“Where else in the house might Billy Bob have left his fingerprints?” Morton asked.
“On that note,” Stone said, pointing, “and in the kitchen. No, forget the kitchen, my housekeeper has already been in there this morning, wiping everything down. She’s very thorough. By the way, she discovered the body. She’s lying down in the second-floor guest room. Maybe she’s recovered enough to talk to you by now.”
Weiss headed for the stairs.
Joan Robertson, Stone’s secretary, came into the room. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Joan,” Stone said, “when did you last see Billy Bob?”
“Yesterday morning around ten, when he was on his way out. He said he had to go to Omaha, and he’d be back in the city tonight, at the Four Seasons.”
“Do you have any idea why he didn’t come see me before he left?”
“I thought you had gone out. Were you in the house?”
“I was here, in the study, reading, all day.”
“When you didn’t come down to the office, and when Mr. Barnstormer came down, I just assumed you had gone out.”
Dino spoke up. “Did you see him leave the house?”
“Yes; a driver put his luggage into a black Lincoln and they drove away.”
“How did you meet this Billy Bob?” Morton asked Stone.
“The head of the law firm I work for introduced him to me as a new client.” He gave the man Eggers’s name and number.
“I was there for that, too,” Dino said. “Make a note; somebody took a shot at Billy Bob’s limo the other night. DiAngelo caught the case; he’ll give you details.”
“Billy Bob’s original name was Barnstetter,” Stone said. “He says his grandfather changed it to Barnstormer, but it might help in running down his background. He came into Teterboro on a Gulfstream Four corporate jet, and he said an engine had to be replaced because of a bird strike.”
“Where in Texas is he from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anything else about him you can tell us?”
“He leaves a trail of two-dollar bills wherever he goes,” Stone said. “Tips, mostly.”
Weiss came back. “I called the Four Seasons Hotel. They know Barnstormer, and they have a reservation for him tonight, for a week.”
“Be there when he arrives,” Dino said.
TWO HOURS LATER, the corpse was gone, and people were trickling out of the house. Stone took Dino aside.
“You’ll notice I didn’t bring Tiffany Baldwin into this.”
“I noticed.”
“Can we keep it that way?”
“I don’t see why not; we can confirm your alibi without her.”
“Good; the press would be all over it, if her name came into play.”
“I’m not going to be able to keep your name out of the papers,” Dino said. “They’re already outside your door.”
“Think you could give them a statement, exonerating me and saying I’ve left on a Caribbean vacation?”