Hot Mahogany (9 page)

“There’s got to be a caretaker,” Stone said.

“There is,” Barton replied. “I know the fellow. He would probably live in the little house you can see a part of behind the barn.”

“So when the painters leave, there’ll still be somebody there.”

“Of course. You don’t just drive away and leave a house like this, containing an important collection, all by itself.”

“What kind of security is there likely to be, Holly?” Stone asked.

“Oh, every door and window in the house will be wired, and there’ll be motion detectors galore, sensors under the rugs. Like that.”

“Will there be battery backup?”

“Of course, and maybe a generator, too.”

“So, if we could cut the power, the generator would come on automatically?”

“Yes.”

“So we could fix the generator so it wouldn’t come on, then cut the power?”

“But there’d be a battery backup. It would be crazy not to have that.”

“Where would the batteries likely be?”

“Inside the house, probably. But the generator would be outside, since it’s noisy when it comes on.”

“How noisy?”

“Probably like a big truck idling. They’d have a big one for a place like this, at least twenty kilowatts, I’d imagine.”

“Right,” Stone said. “When you’ve got that much money, you don’t tolerate the slightest inconvenience. The power goes off in the middle of your favorite TV program, you want it back on instantly.”

Holly panned the scene with the binoculars. “I see a power transformer on a pole about a hundred yards from the house,” she said. “We’d have to knock that out in such a way that it would appear to be a normal failure. Short it out. Could take them a while to reset it.”

“Then what?” Barton asked.

“I want to watch the painters leave for the day,” she said, “and then I want to go to the hardware store before it closes.”

“Impossible to do both,” Stone said. “Give me a list, and I’ll go now. I can be back in an hour.”

Holly took a notebook from her pocket and began scribbling. She handed it to Stone. “No shortcuts, no substitutions.”

“Right.”

“Stone,” Barton said, “there’s a gate where you can drop us along the way. It’s closer to the house.”

“All right.”

Stone dropped them a mile back down the dirt road.

“We’ll leave the gate open,” Barton said. “You can drive closer to the house with your lights off, but don’t slam any car doors.”

“I’ll be back shortly,” Stone said. He drove away reminding himself that he was not —
not
— going to enter that house.

19

Stone drove into town to the Washington Supply and walked around, filling Holly’s order. He picked up a small screwdriver set, needle-nose pliers, wire cutters, electrical tape, a small roll of wire, an electrical meter, some alligator clips, two tiny flashlights and lithium batteries and, of course, a roll of duct tape. He also bought her a nylon tool belt with a pouch, and three pairs of paper socks that workmen wore over their boots to keep from tracking up nice houses. As an afterthought, he grabbed a box of latex gloves, then he went to the cashier’s counter.

“Stocking up, huh, Mr. Barrington?” the man at the counter asked.

“Yeah, just a few things for around the house, do a few repairs.” He charged the goods to his account and left. Half an hour later, he turned off the dirt road and through the opened gate onto an almost grown-over lane. It was getting dark, and he switched off his lights to avoid being seen from the house. The lane ended in a little clearing, perhaps a hundred yards from the house. He stuffed all his purchases into the tool belt and its pouch, then, carrying the socks and the latex gloves, he followed Holly’s and Barton’s tracks through some fairly tall grass until he found them behind the barn.

“Hey,” Holly whispered. “Did you get absolutely
everything
?”

“Of course. That and a bit more.” He handed her the tool belt and issued everybody latex gloves and paper socks. “Wait until we’re inside the house before you put on the socks over your shoes,” he reminded them.

A vehicle door slammed, and they peeked around a corner of the barn.

“The painters are packing up,” Holly said.

“Hey, Randy!” somebody yelled.

A door opened at the caretaker’s house, and a man stepped out. “Yeah?”

“We’re done for the day; you can lock up and do the security thing.”

“Okay, as soon as I finish dinner. See you guys on Monday.” He went back inside and closed the door. The van drove away.

“Holy shit,” Holly said. “The house is wide open, and the alarm hasn’t been set. Let’s go!”

“I’ll wait here,” Stone said.

