The Book of Fate - Brad Meltzer [97]
“Oh, and that mention you did of Rose DuVall . . . good for you. We all knew it was her husband who dragged the kids to court.”
Next to me, Lisbeth looks away, fighting to avoid eye contact. At first, I thought it was modesty. But the way her face falls . . . the way she anxiously scratches at the freckles on her neck . . . I know shame when I see it. Especially when it comes from not meeting your own personal expectations.
“Oh, and please ignore the mess,” Cammie adds, leading us through the sumptuous Mediterranean-style living room and pointing to the white billowy painter’s cloths that’re draped over every piece of artwork on the walls. “The jury’s coming tomorrow.”
Two years ago, the previous owners of Cammie’s spectacular fourteen-bedroom, twenty-thousand-square-foot home were brutally gunned down by their only son. With the parents dead, the house was sold to Cammie and her husband, an heir to the Tylenol fortune, who, according to the stories, were so desperate to make a splash in the P.B. social scene, they swooped in and bought it for twenty-seven million even before they wiped the chalk marks off the wide, cypress plank floors.
“The sheets were Victor’s idea,” Cammie explains. “You know, with the jury set to walk through the old crime scene, we just thought . . . when it comes to the collection . . . we don’t need everyone knowing how many Francis Bacons we have.” She raises her eyebrows at us.
I nod, staring at the stark white sheets. Traveling with the President, I’ve been to plenty of billionaires’ homes with a Rembrandt or Monet or Warhol on the wall. Some’ll even have two or three. But here . . . as we pass from the living room, through the library, through the blood-red billiard room in back, I count at least thirty covered pictures.
“Of course. Of course, you’d want to be discreet,” Lisbeth says, finally looking up.
Stopping short at the double French doors that lead out back, Cammie spins around at the word discreet. A lesser clubwoman would take it as a threat. It’s not. And Cammie’s not lesser at anything. Tugging on the bottom of her peach sweater, she smooths it over her flat stomach and smiles to herself. It’s every hostess’s dream: being owed a favor by the local gossip queen.
“Listen, I have some errands to run—what a pleasure meeting you,” Cammie adds, happily excusing herself. “Tommaso’s out back. He’ll take perfect care of you.”
With a flick of the antique brass doorknob, the French doors swing open, leading us out across a stone path that takes us past the saltwater pool, through an expansive formal garden, and into a fruit orchard filled with the sweet smells of grapefruits, tangerines, and Persian limes.
“Am I shallow for hating her perfect, yoga-trainered ass?” Lisbeth asks as we pass one of the lime trees. “Or should I just be content in despising her for the mere fact that I now owe her one?”
“If you wanna get technical, we actually owe her two,” I say, pointing to our destination.
Beyond the orchard, beyond the stone amphitheater, even beyond the football-field-sized patch of meticulously mowed grass that runs down toward the water, sits a pristine, 160-foot, three-deck, black-and-cream-colored mega-yacht that towers over every other boat floating behind it on the calm currents of Lake Worth. The Pequod, it says in fine gold script along the transom at the stern. It’s not until we’re right alongside it that I even appreciate how big the yacht is—from front to back, it’s gotta be three eighteen-wheelers parked end-to-end.
“You sure it’s fast enough?” Lisbeth asks, craning her neck back and shielding her eyes from the sun.
She’s not talking about the boat. As fast as we need to move, we don’t have time for a pleasure cruise. Nor can we afford to risk heading to the local airport and getting tracked by our IDs and airline tickets. I take two steps back to get a clearer view of our target. It sits on the rear sundeck with its three still blades arched slightly downward.