by Jane Haddam
“What they want is cover,” Bennis told him, over and over again. “They want you to suck up all the publicity. It’s usually bad publicity. They want to be able to sit back and say, look, we went out and got the hottest guy out there, it’s not our fault this is the way it turned out.”
“I don’t usually leave a case until it’s been solved,” Gregor pointed out. “I don’t usually leave them with an open murder file.”
“It’s not just a matter of solving the case,” Bennis said. “It’s also how it gets solved and who it gets solved in the face of. That didn’t make any sense, I know. But I think a lot of these times, a lot of these cases, what they’re worried about is not necessarily solving it, but solving it by arresting the wrong person.”
“They bring me in as a kind of Innocence Project?”
“No,” Bennis said, “not that kind of wrong person. I mean they don’t want to think that the person who is really guilty is the richest guy in town, maybe, or the mayor, or somebody else they would rather not arrest. I don’t think they’re going to call you in if they think the perpetrator is the local high school drug dealer. They bring you in when the murderer is going to be somebody—normal.”
“I don’t think murderers are normal,” Gregor said. “I never did buy that thing about how any one of us could be a murderer under the right circumstances. Most of us could be killers, yes, but that isn’t the same thing.”
“You’re not really going to give me one of those lectures about the fundamentally altered mind of the murderer,” Bennis said. “I mean, the first time I heard you give one of those was the week after we met, and that was—”
Gregor sat in Larry Farmer’s car and thought that his theory was fine as far as it went, but that he’d never developed it to the point of determining how you could recognize such a person when you first met him.
Larry Farmer had pulled up right outside the Pineville Station Police Department’s front door. It wasn’t much of a police department as far as Gregor could see, but the departments that hired him almost never were. Larry Farmer looked around a bit and then sighed with relief.
“That’s all right, then,” he said. “I was sure we’d already be inundated. It’s just the kind of thing, you know. There’ll be trucks down here before the day is out. It’s been enormous news locally for weeks. This is going to make it worse.”
Gregor sat where he was, without moving. Larry Farmer didn’t seem to be moving, either.
“We’re going to want to call a press conference,” Larry Farmer said. “I hope you don’t mind, but it’s absolutely vital. We can’t be seen as just sitting on our rear ends or not doing something to repair the situation. Especially now that we seem to have made such a mess of it. There’s going to be a lot of local publicity and there’s going to be a lot of, well, people.”
“People?”
Larry Farmer shrugged.
Gregor leaned back a little. “My wife says that people hire me when they know who committed the murder, but it’s somebody they don’t want to take the responsibility of arresting. That they call me in to take the heat when the murderer turns out to be the mayor.”
“Oh, the murderer isn’t the mayor,” Larry Farmer said.
“I wasn’t suggesting he was,” Gregor said. “I was trying to find out if that was why you had hired me. To take the heat of the publicity which you know is going to be bad.”
Larry Farmer squirmed. “Is that unacceptable? Would you be unwilling to work for us if that was what we wanted? Because, I have to admit, Mr. Demarkian, the publicity is an issue. The publicity and the pressure. There’s going to be a lot of pressure, because it’s Waldorf Pines. And we haven’t talked money yet, but I’ve heard about what you charge. You’re not cheap. I don’t think I could justify your fee if it wasn’t for the problem with the publicity. And, you know, the pressure.”
“I’ve got nothing against taking the heat with the publicity,” Gregor said, “but I do think that if you’ve got a good idea who did this and why, or even just who, that it might save us both a lot of time if you just told me now. Making me stumble around until I stumble on the obvious just wastes time. And even if you’re wrong, knowing who you suspect and why is useful information.”
Larry Farmer fluttered his hands in the air. Everything about the man fluttered.
“But that’s the thing,” he said. “That’s the thing. You know who I suspect? Arthur Heydreich. Or at least, I would have suspected him if that body in the pool house had been his wife. What would you think? Here’s a man found right at the scene with two dead bodies. One is definitely the body of the kid who was screwing his wife, or at least who everybody said was screwing his wife. The second was unrecognizable but, you know, arguably—”
“It made sense to expect it belonged to the wife,” Gregor said. “We’ve been over this before.”
