Dirt (Stone Barrington 2)

doing so, he had to move past the closet. As he made the door, the first voice spoke again.

“You stay here,” the voice said, and there was the sound of the action of an automatic pistol being worked. “I’m going to have a look around. You might use the phone on the desk over there to call nine-one-one and tell them there’s been a break-in.”

“Right,” the other man replied.

The young man sprinted nearly soundlessly through the living room, his soft slippers making only tiny noises on the carpeting. He made it down the hall to the front door, opened it, and stepped into the hallway. The elevator and the front door seemed like a bad idea; if there was already a cop car on the block when the 911 call went in, he might meet them going out the door. The elevator door stood open. He stepped inside, pushed in the EMERGENCY button to activate the car, pressed the button for the ground floor, and stepped out of the car just as the doors closed. The elevator started down, and he made for the stairs. Holding his paper bag of tools, he bounded down flight after flight, past the lobby floor to the basement. There had to be a back door for service purposes.

He emerged into a dimly lit hallway that seemed to have a row of doors leading to storage rooms. He raced past them, made a turn at the end of the hallway, and came up against a door. He put his ear to it, and could hear the sound of a garbage truck outside. Carefully, he opened the door, and as he did, a loud bell began to ring. Coolly, he put his head out and looked around. He was in a sort of concrete pit, with steps leading up to the side street. He closed the door behind him, but the bell continued to ring, both inside and outside the building. Worse, a red light over his head was flashing relentlessly. Now he began to panic. He charged up the steps and ran head-on into a garbage collector holding two empty cans.

The two went down together, the garbage man hollering, the cans bouncing around the sidewalk.

“Hey, get that guy!” somebody yelled.

The young man got to his feet, grabbed his paper bag, and sprinted down the block toward Fifth Avenue, pursued by the garbage men. He ran straight across Fifth, nearly being run down by a police car, its lights flashing. Funny, he hadn’t heard the siren until now. He heard the car doors opening, and somebody shout, “Stop! Police! Stop!”

Only one choice here, he thought. He ran straight at the park wall, throwing his paper bag ahead of him, vaulted over the wall, hit the ground on the other side, grabbed the paper bag, and was gone into the brush. They’d never get him now. Cops were too fat to run far. He emerged onto a walkway and ran down it toward Central Park South. The sound of police sirens faded into the distance.

He had gotten away with it again.

Chapter 8

Amanda got out of the Mercedes and looked approvingly up and down the tree-lined block. The nineteenth-century development known as Turtle Bay comprised three sides of a city block between Second and Third Avenues in the Forties; all the houses opened to the rear on a common garden. She knew half a dozen people with houses on the block and recognized it for the highly desirable place to live that it was.

She climbed the steps of the brownstone and rang the bell. The door was answered almost immediately by a Mediterranean-looking woman. Amanda followed her through an entrance hall and a formal drawing room into a book-lined study at the rear of the house, with a bay window overlooking the gardens.

“Will you please be comfortable for a moment,” the woman said. She spoke with a rather heavy accent. “Mr. Barrington will be with you quick.”

“Thank you,” Amanda said, taking one of a pair of leather wing chairs before the window.

“I’ll get some tea,” the woman replied, then left.

Amanda stood up and had a look around the room. It contained a great deal of original oak paneling, in addition to the bookcases, and there was an antique Persian rug on the floor, with old-fashioned parquet showing around its edges. A leather-topped walnut desk occupied a corner, and there were a number of silver-framed photographs on a shelf beside the desk, of people Amanda assumed to be Barrington ’s father and mother. On the wall behind the desk were three good-sized oils, all New York scenes, that Amanda would have bought on the spot. They were, she realized, all by Matilda Stone, who, she knew, had died fairly young and had left only around fifty canvases, all in private hands. She wondered what these three might be worth.

Stone Barrington finished his phone call and hung up. “ Alma,” he called to his secretary, “I’m going upstairs to meet my four o’clock; hold all my calls.”

“Right, Stone,” Alma called back from her adjacent office.

Stone climbed the spiral staircase that led to the rear hall of the first floor of the house and entered his study. A tall, handsome, beautifully dressed and coiffed woman, who appeared to be in her early forties, stood before his desk, looking at his mother’s paintings. “Good afternoon,” he said.

She did not turn around immediately, but went on looking at the paintings. “I don’t suppose I’ve seen more than a dozen of her pictures in my whole life,” she said, “but I’ve loved every one of them.”

“Thank you; she’d be pleased to have the compliment.”

She turned and walked toward him, holding out her hand. “I’m Amanda Dart.”

He took her hand. “I’m Stone Barrington; won’t you sit down?”

They each took a wing chair and, as if on cue, the servant appeared with a silver tray containing a matching teapot, two cups and saucers, and a plate with several slices of pound cake and some cookies.

“This is my housekeeper, Helene,” Stone said. “She makes the best pound cake on the Eastern Seaboard.”

“In the Western Hemisphere,” Helene said blithely.

“Helene is Greek; humility does not come easily to her.”

“And what would I have to be humble about?” Helene asked. “You bet not my pound cake.”

Amanda smiled appreciatively. She wanted the strange woman to be gone. “Tell me about this house,” she said, so they’d have something to talk about while Helene poured. Anyway, she was interested.