The Old Man(21)
“You said I shouldn’t do that while she’s here, so I thought you must be expecting it other times. I thought I’d get it out of the way.”
She kissed him and patted his cheek. “Thank you, Peter.” She went back to stirring her sauce.
He said, “I’ll go out to a restaurant tonight, and let you two be together. It’ll also help us look more convincing as just roommates. Let me know when her plane comes in so I can be out of here by then.”
“Seven thirty is my best guess for her to reach here.”
“I’ll feed the dogs and take them out for their walk now.”
The walk took them the next couple of hours, to a few places where they hadn’t been before, so he used the leashes. He felt comfortable walking them tonight. An older man walking a pair of matched mutts was not especially interesting to people. The new route also gave him a chance to add to his familiarity with the area.
Whenever he was out, he was looking for signs that someone was studying him too closely or following him. He was now operating on the theory that the men who had tried to kill him had not been sent by any part of the government. There would have been no reason for government people not to do what they did best—put on bulletproof vests and jackets that said POLICE or FBI or something, arrive in numbers, kick down his door, and arrest him. He was not exactly guilty of stealing the money, but he was close enough to guilty for a legitimate conviction.
No, these had to be people who had something else in mind. Maybe they wanted to kill him for revenge, or to give themselves lots of time to search his house for account numbers and take the missing money. He had seen three of them briefly, but he hadn’t been able to get any of them to speak, so he hadn’t detected an accent. He hadn’t had time to try foreign languages. They’d had no identification, no phones, no tattoos, not even any jewelry. But they had been very professional, and that made him uneasy.
He brought the dogs home and found that the daughter had not yet arrived. He kissed Zoe, assured her that the sauce she’d made for the chicken breasts was excellent, and left.
His car had not been driven for a couple of days, so he took it into the city to the restaurant. All the way, he kept checking for cars that might be following him. He doubled back three times to be sure, and then had the parking attendants take his car so there would be someone watching it while he had dinner.
The restaurant was called Le Meilleur, and it might not have been the best, but the name wasn’t a pathetic boast. It was far better than most. He spent a couple of hours on an excellent meal, a dessert of fruit, and a glass of Armagnac. Then he drove out to the suburbs and stopped at a grocery store for supplies. He wasn’t sure whether he was now allowed to buy groceries for both of them, at least while the daughter was visiting, but he was still responsible for feeding himself and his dogs. The only thing he added that he wouldn’t usually buy was four bottles of good wine.
When he had put his car in the garage, he climbed the back stairs and went inside. As he came in the door, Zoe called out, “Is that a burglar?”
“Yes,” he said. “But I’m not working tonight.” He put his grocery bags on the floor and began to load the perishable food into the refrigerator. A moment later, Zoe appeared in the doorway, and a few feet behind her was a girl about twenty-three years old with long, blond hair, but bright blue eyes like Zoe’s. Zoe said, “Peter, this is my daughter, Sarah.”
Caldwell looked at her, and noted that she was the girl in the photographs, only a little older, and that she was more like her mother in person. Her movements and posture were the same. “Hi,” she said.
He smiled as sincerely as he could. “Hello, Sarah,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“I know. You’ve heard so much about me,” Sarah said.
“Not that much, really,” said Peter. “I got the impression that your mother is very proud of you, and has been looking forward to seeing you. Both are good things. And she said you were in school.”
“Law school,” she said. “At UCLA. Second year. This is my spring break.”
“Great,” he said. “I hope you’ll enjoy it. The weather has been unseasonably good for this time of year, so it’s good timing.”
“What? No lawyer jokes?”
He shook his head. “Not for a second-year student. You will have heard all of mine during your first year. Have you met the dogs?”
“Yes. My mother introduced us. They’re lovely.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I hope you’re not allergic or anything.”
“No,” she said.
Zoe said, “Okay, Peter. We’ll leave you alone now and let you put away your food.”
“All right,” he said. “I’ll just finish this and then take Carol and Dave out for a bit. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sarah.”
The two women went back to the living room, and the dogs appeared in the kitchen just as he put the last of the cans into the pantry and closed the door. He took the leashes off the hook, snapped them on the dogs’ collars, and took them out the kitchen door and down the back stairs.
They walked the neighborhood for a few blocks, feeling a night chill that reminded him that spring hadn’t quite closed the door on winter yet. A late snow was a possibility that didn’t seem as remote tonight.