“Now I don’t know what happened, or why,” Larry Farmer said, “The kid who’s dead? The body we can identify? Well, he belongs to a Waldorf Pines family. He was a first-class screwup. His parents bought him out of some legal trouble on and off, and he got expelled from college for something drug related. But dead in the pool with his head bashed in from behind? Who would do that? He wasn’t a major dealer. He didn’t know anybody who was, that we can tell. His parents moved to Waldorf Pines after he left for college. And I refuse to believe all that nonsense about the Marsh girl. It’s ridiculous.”
“Who’s the Marsh girl, and what’s the nonsense about her?”
Larry Farmer sighed again. “LizaAnne Marsh lives in Waldorf Pines. She goes to high school. She’s a senior, I think. She’s one of those people. She’s a sociopath in training, if she isn’t full blown there yet. She had one of those parties, those sweet sixteen parties, that they show on television.”
“What?”
“It’s a reality television show,” Larry Farmer said. “My Super Sweet 16. Girls have sweet sixteen parties and they film them, the preparations, the party itself, everything. I don’t know how to explain them to you if you haven’t seen them. The families spend a ton of money on them, hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“Seriously?” Gregor said. “Then this Waldorf Pines place is, what, an enclave for multimillionaires?”
“No,” Larry Farmer said, “not at all. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the course of my life, Mr. Demarkian, it’s that people with real money would never let some television show come and film some big party they gave for their daughter, and they really wouldn’t let some television show make a big fuss about what everything costs. The people who live at Waldorf Pines are well off, more or less, but it’s nothing like that. LizaAnne Marsh’s father owns a bunch of car dealerships. High-end cars, multiple dealerships, he’s definitely making money. It’s just not that kind of money.”
“And yet he gave his daughter a party that costs a hundred thousand dollars?”
“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars by the time they added up the final tab,” Larry Farmer said. “But you know what people like that are like, Mr. Demarkian. They like to throw it around. Old Herb Marsh likes to throw it around, and as much of it in public as he can. He’s probably in debt up to his eyeballs.”
“You haven’t checked?”
“I haven’t got probable cause to check,” Larry Farmer said. “I’d love to see the guy’s financial statements, though. I’d be willing to bet just about anything we’ll be seeing him back here on fraud charges in a couple of years. Either that or the feds will get him for playing games with his taxes. Or, hell, you know, the state of Pennsylvania. But I don’t have anything that sounds like he’s involved in this.”
“But you think his daughter is?”
“No,” Larry Farmer said. “It’s the people in my department. They’ve come up with this ridiculous theory that it’s LizaAnne who killed Michael Platte, because LizaAnne had the hots for him, and he wasn’t buying. He was chasing around after Martha Heydreich instead.”
“And t
he other body?”
“This was back before we knew the other body wasn’t Martha Heydreich’s,” Larry Farmer said. “We thought it was, and they thought LizaAnne could have killed her, too, for the same reason. Out of jealousy, I guess, or spite, or just the attitude that what LizaAnne wants, LizaAnne gets. And it’s like I said, the girl is a sociopath. It’s just that I can’t see anybody murdering anybody for a reason like that. Can you?”
Gregor shook his head. “People commit murder for a lot of completely silly reasons,” he said. “They commit murder for reasons that would sound trivial to you and me. I don’t think the apparent triviality of the reason is the problem with that theory.”
“What is?”
“You’re back to the second body,” Gregor said. “You have two bodies, both of them men. You’d have to have a reason for this girl to kill another man.”
“Maybe she was snubbed by this one, too,” Larry Farmer said. “I told you it was all just crazy. She can’t go around killing every guy who doesn’t want to date her. There’s got to be a ton of them.”
“Unpleasant personality?”
