Mark exhales hard. ‘That’s . . . that’s a lot to process.’
‘Do they know who did it?’ says Jack. ‘Have they caught them? Is it connected to the burglaries? Are they—’
‘I understand that you’re worried. I’m worried too.’ Rick takes a breath. Mark isn’t making eye contact – he’s rubbing the beads of his necklace over and over. The other brother is the opposite – eyes on Rick, his focus pretty intense. Rick continues, ‘The cops are investigating, but we’re doing what we can to help. At the moment I’m collecting in all the logs made by our volunteer patrollers over the past few weeks. We’re going to have a look at them and see if there’s any sightings of the woman who was found in the pool.’
‘And what should we do?’ says Mark, his voice shaky. ‘What do we do now?’
‘You stay vigilant,’ says Rick. ‘Look out for anything unusual, and call security if you see anything suspicious.’
‘And if we feel in danger?’ asks Jack, the short-haired twin. ‘What then?’
Rick rubs his hand over his jaw. Looks from Jack to his brother Mark. ‘Then you call the cops, dial 911, and don’t hesitate.’
20
MOIRA
Her shoulder aches and her ankle’s throbbing but she ignores it. She doesn’t want the others to make a fuss – they can’t afford to get sidetracked now, not when they’re getting somewhere with the investigation.
Across the table, Lizzie’s talking. She looked pale when she arrived back at the house, and kept glancing around as if she was looking for someone. Moira had wanted to check she was okay, but Philip had hurried them through to the patio, where Rick was already sitting on one of the white wicker chairs, and asked for a debrief. Lizzie went first, and since she’s started talking about what she found at the crime scene the colour has returned to her cheeks. Moira watches her new friend. She sounds more confident now as she reports back about the scuff marks she found on the stones around the pool, but there’s something going on with her; Moira can tell Lizzie isn’t feeling all right.
She needs to play it gently, though. She knows sometimes she can be too direct and full-on, and that makes people clam up. Leaning towards Lizzie, Moira asks, ‘So what do you think it means?’
‘Well, the scuff marks were evenly spaced, and when I tried to recreate them I managed to do it by lying on my front and reaching over the pool’s edge,’ says Lizzie. ‘I think whoever killed the young woman tried to pull as many dollars out of the water as they could without going in, either when she was dead or while she was dying.’
They’re all silent for a moment. In the light of the Moroccan-style lanterns Philip looks sombre. Rick shakes his head.
‘I measured the length from the pool’s edge to the marks, and from that I’d estimate the killer is about six foot two, give or take an inch,’ says Lizzie. She looks at Philip. Gestures towards the patio doors. ‘We should write it on the board.’
Standing, Philip takes a dry marker off the table and adds the details to the column headed ‘Killer’。 He taps the line above the one he’s written that says ‘non swimmer?’。 ‘If our perpetrator stayed on the pool’s edge rather than entering the water, sounds like this theory could be right.’
‘Could be,’ says Lizzie. ‘Or they didn’t want any of the victim’s blood getting on them through the water.’
Moira has been wondering about that. ‘Did you manage to get a water sample?’
‘Yes,’ says Lizzie. She opens the messenger bag that’s on the ground by her feet and takes out a small, narrow plastic container with a long swab inside. ‘I got this, but I’m not sure it’ll be viable as there wasn’t much water left and I don’t know the length of time between the body being removed from the water and the water being drained, or whether they flushed the pool with chemicals after draining. There’s a lot of variables to consider.’