Stone Barrington 27 - Doing Hard Time

turned his hose on that, too, dissolving it to run down the drain.
    Then Teddy saw something he didn’t expect. Way forward in the wheel well, the hose had revealed a black box, perhaps one inch by two and an inch thick. A two-inch antenna sprouted from the upper end of the box.
    He knew what that was, because he had invented a GPS transmitter very much like it in his time at the CIA and installed many of them. The question was: Where and in whose hands was the receiver?

Stone sat in the jump seat of the Gulfstream jet and watched the two pilots join the VOR A instrument approach for runway 21 at Santa Monica Airport. He knew from experience that the controllers usually vectored you onto final approach a couple of thousand feet high, and he wanted to see how the two pros would get the airplane down to final approach altitude while, at the same time, slowing it to final approach speed. He always had a hard time with that in his own airplane, but the Gulfstream pilots did it brilliantly, and they touched down exactly where they were supposed to at the exact speed they were supposed to.
    A quick turn into Atlantic Aviation, and they were there. As the engines shut down, one of the Arrington’s fleet of Bentley Mulsannes eased to a stop near the foot of the airplane’s airstair door, and the trunk lid silently opened.
    With their baggage unloaded into the car, the three men piled into the Bentley, and they started for the hotel. They had not reckoned on what the widening of I-405 would do to the afternoon traffic, and they crept along the few miles to the Sunset Boulevard exit. Once there, they were on Stone Canyon Road in a flash, then turning through the gates of the splendid new hotel. An Arrington security guard was there to identify them and wave them through without the usual stringent procedures, and they arrived at Stone’s house five minutes later.
    The grounds were laid out among gardens, and no building was more than two stories high. The effect was more of a luxurious neighborhood than a hotel, and it was more inviting.
    The Arrington was built on a large tract of land that had been assembled over several decades by the late movie star Vance Calder, to whom Arrington had been married before his death. Stone had helped Arrington turn what had been her home and property into America’s premier super-luxury hotel, and one of the provisions in the initial contract was that the hotel company would build her a new house on the property. After their marriage and her death, Stone had inherited the house.
    The butler quickly directed the three hotel bellmen in distributing their luggage. In his suite, Stone unpacked and hung up his suits, then changed into cotton trousers and a short-sleeved shirt and took a glass of iced tea out to poolside behind the house.
    He read the day’s L.A.
Times
while sipping his iced tea and soon fell into a doze in the comfortable high-backed wicker armchair. A moment later he was half-awakened by a splash behind him, then by the sound of someone doing laps in the pool. That would not be Dino, he thought, and probably not Mike Freeman, either. He swiveled the chair slowly around to face the pool and was greeted by the sight of a woman’s legs disappearing under the water. There had been a flash of her body above the legs, and it wasn’t wearing a swimsuit.
    He watched until she surfaced and began breaststroking toward him, apparently not noticing his presence.
    “Good afternoon,” he said finally.
    She stopped dead in the water and her gaze found him in his chair. “Who are you?” she demanded. “And what are you doing here?”
    “I am Stone Barrington, and I am sitting, drinking iced tea, and reading the newspaper. It’s clear what you are doing, but not who you are or why you are swimming in my pool.”
    “
Your
pool?” she asked, with the withering certainty of someone who knows herself to be in the right.
    “All right, I’ll repeat myself:
my
pool.” He nodded toward the house. “Right behind
my
house.”
    “Well then,” she said, “I will get out of
your
water, if you will be kind enough to turn your back.”
    Stone smiled. “Certainly not. I intend to enjoy all the fruits of
my
property.”
    “Swine!” she said, then turned, swam to the steps, and regally climbed them, displaying broad shoulders and slim hips in all their glory. She walked to a chair where she had left her things, dried herself and her blonde hair slowly with a small towel, then slipped