“Heavyset and not very attractive physically,” Larry Farmer said. “Back when I was growing up in this town, a girl who looked like that wouldn’t have been on the map socially. But that’s what you get when you’re stuck with a place like Waldorf Pines. It changes the entire equation. Popular used to be about being pretty and talented and socially adept. Now it’s about how much money your father has and whether he’s willing to spend more than most people would spend for a house giving you a party where you ride in on an elephant.”
“What?” Gregor said again.
“That’s how LizaAnne Marsh made her entrance at her party,” Larry Farmer said. “She rode in on an elephant. You would not believe the amount of trouble it caused. Handlers. Permits. The state animal control people. A circus license. I don’t remember all the details. But we were stuck doing days of work just so that they could make it happen, and then the party needed extra security because of all the drunken teenagers who hadn’t been invited and who wanted to get in. I just about killed somebody myself in the middle of all that.”
Larry looked out and around at the Pineville Station Police Department building.
“It’s the Waldorf Pines people,” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the way things are in places like Philadelphia. You’ve got the Main Line and all of that. It just never was the way things were out here, and I don’t like it. I just wish they’d all pack up and go away somewhere and leave the rest of us alone.”
2
The Pineville Station Police Department was like a thousand others across the United States, small, neat, and built to be “modern” in 1958. There was a long, blond wood counter where members of the public were supposed to present themselves to do their business. There were a few desks behind that counter, most of them unoccupied at this time of day. There were two small offices to the back, one of which Gregor assumed must belong to Larry Farmer. A young woman sat at a desk just behind the counter and did things on the computer. A tall man stood aimlessly next to her, talking without raising his voice and looking as if he had nowhere to go. The tall man was the most formally dressed person in the place.
“Oh, good,” Larry said. “Just who we need. That’s Buck Monaghan. Buck! Buck! I brought back Gregor Demarkian. I told you I would.”
The tall man straightened up and held out his hand to Gregor. “I hope he didn’t kidnap you,” he said. “The situation is pretty dire, but I don’t think we’re at the point where we have to start committing felonies just yet.”
“We’re not the ones committing felonies,” Larry Farmer said. “I wish you’d stop saying things like that. I know you think it’s funny, but it just gets everybody all confused, and then they’re mad at me again. Of course I didn’t kidnap him. I explained the situation, and then he agreed to come. I don’t know what it’s going to cost, but it’s better to have him here than not. You said that yourself just this morning when I asked you about it.”
Buck Monaghan seemed to sigh and stare up at the ceiling, but the movements were so slight, Gregor wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined them. When Gregor took another look, the impression was gone.
Buck Monaghan leaned over the counter and picked up a manila folder. “It’s very definitely a very good thing that we have Mr. Demarkian here, and I never meant to suggest otherwise. I’ll admit I was a little surprised at how fast you got it done. Has he filled you in on anything at all, Mr. Demarkian? Or has he just been panicking?”
“I think I’m more or less filled in,” Gregor said. “Two bodies, one too damaged to identify immediately. DNA came back without providing positive identification of any person but ruling out the person who had been supposed to be the victim—”
“Well,” Buck said, “yes, but not because we’ve got Martha Heydreich’s DNA, either. I sometimes find it more than a little disappointing that the world does not work the way it does on television. If this had been CSI, Martha’s DNA would have been in half a dozen databases and the only reason it wouldn’t have been would be because otherwise the show wouldn’t last long enough. I used to think it would be interesting to get a case like this, a case that wasn’t completely cut and dried. I spent a lot of my time doing plea deals with idiots who think it’s just common sense to rob convenience stores being tended by some kid you’ve known since high school and then expecting he won’t recognize you in a ski mask. The ordinary run of criminal leaves a lot to be desired.”
“It’s not the criminal I’m worried about,” Larry Farmer said.
The young woman at the computer looked up. She gave Gregor Demarkian a long stare and said, “It’s Waldorf Pines. It’s always Waldorf Pines. When anything goes really wrong in this town, you can bet your wallet it’s going to have something to do with Waldorf Pines.”
