Stone Barrington 06-11

that I’m no fun in bed?”
    “Absolutely not. Did they say that?”
    “Yes, and a lot more.”
    “I simply denied everything, as you asked, and as I would have done even if you hadn’t asked.”
    “What about that picture on your bedroom wall?”
    “That’s being dealt with.”
    “Burn it.”
    “My mother painted it.”
    “All right, I’ll buy it from you.”
    “It’s not for sale. Tiff, calm down. The video was taken off the Web site almost as soon as it appeared.”
    “Yes, I saw to that.”
    “Then there’s nothing to worry about. This will go away by tomorrow, and then…”
    “And then nothing,” she said. “I never want to see you again.” She hung up.

    “And just when it was going so well,” Stone said aloud to himself. He hung up the phone.
    Joan buzzed again. “Stone?”
    “Now what?”
    “Someone to see you.”
    “Who?” But his question was answered before she could speak. He looked up to find Arrington Carter Calder standing in the door to his office.
    “Hello, Stone,” she said.
    She stood there in a tight, short, brown dress, her hair golden, a sable coat over her shoulders, looking better than he had ever seen her. Something inside him melted, as it always did when she entered a room. She had not entered a room of his for more than two years, and a dinner they had had together in London a year before had ended disastrously. Involuntarily, as happened every time he saw her, he wondered whether he or the late movie star Vance Calder was the father of her son, Peter. And he wondered why she was here.
    “Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?” she asked.
    He got to his feet and walked around the desk to greet her. “Of course.” He leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, but she turned so that their lips met. “Come in and sit down. Would you like some coffee?”
    She sat down on the sofa. “I’d like some lunch, but would you answer a question, first?”
    “Sure.”
    “This morning, on the Imus show, they were talking about something that seemed to involve you, something about your appearing in a sex video with the United States Attorney? Surely you aren’t gay, Stone, not you.”

31
    THEY LUCKED INTO a table in the busy Grill Room of the Four Seasons, probably because Arrington was Vance Calder’s widow. When a bottle of Chardonnay had been brought and their lunch had been ordered, Stone began to explain.
    “First of all, the U.S. Attorney is female; second, she has denied that the video is of her; third, I am not the person in bed with whoever the woman is.”
    Arrington nodded. “All right, whatever you say.”
    “Do I detect a note of disbelief in your voice?”
    “Yes, you do. This is just the sort of trouble you’re always getting yourself into, Stone, and I know very well that there is one of your mother’s pictures on your bedroom wall.”
    “I have done nothing whatever to get myself into trouble; it’s been done for me. And there are thousands of reproductions of my mother’s paintings on bedroom walls all over this city. They seem to have replaced Utrillo prints as the thing to exhibit one’s good taste in art.”
    “Whatever you say.”
    “While we’re speaking of my troubles, I’d like to take this opportunity, not having previously had one, to explain what happened when we were having dinner in London.”

    “Are you referring to the occasion when you walked out of the Connaught Hotel’s restaurant and vanished into the night without a word?”
    “I was arrested, sort of.”
    “How do you get arrested, ‘sort of’?”
    “The London police turned up at the Connaught and demanded to see me. They took me up to my suite and grilled me for more than an hour and would not allow me to leave or make phone calls. When I finally came back downstairs, you, quite understandably, were gone. All my efforts to contact you and apologize were fruitless.”
    “Well, that’s a very entertaining story, even if I didn’t find it entertaining at the time. What were they grilling you about?”
    “I can’t tell you; it’s a client confidentiality thing.”
    “How convenient.”
    “Oh, all right, I’ll tell you. The London police found a car with two dead Israeli Mossad agents in the trunk; one of them was wearing my raincoat.”
    Arrington burst out laughing. “Stone, you should be writing novels, really you should. You’re able to come up with the most preposterous stories at the drop of a hat.”
    “Arrington, have I ever lied to