Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

Another silence, and then he spoke through a mouthful of cantaloupe. “Just don’t be telling me about getting a job as a night watchman.”

She was annoyed but didn’t let on. “We don’t have to talk about that stuff now, honey.”

“All right.”

Her cell phone rang. She hesitated. Not just that it was a flow-breaker, but it was an unwelcome reminder of the job she had and he didn’t. She knew it couldn’t be a personal call. It rang again.

“I’ll make it quick,” she said, reaching for the cell phone on her nightstand.

Leon cast her a warning look.

It was Roy Bugbee. This was unusual, a call from Bugbee on a Saturday morning. He wasn’t friendly, but neither was he as rude as usual. “The phone records,” he said.

“One second.” She walked out of the bedroom so as not to subject Leon to her conversation. “Rinaldi’s cell phone records?”

“One of the numbers kept coming up a lot, no ID, so I looked it up in Bresser’s.” He was referring to one of the reverse phone directories. She was impressed at Bugbee’s initiative, relieved that he’d finally agreed to take this job on. Maybe he wasn’t completely beyond redemption.

Bugbee had paused, waiting for her to say something, or maybe for dramatic effect, so she said, “Great idea.”

“Right. And three guesses who called Rinaldi at 2:07 in the morning, the day Stadler got plugged.”

“Stadler,” she ventured.

“No,” Bugbee said. “Nicholas Conover.”

“Two in the morning? The same morning when Stadler’s body was found, you mean.”

“Uh huh.”

“But... but Conover told me he slept through the night.”

“Hmph. Guess not, huh?”

“No,” Audrey said, feeling a little tingle of excitement. “I guess not.” Another awkward pause. “Is that it?”

“Is that it? ” Bugbee scoffed. “You got something better on a Saturday morning?”

“No, I mean — nice job,” she said. “Well done.”

She ended the call and returned to the bedroom, but Leon was no longer in bed. He was sitting in the chair, dressed, tying his sneakers.

“What are you doing?” she said.

Leon stood up, and as he walked out of the bedroom, he passed the bed and flung out a hand at the breakfast tray, flipping it onto the floor. The cantaloupe balls went skittering across the carpet, the French toast flopping down in a neat pile, the maple syrup puddle sitting atop the gray wool. The coffee spill soaked right in, as did the half-and-half. Audrey couldn’t keep from letting out a squawk of surprise.

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.

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.”