L.A. Dead (Stone Barrington 6)

"I wish you could come with me and help make some sense of this."

Dino shook his head. "I'm due back in the office first thing Wednesday. Call me when you've got your feet on the ground, and I'll help, if I can."

The train was beginning to move, and Stone jumped on. He and Dino managed a handshake before the train pulled out of the station.

Stone found his compartment and sat down. Stress often made him drowsy, and he dozed off almost immediately.

Chapter 6

Even a first class transatlantic airline seat seemed oddly spartan after the pleasures of the Boeing Business Jet, but Stone managed to make himself comfortable. A flight attendant came around with papers; none of the English-language papers had the story yet, but he caught Vance's name in the headlines of an Italian journal.

He managed to sleep some more and had a decent dinner, which, for him, was lunch, then the lights dimmed, and Vance Calder's face appeared on the cabin's movie screen. It was a report from CNN International and mentioned no more than the bare bones of the story, which Stone already knew. He'd have to wait unti LAX for more news.

He thought about another flight, how if Arrington hadn't missed it, things would have been very different. They had planned a winter sailing holiday on the island of St. Mark's, in the Caribbean, and he had planned, once at sea, to ask her to marry him. She had called him at the airport as the flight was boarding and said she had just gotten out of an editorial meeting at the The New Yorker, for which she sometimes wrote pieces. There was no way for her to make the plane, but she would be on the same flight the following day. The airplane had taken off in the first flurries of what would become a major blizzard in New York, and there was no flight the next day, or the day after that.

T

hen he had a fax from her, saying the The New Yorker wanted a profile of Vance Calder, who hadn't given a magazine interview in twenty years. It was a huge opportunity for her, and she had begged to be allowed to miss their holiday. He had grudgingly agreed and had put the newly purchased engagement ring back into his suitcase, to await a return to New York.

Then he had been caught up in an extraordinary situation in St. Mark's, had become involved in a murder trial, and by the time he was ready to return to the city, there was a fax from Arrington saying that, after a whirlwind romance, she had married Vance Calder.

After that had come news of her pregnancy and her uncertainty about the identity of the father. The paternity test had come back in Vance's favor, and that was that. Now Vance was dead, and Arrington had turned Stone's life upside down once again.

Stone looked up at the cabin screen again. A film was starting, and it was Vance Calder's latest and last. Stone watched it through, once again amazed at how the actor's presence on screen held an audience, even himself, even now.

The time change was in Stone's favor, and they reached LAX in the early evening. Stone stepped off the airplane and found Rick Grant waiting for him. The LAPD detective was in his fifties, graying, but trim-looking. They greeted each other warmly.

"Give me your baggage claim checks," Rick said, and Stone complied. He handed them to another man. "The Bel-Air?" he asked Stone. Yes.

Rick guided Stone through a doorway, down a flight of stairs, and out onto the tarmac, where an unmarked police car was waiting. Rick drove. "You all right?" he asked.

"Well, it's three o'clock in the morning where I just came from, but after some sleep I'll be okay. How about you? How's the job?"

"I made captain; that's about it."

"How's Barbara?" Stone had introduced Rick to Barbara Tierney, who was now his wife.

"Extremely well; in fact, she's pregnant."

"At your age? You dog."

"How about that? I thought I was all through with child rearing."

"Bring me up to date on what happened, Rick, and don't leave anything out."

The Brentwood station caught the case on Satuday evening, about seven p.m. Calder's Filipino butler called it in. There was a patrol car there in three minutes, and the detectives were there two minutes after that. Calder's body was lying in the central hallway of the house, face down. He'd taken one bullet here," he tapped his own head at the right rear, "from about three feet. He was still breathing when the patrol car got there, but dead when the detectives arrived."

"The gun?"

"Nine millimeter automatic; Calder owned one, and it hasn't turned up, in spite of a very thorough search."

"Where was Arrington when it happened?"

"In the bathtub, apparendy. They were going out to dinner later. The butler heard the shot and sent the maid to find her. She was still in a robe when the detectives arrived. They noted the strong smell of perfume; there was a large bottle of Chanel No. 5 on her dressing table."

"And that made them suspicious, I guess."

"Yeah."