Stone Barrington 06-11

earlier; he may already be gone, and he could go just about anywhere in that thing. I’ll phone it in when I’ve finished this steak. I don’t suppose you have a tail number?”

    “Nope. You think he’s already moved the grenades?”
    “Maybe not; he’s missing one thing.”
    “What?”
    “The modification to the standard rifle launcher that arms the grenade when it’s fired. All the ones in New Mexico are accounted for, and if he sold it to these people without the arming mechanism, he’d get a bullet in the brain, or worse.”
    “The grenades can’t be fired any other way?”
    “Nope. You could dribble one like a basketball, and it wouldn’t explode. The mechanism does everything—launches it and arms it, with a single pull of the trigger.”
    “You know,” Stone said, “every time we invent some new method of killing, the bad guys get it. That’s been true from the slingshot to the atomic bomb, and now the administration wants to spend a lot of money developing tiny nuclear weapons. Don’t they ever learn?”
    “If they did, I’d be out of work,” Lance said.

23
    STONE WAS DOING the Times crossword in bed the following morning, when the intercom buzzed. Stone picked it up. “Yes, Joan?”
    “Good morning.”
    “Good morning.”
    “Did you listen to the phone messages when you came in last night?”
    “No.”
    “There’s one from Bill Eggers: He wants you at an important meeting at ten A . M ., at Woodman and Weld.”
    Stone looked at his bedside clock; it was nine twenty-five. “Oh, God.”
    “Maybe it’s something that will produce some income,” she said. “You can’t keep selling stock.”
    “I’m running,” Stone said, heading for the shower.
    HE ARRIVED at the meeting in Eggers’s office ten minutes late.
    “Good afternoon,” Eggers said pointedly.
    “I’m sorry. I got your message only a few minutes ago.”
    He turned and looked at the other person seated on Eggers’s sofa. She appeared to be in her midthirties, dressed in a beautifully designed suit and expensive shoes, wearing a tasteful diamond choker and a heavy-looking engagement ring and wedding ring. “I’m Stone Barrington,” he said, offering his hand.
    She took it, smiled briefly, but said nothing.
    “This is Barbara Stanford,” Eggers said.
    The name caused Stone to stop breathing for a brief moment. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”
    “Sit down, Stone,” Eggers said.
    Stone sat and regarded Barbara Stanford. He guessed that, when she stood up, she would be tall. She had chestnut-colored hair and tawny skin, and the silk blouse under her suit didn’t bother to cover too much cleavage.
    “Barbara has a rather unusual problem,” Eggers said.
    “Perhaps I’d better explain the situation to Mr. Barrington,” she said in a beautifully modulated, accentless voice.
    “Go right ahead, Barbara,” Eggers said.
    “A little over a year ago, I was married to a man I’d only known for a short time. During the time we’ve been married, we’ve spent a total of only a few months together, since he travels widely on business and prefers to do so alone.”
    Stone saw it coming, and he dreaded it. “May I ask his name?”
    “Whitney Stanford,” she replied.
    Stone gulped. “Please go on.”
    “I began to think there might be another woman,” she said, “and I began poking around among his things. I found a passport. I thought it odd, since he was in Paris at the time and would have needed his passport to travel there, but when I opened it, it was in another name: Forrest Billings. The photograph, however, was of my husband. I had barely gotten over the shock when a magazine called Avenue was delivered to my apartment.”
    Stone knew the magazine. It was a society journal that was delivered to every apartment building on the Upper East Side.

    “The magazine features a lot of photographs of people taken at parties, and to my astonishment, I saw a picture of my husband with another woman and—you won’t believe this—the mayor.”
    Eggers, who had seemed drowsy, was suddenly alert.
    “The caption for the picture said he was somebody called Billy Bob Barnstormer.”
    Eggers got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I think it would be best if the two of you talked alone.”
    “No, it wouldn’t,” Stone said. “Sit down, Bill.”
    Eggers sat down, grabbed a tissue from a box on the coffee table and dabbed at his forehead.
    Stone nodded. To Barbara Stanford he said, “Please