Dead in the Water (Stone Barrington 3)

“Then send a check for five hundred and forty thousand to the Internal Revenue Service.” He groaned. “God, how proud I am to be an American and pay my taxes!”

“Right. That leaves eight hundred and eighty-five thousand.”

“Send my broker a check for two hundred thousand, and tell him to call me about where to invest it.”

“We’re rich!” Alma squealed. “What about the rest?”

“I was thinking about buying an airplane,” Stone said.

Alma’s face fell. “Oh. We’re not rich anymore. Well, it was fun while it lasted.” She got up and trudged comically back into the house.

Stone had a thought: he could afford a car now. He got up, went into the house, and walked through the kitchen into a storeroom, then through another door. This had been a garage at one time, and there was still a folding door to the street, though he hadn’t opened it for a long time. He waded through the stacked boxes and old lawn furniture to the door, which was made of heavy oak. He turned the lock, thinking, I’ll have to install an automatic garage door opener if I’m going to use this space. He tugged at the door, which moved six inches and stopped. He tugged again, and got it open three feet. Then, with all his strength, he moved the door up all the way, until it was standing wide open. He found himself face-to-face with a tall man.

“Morning, Stone,” the man said. “I was going to ring the front bell, but…”

“Morning,” Stone said. “What brings you around to see me?”

“Oh, just a social call,” Jim Forrester said. “Got a few minutes?”

“Sure.” Stone dragged two lawn chairs over, made a pass at dusting them, and sat down. “Take a pew.”

The two men sat, ten feet from the street. Forrester seemed a little annoyed at not being asked into the house. “How about some coffee?” he said.

“Sorry, coffee’s off the menu,” Stone replied. “What do you want?”

“Oh, I was just passing by.”

“Were you? Say, whatever happened to your New Yorker piece? I haven’t seen it.”

“Oh, they take a long time to edit anything, you know. My editor…”

“That would be Charles McGrath?”

“Right.”

“Chip McGrath left The New Yorker a couple of years ago to become editor of the New York Times Book Review.”

“Ah, right; I’m working with another editor now. Say, what do you hear from Allison?”

“You must think I’m a medium,” Stone said, expressionless.

“I inquired about the disposition of the body at Government House. They didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. I began to think that Allison might not be dead after all.”

“The police told me that their policy was to cremate the body and scatter the ashes at sea,” Stone said. That was certainly what they had told him. “By the way, have you been to any alumni reunions lately?”

Forrester looked at him, puzzled. “No, not for years. Why do you ask?”

“I did a little checking upstate. There was no James Forrester at Syracuse, not since the class of ’38, and I think that was a little before your time.”

“Must be some mistake,” Forrester said.

“No, but there was a Paul Manning, at Cornell, of course.”

“Yes, that’s where Paul went. Why were you checking on me at Syracuse?”

“When I’ve been had, I like to know why and by whom.”

“Had?”