“Oh, come on. I don’t even have to do the burglary thing.”

“Oh, all right.” He followed along behind Holly and Barton, keeping low behind the stone wall. All the lights in the caretaker’s house seemed to be on, and there were one or two, probably night-lights, on in the big house. Holly led them straight to the back door, and they simply opened it and walked inside. They were in a mudroom, and half a dozen pairs of gumboots were lined up against the wall under a row of pegs holding various outerwear.

“Okay, socks and gloves on,” Holly said, and they all slipped the paper things over their shoes and pulled on the latex gloves. “There’s the security box,” Holly said, pointing, “and I’ll bet the backup batteries are in that cabinet below. You lead the way, Barton; you’ve been here before.”

Barton led them through the mudroom into the butler’s pantry, then through the kitchen and into the dining room.

“Hey, some table,” Stone said, as they walked through.

“Sheraton. It seats sixteen,” Barton said. “I authenticated the chairs for him.”

They continued into the living room. Practically everything was covered in painters’ drop cloths. The pictures had been removed from the walls, stacked along one side of the room and covered. Barton was looking under drop cloths, identifying furniture.

“There’s nothing big enough in here to be the secretary,” Stone said, looking around.

“It’s in two pieces,” Barton said, “desk and bookcase, which rests on top of the desk. It will look smaller under a cloth.”

The three of them spread out in the very large living room and began looking under drop cloths.

“Not here,” Barton said finally. “Let’s try the study.” He led the way into the next room. It was completely dark outside now, but a rising moon offered some light. Holly gave him one of the little flashlights.

They repeated the process from the previous room. “Not here,” Barton said.

“But look at that,” Stone said, pointing.

“What?” Holly said. “I don’t see anything.”

“Exactly. It’s an empty space in a room otherwise stuffed with furniture. What goes there?”

“The secretary,” Holly said.

“It’s the right size and the right place in the room for it,” Barton said. “It’s where I’d put it.”

Then, from the back of the house, they heard a noise.

“Back door,” Holly said.

They froze in their tracks, then a few seconds later tiny lights began to flash around the corners of the ceiling, and a steady beeping, every second, started. They heard the back door slam.

“The security system is booting up,” Holly said. “We’ve got maybe thirty seconds to get out of the house. Let’s go!!”

She ran out of the study, through the living room and into the dining room. More tiny lights were flashing. “Cameras and motion detectors,” she said. “Hurry!”

They made it to the mudroom and Holly tried the back door. Locked. She reached into her tool kit and began fiddling with the door.

“The thirty seconds has to be up,” Stone said.

“If we’re lucky, it’s set for sixty instead,” Holly replied.

The door came open, they all stepped outside and Holly closed the door behind them. “Run!” she said.

The three of them sprinted back along the path they had come, and as they ducked behind the stone wall, spotlights came on around the eaves of the house, and there were three short sharp blasts from a loud horn.

They huddled behind the wall, panting.

“That noise means the system is now fully armed,” Holly said. “Another second and the exterior motion detectors would have caught us.”

“Why didn’t you disarm the system as soon as we were inside?” Stone asked, panting.

“How could I know the caretaker is a fast eater?” she replied.

“Anyway, it’s lucky I didn’t, or he would have found the system inop and called the cops.”

“Well,” Barton said, “that’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”

“Stone, lead the way to the car,” Holly said, handing him a flashlight. “And don’t use that any more than you have to.”

Half an hour later they were back on the main highway, headed for Barton’s house.

“He doesn’t have the secretary,” Barton said. “It’s not in the house.”

“Maybe it’s upstairs in a bedroom,” Stone said.

“No, he’d never put it there; he’d want it on display, for all to see.”

“Well,” Holly said, “he’s made a space for it. My guess is it’ll be here as soon as the painting’s done.”

“It could still be in New York,” Stone said.

“Probably is,” Barton agreed. “There’s nowhere around here he could store it without causing comment.”

“Barton,” Stone said, “we could just wait for his paint to dry, wait for him to move it up here, then report it stolen, get a search warrant and go get the thing.”

