Blood in the Water(79)

But Larry Farmer was just getting going. “I think it defeats the purpose, don’t you? Having manners like that, I mean. What’s the point in being all polite like that, if nobody will talk to you because you scare them? I don’t know, Mr. Demarkian. I don’t know what to say to people like that.”

Gregor let this slide. “Which one is her house?” he asked. “Maybe we should go back towards the green.”

He turned around and headed to the backyard, going by the side of the house where Horace Wingard was least likely to see him. When he got to the green, he stopped and waited for Larry Farmer to come through.

“I don’t suppose I have any luck, and these women live in the house directly to the right of the clubhouse,” he said.

Larry Farmer panted a little and shook his head. “I don’t remember off the top of my head who lives in that house, but it’s not them. They’re over there.”

Larry pointed across the green, so close to where they were it was almost next door. Gregor sighed. “I don’t suppose the people who do live in the house next to the clubhouse have some secret to hide that Michael Platte might have found out about.”

“They might have,” Larry Farmer said, “but they didn’t kill him. They’ve been in Florida since right after Labor Day.”

Gregor let it go, and started across the green again, this time in a very small cut, toward the house that belonged to Caroline Stanford-Pyrie and Susan Carstairs. The route they would have had to take to get to the pool house to kill Michael Platte was plain enough, but at the time of night it would have been necessary to get there, it also would have been easily seen. It was as if these people lived on a stage set and kept track of each other with score cards.

Of course, if Eileen Platte had been telling the truth, Caroline Stanford-Pyrie had made that trek at least once at night, and early enough at night for Eileen to think it was a good time for sandwiches. Gregor wondered how many of the neighbors had witnessed that little jaunt, and what they had thought of it. Given the things people said about Michael Platte, they’d probably thought he was screwing another old lady.

Gregor started off toward the Stanford-Pyrie house, going a little farther out into the green this time, so that he could get a better look at the possible routes. The only one who really had a good shot at getting to the pool house without being seen was Walter Dunbar, and Walter Dunbar was the one person Gregor had seen only for a second, and only in passing. Even so, it had been a strong first impression. It wasn’t hard to see what kind of a person Walter Dunbar was. Anybody who had ever worked in a large organization had met men like him. Gregor could certainly envision Walter Dunbar committing a murder, but he thought the murder would be much more brutal and direct than finding some esoteric way to light a fire from a distance.

Gregor corrected himself. That assumed that the murders were connected, and that there was only one murderer. It also left out the whole problem of Martha Heydreich. Still, it bothered his sense of proportion to think that there had been two, or maybe even three, murders in the same night, and in the same place, and more than one murderer.

He made his way a little farther out into the green. He looked around for 360 degrees. The problem remained intractable. He did another 360-degree turn, and realized that there was a teenaged girl sitting on a bench, staring at him. He stopped for a moment to stare back. The girl was blond and chunky, too heavy for fashion and wearing both too much jewelry and too much makeup. For a moment, Gregor wondered if he was seeing Martha Heydreich herself, complete with clown mask. Then the girl got up and walked toward him, and he could see she was much too young.

Larry Farmer was getting more nervous by the minute. “We ought to get out of here,” he said. “Horace Wingard is going to have a cow.”

The girl kept coming. Gregor waited for her. When she got close enough for Gregor to smell her perfume, she stopped. The perfume was Joy. Gregor recognized it because he’d bought it for Elizabeth half a dozen times, special gifts for anniversaries, because it was billed as the most expensive perfume in the world.

The girl was not chewing gum, but there was something about her that made her seem as if she was. Close up, she was even more outlandishly made-up than she’d appeared to be from afar. She sized Gregor up and down and shrugged her shoulders.

“Are you that guy,” she asked, “the detective? I heard somebody say the police were bringing in this great detective because they didn’t know who did the crimes.”

“I’m Gregor Demarkian,” Gregor said. “I am a detective, yes. I don’t know how great.”