“Hello, Grant,” Holly said, “this is my friend Stone Barrington.”
Grant managed a perfunctory handshake. “I thought I was seeing you alone.”
“Why did you think that?” Holly asked. “Anywa
y, anything you have to say, you can say in front of Stone. He’s also my lawyer.”
Grant cut Stone a sharp glance. “Do you need a lawyer?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Holly said.
Stone kept a straight face. “Shall we go in?”
They were greeted by Suzanne, and Stone gave her a kiss. “Something in the back, I think,” he said.
“Right this way.” She led them to a table.
“Does this place get crowded?” Grant asked.
“It’ll be jammed in fifteen minutes,” Stone replied.
They ordered a glass of wine and looked at menus. When they had ordered lunch, Grant started in. “I got a call from our New York office last night,” he said. “The NYPD is all over them about Trini Rodriguez. What did you have to do with that?”
“Last night, Trini apparently shot a New York City cop, in a deli in Little Italy,” she said. “I had nothing at all to do with that.”
“Why do they think it was Trini?” Grant asked.
“Oh, I had something to do with that. The perp’s description matched Trini’s, and I mentioned that to an NYPD detective.”
“Great, thanks a lot.”
“What, you wanted nobody to bother Trini? Gee, I’m awfully sorry about that.”
“He’s working something very important to us.”
“So, he killed a cop on his coffee break?”
“You don’t know it was Trini.”
“You don’t know it wasn’t.”
“He denies it.”
“So you’ve talked? What did you expect him to say?”
Grant turned to Stone. “How do you come into this?”
“Holly is staying at my house,” Stone said, “and I sometimes give her legal advice. Otherwise, I’m not in it.”
“Then that’s where you should stay,” Grant said, “not in it.”
“Leave Stone out of this, Grant,” Holly said.
“That’s what I’m hoping to do.”
“Tell me, exactly why is the FBI so interested in keeping a cop killer on the streets?”
“I can’t tell you that,” Grant said.