D.C. Dead (Stone Barrington 22)

Then Stone remembered a call he had not made. He checked his notebook for the number and the hospital answered. “Dr. Tom Kendrick,” Stone said.

After a short wait, Tom Kendrick came on the line. “Dr. Kendrick.”

“Dr. Kendrick, this is Stone Barrington. We met at your parents’ house.”

“I remember,” Kendrick said.

“We’ve concluded our investigation, and I wanted you to know the results.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Kendrick replied.

“We have concluded that your father did not kill your mother. The note he left was misinterpreted.”

“I’m relieved to hear that,” Kendrick replied, “but who did kill her?”

“She was killed by a woman named Shelley Bach, who was having an affair with your father. We believe that your father took his own life because he felt that his affair with Ms. Bach was the root cause of her death. This will all be in the papers by tomorrow, so you’d better prepare yourself for a lot of phone calls from the media.”

“Thank you, I’ll try to handle that. And thank you for letting me know the outcome.” Kendrick hung up.

Stone got aboard, then buttoned up the airplane, started the engines, and ran through his checklist. Finally, he called ground control for his clearance. The controller read him the clearance, and Stone repeated it.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen an airplane cleared across the Washington TFR,” he said, referring to central Washington, including the White House. “And at low altitude. You must know somebody.”

Stone laughed. “No, just the luck of the draw,” he replied, and requested permission to taxi. When they had lifted off, Stone said to Dino, “You’re going to be impressed with our routing.”

“Yeah, why?”

“I think Holly used her influence with Air Traffic Control to see that we got the scenic route.”

Moments later they crossed the Potomac at three thousand feet and saw the Washington Monument and the White House ahead.

“Man, what a view!” Dino said. “I’m going to send Holly some flowers!”

Shortly after they had passed the White House, Stone was told to climb directly to his filed cruising altitude and to fly direct to New Haven. Normally, he would have ascended in stages and been told to fly an airway.

They landed at Tweed Field, New Haven, and Dino’s son, Ben, drove out onto the ramp to meet them and unload their luggage.

Dino embraced his son, and Stone shook his hand. “We could have taken a cab,” Stone said.

“I’m glad to have a break from the theater,” Ben said. “Peter will be embroiled with details until curtain ?cab,”time, since he’s the director, but I wasn’t needed. I’m only the producer.”

He drove them to the building where Peter had bought an apartment that housed himself, Ben, and Peter’s girlfriend, and Stone and Dino made themselves comfortable in the guest room, while Ben went back to the theater.

“They’ve done some more fixing up since we were here last,” Dino said.

“Yes, they’ve got curtains and a nice Oriental rug, now,” Stone agreed. They found the makings of sandwiches in the fridge and made lunch.

As THE FINAL CURTAIN came down, the audience rose as one, applauding, whistling, and shouting. The cast took multiple curtain calls, then, to shouts of “Author! Author!” Peter joined them for the final bow.

“That was really something,” Stone said.

“I hadn’t expected it to be so funny,” Dino replied. “That was terrific writing.”

“It certainly was,” Stone said. “They’re meeting us at the restaurant.”

THE OPENING NIGHT PARTY was nearly as much of a triumph as the opening night performance. Stone and Dino

were treated with deference by the student crowd, but stayed out of the way and let Peter and Ben have their moment of glory.