by Stuart Woods
Chapter
22
On Saturday morning Stone fixed breakfast, then woke up Allison, who had been sleeping unusually well. “I’ve had a message from Leslie Hewitt,” he said. “He wants us to come out and see him this morning.”
“Okay,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I think a swim will wake me up.” She started up the ladder.
“Hang on!” he commanded. “It’s broad daylight, and there may be some press still on the island.”
“Oh,” she said, blinking.
“I enjoy you naked, but I don’t want anyone else to,” he said.
She smiled. “You’re sweet. I think I’ll just have a shower; join me?”
“Already had one,” he replied, “and breakfast is nearly ready, so hurry.”
They walked up to the Shipwright’s Arms together, to borrow Thomas’s car, and the first person they saw was Hilary Kramer from the Times.
“What are you still doing here?” Stone asked. “Didn’t you get the bum’s rush with everybody else?”
“Nope. I was in the capital, buying some necessities, and when I came back, everybody was gone.”
“You missed the press conference, then?”
“I didn’t care anything about that. I’d already filed.”
“Did anybody else survive the press purge?”
“There’s a crew from CNN here who got to stay to provide pool coverage for the TV people.”
“How about Chris Wheaton, from 60 Minutes?”
“Gone with the wind, along with everybody else.”
“What sort of attention did your story get at the Times?”
“I don’t know; I modemed it in, and I’ll trust their judgment, but it’s a good story. Where are you off to?”
“A visit with my co-counsel.”
“Can I come?”
“Sorry, this is strictly business.”
Kramer shrugged. “Well, I’ve got nothing to do but file my story on the ouster of the international press, then it’s vacation until the trial on Monday, since Sir Winston won’t see me.”
“Lucky you; see you later.”
They got the car keys and drove out along the coast road to Sir Leslie Hewitt’s cottage. They found him weeding his back garden, and Stone was relieved to see that he recognized them. “Morning, Leslie,” he said.
“Good morning to you, Stone, and to you, Mrs. Manning.”
“Please call me Allison,” she replied with a winning smile.
“I thought we might talk about how to proceed at the trial,” Stone said.
“Of course we will,” Hewitt said, “but I wonder if I could ask a small favor of you before we begin?”
“Of course.”
“I’d like to give you some tea, but I’m out of milk. Would you be kind enough to run down to the grocer, about two miles along the coast road, and fetch me a bottle?”
“All right, Leslie,” Stone said, and Hewitt insisted on giving him money.
As he turned to leave, Hewitt offered Allison his arm. “May I show you the garden, my dear?” he asked, smiling sweetly.
“I’d be very pleased to see it,” she replied, taking his arm. “See you later, Stone.”
Stone drove to the grocery with ill grace, annoyed at being dispatched on such an errand when they should have been discussing how to save Allison’s life. He was struck by how completely lucid Hewitt was, as compared to their last meeting; the man apparently went in and out of his haze unpredictably. Stone bought the milk and drove back to the cottage, entering through the front door. He went to the kitchen to put the milk in the refrigerator and was surprised to find a full bottle there. Well, he thought, when I’m his age I’ll forget the milk, too. He walked out the back door into the garden and saw Hewitt and Allison deep in conversation on a bench at the bottom of the garden. When they saw him coming, Hewitt had a few more words to say, patted her on the knee, then rose to receive Stone.
“Come into my study, and we’ll begin,” Hewitt said.
Stone fell in alongside Allison. “What were you two discussing so seriously?” he asked.
“Gardening,” she replied.
“Now,” Hewitt said, taking his usual seat at his desk and waving Stone and Allison to a sofa. “Here’s how it will go on Monday: the judge will select a jury, which should take an hour or so, then the prosecution will make an opening statement, probably a very long and passionate one, if I know Winston Sutherland, and I have since he was a lad. The jury will be very impressed. Then I will make an opening statement, which will be equally passionate, but very much shorter, for which the jury will be grateful, I assure you. That should bring us to lunchtime.
“After lunch, Winston will present his case, which will almost certainly be confined to reading passages from Mr. Manning’s journal, or outline for his novel, whichever way you would like to characterize it. I would be very surprised if he called any other witnesses.”
Stone interrupted. “Isn’t he required to submit his evidence and witnesses to the defense?”
“Oh, no,” Hewitt replied. “Nothing of the sort. Then we will call your writer acquaintance, Mr….”
“Mr. Forrester, from The New Yorker,” Stone said.
