REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Scott Peterson promised his mistress a “very beautiful” future in a phone call just a week after his wife went missing, according to a recording of the conversation played at his capital murder trial Wednesday.

The hour-long tape dominated Amber Frey’s second morning on the witness stand. As her high-pitched voice and Peterson’s gravelly tone boomed from a portable stereo on the prosecutors’ table, Frey sat silently in the courtroom gallery, staring at her lap.

“Our relationship will grow and when it’s the right time, slowly it will be very beautiful,” Peterson was heard promising Frey during a call placed just after midnight on Jan. 1, 2003. Just a few hours earlier, the fertilizer salesman had attended a candlelight vigil for his pregnant wife, Laci, who had vanished on Christmas Eve.

The call was one of two lengthy conversations played for jurors, and both showed the lovers locked in a battle of lies. Frey learned Peterson was married Dec. 29 and secretly began taping their calls for police investigating Laci Peterson’s disappearance. An unwitting Peterson continued presenting himself to Frey as a bachelor calling from a European business trip. In a call Peterson placed to Frey at 10 p.m. Jan. 1, he told her he had arrived in Brussels from Paris and was preparing for a morning jog. He called himself “pudge boy” and blamed the French food for his weight gain.

“I’ll jog down to the main square,” he told Frey on the tape.

“Um-hum,” she replied.

“Which is kinda neat with all the big churches in the background,” he continued.

A moment later, Frey said, “You’re in Europe though, right?”

He answered, “Oh yeah.”

At another point, a dog can be heard barking in the background and Peterson blamed a dog at the hotel.

By that time, Frey had likely seen news footage of Peterson in Modesto, visiting a volunteer search center and walking his dog, McKenzie. She did not reveal her knowledge during the calls.

Prosecutors have suggested Peterson killed his wife because he was desperate to hold on to his relationship with Frey. They plan to play dozens of recordings to demonstrate the intensity of the relationship and his ability to lie.

In the tapes, Frey proved herself a canny aid to police. In the midnight call, she placed gentle pressure on him to discuss their relationship.

“Do you want to be together with me?” she asked him.

“Well, I mean obviously my, you know, my thoughts are that I think that we, you know, would be wonderful together,” he replied.

Later he mentioned her toddler daughter, “For the rest of our lives I think we care for each other and Ayianna and you know we could fulfill each other.”

Peterson told her he thought they were “95 percent” compatible, but needed to iron out the other five percent of their relationship. Those areas included their views on God and children. Frey was an enthusiastic churchgoer and wanted more children. Peterson did not attend church and said he was considering a vasectomy.

He also urged her not to overanalyze their relationship.

“It’s gonna flow naturally,” he told her.

At the time of the calls, volunteers were scouring woodlands and lakes for any sign of Laci Peterson.

Jurors received transcripts of the often tinny-sounding calls. At the defense table, Peterson also stared at the documents. He did not look at Frey as she briefly took the stand to answer a few preliminary questions about the calls, and he did not look up when about half way through the first call she left court. Her lawyer, Gloria Allred, has said Frey, who gave birth to her second child three months ago, is breastfeeding the infant during breaks in court.

As she did on her first day on the stand, Frey wore a conservative black suit. In one of the calls, she asked Peterson if he wanted to know what she was wearing. When he said yes, she described “pretty sexy” black pants with a leopard print, boots and a magenta shirt.

“It’s very sexy too,” she added.

Peterson asked, “Are these black leopardy pants tucked in the boots?” No, she replied.

Jurors are scheduled to hear more tape-recorded conversations Wednesday afternoon. Frey’s testimony could last two weeks.

Peterson, 31, is charged with two counts of murder.

His trial is now in its 11th week.