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“That was very good,” she said. “Very professional. Were you really recording him?”
“Yes,” Stone said.
“Was he angry?”
“Yes. He kept saying he didn’t understand why you wouldn’t see him.”
She nodded. “It figures. He was a perfectly nice person, until he heard your name.”
“From whom did he hear it?”
“From me. I told him that Peter and I were spending Christmas with you. He demanded to know who you were, and I told him you are an old friend. That didn’t help. He started asking questions about you, and I cut him off.”
“How long had you been seeing him?” Stone asked.
“Since shortly after construction started on the house. It was foolish of me, I guess, to become involved with someone who worked for me, but you weren’t around, and I was lonely.”
“Does Peter know him?”
“They’ve met once. I’ve kept him away from Tim.”
“Well, let’s let sleeping dogs lie,” Stone said. “He’s been warned.”
17
P eter put on his overcoat and gloves, tucked his leather envelope under his arm, left the house, first making sure his key was in his pocket, walked up to Third Avenue, and hailed a cab. “Two-oh-five West Fifty-seventh Street,” he said to the driver, looking at the address written on the back of his father’s card.
The driver said nothing to him but talked rapidly into his cell phone in a language that Peter thought was Arabic or Urdu. The man drove as quickly as possible in the traffic, and arrived at the building in ten minutes. Peter paid and tipped the man, as his father had told him to, and got out of the cab. It was, he reflected, the first time he had been in a New York City taxicab alone. He walked into the building and was greeted by a man in a uniform.
“May I help you?”
“Yes, please. I have an appointment with Miss Letitia Covington.”
The man picked up a phone. “Your name?”
“Peter Ca-Barrington,” he said, correcting himself quickly.
The man announced him, gave him the apartment number, and told him to go up.
Peter got on the elevator and pressed the correct button. He checked his hair and the knot in his tie in the car’s mirror and exited into a vestibule. Before he could ring the bell the door opened and he was greeted by a uniformed maid.
“I’m Peter Barrington,” he said, and she took his coat and led him into a sunny living room facing Fifty-seventh Street. A handsome, gray-haired woman of an age he could not determine sat in an armchair.
“Peter? I’m Letitia Covington,” she said, indicating that he should sit on the sofa next to her chair.
“How do you do, Miss Covington,” he said. He shook the offered hand, which was cool and dry, and sat down.
“Would you like tea?”
“Thank you, ma’am, yes.”
“Milk or lemon?” she asked, reaching for the pot on a silver tray before her.
“Lemon, please, and two sugars.”
The woman smiled to herself and poured.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Peter said, accepting the cup.
