It was one of the odder things about Martha Heydreich that if you saw her unexpectedly, and couldn’t get a clear look at the color of her clothes, you almost wouldn’t know who it was.
3
Horace Wingard was getting ready to shut up the office. He’d stayed late tonight, because he always stayed late, and because tonight was not a good night to seem to be ignoring the finer details of his job. The announcements about the search for Martha Heydreich were everywhere. He’d had three or four people stop in to comment on them tonight. Miss Vaile was still at her desk, typing away at the computer. He wasn’t sure why she hadn’t gone home. He wouldn’t keep her this late unless he was in the middle of a true emergency, and this was not really an emergency. It was, he thought, the difference between acute and chronic disease. Acute disease was an emergency. Chronic disease was just something you put up with, because you had to. Because it was there.
Most of what Horace had been doing for the past several hours was just make work and unnecessary. He had gone over the figures for the maintenance of the golf green. Keeping the turf in shape was getting more expensive every day. He took out the folder with the specs for repairing the pool and went over that yet again, although there was nothing he could do about it anytime soon. The pool was a big selling point at Waldorf Pines. It was heated, and supposed to be open and ready fifty-two weeks a year. They were going to have to rethink the club dues soon, no matter what kind of fuss it was going to cause.
When he finished with the figures, he went to the computer and looked up the data on the new people asking to buy houses at Waldorf Pines. There were not very many houses for sale. Even when the complex had first opened up, there had been nice long waiting lists of people who had wanted a house here. People were afraid of themselves and each other these days. That’s why they wanted the gates and the locks and the security cameras. He was a little surprised that none of the three couples with applications in had dropped out of the process.
You had to at least pretend to be exclusive, Horace thought. That was one of those things he had learned on his way up. People always cared most about who was being kept out. That was why Horace didn’t mind LizaAnne Marsh. LizaAnne was crude about it, and she was rude about it, but she was not dishonest. People could complain about her all they wanted to, but she was only saying what all of them thought.
Horace put everything away and looked around the room. Everything was in its place. All the issues were resolved for the night. He got up and started turning off lights, going from one to the next like an old-fashioned lamplighter on a street that had just been fitted for gas.
When the office was dark, he turned back to look at it. People at Waldorf Pines thought they had secrets, but they didn’t really. Horace Wingard knew all about them. He had made it his point to know all about them. He went out into the anteroom and closed the door behind him. Miss Vaile looked up from her computer.
“Are you going home now, Mr. Wingard?”
“I thought I might as well,” Horace said. “There isn’t anything to do around here any more tonight. Although we might look ahead to problems for tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Figuratively speaking,” Horace said. “Over the next few days, perhaps. Or the next few weeks.”
Miss Vaile cocked her head. “Do you really think he has the answer, then? Gregor Demarkian? Do you really think he knows what happened in the pool house?”
“I have no idea,” Horace said. “But it wasn’t that I was thinking about. I was thinking about other things.”
“I’ll admit,” Miss Vaile said, “I’ve been worried. First the murders, then the mistake about the murders, then Mrs. Platte trying to commit suicide. It feels like everything’s out of control. It’s not a feeling I like.”
“It’s not a feeling I like, either, but I think that it is under control, as best it can be. As long as there is a solution of some sort, I don’t think we have to worry about that in the long run. No, it’s something else, something I’ve been expecting for some time. I have notified upper management. They are prepared for it coming.”
“Are they?” Miss Vaile said. She looked momentarily confused. “Should I be? Is this something I’m going to have to contend with?”
“We’ll all have to contend with it for a while,” Horace said. “But I’m not sure that, in spite of the bad publicity, well, I’m not sure that the bad publicity will be all that bad. People are very odd that way, these days. Fifty years ago, it would have mattered outside the bounds of its real importance. It would have been a matter of principle. But these days, the only principle is money, and there is certainly enough money.”