“You’re a media event,” Rochelle said, and Grace shot her another look.
“If this palatial house and grounds look familiar to many of you,” Camryn Nobles said, her voice lowering to a confidential tone, “it’s because this is the home of lifestyle blogger Grace Stanton, who writes the wildly popular Gracenotes blog. The house has been featured in numerous national publications, and Ms. Stanton has been a frequent guest on network shows like Oprah, Ellen, and, yes, even the Today show, and of course our own Suncoast Morning! where she’s been practically a fixture over the past two years, as a lifestyle expert.”
Now Camryn was talking again, strolling around to the side of the house, down a long coral-rock driveway toward the rear of the Stanton mansion.
“Grace Stanton is a successful interior designer and a hometown girl who grew up in modest circumstances in nearby Cortez,” Camryn said. “After moving to South Florida and marrying, she had a thriving design practice before moving back here to the Suncoast in 2009. Husband Ben, forty-four, was an advertising executive who gave up his career two years ago in order to devote all his energies to maximizing his wife’s burgeoning lifestyle business. Grace and Ben Stanton are fixtures on the local social scene; in fact, they hosted a charity party for the local children’s shelter right here in this lovely poolside setting back in October. But authorities say this bucolic scene turned ugly sometime after midnight. Here’s the tape police have released, of the panicky 911 phone call they received at one fifteen A.M. from Ben Stanton. And we want to apologize to our viewers, in advance, for the somewhat graphic language in this tape.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna need some assistance here. My, uh, my wife, she’s out of control.”
The female 911 operator sounded bored. “Sir, are you in physical danger?”
“What? I don’t know. She went crazy on me. I’ve never seen her like this. Look, I think you better get an officer over here before she does hurt somebody.”
Shrieks were clearly audible in the background. And then came Ben Stanton’s muffled voice.
“Grace, what are you doing? This isn’t funny. Are you crazy? What the … Get the hell away from there!”
In the background came the sound of a car door slamming, then a high-powered motor revving, tires squealing across pavement. And then, a loud splash.
“Christ! Grace, what the hell have you done? Jesus H!…”
“Sir? Do you have a life-threatening situation there?”
Stanton’s voice, when he came back on the line, was grim. “If she hasn’t already drowned, I’ll kill the bitch myself.”
“Turn it off, please,” Grace said, turning her back to the television.
Rochelle dialed down the volume, but she kept watching.
Camryn was back on camera, walking toward a patio area lined with a lush hedge of sea grapes. Graceful coconut palms and hibiscus shrubs were scattered about the patio, which included a fully outfitted kitchen and thatch-roofed tiki bar.
The reporter gestured in the direction of a two-story, three-bay garage. “The police won’t say what sparked the altercation between Grace and Ben Stanton last night, but I spoke off camera to a neighbor who claims to have overheard what she termed ‘a spirited exchange’ between the married couple last night. That neighbor says the source of the problem was Mrs. Stanton’s stunning twenty-six-year-old female assistant, who has been living in a garage apartment on this property for some months now. The neighbor also says that in the early morning hours before dawn today, that assistant, whose name we aren’t divulging, fled in terror through that hedge,” Camryn pointed to the sea grapes, “wrapped only in a beach towel.”
“Neither of the Stantons were available for comment at airtime,” Camryn went on, still walking toward the patio, “But despite the lack of witness statements, or cooperation from the parties involved, there are some simply inescapable conclusions we can draw about what went down here last night.”
The camera pulled back to show a three-car garage, with all three parking bays empty, and then panned over toward the swimming pool, a shimmering free-form turquoise oasis set on a patio of more coral rock. The shallow end of the pool had coral rock steps that descended into a separate, enclosed whirlpool spa. And the deep end?
Camryn Nobles stood at the edge of the pool and looked down, the camera following her gaze. A lime-green canvas beach umbrella floated tranquilly on the surface of the water, as did four chartreuse vinyl lounge cushions. Totally submerged and barely visible beneath the water was an ominous-looking oblong black form.
“And that,” Camryn said, her voice somber, “appears to be Ben Stanton’s 2013 Audi Spyder convertible, which retails for approximately 175,000 dollars.”
* * *
Rochelle Davenport pointed the remote control and finally, mercifully, clicked it off.
“You really drove a car worth 175,000 dollars into the pool?” Rochelle asked her daughter.
Grace shrugged. “I doubt he paid that much for it. Knowing Ben, he worked some kind of advertising trade-off with the dealer.”
“This is just so unlike you,” Rochelle said. “I mean, I don’t blame you for what you did, but it’s just so not you.”
“Temporary insanity,” Grace said. “That’s the only explanation I can think of.”
“You could have drowned,” Rochelle said. “Did you think of that? You’d have left me a childless widow.”
“And then Ben could have collected on that two-million-dollar life insurance policy we bought last year,” Grace muttered. “I gotta change that.”
“It was a dumb thing to do,” Rochelle insisted. “Seriously.”
“I couldn’t have drowned. The top was still down,” Grace said, suddenly returning to her normal, logical self. “I guess it got kind of hot in that garage, while she was…”
“Giving him a blow job?” Rochelle said helpfully.
“Yeah. In the front seat of the Audi.”
“I also can’t believe Ben just let you
