Peter seemed to be speechless.
“Do you understand?”
Peter nodded. “Yes, I do. Thank you, Dad.”
“Now, you have to do something hard, Peter,” Stone said.
“What’s that, Dad?”
“You have to forget that you’re going to be a billionaire and just live your life like an ordinary person. That won’t be as easy as you might think, but you should start by not telling anyone-and that includes Hattie and Ben-anything about your inheritance. You can just say that you have a trust, and that it won’t be available to you until you’re thirty-five. If people think of you as a billionaire, you’ll find that they-even your very best friends-will have their perceptions of you altered by their knowledge of your wealth. I’m sure you want your friends to like you for who you are, and not what you have.”
“I see,” Peter said, “and I think you’re right.”
“Also, if anyone, such as your school or a charity, should ask you to donate money to them, tell them to call me, that you have no access to substantial funds.”
“All right, I will.”
“Any questions?” Eggers asked.
Both Stone and Peter shook their heads.
“Now the good news,” Eggers said. “Due to an anomaly in the national budget created by the Bush tax cuts ten years ago, a folly of our Republican friends, there are no federal inheritance taxes on the estate of anyone who dies in this calendar year.”
“You mean there’s nothing to be paid?” Stone asked.
“No, not a cent.”
“Wow,” Stone and Peter said simultaneously.
54
S tone was back at his desk when Joan brought him the New
York Post.
“You should see this,” she said, opening the paper.
Stone looked at it. The headline read: VANCE CALDER WIDOW SLAIN IN VIRGINIA SHOOTING. There was only one photograph, a shot of the house down the driveway. He made a little groaning sound, then read the piece, which was bylined Kelli Keane and said that the police were looking for a person of interest. When he finished it he closed the paper and handed it back to Joan.
“Well, that was more restrained than I would have expected from the Post,” he said. “This Keane woman came down to Virginia as the assistant to the art director from Architectural Digest.”
“I thought so, too,” she said. She handed him the Times, open to the page. “They’re even more restrained, and Arrington’s obituary is fairly brief.”
Stone read the two pieces. One line in the obit said, “She is survived by her second husband, Stone Barrington, and a son, Peter, 18, both of New York.” The implication was that Peter was Stone’s son.
“It will be on the AP wire, of course,” Joan said, “but they will pick up the Post piece.” The phone rang, and she picked it up. “It’s the sheriff, in Virginia,” she said, handing him the phone.
It suddenly occurred to Stone that he had not given a thought to Tim Rutledge since speaking to the sheriff at the house. “Good morning, Sheriff,” he said.
“Good morning, Mr. Barrington,” the sheriff replied. “I just want to give you an update on Tim Rutledge. He left town the day of the shooting and left a note for his department head, saying that he was moving to California to take up a teaching appointment there.”
“So, he’s on the run?”
“He is. We’ve sent out a nationwide alert to police agencies. We don’t think there is a teaching appointment in California, and he could be anywhere. He cleaned out his bank accounts last Friday, so that would indicate premeditation.”
“I see.”
“The shotgun was processed for fingerprints, and the only ones found were those of my deputy. Rutledge apparently wiped it clean. Shall I return the shotgun to you?”