“Yes, quite. I should think it would be best if you, Stone, questioned him. I’m sure you already have a complete grasp of what we must get from him.”
“Yes,” Stone said. “I want to…”
Hewitt held up a hand. “No need to go into that; I trust your judgment completely.”
“Thank you very much,” Stone said, “but shouldn’t we go into this in more detail?”
“Completely unnecessary, I assure you,” Hewitt replied with a big smile. “Then we will put Mrs. Manning on the stand, and I think you should question her as well,” Hewitt said. “No need to go over that with me, but I should think that the two of you might go through it once or twice.”
“You may be sure we will,” Stone said. Jesus, he thought to himself, is this the man’s idea of preparation?
“Then there will be cross-examination and redirect, but I urge you to keep redirect to an absolute minimum, since Lord Cornwall is impatient at such times. Then Winston will make his closing statement, which will be annoyingly like his opening one, then I will make our closing statement, which will move the jury very nearly to tears. Juries always love my closing statements. Then we will wait for the jury to make its decision.”
“We have no idea, of course, how long that will take,” Stone pointed out.
“Quite the contrary; I would be surprised if they took more than an hour, two at the most. The jury will, like most juries, have already made up their individual minds before the proceedings are finished. They will just. Need time to chat a bit to be sure they’re all in agreement.”
“That has not been my experience with juries,” Stone said.
“Oh, I am sure that in your country there is extensive deliberation before the jury decides what it has already decided,” Hewitt said, chuckling, “but in St. Marks, it is considered rude to keep anyone waiting, especially on so important a matter as Mrs. Manning’s life.”
“That will be very nice of them,” Stone said dryly.
“Of course it will, and we will be spared the suspense.”
“I hope we are spared a great deal more,” Stone said.
“You may certainly hope,” Hewitt said. He looked at a gold pocket watch that he produced from his Bermuda shorts. “Well, I see that time is getting on. We will meet at the court at ten o’clock on Monday morning and all do our very best.” He rose and left the room without so much as a good-bye. Stone reflected that Hewitt had not offered them the promised tea, for which he had obtained the unnecessary milk.
Allison turned to Stone. “You know, sometimes I think he’s not entirely all there.”
Stone certainly could not disagree with her. “What did you two talk about while I was shopping for milk?”
“I told you,” she said. “Gardening.”
Chapt
er
23
Stone was having lunch alone at the Shipwright’s Arms when Thomas called him to the phone. “It’s Bob Cantor,” he said, moving the receiver down to the end of the bar, away from where Hilary Kramer was sitting.
“Hello, Bob,” Stone said into the instrument. “You back from the Canaries?”
“I’m home again,” Cantor replied, “and a little worse for the wear. The jet lag will kill you.”
“I sympathize. You got something new from the Canaries?”
“Nothing at all. I have got something new from here, though.”
“Shoot.”
“You remember I told you I checked out Paul Manning’s credit record?”
“I do, and he had a pretty good one, as I recall; paid everything on time.”
“That’s right, but I had that information only from a phone call from a friend at my bank. Now I have the printed report, and it shows a lot more.”
“Like what?”
“Seems Mr. Manning was living right on the edge. He was pulling in a magnificent income, of course, probably something between a million and two million a year, and closer to two. But he was spending one hell of a lot of money, too.”
“That’s very interesting,” Stone said.
“It gets more interesting. The credit report shows that he was pretty maxed out on all his credit cards and that he was borrowing heavily to make it from paycheck to paycheck.”
“Writers don’t get paychecks, do they? They get royalty checks.”
“Okay, okay, he got paid in widely separated lumps, but they were big lumps. My point is, his credit record shows that he was borrowing heavily from three banks, usually a hundred thousand bucks at a time, then repaying it when his royalty or advance check came.”
“Was he keeping up?”
“Just barely. I, ah, did a little unauthorized snooping last night.”
“What do you mean?”
“I drove up to Greenwich, got into his house, and had a look through his financial records, which his secretary had neatly filed away.”
“Bob, you should check with me before you do things like that.”
“If I had checked with you, you wouldn’t have let me do it.”
“You’re right about that. So what did you find out?”
“When he got a check he would pay off the three banks, and there would be only a few thousand left, not enough to get him to the next publisher’s payment. Right before he set off on the transatlantic voyage, he got two checks at once from two contracts, and that squared him for a while. But he borrowed while he was away, and now the banks are lined up, waiting for the will to be probated.”