Gregor shook his head. “Just a few minutes ago, Mr. Farmer here was telling me that the people who live in Waldorf Pines weren’t all that wealthy or all that influential. Car dealerships, I think he said. But if they’re not all that wealthy and they’re not all that influential, how can they cause you all this trouble?”
Buck Monaghan and Larry Farmer and the young woman all looked at each other.
It was Buck Monaghan who finally spoke. “It’s not the people who live in Waldorf Pines who are the problem,” he said.
The young woman snorted. “They’re a problem, all right. If I get my hands on that little bitch, I’ll—”
“That wasn’t the kind of problem I was talking about,” Buck Monaghan said.
“Well, it’s not just LizaAnne, queen of the universe, who’s trouble,” the young woman said. “There’s the alleged victim, the one who isn’t a victim and is probably in Monte Carlo by now under an assumed name. She was a prize and a half on Sundays, let me tell you.”
Buck Monaghan cleared his throat. “Miss Connolly’s sister wasn’t invited to the Marsh party,” he explained, “and as for Martha Heydreich—well, whatever. Let’s just say that she isn’t a very polite person.”
“She drove that car around like she wanted to kill somebody,” Miss Connolly said, “and the somebody she wanted to kill was definitely one of us peasants. Honestly, Larry, stop shushing me. Who do these people think they are? It’s not Bill Gates living out there and it isn’t the president of the United States, either. Since when does being able to borrow enough money to ride around in a pink sports car make you queen of the May?”
“Do you even know what that means, being queen of the May?” Buck Monaghan said.
Miss Connolly shook that off. “It’s something my mother used to say. And Sister Agnes Haloran at school. Why should I care what it means? The whole lot of them up there act like somebody just appointed them God, and they don’t care what kind of damage they do in the process. It’s not just that Jen didn’t get invited to the Marsh party, it’s that she tried to kill herself over it. Because that’s Waldorf Pines and they can
’t just not invite you. They have to go around telling everybody at school that they shouldn’t ever talk to you again because you’re such a freak, and probably a lesbian, and then—”
Gregor straightened up. “I see,” he said. “That’s why some people had the other theory. This is about that girl again.”
“LizaAnne Marsh,” Larry Farmer said.
“She’s not a girl,” Miss Connolly said. “She’s a hatchet-faced snake and a tub of lard. And it wouldn’t surprise me if she’d killed off half the state of Pennsylvania.”
“It sounds more like half the state of Pennsylvania has a reason to kill her,” Buck Monaghan said, “and she’s very much alive, and at her usual business. And that may be very unfortunate on a number of levels, but it is not our problem at the moment. Our problem is Waldorf Pines.”
Miss Connolly had turned back to her computer. “They’re not worried about the people who live there,” she said, “they’re worried about the people who run the place. Not that anybody really knows who runs the place. It’s a private corporation.”
“People have a right to form private corporations,” Buck Monaghan said. Miss Connolly shuddered, and he frowned at her back. “But as it turns out, it’s not the owners of the corporation we’re concerned with immediately, it’s the man they hired to manage the place. Waldorf Pines is a private, gated community where anyone who buys a house must be a member of the golf club. You’re from Philadelphia, so you’re probably thinking of how those traditionally work, places where there’s been a club in place for generations and then the members decide to build residential housing on the grounds. This isn’t like that. Waldorf Pines was invented pretty much out of whole cloth not more than fifteen years ago. They built the club, they built the golf course, they built the houses, they worked up the club rules, they did the whole thing like they were making a set for a movie. The rumor, and it’s a reliable rumor, is that they sunk a ton of money into doing it, and they’ve got a continuing interest. I’ve been trying to get some information about exactly how the financial arrangements go for the people who are living there, but so far all I’ve heard is that the arrangements don’t have anything to do with this murder and I don’t have an excuse for getting what is supposed to be privileged communication. But there’s something, some way in which the company is continuing to be financially involved, because they’ve got a full time manager out there and he seems to be charged with protecting their interests.”