6 Stone Barrington Novels (99 page)

THEN ARRINGTON SMILED WARMLY, and Stone's knees went a little weak. He experienced a series of vivid flashbacks: meeting her at a New York dinner party some years before, she in the company of America's biggest movie star, Vance Calder; taking her away from Calder, making love to her in his house and hers, falling desperately in love with her; then setting off on a sailing trip to the Caribbean, planning to meet her there; her not showing up, but writing to say she'd married Calder. Then there was the child, of course, Peter; born slightly less than nine months later: Calder's son, she said, and the tests had backed her up. Then, after Calder was dead, murdered, learning that the tests might have been rigged. She'd refused further testing. He'd seen her a few months before in Palm Beach, for a single evening, then he had been in the hospital with a bullet wound, then whisked back to New York. They had not spoken since.

Stone snapped back to the present and made his way down the steps toward her. She was tall, a little blonder than before, dressed in a long, emerald-green gown. Ravishing. To his surprise she met him halfway, embraced him warmly, and gave him a light kiss on the lips.

“Hello, Stone,” she said, nearly laughing. “Are you surprised to see me?”

“I certainly am,” he replied; “what brings you to London?”

“Barbara Wellington and I were roommates at Mount Holyoke; she invited me over to see what she's done with the residence. Isn't it beautiful?”

“Yes, it is.” But he wasn't looking at the residence. “And you are more beautiful than I've ever seen you.”

“Aren't you sweet! I saw your name on the guest list this afternoon, and I jiggled the place cards around so we're seated together.” She stopped and looked at him. “I'm alone in London.”

Stone was beginning to sweat a little, and he was grateful when a waiter showed up with a tray of champagne flutes. He took one and replaced hers with a full one. “I'll look forward to catching up,” he said.

Then he remembered the other face he had recognized and looked for it. Gone. Lost in the crowd.

“Looking for someone?” Arrington asked.

“I thought I saw a familiar face, but no more.”

She took his arm and led him across the room and out some French doors to a garden. “And what brings you to London?”

“A client asked me to come over and look into something for him.”

“Sounds mysterious.”

“It is.”

“It's always mysterious when you're involved, Stone. Tell me about it.”

“I'm afraid I can't. Maybe when it's over.”

“Oh.”

“How is Peter?”

“Growing,” she said. “You must come and see him sometime.”

“I'd like that very much,” he said. “Where are you spending most of your time?”

“I've been dividing it between LA and Mother's house in Virginia. Peter is there for the summer with her, while I've been apartment hunting.”

“In London?”

“In New York.”

Stone began to sweat again and sipped the cold champagne. From inside the house a chime was being struck repeatedly.

“Sounds like dinner,” Arrington said. “Shall we?”

“Let's do.” The thought of Arrington living in New York again thrilled and frightened him. Immediately, his life seemed in turmoil.

 

They sat at round tables for ten, and there were at least twenty of them. Arrington knew some of the other guests, having “jiggled the place cards,” and she chatted animatedly with them all, leaving Stone with a thousand questions and no opportunity to ask any of them. Dinner was good, for banquet food, and when dessert came, Stone excused himself and went to look for a men's room. A staffer showed him the way, and he went inside and stepped up to a urinal. A moment later, the door opened and someone walked behind Stone and around the room, then stepped up to the neighboring urinal.

“See anyone you know?” Hedger asked.

“Yes, Arrington Calder,” Stone said.

“The movie star's widow? I think she killed him, don't you?”

“No.”

“How do you know her?”

“We've been friends for a long time.”

“Oh, wait a minute, I remember now; you were involved with her trial, weren't you?”

“She was never tried,” Stone replied. “Her lawyer and I got it quashed at a hearing. She was plainly innocent.”

“Yeah, sure,” Hedger said.

Stone zipped up and went to wash his hands. Hedger was right behind him.

“I saw someone else,” Stone said.

“Who?”

“The man who interrogated me. At least, I think it was he; I only got a glimpse of him, and he wasn't very well lighted the last time I saw him.”

“Where is he sitting?”

“I don't know; when I looked for him again, he was gone.”

“You mean, he left?”

“I don't know; he may have just moved elsewhere in the room.”

“Did he see you?”

“I don't know.”

“Try and spot him again, and find a way to let me know where he is. I'm at table sixteen.”

“All right. There's something else we have to talk about, but we can't do it now.”

“How about lunch tomorrow in the Connaught grill? One o'clock?”

“Fine, see you then.”

