Blood in the Water(69)

Fanny Bullman got just two houses down from Arthur Heydreich’s and slowed down. She looked around as if she were surprised to find herself where she was. Then she moved slowly over the edge of the green, to the pathway where people were allowed to walk.

LizaAnne wondered what was wrong with the woman. She wasn’t dressed up to see somebody and impress them. She was wearing old jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt and a cardigan sweater that looked like it had been through the washing machine a hundred and fifty times. She was wearing her hair tied back in a ponytail that looked like it had been put up first thing in the morning, with a rubber band, and without looking in a mirror.

There were people out this morning, moving around near the pool house. LizaAnne only recognized Horace Wingard. The other two men just looked old and probably retarded. Fanny Bullman saw them and hesitated. The pool house was not near Arthur Heydreich’s house. It wasn’t really near Fanny Bullman’s, either. Fanny Bullman hesitated anyway, as if she were afraid the people there were going to take notes and ask her to explain.

The men at the pool house were not looking at Fanny Bullman. They were not looking at LizaAnne Marsh, either. Fanny Bullman shuddered slightly and turned away from them, making her way straight to Arthur Heydreich’s house now. She had a hitchy little limp in her step. She looked like she didn’t care at all what she looked like.

Fanny Bullman climbed onto Arthur Heydreich’s deck and knocked on the sliding glass doors. LizaAnne saw that shadow that was the evidence of curtains being pulled back and then saw the sliding glass doors open. It seemed to LizaAnne that it would make sense if Arthur Heydreich would come out and look at people, but he didn’t. There was no sign of a person inside the glass doors. Fanny Bullman just went through them, and they closed behind her.

LizaAnne was sure she would never behave like that if she was in Arthur Heydreich’s position. She would make a point of being seen right out in public and everything. If you skulked around and tried to hide, you looked guilty.

The magazine she had was Vogue, and she was bored with it. The only really good things about magazines were the ads, and Vogue had very good ads. Someday, LizaAnne wanted to have a diamond-paveéd spiral snake bracelet like the one in the ad for Harry Winston, the one she knew better than to ask her father for. She was pretty sure her father could afford it, but she also knew how he felt about snakes. He had had the Bible read to him a lot when he was a child.

LizaAnne was very glad that nobody read the Bible to her, ever. She didn’t think she could stand it if she was supposed to take church seriously, instead of a place you went a couple of times a year to wear clothes you bought for the holidays.

The curtain had been pulled across Arthur Heydreich’s plate-glass windows. LizaAnne left the magazine on the bench and got up to go over there. She did not worry about crossing the green. She did not care if somebody in the houses saw her. She was not the one doing something she shouldn’t.

She got to Arthur Heydreich’s house and considered the possibilities. They could have gone upstairs to one of the bedrooms. She had a hunch that that was not what they would do. It would be gross to have sex in the same bed you had sex with your wife, and now she was dead, or she wasn’t. LizaAnne hadn’t quite worked it through in her head. First Arthur Heydreich was supposed to have killed Michael Platte and Martha. Then he wasn’t supposed to have killed anybody because Martha wasn’t dead. Then it was Martha—

It made no sense. It was retarded.

LizaAnne climbed carefully up on the deck, to make sure she wasn’t heard. She walked slowly over to the plate-glass windows. The curtains were closed tight. She couldn’t see a thing. She could hear something, though. There was a lot of panting and grunting. There was a lot of shuffling of feet.

Was it really possible that Arthur Heydreich had had sex with his wife in this house, or anywhere? LizaAnne couldn’t imagine anybody having sex with Martha Heydreich.

She moved along the deck until she got to the second set of windows. These were higher on the wall, and by the time she was halfway there, she could tell there were no curtains pulled across them. That was because they were small windows, meant to sit about the television set. You’d have to be right up against the house and standing on tiptoe to see anything through them.

LizaAnne got right up next to the house. She stood on tiptoe. She was reasonably tall, but she wasn’t very flexible. It took her a couple of tries. On the third try, she made it all the way to where she wanting to go, but she was out of breath.

She looked through the window and saw Fanny Bullman, naked except for her little white socks against the beige leather of the family room sofa. One of Fanny’s legs was high in the air, arching over the curve of Arthur Heydreich’s back. Arthur Heydreich was not as naked as Fanny was. His shirt was off, but his trousers were still on. They were just puddled around his ankles, as if he were using the toilet.