Blood in the Water(70)

It’s just so retarded, LizaAnne thought, and then, in a movement so fast, she almost didn’t believe it was real, Arthur Heydreich turned around and stared directly into her eyes.





FIVE

1

The hard thing about consulting—the thing you did not have to put up with if you were a regular part of the investigative team—was not knowing what you could and couldn’t trust about the reports you had been given. When you were part of a team, you knew the other players. You knew that Bob was color blind, and that Sherrie tended to oversympathize with witnesses. You knew that lab reports from Melanie were first rate on poisons but unsure on gunshot residue. You knew which coroner had an obsession with which cause of death, and which one didn’t see murder even when it slapped him in the face.

In this case the investigative team was limited, and switching out among them would not have been an option. But he still didn’t know what to think of the reports he’d been given, and he was not made confident by the problem with the key.

Right now, what concerned him most was the state of the pool house. He had asked to stop by to see it on their way across the complex to the Platte house, and Horace Wingard had allowed the visit with the kind of grudging condescension that told Gregor he was scared to death. There were, of course, obvious reasons for Horace Wingard to be scared to death. This was probably a very good job. It would not only pay well, but it would leave a lot of room for Wingard’s autonomy. He could run his own show as he saw fit as long as everything was going along well. He could make his own hours, although he probably made brutal ones. He could order around the staff. He could even bully the residents. And in this economy, this would be a hard job to replace.

Still, Gregor was only half convinced. People didn’t usually get the deep willies about losing a job unless there was a lot going on behind the scenes—a house, a mortgage, children to support, debts. Gregor revised this. Just a house and a mortgage and children, on its own, wouldn’t produce that kind of underlying panic. For that, you needed some serious overextension. Gregor thought he was guessing right that Horace Wingard wasn’t married and that he didn’t have children. He also thought he was guessing right that Wingard probably lived on the grounds. It was interesting. The man was as twitchy as if he had mob money behind him. It was one of those things that might be worth it to check out.

It would explain, as well, why Ken Bairn was so jumpy about upsetting the management at Waldorf Pines.

Horace Wingard took them along a back path from the clubhouse proper to the pool house. Gregor found himself looking at the brushed flagstone walk and kicking against it to see if the stones came loose. They didn’t. There might be a few corners being cut on the maintenance of the pool house during repairs, but they weren’t being cut on anything a resident might be able to see for himself.

When they got to the pool house, Gregor turned around and looked back at the clubhouse. It wasn’t very far away.

“There are security cameras on this walk?” he asked.

“Of course there are,” Horace Wingard said. “There are security cameras everywhere.”

“I just want to be absolutely clear,” Gregor said. “There are cameras all along this walk? Or just at one end?”

Horace Wingard stepped up and pointed into the trees above them. “There’s one at the clubhouse end, pointing out toward the walk. On the other side of it is one pointing into the door of the clubhouse. Then there’s another in the center here. Then there are two more at the pool house door itself, one pointing back up the walk and one pointing in at the door. Of course, residents are not supposed to use this door. It’s a convenience for the maintenance staff. However—” Horace Wingard fluttered his hands.

Gregor nodded. “And given what security tape you do have of the night in question, there was nobody on this walk?”

“No. Of course—”

“There’s an hour and three-quarters missing,” Gregor said, before Horace Wingard could. “I know. But from what I understand, there isn’t any tape missing from the morning of the fire.”

“That’s right,” Horace Wingard said.

“And the missing time,” Gregor said, “that was because the tape was—what? Malfunctioning? I thought I heard somebody say it had been turned off.”

Horace Wingard looked uncomfortable. “That seems to be the best explanation anybody can give me,” he said. “That somehow somebody or something just turned off the master switch in my office and then turned it back on again later. It sounds ridiculous to me. I’m in my office most of the time. I wouldn’t have allowed somebody to walk in and just—”