Chapter 5: The Tour

On Wednesday at ten, I walked up the hill to Silvan Waverley's house with a bill for forty minutes at a fence.

My hourly rate was sixty-two dollars and fifty cents.

Forty minutes of that was forty-one dollars and sixty-seven cents, and I had printed it.

The wall was ten feet high and the gate was iron.

A calm woman opened it, the same one who had been sitting in the SUV with the tablet.

"I'm his assistant," she said. "He's expecting you. He's been expecting you since six."

"It's ten."

"He's very expecting."

She led me up a long stone drive to a house made of glass and pale wood.

The lawn was perfectly green and there was not one dandelion in it.

Truffle came with me, on a leash, as a witness.

Silvan met us in the front hall in his socks.

He wore a white T-shirt with the sleeves pushed up, and I noticed his forearms and looked at the ceiling.

"Lacey. You came."

"I brought your invoice."

I handed him the page.

He read it with great attention.

"Forty-one sixty-seven. For time at a fence."

"I don't round."

"I would never ask you to."

He looked up.

"Would you like a tour? You have to see where he lives. It's relevant."

"To what?"

"To everything. Please."

"Last night," I said. "How did Truffle get all the way up here?"

"I was going to ask you. I thought the gate was latched."

"I tied it with a hair elastic."

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