Stone was having lunch alone at the Shipwright’s Arms when Thomas called him to the phone. “It’s Bob Cantor,” he said, moving the receiver down to the end of the bar, away from where Hilary Kramer was sitting.
“Hello, Bob,” Stone said into the instrument. “You back from the Canaries?”
“I’m home again,” Cantor replied, “and a little worse for the wear. The jet lag will kill you.”
“I sympathize. You got something new from the Canaries?”
“Nothing at all. I have got something new from here, though.”
“Shoot.”
“You remember I told you I checked out Paul Manning’s credit record?”
“I do, and he had a pretty good one, as I recall; paid everything on time.”
“That’s right, but I had that information only from a phone call from a friend at my bank. Now I have the printed report, and it shows a lot more.”
“Like what?”
“Seems Mr. Manning was living right on the edge. He was pulling in a magnificent income, of course, probably something between a million and two million a year, and closer to two. But he was spending one hell of a lot of money, too.”
“That’s very interesting,” Stone said.
“It gets more interesting. The credit report shows that he was pretty maxed out on all his credit cards and that he was borrowing heavily to make it from paycheck to paycheck.”
“Writers don’t get paychecks, do they? They get royalty checks.”
“Okay, okay, he got paid in widely separated lumps, but they were big lumps. My point is, his credit record shows that he was borrowing heavily from three banks, usually a hundred thousand bucks at a time, then repaying it when his royalty or advance check came.”
“Was he keeping up?”
“Just barely. I, ah, did a little unauthorized snooping last night.”
“What do you mean?”
“I drove up to Greenwich, got into his house, and had a look through his financial records, which his secretary had neatly filed away.”
“Bob, you should check with me before you do things like that.”
“If I had checked with you, you wouldn’t have let me do it.”
“You’re right about that. So what did you find out?”
“When he got a check he would pay off the three banks, and there would be only a few thousand left, not enough to get him to the next publisher’s payment. Right before he set off on the transatlantic voyage, he got two checks at once from two contracts, and that squared him for a while. But he borrowed while he was away, and now the banks are lined up, waiting for the will to be probated.”
“Well, I guess that’s going to cut into Allison’s insurance money.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Cantor came back. “Manning had twelve million bucks in life insurance.”
“Twelve million bucks? Nobody has that much insurance.”
“You’d be surprised how many people do. He was paying something like fifteen thousand bucks a month in premiums, which is one of the reasons, along with his lifestyle, that he was having to go to the banks to get by. And get this, he also had mortgage life insurance to cover both the house and the boat loans. When Allison pays all the outstanding bills, she’s going to have at least eleven million bucks in cash, tax free, plus the house, the boat, the cars—everything—free and clear. Her biggest expense is going to be property taxes, and she won’t have those long, because she’s already put the Greenwich property on the market. I told you I have a buddy up there in the property business.”
“Have you seen the New York Times piece on Allison’s plight down here?”
“Yep, and you can be sure that the insurance company has seen it, too.”
“That means they won’t pay unless she’s acquitted.”