She went away and came back with a double old-fashioned glass filled with ice and a brown liquor. “No bourbon; try this.”
He sipped it—strong and dark and peaty. “It’s excellent, what is it?”
“Laphroaig—a single-malt Scotch whiskey from the island of Islay.” (She pronounced it “Islah.”)
“I’m not usually a Scotch drinker, but this will do just fine.” He thought she seemed oddly cheerful and unaffected for a young woman who had had to leave her home on a moment’s notice, for very odd reasons. “Are you doing all right?”
“Just fine. Lance will be off the phone in a minute, I’m sure; he’s already been on it since we arrived here. Ali and Sheila are upstairs napping—or something.” She smiled impishly.
Stone thought they must be napping, not something else, not after having seen their business explode before their eyes earlier in the day.
“Tell me about Ali and Sheila,” Stone said. He wanted to hear what Erica had to say about them before Lance returned.
“They’re just friends of Lance’s,” she said. “They have an antique shop in Chelsea.”
Had, Stone thought. “What nationality are they?”
“Ali is Syrian, Sheila Lebanese, I think.”
Syrian? Lebanese? Did they have something against the Greeks, or vice versa? He couldn’t make any sense of this. “How did Lance meet them?”
“Business—some importing or exporting thing, I think.”
“Does Lance have a lot of friends in London?”
“Just the ones you’ve met,” she said. “Monica, Sarah, Ali, and Sheila. He’s the sort of person who seems to have lots of acquaintances and few friends.”
I’ll bet, Stone thought. “Have you met a lot of his acquaintances?”
“Not really; once in a while someone will come to the house for a business meeting.”
“To the house? Doesn’t Lance have an office?”
“Not really; if he needs space for a meeting, he uses a club or a hotel meeting room.”
“I guess Lance travels pretty light, then.”
“Pretty light,” Lance said from the doorway.
“Oh, you’re finally off the phone,” Erica said. “Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, some Scotch, please.”
“Try the Laphroaig,” Stone said, raising his glass. Stone opened his mouth to tell Lance what he’d experienced in his wine cellar, then changed his mind. So far, nobody knew he’d actually been at the house; perhaps it was better to keep it that way, at least, for the moment.
The three of them chatted idly for a while.
“Anybody hungry?” Erica asked.
“Now that you mention it,” Stone replied.
“There’s no food here; I guess we’d better go out somewhere.”
“There’s plenty of food back at Farm Street,” Lance said. “Let’s go back there and fix something. I’ve been on the phone with some people, and I think it’s safe to go back now.”
Stone wondered what kind of people could tell Lance that.
“Great!” Erica said. “I feel like cooking. Shall we wake Ali and Sheila?”