Lucid Intervals (Stone Barrington 18)

HERBIE LOOKED AWFUL, and the orange jumpsuit didn’t help. “Where have you been?” he demanded of Stone. “I’ve been in here for nearly a whole day!”

“I was several hundred miles away when I heard, Herbie. I got here as soon as I returned to town. Now tell me, what happened?”

“It was yesterday morning,” Herbie said. “Sheila and I had breakfast in bed, and we were watching some morning TV when we got into an argument about you.”

“About me?”

“Yeah. This is all your fault.”

“Herbie, calm down and tell me what you’re talking about.”

“You know what I’m talking about, Stone. It was you who insisted.”

“Insisted on what?”

“On the prenup.”

“Ah, yes. I did insist, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did. So I told Sheila to go and see you about it, and she went absolutely nuts: ranted and raved and started crying. It upsets me when she cries.”

“Does she… did she cry a lot?”

“Only when I tried to get her to do something she didn’t want to do, like not go shopping.”

“Or talk to me about a prenup.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you explain to her that she would need to see her own lawyer?”

“I thought all she needed was you,” Herbie said.

“Let me explain this to you, Herbie,” Stone said. “It would be unethical for me to represent both of you at the same time, so Sheila would have needed her own attorney. I would have insisted on that had she called me.”

“Even if we were going to get married?”

“Especially if you were going to get married. If she had signed a prenup without her own counsel and you later got divorced, she could get the prenup invalidated on the grounds that she was not properly represented.”

“Oh.”

“Now go on. What happened next?”

“Well, I couldn’t stand the yelling anymore, and I said I would talk to her some more about it after I went to the john, and I went to the john.”

“For how long?”

“Long enough to read most of a magazine.”

“How many minutes, Herbie?”

“I don’t know… twenty minutes, half an hour. Who’s counting? So I got dressed, and when I came out of the bedroom, Sheila wasn’t there. I looked all over for her, but she was gone. I figured she was out doing some revenge shopping and she’d be back when she cooled off, so I sat down in the living room to watch some more TV. Then I heard all these sirens, and they would get louder and louder and then stop, like they were in front of the building. So I went out on the terrace-the sliding glass door was open-and looked over the, whatchacallit, the edge.”

“The parapet.”

“Yeah, like that. And there were a couple of cop cars and a fire truck down on the street, and people were running around. So I went back inside and watched some of Ellen. Maybe five minutes later, the doorbell rang, and there were these two uniforms standing there.”

“What did you tell them?”