by Jane Haddam
“And that was—”
“About two and a half years ago,” Caroline said. “It’s amazing how much time has passed, isn’t it? It’s been nearly seven years now since the smashup. And then, of course, there were lawsuits everywhere. Everybody was convinced I must have known all about it. I didn’t. I wasn’t brought up to stick my nose into my husband’s business affairs. And I had money of my own, from my own family. I didn’t see the justice in allowing a lot of—well, people, let’s say. I didn’t see why Henry’s investors should be allowed to take my money.”
“What have the courts had to say to that?”
“That I’m right,” Caroline said. “My money is my money. Are you surprised?”
“No.”
“The only problem left after that was the publicity,” Caroline said. “And there was a lot of it. People yelling at me on the street. Henry’s investors following me from place to place. And the reporters, of course. And the stories in the magazines and the newspapers and on television. And the books. My grandmother used to say that a lady never got her name in the papers except when she was born, when she married, and when she died. I should have listened to her. There were so many photographs of Henry and me at one thing or another, in society columns, in Town & Country. They just get dredged up and reprinted wholesale when anybody wants to write a story.”
“So you changed your name and came out here,” Gregor Demarkian said. “And then Michael Platte found out who you were.”
“It bothered me, that business of his finding out who I was,” Caroline said. “Who Susan and I were, I should say. You never met Michael Platte, of course. He was dead before you were brought in on this thing. But he wasn’t a bright boy. He was a sociopath, that was certain. But he wasn’t bright. And he was not curious. He didn’t paw through old newspapers and magazines. I doubt if he ever listened to any news at all. That’s why I always thought it must have been her who figured it out, and not him.”
“Her?”
“Martha Heydreich,” Caroline said. “She was a sociopath, too, if you want to know the truth. And absolutely the creepiest human being I’ve ever met.”
“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.”
“It could be,” Gregor Demarkian said.
“Well, maybe the murderer will come back and kill him because he knows too much,” Caroline said. “At least that would get him out of my hair.”
“What about the other body?” Gregor Demarkian asked. “I was thinking, earlier this morning, that we spend all our time thinking about Michael Platte, because we know who he is and we have some insight into what an investigation into his murder would look like. But we also have another body, and we don’t know who it belongs to. We don’t even know why it was where it was. I had someone suggest to me that it might be somebody named Mr. Bullman.”
“That would be LizaAnne again,” Caroline said. “Talk about sociopaths. Do you ever wonder why everybody in the world seems to be a sociopath lately? My sons are both sociopaths. They’d have to be to turn their own father over to the police. LizaAnne is Fanny Bullman’s biggest competition for whore of Waldorf Pines. I think it drives her crazy that somebody as ‘old’ as Fanny Bullman can be sleeping with all these men. Of course, if she�
��d just take off about thirty pounds, there might be some more interest, but that’s LizaAnne. She ought to get whatever she wants because she’s LizaAnne. God, I’ve known Rockefellers without that kind of attitude.”
“Do you think she could be right?” Gregor asked. “Do you think the unidentified body could belong to Mr. Bullman?”
“No,” Caroline said. “You might as well check it out, of course, but Charlie Bullman is away on business a lot, which is when Fanny manages to do most of her damage. And this time it’s been a while. Almost two weeks, I think. There might be something there. But there might not. It’s hard to tell with Charlie and his trips. Even when he’s home, he’s not home. Mind you, she can do it most weekdays anyway, because Charlie works almost constantly. But I think if you check into things, you’ll find that he’s just off in Houston or somewhere on some kind of business trip. I find other people’s marriages fascinating, to tell you the truth. They have two children, those two do, and that seems to be all there is to it. They can’t have much time to talk to each other, and I don’t see how she could possibly have the energy to sleep with him after all the sleeping around she’s doing. And now Arthur Heydreich. She’d better watch it. There are news camera crews watching Arthur Heydreich. She could get caught.”
“One more thing,” Gregor Demarkian said.
“Fire away,” Caroline said.
“On the night before the bodies were discovered,” Gregor said, “on the night that the murders were actually committed. Were you out and around between ten forty-five and twelve thirty?”
“For goodness sake,” Caroline said. “Of course I was. Everybody was. Susan and I went to dinner at the club and then we stayed to play bridge. A lot of people do. The club is always full to bursting until at least eleven thirty, and after that there are stragglers at the bar. I don’t think Susan and I came home until midnight.”
“And did you see anybody, in all that time, on the green, or going to the pool house?”
“Anybody at the clubhouse could have been going to the pool house. They’re right next door to each other. And if you mean did I see Michael Platte and Martha Heydreich taking their walk across the green, of course I did. Everybody did, even if they tell you they didn’t. We were all talking about it. You’re not supposed to walk on the green at all, and those two—well, those two. You’d have had to see them together to understand.”
“Were they fighting? Were they holding hands? Was anything memorable about them at all?”
“Not a thing,” Caroline said. “And they never held hands, and Martha only had screaming fights when she had an audience. They were just walking across the green. They could have been going to the pool house. Michael was supposed to be working there. They could have been coming into the club. They could have been doing anything. It wasn’t as if it was the first time, Mr. Demarkian.”
“Ah,” Gregor Demarkian said.
Caroline stood up. “Do you know why I let you in here and not your friend? Because I do not expect you to tell anybody outside this room that you know who I am. Oh, I know you might have to if you want me arrested for the murder of Michael Platte and whoever else that was, but I didn’t murder Michael Platte. And I don’t welcome the prospect of having to change names and move to God only knows where yet again. I did not kill Michael Platte. I did not help my husband steal sixty billion dollars. And I want to be left alone.”
