Bel-Air Dead (Stone Barrington 20)

“All right,” she said, “I will.”

Stone watched her walk back toward the main house, and he wondered why he was not sexually attracted to her. She was quite beautiful, after all.

27

Stone retrieved the Woodman amp; Weld documents from the fax machine in the house, and when he returned to the patio, Arrington and Dino were having breakfast. He put the envelope on the table and poured himself a second glass of orange juice.

“You’re not eating?” Arrington asked.

“I was hungry; I ate earlier.”

“What’s the big envelope?”

“Many documents for your signature. Signing them will wrap up the property purchase, the airplane purchase, the purchase of Baird’s shares, and it will authorize Woodman amp; Weld and me to transfer funds from your line of credit to pay for all of that.”

“You didn’t mention the purchase of James Long’s shares.”

Stone sighed. “There’s a problem with that.” He told her about the attack on Long.

“You mean Prince can have people killed in prison?”

“It’s not as hard as you might imagine, if you have a contact on the inside.”

“I’m beginning to feel unsafe,” she said.

“You’ve had round-the-clock security since late last night,” Stone said. “Mike Freeman arranged it, and his people are good.”

“Oh, then I feel safer.”

“With any luck at all you’ll have everything wrapped up and will be able to fly back to Virginia tomorrow-the day after, at the most.”

“You mean if James Long doesn’t die.”

“I mean if he signs the papers. If he dies, then we have to deal with his estate.”

“Oh, God,” she said.

“We have to take these things as they come,” Stone said. “Everybody’s working very hard to make this work.”

“I know you’re working hard, Stone, and I’m very impressed by how quickly you’ve been able to generate all the

paperwork for these various transactions.” She put her fork down. “Okay, give me a pen.”

Stone guided her through the documents, then doublechecked to be sure she had signed them all, then he summoned Manolo and gave him instructions on faxing the documents.

“Before the day is out, you’ll own Baird’s shares, the adjoining properties, and the airplane.”

“Things didn’t happen this fast when I was dealing with Mr. Sharp, back in Virginia. He would have taken weeks to get all this done.”

Manolo came and told Stone he had a call.

“Hello?”

“Stone, it’s Rick Barron. Have you heard about Jim Long? The morning news said he’s in the hospital.”

“Yes. We’re still going to make this happen, Rick. We just have to wait for him to be sufficiently conscious to sign the sales documents. They’re in his attorney’s hands now.”

“What else can go wrong?”