She followed him out, crying, “Leon, baby, I’m sorry-I didn’t…” But didn’t what? The call was important, wasn’t it?
“You’ll make it quick, huh?” Leon said bitterly as he clomped down the hall. “Sure you will. You got business to do, you’re gonna do it no matter what we’re doing. You got your priorities straight, don’t you?”
She felt sad and almost despondent. “No, Leon, that’s not fair,” she said. “I couldn’t have been on the phone for more than a minute. I’m sorry-”
But the screen door slammed, and he was gone.
Audrey was alone in the house now, feeling lonely and a tad anxious. She had no idea where Leon had stormed off to, just that he’d taken his car.
She called Bugbee back, reaching him on his cell.
He didn’t sound happy to hear from her, but then, he never did. “You said Conover called Rinaldi at 2:07 on Wednesday morning. Was that the only call that night?”
“That morning,” Bugbee corrected her. She could hear traffic noise in the background. He was probably in his car now.
“Were there any other calls that night or that morning between Conover and Rinaldi?”
“No.”
“That means Rinaldi didn’t call Conover first, wake him up or something. Conover wasn’t calling Rinaldi back, in other words.”
“Right. Put it this way: Rinaldi didn’t call Conover from either his home phone or his cell phone. It’s conceivable he called Conover from a payphone, but you’d have to get Conover’s phone records for that.”
“Yes. I think we should talk to both of these gentlemen again.”
“I’d say so. Hold on, I’m losing you.” A few seconds went by, a half a minute, and he was back on. “Yeah, put the squeeze on ’em both. I’d say we got ’em there with an inconsistency.”
“I’d like to talk to them tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday-don’t you have church or something?”
“Sunday afternoon.”
“I’m golfing.”
“Well, I’m going to see if I can’t talk to Nicholas Conover tomorrow afternoon.”
“On Sunday?”
“I figure he can’t be too busy at work if it’s a Sunday.”
“But that’s family time.”
“Stadler had a family too. Now the thing is, Roy, I think we should talk to these gentlemen simultaneously. And we ought to call them at the last minute before we go over. I really don’t want one calling the other to get their stories straight.”
“Right, but like I said, I’m golfing tomorrow.”
“I’m flexible as to the time tomorrow,” she said. “You tell me what works best for you. I’m usually out of church by eleven.”
“Christ. Well, I’d rather do Conover. I want to take down the fucker. You can talk to Rinaldi.”
“My sense, talking to Rinaldi, is that he might respond better to a male detective.”
“I don’t really give a shit what makes him comfortable.”
“It’s not a matter of comfort,” Audrey said. “It’s a matter of what’s going to work best, what will help us extract the information we want most effectively.”
Bugbee raised his voice a few decibels. “You want to get information out of Nicholas Conover, you gotta play him hard. And that calls for me. My style. Not yours. You’re a pushover, and he can tell.”
“Oh, I’m less of a pushover than you might think, Roy,” she said.
55
Cassie was already seated at a booth when Nick arrived at the Town Grounds, Fenwick’s upscale coffee house. The national craze for good coffee had even come to Fenwick, a Maxwell-House-in-the-can kind of place if ever there was one, but Starbucks had stayed clear so far. The result was this small, sort of neo-hippy joint that roasted their own coffee, did a healthy take-out business in beans, and served coffee in little glass French presses.
She was drinking a cup of herbal tea-a Celestial Seasonings Cranberry Apple Zinger packet was crumpled next to the teapot-and looked tired, gloomy. The smudges under her eyes were back.
“Am I late?” Nick asked.
A quick shake of the head. “No, why?”
“You look pissed off.”
“You obviously don’t know me well enough yet,” she said. “You’ll learn to recognize pissed off. This isn’t pissed off. This is tired.”
“Well, that dinner wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Your kids are great.”
“You really hit it off with them. I think Julia loved having another woman around.”
“It’s a pretty male household, with you two Conover men exuding all that testosterone.”
“The thing is, you know, Julia’s at this age where-well, I don’t know who’s going to talk to her about periods and tampons, all that girl stuff. She doesn’t want to hear it from me. Like I know anything about it anyway.”
“Her nanny, maybe? Marta, right?”
“I guess. But it’s not the same thing as a mom. There’s Laura’s sister, Aunt Abby, but we barely see her anymore since Laura’s death. And Luke spends most of his time hating me. One big happy family.” He told her about the big fight, Lucas storming out of the house.
“You talk about him like he’s the bad seed.”
“Sometimes I think he is.”
“Since Laura’s death.”
Nick nodded.
“How’d that happen?”
Nick shook his head. “I don’t want to get into that, you mind?”
“Hey, fine. What do I care?”
Nick looked at her. “Come on, don’t get offended. It’s just a sort of heavy topic for a Sunday morning, okay?” He took a breath. “We were driving to a swim meet and we hit an icy path and skidded.” He studied the tabletop. “And blah blah blah.”
“You were driving,” she said softly.
“Laura was, actually.”
“So you don’t blame yourself for it?”
“Oh, I do. I totally do.”
“But you know it’s not rational.”
“Who’s talking rational?”
“Whose swim meet?”
“Luke’s. Can we talk about something else, please?”
“So he gets to blame you and also share in the guilt, right?”
“You got it. It’s a mess.”
“He’s a good kid, deep down. Lot of attitude, like most sixteen-year-old boys. Hard shell, but soft nougat center.”
“How come I never get to see the nougat center?”
“Because you’re his dad, and you’re safe.”
“Well, maybe you can talk to him about the evils of smoking.”
“Yeah, right,” she said, chuckling. She took a pack of Marlboros from her jeans jacket and tapped one out. “I think I’m not the best person to do that. Kinda like your Sid Vicious giving ‘Just Say No’ lectures on heroin.” She took out her orange plastic Bic lighter and lit the cigarette, pulling the saucer toward her to use as an ashtray.
“I thought people who do yoga don’t smoke,” Nick said.
She flicked him a glare.
“Isn’t yoga all about breath?”
“Come on,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“Can I ask you something?” she said offhandedly.
“Sure.”
“Julia told me about your dog.” Nick felt his guts constrict, but he said nothing. “God,” she went on. “That’s so incredible. I mean, how did you feel when that happened?”
“How did I feel?” He didn’t know how to respond. How would anyone feel? He shook his head, faltered for a bit. “I was frightened for my kids, I guess, most of all. I was terrified they might be next.”
“But you must have been furious too. I mean, God, someone who’d do something like that to your family!” She tilted her head as she peered at him, her eyes keen. “I’d want to kill him.”
Why was she asking this?
He felt a wave of cold wash over him. “No,” he said, “it wasn’t anger so much as-as this protective instinct. That’s what I felt most of all.”