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  Either way, Sloan was trapped. She couldn’t say anything that might impede Paul’s investigation, so she resolved to stick as closely to the truth as possible so that Paris would have fewer reasons to feel duped no matter what happened to Carter. “The truth is we’re just friends. I was . . . uneasy . . . about coming here. Paul convinced me I should, and he . . . volunteered . . . to come with me.”

  “For moral support,” Paris concluded. “He’s so nice. He’s someone you just know you can trust.”

  Sloan made a mental note never to rely on Paris’s judgment of men. “What about Noah and you?” she said, eager to shift the focus away from herself. “Carter told me the two of you are practically engaged.”

  “Father is determined to make it happen. I’ve told him I don’t want to marry Noah, but he just can’t understand.”

  “Why not?”

  Paris flashed her a winsome smile. “Probably because Noah is gorgeous, brilliant, and incredibly rich, and women make fools of themselves over him. However, Noah doesn’t want to marry me either, and so we made a secret deal that solves the whole problem.”

  “What sort of deal?”

  “Noah isn’t going to propose,” she said with a laugh as she turned into the driveway. The gates opened automatically, without Paris stopping to press the call button or using any kind of electronic opener. Sloan’s attention switched to the house’s security system out of concern for Paris’s safety, and then because she realized the information might also be vital to Paul and her. “Aren’t you ever afraid here?”

  “Of what?”

  “Thieves. Prowlers at night. This place is the size of a museum. If I were a thief, I’d figure there were lots of things inside it worth stealing.”

  “We’re very safe,” Paris assured her. “Besides the fence, we have infrared beams all around the perimeter of the property. They’re turned on automatically with the alarm system at night. Also, there are ten cameras positioned around the property. Are you afraid here?”

  “I—I guess I always think about security and safety,” Sloan said, trying to stick as closely to the truth as possible for the sake of her future relationship with Paris.

  “That’s why you took a self-defense course,” Paris concluded, and immediately tried to reassure her with more information. “If you get worried, you can turn on any television set in the house and see whatever the cameras are seeing. Tune to channel ninety, then go right on through to channel one hundred. That will show you all the camera views of the property. At least, I think those are the right channels, but Gary will know for sure. I’ll ask him. Father had Gary arrange for the new security system.”

  “Thank you—” Sloan said lamely.

  “Also, if you hear or see something that really scares you, you can pick up any desk-style phone in the house, press the pound key, and hold it down. But don’t try that unless you really think there’s a problem. I did it accidentally once when the system was first installed. I was trying to open the gates from the house, but I forgot to press the intercom button before I held down the pound key.”

  “What happens when you do that?”

  “Everything,” Paris said with a giggle. “An alarm goes directly to the police station, the sirens on the house start screaming, and all the lights on the property, inside and outside, turn on and start flashing.”

  Sloan thought that sounded rather like the integrated telephone-security setups that had caused Karen Althorp and Dr. Pembroke so much embarrassment in Bell Harbor.

  Paris drove around the side of the house to a six-car garage, and one of the garage doors opened automatically. “I haven’t seen you use a gate opener or a garage door opener,” Sloan said.

  “There’s an electronic gadget hidden somewhere on our cars. When you drive up to the garage, the gadget on the car talks to the gadget on the correct garage door and opens it. The same gadget opened the gates for us when we turned into the drive just now.”

  “It sounds like no one who shouldn’t be here can get in or out,” Sloan observed as Paris parked the car in her garage stall.

  “Anyone can get out once Nordstrom has let them in. There are sensors under the pavestones that open the gates when the weight of a car rolls over them. Otherwise, Nordstrom would have to be on hand to open the gates every time a delivery truck or servant needed to leave.”

  “You are truly part of the electronic age,” Sloan told her with a smile.

  “Father is extremely security conscious.”

  Sloan was afraid he probably had more than one reason for that.

  21

  Gary Dishler materialized in the hallway from a room by the stairs as soon as Paris and Sloan walked past it. “Mrs. Reynolds has been asking for you,” he told Paris. “She’s upstairs in her room.”

  “Is she feeling all right?” Paris asked worriedly.

  “If she’s suffering from anything, it’s boredom,” he reassured her.

  While Paris confirmed that television channels ninety through one hundred showed the images from the security cameras, Sloan studied the butler, who was nearby. Nordstrom was well over six feet tall, with blond hair, blue eyes, a ruddy complexion and a muscular physique. On the way upstairs, she confided her thoughts. “He looks more like a security guard than a butler.”

  “I know,” Paris returned with a smile. “He’s really huge.”

  They were still smiling as they walked into Edith Reynolds’s bedroom. The old lady was seated on a fringed, maroon velvet sofa at the end of a room that was nearly the size of Sloan’s entire house and filled with so much dark, very ornate furniture that Sloan felt a little claustrophobic.

  Mrs. Reynolds scowled as she took off her glasses and laid her book aside. “You’ve been gone all day,” she accused. “Well,” she said to Paris. “How was Sloan’s golf lesson?”

  “We didn’t go to the club,” Paris said.

  Edith’s white brows snapped together, but before she could say anything Sloan spoke up. Trying to simultaneously shield Paris from the old woman’s displeasure as well as improve her mood, Sloan deliberately made a joke of her refusal to play golf. “Paris tried to make me play golf, but I begged her for mercy; then I refused to get out of the car. She tried to drag me out of it, but I’m stronger than she is. She tried to clobber me with a putter; then I reminded her that you do not approve of public spectacles, and she had to give in.”

  “You are being impertinent,” Edith declared, but she was having trouble maintaining her dark scowl.

  Sloan let her amusement show. “Yes, ma’am, I know, but I just can’t seem to help it.”

  “I told you to address me as Great-grandmother!”

  “Yes, Great-grandmother,” Sloan quickly amended, sensing that yielding on that point would accomplish her goal. She was right. Edith Reynolds’s lips were twitching with reluctant laughter.

  “You are also outrageously stubborn.”

  Sloan nodded meekly. “My own mother has said so.”

  On the brink of losing their battle of wits, Edith saved face by dismissing Sloan with a flip of her hand. “Go away. I’ve had enough. I want to talk to Paris privately.”

  Satisfied that Paris wouldn’t be reprimanded for the aborted golf lesson, Sloan did as she was told, but not before she noted Paris’s dazed expression.

  When Sloan was gone, Edith nodded to the chair in front of her. “Sit down. I want to know what you did and what you talked about.”

  “We had lunch at Le Gamin and we talked about everything,” Paris said as she sat down. For over an hour, Paris tried to repeat what Sloan had said, but she was interrupted constantly by her great-grandmother’s probing questions. “It was wonderful,” Paris said when the inquisition was finally over. “I could have stayed there all day and all night. Sloan felt the same way. I know she did.”

  “And now,” Edith said coolly, “I suppose you want to go up to Bell Harbor and meet your mother?”

  Paris braced for a storm of opposition, but she did not back