Dirt

house before?”
    “Twice.”
    “How many staff?”
    “A butler, a housekeeper, three maids, and a cook and kitchen staff. Oh, a driver. They’ve all been with the Duke for years, and he made a point of their discretion.”
    “Good.”
    He was very thorough, Amanda thought, and she liked that. She liked his looks, too — tall, slender, blond hair going gray. She liked the good suit and shirt — not custom-made, perhaps, but fine quality. She liked the house. She could make this man
very
well known, if she chose to. He was the sort of man she might like to be seen with. She would think about that.
    “You would have made a good police detective,” Stone said.
    Her eyebrows went up. “Why do you think so?”
    “You’re very observant, very analytical,” he replied. “At least as much so as I.”
    “Thank you,” she said, smiling. “Only an observant person would see that.”
    “Amanda, I think you may have it in you to solve this mystery without my help. Certainly you know the people involved better than I. You know who might wish to hurt you.”
    Amanda laughed ruefully. “They are legion,” she said. “In my business I make enemies every week, even though I try very hard not to.”
    “I can see how it might be difficult not to make enemies.”
    “Not difficult, impossible. I run the most innocuous item about someone’s marriage or divorce and, at the very least, I’m perceived as having taken sides in the matter, sometimes by
both
parties.” Stone laughed, and she joined him. She had seemed a bit stiff at first, but now she had loosened up, and she was charming. He was forty-two, and he tended to be attracted to women a decade younger, but she must be around his age, he thought, and he found her appealing. Careful, this was business, at least for the moment. He had been on the point of offering her a drink.
    Amanda glanced at her watch.
    “Am I keeping you from something?” Stone asked. “I think we’re about finished for now, if you have to leave.”
    “I have another hour,” she said, “if you do; and the sun is well over the yardarm. I wonder if I might have a drink?”
    “Of course,” Stone said. Mind reader! “What would you like?”
    “Oh, something light.”
    Stone picked up the phone and pressed a button or two. “Helene, there’s a bottle on the bottom shelf of the small refrigerator. Would you bring that and a couple of glasses?”
    Helene appeared with a bottle of champagne in a silver wine cooler and a pair of flutes.
    “Just set it on the desk; I’ll open it,” Stone said.
    Helene departed; Stone opened the champagne and poured.
    “Veuve Clicquot,” Amanda said. “My very favorite.”
    “I’ll keep that in mind,” he replied.
    Amanda lifted the thin glass and took a sip. And Baccarat crystal, too, she thought. “Enough of business,” she said. “Tell me about you.”
    “Not much to tell. Grew up in the Village; P.S. Six, NYU, law school, joined NYPD, made detective, took early retirement, practiced law. That’s me in a nutshell.”
    “Stone,” she said, “men like you don’t fit into nutshells.”
    He laughed.
    “I’m having some people for dinner on Friday evening. Will you come?”
    “I’d be delighted.”
    She dug a card from her purse and handed it to him. “Come at six-thirty; that’ll give us time to talk a bit before the others arrive.”
    “All right.”
    She looked around the rooms. “Your books tell me more about you than you do.”
    Stone shrugged. “I’ve nothing to hide.”
    “We’ll see,” she replied.
     
Chapter 10
     
    Stone arrived at Elaine’s at eight-thirty, having only just sobered up from the champagne with Amanda Dart. Jack, the headwaiter, seated him at the table just beyond the newly painted no-smoking line and brought him a Wild Turkey on the rocks without being asked. Dino was late, which didn’t surprise him. They had dinner once a week, usually at Elaine’s, but Dino had a lot of demands on his time these days. Lieutenant Bacchetti, formerly Stone’s partner on the force, now ran the detective squad at the Nineteenth Precinct on East Sixty-seventh Street.
    Elaine pulled up a chair and sat down. “You meeting Dino?”
    “Yep.”
    “He might be late; his kid had a birthday party earlier.”
    “Then I’m surprised he’s coming at all.”
    “I’m not,” she chortled. “He’d do anything to get out of something like that.”
    “You’re probably right. Elaine, do you know Amanda