Stone left first and went back to his table. He took the scenic route, wandering among the tables, and then, over near the doors to the garden, he saw the man, who was raptly listening to an elderly woman seated next to him. Table twelve, he noted. He looked at the man as closely as he dared. Was it his inquisitor, or was he simply a bald, bullet-headed man? Stone
wished he could hear his voice; that would complete the identification. The man never looked at him, and he made his way back to his table and Arrington.

She was gone. Dancing had begun, and he spotted her on the floor with a man from their table. He took a cocktail napkin, drew a circle, and wrote on it,
Table Twelve
. He marked the bald man's position and gave it to a waiter. “Please take this to Mr. Hedger, at table sixteen; he's the one with the mustache.”

The waiter departed, and Stone followed him with his gaze to Hedger's table. He saw Hedger read the note, then tuck it into a pocket. He didn't immediately look at table twelve, but a moment later he let his gaze run in that direction. Then he looked toward Stone and shrugged.

Stone looked back at table twelve, but the man was no longer there. He noticed a door to the garden open, near the table. Stone looked back at Hedger and shrugged.

Arrington came back to the table and took Stone's hand. “Come dance with me,” she said. She led him to the floor, and the band was playing something romantic.

Stone held her in his arms, something he had always loved doing, and moved them around the floor.

“You were always a wonderful dancer,” she said. “Vertically or horizontally.” She kissed him on the neck.

“Let's get out of here,” Stone said.

“I can't; I'm a guest of the ambassador, and it would be rude.”

“Dinner tomorrow night?”

“Where?”

“The Connaught restaurant, at nine?”

“You're on.”

She put her head on his shoulder, and he whirled her happily around the floor.

Stone looked back at table twelve; the man was still not there. “If you jiggled the place cards, you must have access to tonight's guest list,” he said to Arrington.

“I suppose,” she replied.

“Do you think you could get me a list of the people at table twelve, with their positions marked?”

“I suppose so, but not tonight.”

“Will you bring it with you tomorrow evening? It's important.”

“Anything for you,” she said, and let her tongue play lightly over his ear.

Stone didn't complain.

STONE WAS ALREADY AT AN ALCOVE table in the Connaught grill when Stanford Hedger arrived for lunch. Hedger sat down and ordered a pink gin, something Stone had never heard an American do.

“What is a pink gin, anyway?”

“Gin with a dash of Angostura bitters,” Hedger replied. “I doubt if you'd like it.”

“I doubt it, too,” Stone replied, sipping his Chardonnay.

“Did you enjoy your evening?” Hedger asked. “I saw you and Mrs. Carter dancing.”

“Yes, thank you, and thank you, too, for the use of the ambassador's car.”

“Any time,” Hedger replied. “When the ambassador's not using it, I use it myself, sometimes. Tell me, is it hard to dance with someone's tongue in your ear?”

“On the contrary,” Stone replied. “It helps.”

Hedger laughed. “I never saw your little bald man, you know; are you sure he wasn't a figment of your imagination?”

“Isn't his presence why you had me invited?”

“Well, yes; but I fully expected to see him, if you did.”

“Why did you think he'd be there?”

“Just a hunch. Last night's dinner, if you didn't know, was for the foreign diplomatic corps. I reckoned if he was anybody important in an embassy, he'd be there.”

“Good guess,” Stone replied. “And why did you think he'd be somebody important in an embassy?”

“His accents, as you described them, one overlaid on the other. Eton is a very exclusive school, you know, and everybody who spends his youth there comes out with that accent, even the foreigners. Remember Abba Eban, the Israeli ambassador to the UN?”

“Yes.”

“Same accent.”

“Now that you mention it.”

Hedger looked at the menu. “I'll have half a dozen oysters and the Dover sole,” he said to the waiter, “off the bone, and I'd prefer a female, if there's one available.”

“I'll have the cold soup and the sole,” Stone said. “Should I order the female, too?”

“If you enjoy roe,” Hedger replied.

Stone nodded to the waiter.

“And bring us a bottle of that lovely Sancerre,” Hedger said. He turned to Stone. “Now, what's up? Why did you want to see me?”

“Things have taken a rather ominous turn,” Stone said, “and I thought you might have some advice on how I should proceed.”

“Tell me.”

“I followed Lance Cabot yesterday from his house to an antiques market in Chelsea. Do you know his friends Ali and Sheila?”

“Oh, yes; he met them when we were in Cairo. I believe they were complicit in the bombing of my safe house there.”

