped in the little parking lot. Gregor Demarkian had gone into the pool house. Horace Wingard and Larry Farmer were still standing in the parking lot, looking useless.

Horace Wingard saw him coming and said, “Mr. Dunbar. I hope you’re not thinking of going into the pool house. The pool house is off limits to residents until the damage is repaired. If you left personal items in a locker, we’ll be more than happy to send a staff member in to collect them for you.”

Horace Wingard always sounded as if he were saying tongue twisters. All the words came out very fast. Walter wasn’t listening to him anyway.

“I’m going to the clubhouse,” he said. “I’m going to file my petition again. And don’t tell me I need the signatures of a third of the residents, because you know that’s hogwash. I could sue you over it if I wanted to. An exclusive community for discriminating people. Hogwash. Bullshit, if you don’t want to put too fine a point on it.”

Horace Wingard sighed. “Mr. Dunbar, the residents of Waldorf Pines are already subject to a background check—”

“To a financial background check,” Walter said. “There should be a criminal background check. Criminals have money. Criminals have parents with money. Criminals have husbands with money. We could have a serial killer here, and you wouldn’t know it.”

“Mr. Dunbar,” Horace Wingard said.

“There’s trouble here whether you like it or not,” Walter Dunbar said. “There’s that hose that was thrown right up on my porch the night of the murder. I told you about it. I told the police about it. Nobody pays attention to me.”

“Mr. Dunbar,” Horace Wingard said again.

Gregor Demarkian came out of the pool house. Walter saw Horace Wingard throw him a nervous glance.

“Great detective,” Walter said.

Then he turned his back on all of them and marched on in the direction of the clubhouse.

2

LizaAnne Marsh didn’t know when she had decided that she needed to Do Something about the things that were going on in Waldorf Pines, but she did know what it was that had to get done. People were being woefully stupid about all this, as if the only thing they could do when disaster struck was to dither around and sound like people on television, saying things that didn’t mean anything.

LizaAnne was not worried about Martha Heydreich coming back in the night and murdering them all, which is what her father and mother kept talking about. She hadn’t been worried about Arthur Heydreich murdering them all, either, which was what her parents had talked about in the beginning.

Death was not all that interesting to LizaAnne. She thought it was probably only really interesting to old people, because they were so close to having to die. People who were not so old did not think about death. They thought about sex.

LizaAnne had started thinking about sex the first time she’d seen Fanny Bullman go into Arthur Heydreich’s house. Well, no, that wasn’t exactly right. LizaAnne thought about sex a lot. She thought about what it would be like to have sex with Brad Pitt. She thought about how awful it must be for him, married to that woman with the lips that made her look like a fish. It was scary the way things happened sometimes. People did things to their lives. They married people. They ran away. They hit people with their cars. People just did things, and then everything was a mess.

LizaAnne had started thinking about sex and murder the first time she’d seen Fanny Bullman go into Arthur Heydreich’s house, and the more she thought about it, the more interesting it got. The idea of older people having sex was a little confusing, except for movie stars, because movie stars always looked young. LizaAnne didn’t know what people saw in each other at that age. She did know what people that age saw in people her age, which was why she was never really upset when one of the teachers came on to her.

Still, she knew that older people had sex, and had sex with each other, and had affairs. They even did the things younger people did to mess up their lives. If Fanny Bullman was having sex with Arthur Heydreich, she was probably going to mess up her life. Arthur Heydreich wouldn’t mess up his, because his was already down the toilet.