Swimming to Catalina

been renovated in striking fashion and was handsomely furnished. Apparently there was good money in working for movie stars.

    He checked the refrigerator and found the makings of a sandwich, along with a lot more food, and had some lunch, then he found his way upstairs, hung up his clothes, and collapsed on Betty’s king-sized bed. It was after six when he awoke.
    He went back downstairs, checked the fridge again, and looked through the cabinets, then started making dinner. At a quarter past seven he heard the front door open, and Betty walked into the kitchen.
    “Jesus, it smells good in here,” she said. “What are you making?”
    “Just some pasta; would you like a glass of your wine?”
    “Thank you, yes sir.”
    He poured her a glass of chardonnay. “So how was the rest of your day?”
    “Weird. I’m unaccustomed to keeping things from Vance.”
    “I appreciate your helping me.”
    “As long as I’m helping Vance, too.”
    He got dinner onto the kitchen table, and they sat down.
    “This is delicious!” she said. “I don’t know why I would have wanted the chef from Grimaldi’s, when I could have you.”
    “Anytime,” Stone said, raising his glass.
    “I’ll drink to that.”
    “Why don’t you bring me up to date on what you know so far? Start when Arrington disappeared.”
    “I didn’t know she had disappeared,” Betty said. “Vance came into the office and said she had to go back to Virginia to see her folks about some family matter. I got her a round-trip ticket to Dulles and sent it over to the house. I assumed she made the plane.”

    “Was there anything in Vance’s behavior that was different from the way he usually is?”
    “He seemed preoccupied, I suppose, starting that day. I had to tell him things two or three times before he’d remember them. That was about it.”
    “Had he ever been that way before?”
    “Yes, I suppose he had, when he’d had something on his mind. Vance tells me a lot, but he doesn’t tell me everything, and usually I don’t ask.”
    “Did he get any unusual phone calls around that time?”
    “What do you mean by ‘unusual’?”
    “Any calls that frightened him or made him angry?”
    “Vance is an actor, and like most actors he’s always acting. He doesn’t give away much.”
    “Not even to you?”
    “Sometimes, not often.”
    “Did he repeatedly get calls from the same person?”
    She thought about that. “I remember, the day after Arrington left, Lou Regenstein called him several times over the afternoon, but that’s not really unusual. They do a lot of business together, and they’re very close.”
    “Any calls from David Sturmack?”
    “Not that I recall, but that wouldn’t have been unusual, either.”
    “Any from Onofrio Ippolito?”
    “That’s a name I had never even heard until Vance gave me an invitation list for the dinner party with his name on it. Although I noticed him at the party, I didn’t put a face to the name until we saw him at Grimaldi’s.”

    “So Vance and Ippolito aren’t friends and haven’t done business?”
    “Not that I’m aware of, and there isn’t much in Vance’s life that I’m not aware of.”
    “Let me ask you something else: from my perspective, Vance seems to have a seamlessly successful life—he’s handsome, rich, at the top of his career, married to a wonderful woman, and has the esteem of everyone he knows and millions that he doesn’t.”
    “That’s a pretty fair assessment, I guess.”
    “What are his weaknesses?”
    “Personal? Business?”
    “Both.”
    “Well, on a personal level, he’s not as good a lover as you are.”
    Stone laughed. “I’m flattered. So, you’ve had an affair with Vance?”
    “I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that. Vance has probably slept with very nearly every woman he knows, at least once.”
    “So how often did you sleep with him?”
    “Now you’re straying into my personal life.”
    “You’re right; I’m sorry.”
    “An even dozen times,” she said. “I counted.”
    “Why did you stop?”
    “He stopped. It was his call.”
    “Why his call?”
    “Because he’s a movie star.”
    “And that’s more than just a man?”
    “In this town, it is. You don’t know anything about movie stars, do you?”
    “No; Vance is the only one I’ve ever had a conversation with.”
    “Let me tell you about movie stars.”

    “Shoot.”
    “There are several kinds of power in this town: the most important is the power to get a movie