Dead in the Water

chicken breasts in a skillet on the four-burner gas range, which was large for a yacht.
    “When did you find time to get to the grocery store?” he asked.
    “I didn’t. I provisioned in the Canaries, and I’ve got lots of cold storage here, plus a large freezer. There won’t be a salad, though; sorry about that.”
    They clinked glasses. “Better times,” Stone said.
    “I’ll drink to that.” She took a swig of her martini. “Expert,” she said.
    “A misspent youth. I tended bar in a Greenwich Village joint one summer, during law school.” He leaned against a galley cabinet and sipped his drink. “Tell me about you,” he said.
    “That’s easy,” she replied. “Born in a colonial village in Litchfield County, Connecticut, father a country lawyer, mother a volunteer for this and that; went to local private schools, then Mount Holyoke, in Massachusetts; did a graphics course at Pratt, in Brooklyn, worked as an assistant art director for an ad agency in Manhattan, met Paul, married Paul; lived…well, lived. What about you?”
    “Born and raised in the Village, father a cabinetmaker, mother a painter; NYU undergrad and law school. NYPD for fourteen years, eleven of them as a detective.”
    “Why’d you quit?”
    “A very bad boy put a twenty-two slug in my knee, and the force quit me, gave me their very best pension.That’s the short version; I won’t bore you with the long one, which involves a lot of department politics and a very strange case I worked on. Anyway, once off the force, I crammed for the bar, and an old law school buddy hooked me up with Woodman and Weld.”
    “How much money do you make?”
    The bald question stopped him for a moment, then he recovered. “I made about six hundred thousand last year,” he said. “My best year so far.”
    “You’re doing well, then.”
    “By New York law firm standards that’s only middling, but I have a lot more freedom than I would as a partner in a firm. I’m lucky that I can pick and choose my cases. If I want to bugger off to St. Marks for a week’s sailing, I can manage it.”
    She put an oily hand against his cheek. “But you got stood up, didn’t you? Poor baby.”
    “That’s me.”
    “Who is she?”
    “Name’s Arrington Carter; she’s a freelance writer.”
    “And when the blizzard was over, what kept her in New York?”
    “She’s writing a New Yorker profile of Vance Calder.”
    “Ooooh, lucky girl.”
    “I guess. She’s known him for a while; matter of fact, she was his date the first time I met her.”
    “And you won out over Vance Calder? You must be sensational in bed.”
    He laughed. “You think that was it? I always thought it was my boyish charm.”
    She gave him a bright smile. “That, too.” Sheopened a sealed packet of smoked salmon and arranged the slices on two plates. “First course is almost ready,” she said. “There’s a bottle of white on the table; will you open it?”
    Stone went to the table, found a corkscrew, and opened a bottle of Beringer Private Reserve ’94, then tasted it. “Excellent,” he said. “Was Paul a connoisseur of wines?”
    “Paul was more of a wino; I’m the authority.” She handed him a bottle of red. “For the main course; might as well open it and let it breathe.”
    “Dominus ’87. Very nice.”
    “You know wines?”
    “Enough to stay out of trouble.” He opened both bottles.
    She set the two plates of smoked salmon on the table and untied her apron. Underneath it she was dressed in a very short skirt and a white cotton blouse, unbuttoned and tied under her breasts.
    Stone remembered that the first time he had seen her she’d been wearing that sort of blouse, tied that way.
    They finished their smoked salmon, then she whipped up a chicken dish over rice, with a lovely sauce. They were both warm with the wine and laughing easily. Allison cleared the table, then pressed a button and it folded away electrically.
    “Very slick.”
    “Glad you like it.” She caught him looking at her breasts. “Any yachtsman should be able to deal with a simple square knot,” she said, knocking back the last of her wine.
    Uh-oh, Stone said to himself. But he had had nearly a bottle of wine on top of the martini, and he was feeling hurt by Arrington, feeling incautious, and feeling extremely attracted to Allison Manning.
    She went to a switch panel and lowered the lights; when she came back the knot in her shirt had been untied. She bent to kiss Stone, and her