Читать книгу Limb from Limb - George Hunter - Страница 9

Hughes continued jotting notes for his report while Stephen meandered on with his tale, consulting his own spiral-bound ledger as he bounced from subject to subject. The veteran officer, who has been married for twenty-three years and has two sons, was surprised when Stephen began talking about Tara’s alleged infidelities.

“He said his family thought his wife was having an affair with Lou, her boss,” Hughes said. “He said they worked closely together, and that he was a little suspicious of that. But at first he didn’t believe she was cheating.”

Stephen later changed his story, telling Hughes he was concerned Tara was having an affair with Troendle, her group boss. Stephen also revealed that he and Tara had been to marriage counseling. “He said he felt she confided in Lou about their marital problems more than she did with him, because she was with her boss all the time, while he was at home with the children,” Hughes said. “He said she was traveling so much, it was putting a strain on the marriage.” Stephen also explained that he’d recently contacted an attorney and was considering a divorce.

Hughes said he decided to call Tara’s boss in Puerto Rico, since Stephen willingly provided the phone number, one of many names and numbers that were recorded in the notebook he clutched. Troendle, the fifty-year-old executive who was in charge of Washington Group’s Puerto Rican operations, was at his San Juan office when Hughes called.

“I wanted to find out what was going on between Lou and Tara, since that was Stephen’s concern,” Hughes said. “When I talked to Lou, he seemed genuinely worried about Tara. He said he would assist us in any way we needed to find out what happened to her. He really seemed worried, because he said Tara would never leave without telling anyone. Right then and there, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. I’m thinking, ‘Oh boy, Stephen Grant is lying to me.’ And he’s sitting there smiling,” Hughes said.

“After I got off the phone with Lou, [Stephen] asked if I wanted to call her parents, but I said, ‘I’ll leave that to the detective bureau.’ Because after I talked to Lou, I was concerned Stephen was lying, and I figured I’d better leave any more phone calls up to the detectives. I got the feeling that this guy was playing me.”

That feeling was reinforced when Stephen veered onto his next topic: the Grant family’s live-in babysitter. “He started talking about the au pair,” Hughes said. “I said, ‘How old is she?’ He said she was nineteen, and I asked him if he was having any kind of relationship with the au pair. He leaned back in his chair and smiled at me, and said, ‘She’ll never tell.’”