Moira frowns. She hadn’t really looked at the rest of the pool area, just focused on the woman in the pool. ‘No, I don’t think so. Like what?’
‘Anything the killer could have discarded. The gun, for example.’
‘No, nothing, I’d have said if I did. All I saw was the woman, the money, and then when I got closer after calling 911, the black bag on the bottom of the pool.’ Moira pauses. Thinks back to what happened when the police arrived. ‘But, a while after Detective Golding showed up, he got the uniforms searching the flower beds and surrounding area. I overheard one of them saying they were looking for the victim’s phone.’
Lizzie steps towards Moira, joining her at the pool’s edge. ‘Damn. They’ve drained it completely. I wanted to take a water sample.’
‘Is draining it normal?’ asks Moira.
‘I don’t have much experience with pool deaths, not so many of them in my neck of the woods in the Thames Valley. Given the amount of blood that probably went into the water I expect the cops advised the management to do it.’
‘Safer to drain it right away, I guess. They wouldn’t want people swimming in it after what happened. It’d be a health hazard.’
‘True. Taking the water sample was a long shot anyway.’ Lizzie frowns, looking thoughtful.
‘What is it?’ Moira asks.
‘I was just thinking about what you said earlier, how this is a strange place for a mugging.’ Lizzie scans the area around the pool. ‘I mean, it’s fine in the daylight, but it feels spookier now that the light’s fading, and after dark, with the park closed, why would anyone want to be here? The chances of two people happening to run into each other seems unlikely – it’d be a massive coincidence.’
‘I don’t believe in coincidence, but we know there must have been two people here, minimum.’
‘Indeed. So I think they arranged to meet here after the park was closed.’
Moira senses that’s not all. ‘But?’
Lizzie shakes her head. ‘Well, if they knew each other – say they were lovers rendezvousing here, for example – the gun seems out of place. Bringing a gun makes the murder feel premeditated, and crimes of passion are often more spur-of-the-moment, up close, and more personal – strangulation, stabbing, that sort of thing. This feels . . . different.’
Moira gets what Lizzie is saying. ‘Then maybe they weren’t lovers.’
‘Then why would they meet here after dark?’ says Lizzie, frowning.
‘That’s one big question,’ says Moira. Knowing why the victim was in the park late last night or in the early hours of this morning is a critical piece of the puzzle. She runs her hand through her hair. ‘The other is what the money was for.’
Lizzie nods. ‘We need an ID on our Jane Doe. That could help.’
‘For sure,’ says Moira. ‘And there’s something else bothering me about the gun. I know it’s secluded here, but we’re not that far from the houses on Coral View Boulevard. Surely someone would have heard the shot?’
‘Depends on the time. Mary and Archie had their golden wedding anniversary party last night. There was a firework display late in the evening. If the shot happened around that time it could have been camouflaged by the noise.’
‘Do you think they knew that?’
‘If they did, again, it points to premeditated,’ says Lizzie. ‘Shooting someone in time with the fireworks – that would take a bit of planning.’
‘And inside knowledge of when the firework display was taking place.’
They’re silent for a moment. Until this point they’d been working on the presumption that the killer was an outsider. But now, if their assumptions are true and the fireworks had been used to cover the sound of the gunshot, it means whoever did it had access to information about the social goings-on in The Homestead.