Swimming to Catalina (Stone Barrington 4) - Page 42
“I thought so at first; I don’t now.”
“What changed your mind?”
“As soon as I got here everybody, and I mean everybody, the husband knows went to a great deal of trouble to distract me from the problem. Then the husband told me he had heard from his wife, that she was fine, and I was hustled out of town.”
“But you’re still here.”
“I didn’t like being hustled. Also, I had two phone messages from the lady, and my hotel’s caller ID made them from a restaurant called Grimaldi’s.”
Grant’s eyebrows shot up. “I know that place, or used to.”
“I thought you might.” Stone told Grant about his visit to the restaurant and finding the matchbook in the storeroom.
“Sounds like the lady’s leaving a trail of crumbs.”
“It does, doesn’t it? I can’t go any farther with this without telling you who these people are, so I need to know if you’re in.”
“Tell me who they are, and I’ll tell you if I’m in.”
“The husband is Vance Calder.”
Grant put down his fork and leaned back in his chair. “Holy shit,” he said.
“That about sums it up. His wife and I used to be…close, in New York. She went off to do a magazine piece on Calder and ended up marrying him.”
“So why didn’t Calder call us?”
“He’s terrified of the publicity, especially the tabloids. I think he’s led pretty much of a charmed existence with the press, and he doesn’t want that to change.”
“But it’s his wife.”
“Yeah.”
Grant shook his head. “I haven’t had all that much contact with the showbiz community,” he said, “but these people never cease to amaze me. They think they’re operating on a nearby planet of their own, where they call all the shots and nobody else matters.”
“From what I’ve heard, that’s how it was in the twenties and thirties, when the studios were big.”
“I guess so, and maybe it’s still like that a little, but it rubs me the wrong way.”
“I can understand that, but it’s not my purpose here to drag these people and their friends down to earth; I just want to find the lady and talk to her.”
“Talk to her? Not reunite her with her husband?”
Stone shrugged. “If absolutely necessary.”
“You still want her?”
Stone looked at his plate. This was the question he had been avoiding asking himself. “I want to know if she still wants me, after…all that’s happened.”
“But you don’t know what’s happened.”
“That’s right, and I want to find out.”
“Well, on the face of it—I mean if Calder walked into the cop shop and I caught it—I’d read it as a purely domestic matter.”
“It may be, but I doubt it.”
“You could be right; it’s the Grimaldi’s connection that intrigues me. I doubt if that joint is even in the phone book; it’s not the sort of place a movie star’s wife would wander into.”
Source: readsnovelonline.net