“Don’t we all?” Barton replied.
They were all quiet for a few minutes, eating their dinner.
“I can think of something Crow could offer her,” Stone said.
“What?” Barton asked.
“An annuity.”
“I don’t follow.”
“Suppose our Charlie approaches her – he gets an introduction through some mutual acquaintance – and Charlie says, ‘Look, Mildred, you’ve got some beautiful things here, and I never want you to be separated from any of them. I understand that you need funds, though, so I’m prepared to offer you an annual income for the rest of your life, if you’ll make me the heir to the things in your house.’ ”
Barton nodded. “Either that or he just offers her ten or twenty million now, and she keeps her lifetime ownership. After all, how much longer can she last?”
“My impression is that Charlie doesn’t have that kind of cash on hand,” Stone said. “He seems to have been sailing pretty close to the wind. For a long time. I don’t even know if he could raise the annuity.”
“An annuity is an interesting idea,” Barton said. “I wish I’d thought of it.”
“Is it too late?” Stone asked.
Barton shrugged. “Maybe not. Mildred likes me, and I think she might talk to me. If she does, that would give me a chance to find out exactly what she’s got in that house, too.”
“How long since you’ve spoken to her?” Stone asked.
“I saw her at a dinner party at Marble House in Newport last year, and she seemed very pleased to see me. We chatted for nearly an hour over coffee, and I was careful never to bring up anything about her possessions.”
Dino broke in. “All this is very interesting, but let’s get back to Charlie Crow. Why the hell would he be interested in antique furniture?”
“Money,” Stone said. “Charlie is very interested in money.”
“I’ll grant you that,” Dino said, “but why furniture? Why does he even know anything about it? I saw a picture of his apartment in a magazine a few weeks ago, and it was full of a lot of awful gilded tables and chairs and huge chandeliers. Why would a guy like that know about or have any interest in eighteenth-century American furniture? If he were buying it, how would he know what to pay for it? And I find it hard to believe that Charlie and this Mildred would have any mutual acquaintances.”
“Good point,” Barton said. “It’s a mystery.”
“Barton,” Stone said, “do you have Mrs. Strong’s phone number?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why don’t you call her tomorrow morning and tell her you’ll be passing through Bristol tomorrow and that you’d like to stop in and see her?”
“I could do that.”
“And maybe, if Crow has made her some kind of offer, you could top it.”
“That would depend on what he’s offered her,” Barton said.
“You might find a way to slip something into your conversation that would give her doubts about dealing with Crow.”
“I’d be doing her a favor,” Barton said. “Charlie is the kind of guy who’d screw her out of everything she’s got, if he could find a way, and he’s good at finding a way.”
Stone nodded. “Think of it as a rescue mission,” he said.
42
Stone was having breakfast in the kitchen the following morning when Barton came down.
“Good morning,” Stone said.