“Turns out they had a shop in the market. Also turns out that I wasn't the only one following Lance; so were the two men who abducted me and took me to the interrogation. They were in the same Daimler limousine.”

“Did you make a note of the number plate?”

“No,” Stone replied, a little embarrassed that he had not thought of that.

“Next time you get the chance,” Hedger said. “It would help.”

“Certainly. Anyway, the two men followed Lance into the building. I went inside and found Ali and Sheila's shop, phoned Lance there, and told them to get out. I got them into a cab, and as we drove around the building, a bomb destroyed the shop.”

Hedger's considerable eyebrows went up. “Sounds like these people are getting serious.”

“They're not the only ones,” Stone said. “Lance called Erica and told her to get out of the house; then they went to the home of a friend, and I had a look around Lance's house; got the keys from Monica, Erica's sister.”

“Oh, good,” Hedger said, obviously pleased. “I assumed you searched it thoroughly.”

“I did. There was absolutely nothing that revealed anything about Lance or whatever business he's conducting.”

“I'm not really surprised,” Hedger said. “Lance is too smart to leave sensitive materials lying around.”

“Then I had a look in the wine cellar, where I found a small office, concealed behind a couple of wine racks.” He gave Hedger a description of how he got in. “There was a desk, a computer, and filing cabinets, all secured. As I was trying to get into the computer, I heard someone entering the house; more than one person. I shut myself up in the office and waited for them to leave. After a few minutes, two men came into the
wine cellar; a moment later, another person came in and shot them both.” He had Hedger's undivided attention now.

Their first courses arrived, and Stone waited for the waiter to depart before continuing. “When I got out of the office, they were both dead—two small-caliber shots to the head, in both cases.”

“I hope to God you didn't call the police.”

“No, I got the hell out of there, after removing any fingerprints I might have left on various surfaces.”

“Good,” Hedger said, relieved.

“The two men were my former abductors.”

Hedger looked surprised. “Oh, really?”

“They were carrying Greek passports.”

“
Greek
?” Hedger grunted. “Probably false.”

“They looked good to me.”

“Would you recognize a false passport?”

“I've seen a few, but to answer your question, probably not a good one.”

“Well, let's sum up,” Hedger said.

“Not yet, there's more.”

“More?”

“I went to find Lance and Erica; we had a drink, and then we returned to the Farm Street house. Erica cooked, and Lance asked me to go to the cellar and bring up some wine. I did, and the bodies were gone, everything cleaned up.”

Hedger looked really interested. “How long were you out of the house?”

“An hour and a half, maybe two hours.”

“Long enough for Lance to visit the house, clean up, and return to the other house?”

“If he hurried, and if he was very efficient. He was on the phone when I arrived at the other house, but I've no idea how long he had been there.”

“Could Lance have had any idea you'd been to the Farm Street house?”

“Possibly, since I got the keys from Monica. Maybe she told him.”

“So he sent you down to the cellar so you could see for yourself that everything had been cleaned up.”

“Perhaps. I'll have to find out if Monica told him I had the keys.”

“Do that. Now, as I said, to sum up, what does this tell us about Lance?”

“You tell me.”

“It tells us that Lance is a part of something bigger than himself.”

“How does it tell us that?”

“You obviously didn't read the papers this morning.”

“Not thoroughly.”

“Your two ‘Greeks' were found in Hyde Park, in the trunk of a stolen car. The police are quite excited about it.”

“Oh.”

“I very much doubt if Lance had time to steal a car, load the bodies into it, and clean up the wine cellar, all on his own.”

“You have a point. But what if it wasn't Lance?”

“Who else might it be?”

“The bald man?”

“They were his men; why would he shoot them in Lance's wine cellar, then clean up after himself? I could understand that he might wish to pin the murders on Lance, but in that case, he'd have left them where they lay, for somebody to find, wouldn't he?”

“I suppose so.”

“The parties we know are involved in this are Lance, the bald man and his two companions, and the two
‘Greeks,' and they're dead. If there's another party, I don't know about it, and neither do you.”

“Lance would,” Stone said. “If he knows anything. It's possible that another party murdered the two men, and Lance knows nothing about it.”

“If you were the investigating officer, and you are, in a way, would you believe that?”

“It wouldn't be my first theory,” Stone admitted.

“Now, back to the bald gentleman. I think he's a diplomat; how do we find out who he is?”

“Tonight, I'll have a list of the people at table twelve,” Stone said. “We can begin there.”

“Very good,” Hedger said. The waiter arrived with their sole, and they tucked into it.

Stone liked the roe.