I knew I'd made a terrible mistake the minute his face shut down.
'What a dreadful suggestion. Abominable. I'm sure you see a lot of that kind of thing in your work, but it's not something that's happened in our family, young lady.'
I'm not sure what he was referring to when he said 'my work,' and I'm not sure Fred did, either, but the point was, he now felt entitled to be angry with me, and he was taking full license.
'Something awful did happen in your family, though,' I said, as quietly and gently as a snowflake falling.
His face crumpled for a minute, like tissue paper. 'Yes,' he agreed. 'Yes, it did.' He heaved himself to his feet. 'I have to go.'
'You sure you're okay to drive?' Tolliver asked, in the most neutral voice possible.
'Actually, I don't believe I am,' Fred admitted, much to my surprise. I don't think I'd ever heard a man admit he was incapable of driving, and I have watched scores of men in many states of being high. They all thought they could manage a car, or a truck, or a boat.
'I'll get him home in his car, you follow us,' Tolliver said.
I nodded. I wasn't especially pleased at the prospect of getting the car back out of the hotel garage, but I didn't see anything else we could do. I stored the check in Tolliver's laptop case for safekeeping while Tolliver called downstairs about the cars. We got Mr. Hart up between us, and we went to the elevator. He kept telling us over and over how much he appreciated our help, and how sorry he was he'd spoken to me in an angry way.
I couldn't figure out Victor's grandfather. Finally I stopped trying. It was obvious to me that this man was under a nearly unbearable strain, and the weight of it was crushing him. But why Fred Hart? If our distraught caller had been Joel, I could have understood it better. After all, it was his daughter who was dead, it was his family who was under suspicion, it was his wife who was about to give birth under extremely unhappy circumstances.
With some difficulty, and a little help from the bellboy, we got the older man into the passenger's seat of his car. He was driving his Lexus hybrid, the one like his son-in-law's, and even under the circumstances I could read Tolliver's flush of pleasure at getting to drive the car. I was smiling to myself as I slid into our car, which was very humble in comparison.
Fred had given Tolliver directions, though he was speaking less and less and seemed ready to go to sleep. I followed Tolliver east, again, this time past the Bingham College area to Germantown. We turned so many times I was worried about Tolliver and me escaping from the suburb after we'd deposited Fred at his home.
When Tolliver pulled into a driveway that led into a large corner lot, I was trying not to be stunned by the obvious richness of the area. Fred Hart's place had been new maybe twenty-five years ago. The whole neighborhood appeared to date from the same era; the homes looked fairly modern in style, but the trees showed a good growth and all the landscaping seemed well-established.
What astonished me so was that all these houses had taken steroids. Not one of them would have less than four bedrooms, and that would only be the beginning of it. I imagined each one of them cost a million, probably way more; this was not the kind of place I planned to look at when Tolliver and I began house hunting. I pulled into the multi-car garage, which could hold two more cars besides the Lexus and ours. Besides being big enough to hold four third-world families, the garage had a large closet at the far right side that must act as a toolshed. And there wasn't a single oil stain.
I jumped out to help Tolliver, who was having trouble getting Fred out of the car.
'He pretty much passed out during the drive,' Tolliver explained. 'At least he'd already given me directions. I hope the house key works. If we're at the wrong house, we're screwed.' We both laughed, but not too merrily. I sure didn't want to have to talk to the police again, for any reason.
Tolliver handed me a key ring he'd extracted from Fred's pocket, and while he resumed pulling Fred out of the car I hurried over to the door. The second key I tried turned in the lock, and his security system, if he had one, wasn't on, because nothing began to tweet or blare when Tolliver got the stumbling man into the house. I moved ahead to find the best place to stow him. I had to stop and gape. I'd thought the Morgenstern house was so pretty and big, but this house was overwhelming. The kitchen we'd entered was huge, just huge. I passed from there into the family room, or den, or living room. I didn't know what to call it. It had exposed beams in the cathedral ceiling, an enormous fireplace, and conversation groupings.
'If I had been brought up here, I would believe I could have anything I wanted,' I said, stunned.
'Where do we go?' Tolliver asked impatiently, not in the mood to listen to sociological reflections. I made my feet move. The master bedroom, I discovered, was downstairs, which was a great relief. Together, Tolliver and I got Fred onto the (of course) king-size bed, got his coat and shoes off, and covered him with a soft afghan that had been thrown artfully over the back of a huge leather chair… in front of the master bedroom's very own fireplace and conversational grouping. I didn't know who was supposed to have conversations here, since Fred appeared to live by himself. I predicted I'd find a walk-in closet and a bath with a sunken tub somewhere very close. I opened the closet door, and then the bathroom door. Yep. All that and more.
'Watch out!' a voice called from the bed, and I swung around, startled.
Fred Hart had roused himself to give Tolliver a big caution. He'd grabbed Tolliver's arm while Tolliver was trying to arrange him comfortably.
'You have to watch out. I'll tell you the truth. You just don't know what happened…' the older man said, and then he conked out again.
'I know you drank too much,' I muttered.
Tolliver hung up Fred's coat and looked around for any other little thing we should do. 'That's it,' he said. 'Let's go. I feel like I broke in, this is so much not our kind of place.'
I laughed. We left the bedroom, and the sleeping man, and began making our way back to the kitchen. I just had to stop while we were going through the family room. It was so pretty, all dark browns and coppery colors with bright blue touches here and there. I sighed, and turned to look out the huge window into the back yard. I was a bit surprised there wasn't a pool. I decided the lack was due to Fred's gardening habit.
When Ben Morgenstern had told me Fred liked to garden, I had not imagined anything like this. The high red brick wall that enclosed the back yard was covered with vines, carefully pruned and directed. Running all around this wall was a flower bed full with bushes and probably with bulbs that would bloom in the spring and summer. Aside from this, there were groupings of bushes and flowers, much like the groupings of tables and chairs inside the
