Dead in the Water (Stone Barrington 3)

She turned over and pushed her buttocks into his increasingly active crotch. “Why don’t you get behind me?” She reached between her legs, found him, and guided him in.

Stone pushed into her sweet depths. “Oh, God,” he breathed. “When this is over, remind me to talk to you about your interview tomorrow morning.”

“Shhh,” she whispered, helping him.

Stone jerked awake. Sunlight was streaming through the port above his head. He heard voices and footsteps on the dock. “Allison,” he said, shaking her, “wake up.”

“What is it, baby?” she asked, snuggling her warm body closer.

There was a sharp rap on the hull, and Henry Hardy’s booming voice called out, “Mr. Barrington, you up?”

“60 Minutes here,” he whispered.

Allison’s head came off the pillow. “What?”

He glanced out the port and saw legs standing next to the boat. “I’ll try to get rid of them,” he said. He got out of bed, tried to rub some color into his face, and brushed his hair back with his hands. He got into his swim trunks, which were lying on a seat next to the berth, went into the main cabin, climbed the ladder, and emerged, waist high, from the hatch. Jake Burrows and Chris Wheaton were standing on the dock next to the bow of his boat. “What time is it?” he asked. “Aren’t you a little early?”

“It’s seven-fifteen,” Burrows said. “We have to set up for our eight o’clock interview.”

Stone shook his head. “I haven’t finished breakfast yet, and I don’t know if Allison is even up.” Suddenly he felt a naked body slither between his legs and up the ladder behind him. “Why don’t you go back to the Shipwright’s Arms, have some breakfast, and come back at eight?” He heard Allison sneaking across the cockpit behind him, then the rattle of his boarding ladder, followed by a tiny splash. He stepped off his boat, crossed the pontoon, hopped into the cockpit of the larger yacht, and yelled down the hatch. “Allison, you up yet?” He pretended to listen for a moment, then looked up at the television crew. “She’s up, but nowhere near ready,” he said. “Come back at eight.”

The disappointed crew turned and began walking back toward the pub. As Stone stood in the cockpit, Allison climbed up the stern ladder into the cockpit and, soaking wet, slipped past him and down the companionway ladder.

“I don’t know if I can be ready by eight,” she said, laughing.

“You’d bloody well better be,” he muttered, refusing to look at her.

“If we hurry, we could get in a quickie before they come back,” she said, pulling the hair on his legs.

“Ouch! I’m getting back to my boat right now. You get yourself together.” He fled the yacht and went back to his own.

At eight o’clock sharp he emerged, dressed, to find the crew standing on the dock, waiting. “Just a minute,” he said, “I’ll see if she’s ready.

As he spoke, Allison climbed into her own cockpit, wearing a sleeveless cotton dress that showed off her tan, yet made her look like a high school senior. “Good morning!” she cried, delivering a dazzling smile. “I’m Allison; come aboard, all of you.”

As the crew climbed aboard, Stone took deep breaths and tried to get his pulse rate back down to normal.

Chapter

18

I must be crazy, Stone thought as the interview began. I’ve let this girl go on TV, before an audience of millions and at the mercy of a reporter on her first assignment who would kill for a success, which she might not define as I would, and with no preparation whatever. He watched from the pontoon as Chris Wheaton tossed Allison a few softball questions to relax her, then tensed as the real questioning began. Jim Forrester from The New Yorker had shown up and was sitting quietly beyond camera range, listening and taking notes.

“Allison,” Chris Wheaton said, sounding really interested, “when you and Paul left the Canary Islands and set sail for home, how much sailing experience had you, personally, had?”

“Well, I had sailed across the Atlantic and around Europe with Paul, but he had always done the sailing. The boat was rigged for singlehanding, so he took care of that, and I just kept house—or boat, I guess.”

“So how was it, after Paul’s death, that you managed to sail this very large yacht all the way across the Atlantic all by yourself?”

Allison launched into an explanation of how she had learned enough celestial navigation to find her latitude and how she had managed the sails by using only the main most of the time.

Wheaton seemed fascinated by her reply and satisfied with her answer. Forrester seemed almost to be taking a transcript of the proceedings. Wheaton continued with questions about the sailing of the boat, and Allison grew visibly more relaxed. Then Wheaton changed tack, and Stone

knew that the questions were not coming in the order in which they would appear in the edited version of the interview. Wheaton probed the depths of Allison’s marriage to Paul Manning, taking her over and over the same ground, looking for what might appear to be a motive for murder. To Stone’s surprise, Allison stood up to it beautifully, genuinely seeming to try to answer every question put to her, holding nothing back.

When a halt was called for the first change of tape, Wheaton turned to Stone. “You want a break?”

Stone looked at Allison and she shook her head imperceptibly. “No,” Stone replied. “Go ahead.”