Stone Barrington 06-11

cabin.
    Stone and Dino emptied their pockets onto the table, including Dino’s badge and gun, and stripped. They had just kicked their clothing into a sodden pile when Callie appeared.
    “Well, hi there, sailors!” she said to the two naked men.
    Dino grabbed for his robe.
    “This must be Dino,” Callie said. “I can always recognize a naked policeman.”
    “Dino, this is Callie Hodges,” Stone said, getting into his own robe.
    “How do you do,” Dino said, trying to muster some dignity.
    “We have a ten-thirty tee time at the Breakers tomorrow,” she said.
    “Great,” Dino said. “We can go there on the boat.”
    “Don’t worry—the front will pass through tonight. Tomorrow will be beautiful, I promise. The greens may be a little slow, but Palm Beach is thirsty and will soak the rain right up. I’m surprised your plane was able to land.”
    “It took the pilot two tries,” Dino said. “I was ready to bust into the cockpit with my gun and order them to fly back to New York.”
    “I’m glad you didn’t,” Callie said, smiling sweetly.
    Juanito came back with a tray of steaming mugs.
    “We fixed you a little toddy,” Callie said. “Figured that, with the temperature thirty degrees below normal, you might need it.”
    Everybody sat down, and Stone and Dino gratefully sipped their drinks, which were laced with rum.
    “Well,” Dino said to Callie, “any more at home like you?”
    Callie laughed. “Don’t worry, we’ve got you a date for dinner.”
    “Oh?”
    “Allison Manning,” Stone said. “Although she’s called Liz Harding these days; you might remember that.”
    “I’ll try,” Dino said.
    “Callie, have there been any phone calls for me?”
    “No.”
    “If anyone besides Thad, Bill Eggers, Chief Griggs or my secretary, Joan, calls, will you tell them I’ve gone back to New York?”
    “Sure. Who are you avoiding?”
    “Mrs. Stone Barrington,” Dino said.
    She turned and looked at Stone, and her eyes narrowed. “Who?”
    Dino set down his cup. “Well, I think I’ll go get into some dry clothes.”
    As soon as he was gone, Stone began explaining to Callie who Dolce was. When he had finished, he waited for a comment.
    “Well,” she said finally, “hanging around you is never dull.”

28
    B ECAUSE OF THE WEATHER, THEY HAD DINNER IN THE yacht’s dining room, which was a symphony of mahogany and teak. Juanito had set a small table for the four of them, and candlelight gleamed on fine silver, as he served the dinner Callie had cooked for them. Dino had taken a shine not only to Callie, but to Liz as well, and they to him.
    “What, exactly, do you do on the police force, Dino?” Liz asked him.
    “Well, you know how on the TV cop shows there’s always these two detectives who are out there busting their balls to solve the case?”
    “Yes.”
    “That used to be Stone and me.”
    “Oh.”
    “And you know how the two detectives come back to the station house and report to their lieutenant, and he criticizes them and second-guesses them and ridicules them and sends them back out onto the street to do it all over again?”
    “Yes.”
    “That lieutenant is me, now.”
    “Was Stone a good detective?” Callie asked.
    Stone shifted his weight uncomfortably.
    “He wasn’t all that bad,” Dino said, “but he was hard to keep alive. I was always having to shoot people so they wouldn’t kill him.”
    “Nonsense! I was a very good detective,” Stone said, “but that second part is perfectly true, which gives you a pretty good indication of what percentage of Dino’s statements you can believe.”
    “Tell us about when you saved Stone’s life,” Liz said.
    Dino took a big sip of his wine. “Well, let’s see,” he said. “The first time was when we had chased this guy down in a car, and he came out shooting, got Stone in the knee. I put one in the middle of his forehead.”
    “Goodness,” Callie said. Both the women were rapt.
    “Then there was the time Stone had to jump out of a helicopter because people were trying to kill him. I used a shotgun that time; didn’t kill anybody. Then—oh, this is my favorite—this very strange guy had Stone strung up by his heels, naked, in this old slaughterhouse, about to cut him a few new orifices, and I put two in him.”
    Liz blinked rapidly. “Strung up by his heels, naked? Whew! If I had a folding fan, this is where I’d use it.”
    “And there were probably a couple of other times, but you get the