“No,” Barton said. “If the police get into this and it makes the press — and it will — then everything will be ruined.”

Stone wondered what he meant by
everything
.

20

Stone and Holly went to the Mayflower Inn the following morning for Sunday brunch and lingered over their food.

“Stone, where would Abner Kramer hide the secretary in New York?”

“Kramer strikes me as the type who would be very well prepared,” Stone replied. “He may have rented storage space for it.”

“Or it could be in his house or apartment.”

“That’s a possibility, too.”

“So, let’s go to New York and break into his place.”

“Well,” Stone said, “I now have a fairly complete set of burglar tools. It would be a shame not to put them to use.”

“Good.”

“I’m kidding. I’ve had enough of housebreaking; I don’t have the innate sneakiness required for the work.”

“Are you saying I’m sneaky?”

“Let me be clear: You are sneaky. Isn’t that one of the prime requisites for working at the CIA? I’ll bet you aced the Sneaky 101 final at the Farm.”

Holly giggled. “You know me too well.”

“Are you going to stick around here for a few more days?”

“Well, it’s a paid vacation, isn’t it? And I’ve got a free house. I miss Daisy, but she’s staying with my housemate.”

“You have a housemate? I’m jealous.”

“It’s a female-type person. The place had a spare bedroom, so I cut my rent in half.”

“Sounds sensible.” Stone waved for a check. “I’m going to have to go back to the city.”

“Why don’t you just hang out here with me?” Holly asked.

“Well, I do have a law practice that requires my attention from time to time if I want to earn a living, and I have to look into the other guy from Barton’s Marine outfit… What’s his name?”

“Charles Crow.”

“Right. From the Bronx.”

“That’s the one.”

“Watch your ass, Stone.”

“You mean more than usual?”

“Remember, Crow is the operator, according to Barton. Sounds like a guy with few, if any, scruples.”

“Okay. I’ll watch my ass.”

Stone got back to the city late in the afternoon, went through his mail and checked his phone messages. Alarmingly little business activity, he thought. He was going to have to make some money pretty soon.

Dino was already at Elaine’s when Stone got there.

“How was the country?” Dino asked.

“Gorgeous. The leaves have started to turn.”

“Not here, yet.”

“Soon. Trust me.”

“What did you find out up there?”

Stone gave him a rundown of his activities in Connecticut, including their housebreaking adventure.

“You’re not sneaky enough to be a burglar, Stone.”

“Exactly what I told Holly.”

“If you don’t watch it, I’m going to be bailing you out of some country jail.”

“I hope not. Have you spread the word about the secretary among your colleagues in blue?”

“I have, discreetly.”

“And a photo?”

“Yes. Otherwise they wouldn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. They’re cops, not readers of antiques magazines.”

“Granted. I’ve got to look into the other member of Barton’s outfit who seems a candidate for all this. Can you do a search on arrests and convictions for a Charles Crow?”

“The real estate guy?”

“There’s a real estate guy named Charles Crow?”

“You don’t ever read the papers, do you?”

“Every day.”

“Not the
Times
, the
Daily News
and the
Post
.”

“Dino, I know you consider those rags newspapers, but there’s nothing in them that I need to know.”

“If you read them, you’d know about Charlie Crow.”

“What would I know?”

“Crow is this hotshot real estate… speculator, I guess you’d say. Made a bunch of money, got himself a trophy third wife and a publicist to get him on Page Six. You know what Page Six is?”

“Of course, Dino.” Page Six was the
Post
’s gossip page.

“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Crow make an appearance there at least once a week, every day during the trial.”

“Trial?”

“Yeah, he got caught in some sort of property swindle, but he got off. Cost him a couple of million in legal fees, though.”

“That could put a dent in a fellow’s wallet, couldn’t it? Especially if he has a trophy wife and a publicist to support.”

“I guess so. Charlie Crow was in Barton’s outfit?”

“Yeah, and Barton says he was a wheeler-dealer even then.”

“Are you sure it’s the same Charlie Crow?”

“No, I’m not,” Stone said. “That was your contention. Is he from the Bronx?”