She nodded. “Sure. That’s right. The normal dad reaction. Gotta protect the kids.”
“Right. Got a new alarm system, told all the kids to be extra careful. But there’s only so much you can do.” His cell phone rang.
He apologized, and picked it up. “Nick Conover,” he said.
“Mr. Conover, this is Detective Rhimes?”
He paused for a few seconds. “Oh, yes. Hi-”
He wondered whether Cassie could hear the police detective’s voice.
Cassie smoked, idly studying a hand-lettered “THIS IS A SMOKE-FREE ZONE!” sign on a little chalkboard, pink Day-Glo chalk.
“I’m terribly sorry to bother you on a Sunday, but if there’s any way you could spare a little time, I’d like to come by and talk for a little bit.”
“Well, sure, I suppose. What’s up?”
“There’s a couple of little details I’m confused about, I thought you might be able to clear up for me. I know Sunday is family time, but if you wouldn’t mind…”
“Sure,” Nick said. “What time do you have in mind?”
“Is half an hour from now convenient for you?”
Nick hesitated. “I think that would be okay,” he said.
When he ended the call, he said, “Cassie, listen-I’m sorry, but-”
“Family calls,” she said.
He nodded. “Afraid so. I’ll make it up to you.”
She put a hand on his forearm. “Hey, don’t worry about it. Family’s always number one.”
As soon as he’d dropped her off, he dialed Eddie’s cell.
56
Driving up to the fancy iron gate with the brass plaque that said FENWICKE ESTATES, Audrey was distinctly aware that she was entering another world. She had changed out of her church clothes into something more casual, and now she felt underdressed. Her Honda Accord was definitely underdressed. The guard at the gatehouse looked her over with disapproval as he took her name and picked up his phone to call Conover. She doubted it was the color of her skin. More likely the color of the rust on her front left quarter panel.
She noticed all the security cameras. One, mounted to the gatehouse, took her picture. Another was positioned to capture her license plate at the rear of her car. There was a proximity-card reader by the guard’s window too: people who lived in Fenwicke Estates probably had to wave a card at the sensor to be admitted. The security was impressive. But what must it be like to live like this? she wondered. In a place like Fenwick, where the crimes were mostly localized in the bad part of town, why would you want to live this way? Then she remembered what Conover had said about his wife’s concern that the family might be threatened by employees laid off from Stratton.
When she drove up to the house, she drew breath.
This was a mansion, there was no other word for it. The place was immense, made of stone and brick, beautiful. She’d never seen a house like this in real life. It sat in the middle of a huge green field of a lawn, with specimen trees and flowers everywhere. As she walked up the stone path to the house, she glanced again at the lawn and noticed that the blades of grass were small and slender and sparse. Up close she could see that the lawn had recently been seeded.
The lawn.
She pretended to trip on one of the paving stones, fell to her knees, breaking her fall with one hand. When she got back on her feet, she slipped a good healthy pinch of soil into her purse just as the front door opened and Nicholas Conover came out.
“You okay?” he said, walking down the front steps toward her.
“Just clumsy. My husband’s always saying to me, ‘Walk much?’”
“Well, you’re not the first to trip on those stones. Gotta do something about that path.”
He was wearing faded jeans, a navy blue polo shirt, white running shoes. She hadn’t noticed before how tall he was and trim and powerful looking. He looked like an athlete, or a former athlete. She remembered reading that he’d been a hockey star at the high school.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you at home on a Sunday.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Conover said. “It’s probably just as well. My schedule during the week’s pretty jammed. Plus, anything I can do to help you out, I want to do. You’re doing important work.”
“I appreciate it. This is such a beautiful home.”
“Thanks. Come on in. Can I get you some coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“Lemonade? My daughter makes the best lemonade.”
“That right?”
“Right from frozen concentrate. Yep.”
“That sounds tempting, but I’ll pass.” Before they got to the front steps, she turned around and said, “That really has to be the most beautiful lawn I’ve ever seen.”
“Now, that’s what a guy likes to hear.”
“Oh, right. Men and their lawns. But seriously, it looks like a putting green.”
“And I don’t even golf. My greatest failing as a CEO.”
“Is it-do you mind if I ask, because my husband, Leon, is always complaining about the state of our lawn-did you put down sod?”
“No, just seed.”
“Regular grass seed, or, what’s that stuff called-where you spray it?”
“Hydroseed. Yep, that’s what we did.”
“Well, I’ve got to tell Leon. He’s always calling it hydroweeding because he says you get way too many weeds in the grass, but this looks just perfect to me.”
“That Leon sounds like a real card.”
“Oh, he is,” Audrey said, feeling a prickle. “That he is.”
The front door looked like something out of Versailles, ornately carved wood in a honey color. A quiet high-pitched tone sounded when Conover opened the door: an alarm system. He led her through an enormous foyer, high vaulted ceilings, really breathtaking. So this is how rich people live, she thought. Imagine being able to afford a house like this. She tried not to gawk, but it was hard.
She heard the sound of someone playing a piano and thought of Camille. “Is that one of yours?” she asked.
“My daughter,” he said. “Believe me, it doesn’t happen often, her practicing. It’s like a total eclipse of the sun.”
They walked by the room where a young girl was practicing, a lanky dark-haired girl around Camille’s age wearing a baseball shirt. The girl was playing the first prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, one of Audrey’s favorite pieces. She played it haltingly, mechanically, clearly not yet grasping how fluid it had to be. Audrey caught a quick flash of a baby grand piano, a Steinway. She remembered how long LaTonya and Paul had scrimped to buy the battered old upright, which never stayed in tune. Imagine owning a Steinway, she thought.
She was briefly tempted to stop and listen, but Conover kept going down the hall, and she kept up. As they entered an elegant sitting room with Persian rugs and big comfortable-looking easy chairs, she said, “Oh, they never like practicing.”
“Tell me about it,” Conover said, sinking into one of the chairs. “You pretty much have to put a-” he began, then started again. “They fight you on everything at this age. You have kids, Detective?”
She sat in the chair alongside his, not the one directly opposite, preferring to avoid the body language of confrontation. “No, I’m afraid we haven’t been blessed with children,” she said. What was he about to say-You have to put a gun to their heads? What was interesting was not the figure of speech but that he’d caught himself.
Interesting.
She casually glanced at an arrangement of family photographs in silver frames on a low table between them, and she felt a pang of jealousy. She saw Conover and his late wife, a son, and a daughter, Conover with his two children and the family dog. An extremely handsome family.
This house, these children-she was overcome by envy, which shamed her.
Envy and wrath shorten the life, it said in Ecclesiastes. Somewhere else it said that envy is the rottenness of the bones-was it Proverbs? Who is able to stand before envy? Who indeed? Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches. That was in Psalms, she was quite sure. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction.