Swimming to Catalina

level, he looked around. There was an assortment of deck furniture and a charcoal grill; a folded beach umbrella leaned against the house; he saw nothing and no one else. Stone carefully peeked through the open sliding door and saw a handsomely furnished living room. A fire was crackling in the fireplace, and the romantic music was louder now. He had hoped that Ippolito was meeting with somebody and that he might overhear something useful, but all he heard was the continuing sounds from the bedroom.
    The least he could do, he thought, was to disturbthe fun. On the deck beside the charcoal grill was a can of firestarter and a box of matches. Stone picked up the can, which was nearly full, and unscrewed the top. Still standing on the deck, he squirted a stream of the fluid onto the living room carpet, making a trail back out to the deck. He made a little puddle on the deck, then carefully tossed the can into the living room; it landed on the trail of fluid. He looked up and down the beach but could see no one. After checking his escape route again, he struck two matches, let them burn for a moment, then stuck them into the box, and closed it. A minute or two would pass before the box and then the matches in the box ignited. He turned and hurried quietly down the stairs, then gave them a push, sending them back into their retracted position with little noise.
    He walked quickly back to the restaurant, picked up his drink from the steps, and climbed to the deck. He walked to the opposite end and took up a position there, sipping his drink. A moment later he heard a softwhoomp as the can of lighter fluid exploded, followed a moment later by a female shriek and male cursing. The diners looked toward the house with the cupola, some of them standing up and pointing.
    “Call the fire department,” somebody told a waiter, who ran inside to the phone.
    Stone leaned against the railing and watched the glow of the fire against the glass of the sliding doors. Another three minutes passed before he heard the sirens. The sound made him smile to himself.
    It wasn’t much of a fire, but it had surely ruined Ippolito’s evening. Pretty soon, after Ippolito thought about the sinking of his sports fisherman and the fire at his beach house, he was going to start thinking that somebody was out to get him.

    He would be right, Stone reflected, sipping his drink. Then his hand began to shake. He had committed arson. Ippolito and the woman in the house might have died, and then he would have been a murderer. He hadn’t carried the pistol today, and that was good, because in his present frame of mind he might have just walked into the house and shot Ippolito.
    He had better start carrying the weapon now, he thought.

42
    Stone had finished breakfast and was getting out of a shower when the phone rang. He grabbed a robe, got into it, and made the bedside table on the fourth ring.
    “Hello?”
    “It’s Rick; did I wake you?”
    “Nope; I was just getting out of a shower.”
    “Get dressed and meet me at the back gate of the hotel in ten minutes; I want you to take a look at something with me.”
    “Okay, I’ll be there.” Stone hung up, toweled his hair mostly dry, got into some slacks, a shirt, and a blazer, and started out the door. Then he remembered; he went back, took off the blazer, slipped into the shoulder holster, fitted the pistol into it, slipped an extra clip into his pocket, got back into the blazer, grabbed a tie, and left the suite.
    Rick was waiting at the rear gate. “Morning,” he said.

    Stone got into the car. “Morning. What’s up?” He began knotting the tie.
    “I’m not sure, exactly, but I have a hunch; we’ll see if it’s a good one.” He handed Stone the late edition of theLos Angeles Times and pointed to a story in the stop press column on the front page, then drove away.
    Stone read the short piece.
    Last night, late, the Malibu Fire Department answered a call from the Pacific Coast Highway home of Onofrio Ippolito, chairman of the Safe Harbor Bank and a well-known Los Angeles philanthropist.
    A spokesman for the department said that Ippolito, whose wife was out of town, was at home alone and had an accident with a charcoal grill while fixing himself some dinner.
    The fire was put out in less than fifteen minutes. There was little structural damage to the house, but a deck and the contents of the living room were destroyed. Mr. Ippolito was not injured.
    “Sounds like an exciting evening,”