She scans the text, picking out the keywords – Manatee Park, swimming pool, young, unidentified woman. The piece is more puff than facts, and passes the incident off as an accidental drowning, but it’s clear from the date given that it’s referring to the murder. There’s nothing about the money or the fact that the woman had been shot. The most important details have been left out.
Moira feels uneasy. What’s reported certainly isn’t anything close to the whole truth. It seems like misdirection or some kind of arse-covering move, but by who and why?
Switching to the Facebook app, she opens The Homestead community page and searches for mentions of the murder or so-called accident. She scrolls through the posts from the various special-interest groups talking about tennis tournaments, quilt-a-thons, the pickleball championships, a trip to a local vineyard and a weekend excursion to St Pete Beach. There are posts from different residents asking for recommendations on local restaurants, home-maintenance help and someone who can install an aquarium. But there’s nothing about the murder. She’s staring at the screen, thinking how odd it is that there’s a total absence of discussion about it, when a new post appears at the top of the feed.
Peggy Leggerhorne to The Homestead community: [PLEASE DON’T DELETE AGAIN] Does anyone know WHAT HAPPENED at Manatee Park? My husband, Dougie, says someone DIED? Is that true? Does anyone KNOW who it was?
Moira frowns. If Peggy Leggerhorne is asking the moderators not to delete her message again, they must be taking down posts on topics they don’t like – and it looks likely that the subject of murder is one of those topics.
As she watches, comments start to appear beneath Peggy’s post. Interesting. It’s barely six in the morning, but it seems as if plenty of the residents are awake.
TexasPete58: I heard a girl died
SamanthaLovesCats: Someone died? Who?
MarkGrecian: It’s just a rumour is all
DorothyKnits: It was a young woman. She was in the pool.
TeaAndCake44583: I heard something about an accident in the pool at Manatee
MarkandJack: It was murder
BlakeGotterton: This can’t be true
Moira hasn’t finished reading the comments when the thread suddenly disappears. She scrolls up and down the page, but can’t find it. Comes out of the app, and then goes back in – still nothing. She’s just about to post a question to ask what’s happened when a notification flashes up:
The moderator has turned off posting and comments.
It seems overkill if it’s due to Peggy’s discussion post – there wasn’t anything inappropriate being said, and they were talking about something that had happened in the community. Moira thinks about the lack of news reports on the murder. Perhaps the problem is that they were talking about it happening in the community. Opening up Messenger, Moira taps out a message.
Moira Flynn: Hi Peggy, I just saw your post but it’s disappeared now. Do the moderators usually delete things like that?
Peggy replies almost immediately.
Peggy Leggerhorne: All the goddamn time! I just wanted to know what’s going on but I’ve posted three times about the death and they delete it every time. It was the same when I posted about getting burglarised – they deleted that too!!
Moira Flynn: I’m so sorry to hear you got burgled
Peggy Leggerhorne: We were the first home it happened to. We’re on Stingray Drive. If they’d let us post about in on the group maybe others could have gotten more preventative measures in place and saved themselves the heartbreak of getting burglarised
Moira Flynn: Who moderates the group?
Peggy Leggerhorne: Homestead management. I thought they’d be asleep now but no!
Moira stares at Peggy’s reply. It’s interesting that the management run the community Facebook page. She clicks back to the page and looks up the moderator list. There are three of them, two women and one man. In their profile pictures they look like they’re all young – probably in their twenties – and have the super-wide smiles of a Disney cast member. They’re all wearing turquoise The Homestead T-shirts. Only one of them has a green dot beside their name, indicating that they’re online right now – Brad Winslow.