2
Back in his office at the clubhouse, Horace Wingard was working out—mentally, with nothing on paper—just what it was that could go wrong from the way things were working out now. Horace Wingard did not like the idea of things going wrong that could not be anticipated. He had lived his life heading trouble off at the pass, and he wasn’t about to stop now.
Miss Vaile was out there, sitting at her desk, doing work on the computer while she waited for him. She always waited for him. It was one of the things he had hired her for.
The introduction of Gregor Demarkian into this thing was good on a number of levels, Horace decided. It was especially good because, in the cleanup that was going to have to come after somebody had been arrested, he’d be able to tell new people interested in Waldorf Pines that Waldorf Pines had enough weight in the local community to require them to hire a high-priced consultant in case anything went wrong on the premises. Dealing with the kind of people who wanted to live at Waldorf Pines, it was never a bad move to associate yourself with celebrities. Gregor Demarkian was a bona fide celebrity, even if only a minor one. He had even been on television.
In another way, though, the introduction of Gregor Demarkian was a problem. He was not local. He was not Larry Farmer or Ken Bairn. Horace had known from the moment he was first introduced to the man that Gregor Demarkian was not about to allow himself to be ordered around, and not about to focus his investigation in the direction that was most likely to be good for Waldorf Pines.
Horace didn’t give a flying damn if Michael Platte was dead. He’d wanted the boy off the premises for months. He didn’t care about the identity of the unidentified body, either, because that was likely to be something he would not want associated with Waldorf Pines. He didn’t even care about the strange disappearance of Martha Heydreich. The woman had been an embarrassment to have around.
All that mattered, in the end, was making sure that Waldorf Pines was safe, and that he himself was safe. And that was going to take planning.
He opened the big, deep drawer on the left side of his desk and got out his old-fashioned Rolodex. Everybody else in the universe had given them up, but he still found his useful. He looked through the entries he had for private detectives and discarded each one. He didn’t want to know if a resident’s daughter was having an affair with the son of a Mafia boss or if one of the women was shoplifting at every store from here to Philadelphia. He tried his professional contact list, but he had the feeling that if he asked his man at the FBI about Gregor Demarkian, he’d be told to take a long jump off a short pier. It was difficult, knowing how to approach this.
He drew his phone close to him and called out to Miss Vaile at her desk.
“Miss Vaile,” he said. “That woman Mr. Demarkian is married to. She was, she is—”
“Bennis Hannaford,” Miss Vaile said. “Engine House, on the Main Line. Those Hannafords.”
“Ah.”
“There was a scandal a few years ago,” Miss Vaile said. “One of her siblings, I don’t remember if it was a sister or a brother, anyway, whoever it was, committed a murder. And was executed for it, I believe.”
“And was Miss Hannaford involved?”
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Ah,” Horace Wingard said again.
“I could get some more information for you, if you’d like,” Miss Vail said.
“Yes, please,” Horace said. “Yes, I’d like that very much. Are Mr. Demarkian and Mr. Farmer still on the grounds?”
“I just saw them come out of the Stanford-Pyrie house. Or, Mr. Demarkian did. Mr. Farmer seemed to be standing on the porch.”
“Fine,” Horace said, although he didn’t feel fine about that at all. “Tell me when they leave, will you? I want to talk to them before they go.”
“Of course, Mr. Wingard.”
Horace put down the phone. There had to be something, somewhere, to get this thing moving in the direction he wanted it to go.
Because the bottom line was simply this: Once the initial shock of the publicity was over, the deaths of those two people in the pool house and the disappearance of Martha Heydreich were not necessarily a bad thing. He was rid of two people he hadn’t wanted around anyway, and the publicity was already fading into legend.
Horace Wingard could handle a legend.
What he couldn’t handle was round two of a world-class scandal.
THREE
1
Larry Farmer was waiting on the deck when Gregor came out, feeling a little stunned by the entire conversation—or maybe by the entire situation. It didn’t he
lp that Larry was jumping around like a six-year-old who hasn’t been allowed to play recess games.
“You really shouldn’t do that,” he kept saying, as Gregor began to walk across the golf green.
“I shouldn’t walk on the golf green?”
“You shouldn’t talk to suspects like I’m not here. That’s not part of the agreement. You’re supposed to be consulting. I need to know things.”
“You don’t need to know that,” Gregor said. “Caroline Stanford-Pyrie isn’t your murderer.”
“You know that for sure? How can you know that for sure? And she’s done something. I can tell. I may be a hick town sheriff, but I can tell.”
“I want to see Arthur Heydreich,” Gregor said.
He looked up and down the length of the golf course. The houses were not the same and yet the same all at once. It made him crazy.
Larry hurried up from behind—somehow, Larry was always hurrying up from behind—and pointed at a house that was nearly all the way around the circle from the clubhouse. Gregor nodded and headed for it.
“You can’t just go barging in there,” Larry said. “You need a warrant.”
Gregor was about to say he didn’t have time for a warrant, but it felt like a waste of breath. He cut across the green to Arthur Heydreich’s house and rang the doorbell. The sound that came from inside was out of tune and echoing.
“Suspects won’t just talk to anybody,” Larry Farmer said. “It’s not like television.”
Arthur Heydreich opened the door and looked Gregor Demarkian straight in the face. He looked—untidy. His hair was uncombed. His shirt was twisted on his body. He looked like a man who just didn’t care anymore. Or wouldn’t, when he had a chance to think about it.
“Ah,” Arthur Heydreich said. He did not bother to notice Larry Farmer.
“I’d thought I’d ask if I could talk to you,” Gregor Demarkian said.
Arthur Heydreich made a face. “I didn’t think there was anything to talk about,” he said. “The police arrested me. They were wrong. Now I’m not arrested anymore.”
