Blood in the Water(83)

“That’s something I hadn’t heard before,” Gregor Demarkian said. “That she was creepy. What does that mean, exactly?”

Caroline shrugged. “It was uncomfortable to be around her. She was just—off, somehow. I don’t mean all the silly exaggeration, the makeup, the endless piles of pink everything. I mean she just felt like she oozed. And I never believed all that stuff about her having an affair with Michael. I’m fairly sure Michael was more gay than not, if he ever got around to sex in the middle of all the drugs he took. And he took a lot of drugs.”

“And you gave him twenty-five thousand dollars in cash,” Gregor Demarkian said.

Caroline stared up at the family room ceiling. It had patterns in it. She had never known why. “I did give him twenty-five thousand dollars in cash,” she said. “I suppose it was LizaAnne who knew about it. He told her, or she found out somehow. She was always chasing Michael around, stalking him. I’m old enough to know how those things work, of course. It was supposed to be a single one-time payment to keep his mouth shut, but it wouldn’t have been that. He’d have been back for more. He had too big a habit not to be back for more. And I could never have counted on his not telling anybody. He was drugged too much of the time.”

“It makes a good motive for murder,” Gregor said.

“It does,” Caroline agreed, “but I didn’t murder him. All I did was buy a little time, time enough to get off somewhere else where nobody would know who we were. And I will guarantee you Susan didn’t murder him. I could see her bashing somebody on the back of the head and then taking off, but not all the rest of this nonsense, fires starting with nothing to start them and then only after hours and hours. Susan, like Michael Platte, is not very bright.”

“You’re bright enough,” Gregor Demarkian said. “And at the moment, you’re really the only one with a motive I have.”

“Well, blackmail is certainly a motive,” Caroline said, “but if that’s what you’re looking at, you must realize it wasn’t only me. There’s Fanny Bullman, for one thing. By now that woman must have slept with nearly everybody at Waldorf Pines. It’s really quite amazing. She’s sleeping with Arthur Heydreich now. I think that’s because he’s become something of a celebrity. I marvel at the innocence of somebody who thinks that being arrested makes somebody a celebrity. Did you know that Henry is giving press conferences from prison? I don’t know how he gets away with it, but he is.”

Gregor Demarkian didn’t look interested. “So Michael Platte was blackmailing you, and you think he might have been blackmailing Fanny Bullman.”

“We could go on,” Caroline said. “There’s our esteemed manager, Horace Wingard.”

“He has something to be blackmailed about?”

“It depends,” Caroline said. “I don’t know if he cares or not. It’s nothing criminal. It’s just that he wasn’t born Horace Wingard, and the background he implies for himself is completely bogus. His name was something impossible to pronounce, Testeverde, something like that, and his father was an immigrant from somewhere in the Soviet Bloc. He went to public schools and some godforsaken community college, and then he just sort of reinvented himself as Mrs. Vanderbilt’s private bouncer. I suppose it depends on whether or not the people who hired him here care or not. If they don’t care, then Horace Wingard probably doesn’t care, either.”

“But you had him followed? You hired a private detective.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Demarkian. I wouldn’t bother to do that. I knew he was fake from the moment I met him, but I wouldn’t do anything like that. No, I recognized him. Once, about twenty years ago, he got caught in the same police sweep in Fort Lauderdale during spring break as my son Jack. I went to rescue Jack so Henry wouldn’t have a fit, and while I was taking care of that they were processing other people out, and one of them is now Horace Wingard. It’s impossible to mistake him. He’s such a peculiar-looking person.”

“If you recognized him, maybe he recognized you.”

“And gave Michael the information to blackmail me?” Caroline said. “Yes, I suppose it’s possible. And, of course, if you wanted to go in for blackmail, Horace has the perfect position for it. Maybe Martha Heydreich had something to be blackmailed about. It wouldn’t surprise me. I wish Walter Dunbar did.”

“Why Walter Dunbar?”

“He’s one of those people,” Caroline said. “Complains about everything. Butts into everybody’s business. Has a new petition for the residents’ association every single meeting, and they’re all vile. Ever since the bodies were found, he’s been going on and on about how the murderer came right past his house and threw a garden hose on his deck, and he wants somebody to do something about it. What’s anybody supposed to do about it? And what does a garden hose have to do with anything? You probably think it’s a clue.”