Swimming to Catalina (Stone Barrington 4)

“Why do you think that?”

“I think that’s why Vance wanted to see his certificates. He’s like that; he likes to touch and feel the things he owns. I’m not sure they’re real to him otherwise. I had the feeling he was thinking of selling them.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He wouldn’t. Not ever.”

“Go on.”

“Then Lou Regenstein came into the office, and he was looking very grim. He and Vance were in Vance’s office with the door closed for more than an hour. Vance hardly ever closes his office door, not the one that opens into my office. Then they left the office and went somewhere together, and Vance didn’t come back until late in the afternoon. Wh

en he did come back, he did something very strange: he told me to take the Centurion shares to the bank—not Safe Harbor, where he does all his banking, but to the bank that’s right outside the studio gates—and he told me to rent a large safe deposit box in my name and to put the shares in it and not to bring the key back to the office.”

“How much room did the share certificates take up in a large box?”

“Hardly any; I found that odd.”

“Did you ever give the key to Vance?”

“No, I still have it; it’s in my own deposit box at Safe Harbor.”

“Did he ever ask you to put anything else in the box?”

“No, but I had the feeling he was going to, otherwise he’d never have had me get a large box.”

“What else happened?”

“Nothing else that day. Oh, he asked me to get Arrington a plane reservation for Virginia—to Washington National, actually–and to deliver the ticket to the house that evening. And I did that.

“The next morning, Billy O’Hara came to Vance’s office, stayed nearly an hour, then Lou Regenstein joined them and they were there most of the morning. Billy is head of security for the studio.”

“Is it unusual for Vance to see O’Hara?”

“Very. The only other time I ever saw him in the office was right after he took the security job. Lou brought him around and introduced him to us.”

“What does studio security consist of?”

“Well, the usual—guards at the gates, studio passes, guard patrols, that sort of thing. In the old days—this isn’t quite so true nowadays—the security people were in charge of protecting stars and contract players from trouble—drunk driving charges, rape, wife beating, that sort of thing. These days, stars are independents and there aren’t any contract players to speak of.”

“Did you get the impression that O’Hara was there to get Vance out of some kind of trouble?”

“It was the first thing I thought of. Vance obviously had a problem.”

“Did he ever confide in you?”

“In bits and pieces. He told me that he wanted to get you out of town—I had to arrange that.” She smiled. “Of course, I wasn’t as anxious for you to leave as Vance was.”

“What other bits and pieces did he tell you?”

“He told me he was having problems with Ippolito and Sturmack, and that I was to be very solicitous of them on the phone and if they came to the studio. He was anxious that they not think he was being rude to them.”

“What else?”

“He told me that Arrington wouldn’t be back for a while, but to go on telling anyone who asked that she was visiting family in Virginia. He told me that he wanted to be a little more accessible to the press, which was unusual. Normally he doesn’t speak to anyone from the press. He doesn’t do interviews, he doesn’t do the Tonight Show, he’s never even done Barbara Walters. It’s part of the Calder mystique, that he’s so inaccessible. I think he changed the policy, however slightly, so that he wouldn’t seem to be covering up anything. That’s why he had me invite that woman to the dinner party.”

“So Vance was setting things up to protect himself.”

“And Arrington. He was very worried that something would appear in the press that would jeopardize her.”