Company Man (28 page)

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.”

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.

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 hydro
weeding
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
.

Her entire house could fit into a couple of these rooms.

She would never have children.

She was sitting next to the man who was responsible for laying Leon off.

She took out her notebook and said, “Well, I just wanted to clear up a few things from our last conversation.”

“Sure.” Conover leaned back in his chair, arms folded back, stretching. “How can I help you?”

“If we can go back to last Tuesday evening, ten days ago.”

Conover looked puzzled.

“The night that Andrew Stadler was murdered.”

He nodded his head. “Okay. Right.”

She consulted her pad, as if she had the notes from their last interview right in front of her. She'd already transcribed them and put them into a folder in one of the Stadler file boxes. “We talked about where you were that night,” she prompted, “when your memory was maybe a little fresher. You said you were at home, asleep by eleven or eleven thirty. You said you slept through the night.”

“Okay.”

“You don't remember getting up that night?”

He furrowed his brow. “I suppose it's possible I got up to pee.”

“But you didn't make a phone call?”

“When?”

“In the middle of the night. After you went to sleep.”

“Not that I recall,” he said, smiling, leaning forward. “If I'm making calls in my sleep, I've got even bigger problems than I'm aware of.”

She smiled too. “Mr. Conover, at 2:07
A.M.
that night you placed a call to your security director, Edward Rinaldi. Do you remember that?”

Conover didn't seem to react. He seemed to be examining the pattern on the Oriental rug. “We're talking after midnight, early on Wednesday?”

“That's right.”

“Then I must have my days wrong.”

“I'm sorry?”

“One of those nights I remember the alarm went off. I've got it set to make a sound in my bedroom so it doesn't wake up the whole house.”

“The alarm went off,” Audrey said. That was checkable, of course.

“Something set it off, and I went downstairs to check it out. It was nothing, as far as I could see, but I was a little anxious. You can understand, I'm sure, with what had just happened.”

She nodded, compressed her lips, jotted a note. Didn't meet his eyes.

“Eddie, Stratton's security director, had just had one of his guys put in this fancy new alarm system, and I wasn't sure if this was a false alarm or something I should be concerned about.”

“You didn't call the alarm company?”

“My first thought was to call Eddie—I asked him to come out to the house and check it out.”

She looked up. “You couldn't check it out yourself?”

“Oh, I did. But I wanted to make sure there wasn't something faulty in the system. I didn't want to call the cops for what was sure to be a false alarm. I wanted Eddie to check it out.”

“At two in the morning?”

“He wasn't happy about it.” Conover grinned again. “But given what I've been through, we both agreed it was better safe than sorry.”

“Yet you told me you slept through the night.”

“Obviously I got the days mixed up. My apologies.” He didn't sound at all defensive. He sounded quite casual. Matter-of-fact. “Tell you something else, I've been taking this pill to help me sleep, and it kind of makes the nights sort of blurry for me.”

“Amnesia?”

“No, nothing like that. I don't think Ambien causes amnesia like some of those other sleeping pills, Halcion or whatever. It's just that when I pass out, I'm zonked.”

“I see.”

He'd just altered his story significantly, but in a completely believable way. Or was she being too suspicious? Maybe he really had mixed up the days. People did it all the time. If that night hadn't been unusual or remarkable for him—if, that is, he hadn't witnessed Andrew Stadler's murder that night, or been aware of it whether before or after the fact—then there was no reason for him to have any special, fixed memory of what he'd done. Or not done.

“And did Mr. Rinaldi come over?”

Conover nodded. “Maybe half an hour later. He walked around the yard, didn't find anything. Checked the system. He thought maybe a large animal had set it off, like a deer or something.”

“Not an intruder.”

“Not that he could see. I mean, it's possible someone was out there, walking around on my property, near the house. But I didn't see anyone when I got up, and by the time Eddie got here, he didn't see anything either.”

“You said you took Ambien to go to sleep that night?”

“Right.”

“So you must have been pretty groggy when the alarm went off.”

“I'll say.”

“So there might have been someone, or something, that you just didn't notice. Being groggy and all.”

“Definitely possible.”

“Did anyone else in the house wake up at the time?”

“No. The kids were asleep, and Marta—she's the nanny and housekeeper—she didn't get up either. Like I said, the alarm was set to sound in my bedroom, and not too loud. And the house is pretty soundproof.”

“Mr. Conover, you said your security director had ‘just' put in the new alarm system. How long ago?”

“Two weeks ago. Not even.”

“After the incident with the dog?”

“You got it. If I could have had Eddie put in a moat and a drawbridge, I'd have done that too. I don't ever want my kids to be endangered.”

“Certainly.” She'd noticed the cameras around the house when she'd arrived. “If you'd had a system like this earlier, you might have been able to prevent the break-ins.”

“Maybe,” Conover said.

“But you live in this gated community. There seems to be a lot of security when you come in—the guard, the access control, the cameras in front and all around the perimeter fence.”

“Which does a pretty good job of keeping out unautho
rized vehicles. Problem is, there's nothing that stops someone from just climbing the fence out of sight of the guardhouse and getting in that way. The cameras'll pick them up, but there's no motion sensor around the fence—no alarm goes off.”

“That's a serious security flaw.”

“Tell me about it. That's why Eddie wanted to beef up the system at the house.”

But now another thought appeared at the back of her thoughts, and she tugged at it like a stray thread.

The security system.

The cameras.

Nothing that stops someone from just climbing the fence
.

If Stadler had climbed the fence that surrounded Fenwicke Estates and walked to Conover's house in the middle of the night, walked across the lawn, setting off the brand-new motion sensors, wouldn't that have been captured by Conover's own video cameras?

And if so, wouldn't there be a recording somewhere? Probably not videotape: no one used that anymore. Probably recorded onto a hard drive somewhere in the house, right? She wondered about that. She didn't really know much about how these newfangled security systems worked.

She'd have to take a closer look.

“You know, I've changed my mind about that coffee,” Audrey said.