“Then please remember that it’s Morgan or Mo,” she said. “We mustn’t stand on formality.”
Stone ordered another bottle of wine, because he thought Dino might need it.
? ? ?
AFTER DINNER FRED drove them uptown. “Would you like to come up for a nightcap?” Morgan asked.
“Certainly,” Stone replied. As they got out of the car, Stone said to Fred, “If I’m not back in half an hour, go home, I’ll get a cab.”
She was silent on the elevator ride, but she was looking very carefully at him. The elevator door opened and she shed her coat, went to the bar, and picked up two brandy glasses. “What would you like?” she asked.
“Brandy,” Stone replied.
She poured two and led him to the sofa. Before sitting down, she removed her red jacket, revealing a black blouse cut low in the back.
Stone observed that only one large button secured it.
She sat down close by his side and facing him. “In recounting my history,” she said, taking a gulp of her brandy, “did I mention that I have not had sex since my husband died?”
“No,” Stone replied. “How can I help?”
She reached behind her and undid the button securing her top, lifted it over her head and tossed it away, revealing uncaged breasts that Stone could only think were perfect. “Anything you like,” she replied, leaning over and kissing him.
Then she stood up, took him by the hand, and led him upstairs to a bedroom, which was baronial in proportions.
While Stone shed his clothes, she carefully turned down the bed and plumped the pillows. Finally, she lay on her back, and there was nothing between them but air.
“Come here,” she said, holding out a hand.
“Yes, ma’am,” Stone replied, climbing aboard.
? ? ?
TWICE DURING THE NIGHT she woke him from a sound sleep for an encore performance. Stone wasn’t sure he was up to the second one, but she persuaded him that he was.
? ? ?
THE NEXT TIME he woke it was because of a ringing telephone, which she answered. “Yes, Lila?” She covered the phone and poked Stone in the ribs. “What would you like for breakfast?”
“Two eggs, scrambled soft in the English style, bacon, English muffin, orange juice, and strong black coffee.”
She repeated his order into the phone, then pulled back the sheet and inspected Stone’s body closely. “Once more unto the breach, dear friend, once more!”
“God for Morgan, England, and Saint George!” Stone responded. They had just enough time before breakfast arrived.
Riding home in a cab, Stone thought Morgan had come along just in time to save him from a life of celibacy.
9
STONE LEANED AGAINST the limestone shower wall and let the water cascade over him. He was feeling something oddly like guilt, a rare emotion for him.
Holly Barker, with whom he had been entwined for years, but nearly always separated from by work or distance, had, at their last meeting, renewed her granting of his sexual freedom, as long as it was committed outside the city limits of Washington, D.C. While he had played by her rules, he gave himself a moment to regret the night before. After that moment, his regret evaporated. He had needed that night as much as Morgan had.
He dressed and went down to his office.
Joan came in with some messages and dropped them on his desk. “Uncharacteristically late, aren’t we?” she asked.
“I overslept,” he replied.
“I’m sorry, overwhat?”
“Please go away,” he said, and she did.
Dino’s message was on top of the pile, and he dealt with that first.
“Bacchetti.”
“Good morning, it’s Stone.”
“Well,” Dino said, “that was quite a dinner last evening.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“I mean, if you didn’t mind the occasional whiff of sulfur.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Dino?”
“I mean that Morgan Tillman has a first-rate chance of being the actual Antichrist.”
“Are you coming over all Catholic on me?”
“I have my ecclesiastical moments—especially in the presence of evil.”
“All right, all right, lay out your evidence.”
“Gladly. Her story is, she came home from shopping and as she entered the living room she saw her husband struggling with another man, dressed in black, on the terrace outside. She dropped her shopping bags and ran to help him, but as she did, he was pushed backward and tumbled over the parapet.”
“Wait a minute, what does the building code say on the minimum height of parapets?”
“How the fuck should I know? Am I a bricklayer? In any case the parapet was undergoing repairs, and several running feet of bricks had been removed in aid of the work. It was low enough that he could have tripped over it and fallen. Shall I continue?”
“Please do.”
“The man ran along the parapet, and she noticed that he had some sort of canvas bag slung over his back. She looked down and saw her husband sprawled in the alley in a spreading pool of blood. She looked back at the ‘burglar,’ and he was rappelling—she used that word—down a rope that was hooked to the parapet. At that point she ran into the house and called nine-one-one. While she was waiting for them to answer, she noted a bare spot on the wall a few yards from her, where her husband’s prized van Gogh had been affixed. When the operator answered—we checked, it was on the fifth ring, they were busy that day—she said that her husband had been fighting with someone on their terrace, and that he had been pushed over the parapet and was lying in the alley, fifteen stories below, and to send an ambulance and the police.”
“Did you listen to the tape?” Stone asked.
“I did, and it substantially matched her story. We had a patrol car there in under four minutes and a pair of detectives three minutes after that.”
“Pretty good response.”
“Thank you. While she was being questioned, Mrs. Tillman took the uniforms to the parapet and looked down to see paramedics attending to her husband. The detectives arrived and she showed them the parapet, then took them further along to where the perp had hooked his rope to the bricks, leaving scrape marks. She suggested the burglar must have had some technique for unhooking his rope. The detectives spent nearly an hour with her, going over her story again and again—you know how that goes—and questioning her about her background and her marriage. They noted that she was unusually calm and lucid during the questioning and answered them without hesitation.”
“Unusually calm as compared to what?”
“You get a wide range of emotions on such occasions, ranging from hysteria and weeping all the way down to calm and reasonable, or as one detective described it, ‘cold and calculating.’”
“How did the other detective describe it?”
“‘Calm and reasonable.’ She also pointed out the bare spot on a wall of pictures and said it had contained a small painting of some golden fields, by Vincent van Gogh, when she had last seen the wall, and she suggested that the picture must have been in the bag slung onto the burglar’s back.”
“And I’m sure your people did all their work thoroughly, with respect to the burglar.”
“Your confidence is not misplaced,” Dino replied.
“Now tell me how she might have killed her husband herself.”
“All right, she came home from shopping and immediately fell into an argument with her husband that may have become physical on either or both of their parts. The argument moved to the terrace, where there may have been a struggle such as that she described with the burglar, and her husband went over the parapet.”
“What reason do you have to think that his going over wasn’t an accident?”
“It’s possible, but all those involved felt that she engineered it.”
“And they felt that on what basis?”
“The couple had a history of domestic disputes. Some of the building’s staff had heard them at it, and she had called the police on one occasion. The officer’s record states that they were both calm when he arrived, and she told him she had overreacted to something he had said to her, and he had since apologized and everything was now fine.”