Blood in the Water(91)

“It’s because it’s for you,” she said, “but you know how my mother is. There are fire regulations for capacity—”

“Oh, I’ll take him home if you’re going to have a problem,” Bennis said. “I feel like I’ve been here all night as it is.”

“No, no, we’re just going to have to pull a chair from one of the tables when somebody leaves. With any luck, there won’t be a line, or there’ll be a couple in the line, or something. Gregor, do you know what you want to eat? Should I give you a menu?”

Gregor considered the hamburger from earlier in the evening. There were very few things in the world that could make him want to eat green vegetables. That hamburger was one of them.

“You could get me an Armenian salad and a cup of coffee,” he said. “Unless that’s too complicated.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Linda said. “It’s been an incredible day, let me tell you. And you’ve been on the news.”

Gregor looked at Bennis and Tibor. Tibor said, “It was not you per se, Krekor, it was that woman who is missing. They had a picture of her and then a little story about the investigation. And you were mentioned.”

“Well,” Gregor said. “I suppose that’s good news. Larry Farmer was telling me the truth about getting out an all-points bulletin. I’ve had an incredible day, too. I’ve been lied to, yelled at, accused of almost everything you can think of, and I’ve only just reached the conclusion that Sherlock Holmes was right. I want you to look at this.”

He took his own homemade map of Waldorf Pines out of his briefcase and put it on the table.

“Who lied to you?” Bennis asked.

“A woman who calls herself Caroline Stanford-Pyrie told me that she recognized the manager of Waldorf Pines, a man who calls himself Horace Wingard, because she’d seen him once being processed at a police station in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, during spring break. She was there getting her own son out of jail.”

“And you knew that was a lie?” Bennis said.

“Of course I did,” Gregor said, “and if you don’t, you’ve never been at spring break. But whether you’ve been or not, you’d know that they don’t take down the information about what your father does for a living when you’re being arrested for being drunk and disorderly. I do not as yet know where she recognized him from, but since she gave me that story while trying to divert suspicion from herself after she’d been discovered to have paid one of the murder victims twenty-five thousand dollars in cash in blackmail money, I’m going to find out.”

“Right,” Bennis said. “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’m fine,” Gregor said.

Linda was back with his salad. He took it from her and shoved it over to the side of the table so that he was able to look at his map.

“Take a look at this,” he said. “This is Waldorf Pines. On the night of the murders, the security camera system went down between ten forty-five and half past twelve. They didn’t break, you understand. After twelve thirty, they were operating normally. They were operating when Arthur Heydreich went into the pool house the next morning. They just stopped working for that particular period.”

“Well,” Bennis said.

“There’s no ‘well’ about it,” Gregor said. “The cameras are not secure. The master switch that turns them on and off is right inside the door of Horace Wingard’s office. Horace was there late and alone, but he went in and out often, and he never bothers to lock that door. Well, he wouldn’t, of course, if he was in and working.”

“And that means?”

“That means,” Gregor said, “that somebody who was in the clubhouse that night walked into Horace Wingard’s office when he wasn’t there and turned the cameras off. And then, an hour and forty-five minutes later, that person came back and turned the cameras on again.”

“And nobody saw this person? Ever?”

“Everybody saw this person. It just didn’t matter, because there was nothing out of the ordinary in seeing him. Or her. Nobody saw this person going in or out of Horace Wingard’s office, or actually throwing the switch, but the chances that that would happen are small anyway.”

“All right,” Bennis said.

“During that two-hour period,” Gregor said, “somebody saw Martha Heydreich walking with Michael Platte on the golf green. Other people were wandering around. But that’s not the kicker. The kicker is this: On the morning Arthur Heydreich found the bodies, the security cameras trained on the green show nobody else going into the pool house. What do you think of that?”