“Has Ms. Manning clutched her chest and turned blue?”
“Worse. Plane crash, this morning.”
“I see.”
“Don’t break the news to anybody you find; we’ll let the official channels do that.”
“Gotcha.”
Stone hung up, walked back to the marina, undressed, and crawled into bed with Allison, who was glad to see him.
Chapter
32
Stone sat in his rented room over the Shipwright’s Arms, staring at the screen of his computer, trying to write an opening statement for Allison’s trial, even though he knew that Leslie Hewitt intended to open himself. He felt that he had to be ready with something if Leslie should suddenly veer off into one of his lapses. He had nearly finished a draft when there was a knock on the door.
“Stone,” Thomas’s voice called from the hallway.
“Come in, Thomas.”
Thomas opened the door. “There’re two policemen downstairs wanting you; they wouldn’t tell me what it was about, but they took my guest registration forms for the past week.”
Stone saved his document and shut down the computer. “Let’s see what they want,” he said. He followed Thomas downstairs to the open-air bar where two starched and pressed black officers waited. “I’m Stone Barrington, gentlemen,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
The taller of the two nodded at an elderly Jaguar in the parking lot. “You must come with us, Mr. Barrington,” he said.
“Where are we going?” Stone asked.
“In the car, please.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Get in the car,” the man repeated.
Thomas spoke quietly. “Do it; I’ll find out where they take you.”
Stone walked toward the car without another word. The shorter officer held the rear door open for him, closed it after him, and got into the driver’s seat; his tall companion sat up front, too. The car pulled out of the lot and headed inland, toward the capital.
“Where are we going?” Stone asked.
“Government House,” the tall officer said. “You in a lot of trouble, man.”
Stone remembered that the jail was in the basement of Government House. “What kind of trouble?”
“You see pretty quick,” the man said.
The remainder of the journey passed in silence. Stone wracked his brain for some notion of what they could be arresting him for, but the only motivation he could come up with was that he was representing Allison Manning. Perhaps in St. Marks that was enough.
Eventually, the car entered the little city and drove to its center, passing the front door of Government House and going to the side, to the jail door. Stone got out of the car and, with an officer on each side of him, walked to the door. The booking desk was dead ahead. He wondered what, if anything, Thomas could do about this.
“This way,” the tall officer said.
Stone turned to his left and found the officer holding open a door that led to a flight of stairs. He followed the man up two stories, with the short officer bringing up the rear. They emerged into a long, broad hallway, cooled by a row of ceiling fans and open to the air at each end, a tribute to the British desire to remain cool in hot places. The building seemed deserted. They marched to the opposite end of the hall, through a set of double doors, and into a waiting room.
“Wait here,” the tall officer said, then went through another door.
Stone looked around him. It was a large room, furnished with well-worn leather furniture, and on the wall was a large portrait of the prime minister, a benevolent-looking man who, Stone guessed, had been in his mid-seventies when he had sat for the portrait. He wondered how long ago that was.