Turning Point by Jeffery Deaver

Author:Jeffery Deaver [Deaver, Jeffery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

8

Three Days Earlier

11:00 a.m., Sunday, November 9

I’m worried the princess will die.”

Neville replied, “Not if we get it right.”

“If it falls it could kill her and everyone. The wall’s too wobbly.”

These words gave Ernest Neville pause; they came from the mouth of his young daughter.

Oh, Sheri understood that the casualties she was concerned about wouldn’t technically be deaths at all, as the victims would be LEGO people, presently standing or sitting—it was hard to tell—at the base of the princess’s castle, which father and daughter had been constructing for the past hour and forty minutes.

But obviously the concept of death was on her mind. Why? The cheerful first grader, with silky hair and a smile made only more charming by the missing teeth, knew about Daddy’s job. Maybe she’d overheard him talking to Betsy about a homicide or fatal car crash.

“We can make it safe,” Neville told her. “Look at the instructions. There’s a piece we’re missing.”

She peered at the sizable document. In his day, LEGOs were rectangles that could be assembled to make walls and floors only and that lay in wait for your bare feet when you went to the bathroom at two a.m.

With a tiny finger Sheri traced over the fine print, then poked through the box that, to Neville, seemed to contain five hundred thousand small plastic pieces. Finally she found the stone-colored one meant to brace the base. Maybe it was a flying buttress. Neville seemed to remember something from school about them.

He lifted the castle carefully, praying it didn’t collapse and crush the spectators, and she inserted the piece where it belonged.

She beamed. The princess and her subjects would be safe.

Betsy walked into the doorway, eyeing the edifice. “Well, that’s impressive.”

His wife, a tanned and athletic blonde, forty-one, like him, remained as beautiful as she’d been when they met and married just after college. When not at the school where she taught, she volunteered at a hospice and jogged and biked. She was also a genius in the kitchen. While his body had refused to gain weight, even under the assault of her irresistible creations, of late she’d developed a slight roll of belly over her jeans. It piqued her somewhat but Neville found it utterly charming . . . and undeniably appealing.

“Leave in twenty?” A Sunday neighborhood barbecue was planned.

Neville looked at the box of LEGO pieces, which had mysteriously doubled in number to an even million. He said, “Sure.”

“Daddy!”

“We’ll finish it tonight.”

Betsy told their daughter, “Harold and Junie are back from their trip. They’ll be there.”

“Yay!” The girl pulled a small carton forward and opened the flaps.

“What’s in there, honey?”

“It’s the princess who’ll live in the castle.”

She tilted the box toward him.

Neville looked inside. “Where did you get that?”

“I found her on the back porch this morning.”

After a moment her father asked, “Hey, sweets, is it okay if I borrow her for a little while?”

A frown. “I guess. If you take good care of her.”

“I will. Don’t worry.”

Neville stepped into the kitchen and returned a moment later.

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