“Well, I guess that’s going to cut into Allison’s insurance money.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Cantor came back. “Manning had twelve million bucks in life insurance.”
“Twelve million bucks? Nobody has that much insurance.”
“You’d be surprised how many people do. He was paying something like fifteen thousand bucks a month in premiums, which is one of the reasons, along with his lifestyle, that he was having to go to the banks to get by. And get this, he also had mortgage life insurance to cover both the house and the boat loans. When Allison pays all the outstanding bills, she’s going to have at least eleven million bucks in cash, tax free, plus the house, the boat, the cars—everything—free and clear. Her biggest expense is going to be property taxes, and she won’t have those long, because she’s already put the Greenwich property on the market. I told you I have a buddy up there in the property business.”
“Have you seen the New York Times piece on Allison’s plight down here?”
“Yep, and you can be sure that the insurance company has seen it, too.”
“That means they won’t pay unless she’s acquitted.”
“Wrong; they’ve already paid. They’d have to sue her to get it back, and they’ll have a very hard time doing that.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s already transferred nearly the whole amount to an account in the Cayman Islands. I found the receipt for the wire transfer.”
“Holy shit!” Stone breathed. “Either Allison has some very sharp advice from her lawyer and accountant, or I’ve underestimated her by a long shot. I’ve never even seen her so much as make a phone call from down here.”
“Well, somebody is, shall we say, acting in her best interests.”
“Somebody sure is, and it isn’t me.”
“Bottom line is, Mrs. Manning’s husband could not have kicked off at a better time for her. If Manning had lived and had continued to live as he did, I reckon he wouldn’t have been able to afford the life insurance premiums much longer.”
“How long had he had the insurance?”
“A little over two years, and if the company had known he was going to sail, two-handed, across the Atlantic twice, he never would have gotten it. Insurance companies frown on that sort of sporting activity.”
“I guess not. This information certainly puts a whole new complexion on things, doesn’t it?”
“I would say so. I mean, if you were still a cop, you’d now suspect Allison Manning of helping her husband overboard, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s one theory.”
“The other theory which suggests itself has to do with the very special dinghy Paul Manning had air freighted to him in Las Palmas.”
“Right. I got the brochure on the Parker Sportster today. It sails.”
“Could it have sailed Manning back to the Canaries from where Allison says they were when he died?”
“Yes, but it wouldn’t have had to; Manning could have left the yacht as soon as they were out of sight of land.”
“Aha!”
“Except for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The Parker Sportster is still on the yacht.”
“Could he have had another dinghy?”
“He did have, but it wasn’t sailable, and anyway, that one is still on the yacht, too.”
“So it looks as though Manning, when he left the yacht, was either dead or swimming.”
“Looks that way.”
“Could he have swum back?”
“I think we can discount that possibility; he might have been spotted near shore in the daytime and there are sharks out there; I don’t think he would have tried it at night.”
“Another boat might have spotted him sailing a dingy, too.”
“Not if he sailed at night. That’s what I would have done in his shoes, but of course, the point is moot, because the dinghy is still on the yacht.”
“Well, pal, good luck with sorting this one out.”
“I don’t have to sort it out, thank God. All I have to do is think about getting Allison Manning acquitted. I’m not the cops.”
“Good point. I’ll call you if I find out anything new.”
“Thanks, Bob. Take care.” He hung up.
“I’m not the cops,” Stone repeated to himself. “I’m her lawyer, and if she’s guilty, she won’t be the first guilty client I’ve represented.” Still, he wanted her to be innocent.
Chapter
24
Stone hung up the phone and returned to his lunch. He wasn’t the cops, granted, but he was still bothered by what he was hearing about Paul Manning’s affairs. He was about finished with lunch when Jim Forrester pulled up a chair.
“Mind if I join you?” the New Yorker reporter asked, settling his lanky frame and waving to Thomas for a drink.
“Not at all. I wondered what had happened to you; I was afraid my star witness had gotten shipped out with the other reporters.”
Forrester shook his head. “Nope. I ducked into the men’s room when I saw the cops, and they missed me. My luggage went, though; I’ve been shopping for the necessities.”
“Good; can we talk about your testimony?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t see any need to rehearse, but I do want to be reassured
that you’re willing to testify that, on the occasion you met them, they were happy together, affectionate, and glad to be in each other’s company.”
“No problem with that.”
“I think we’ll skip the argument they had about their routing later in the evening; it doesn’t seem germane.”
“I think you’re right; I’ve been married, so I know how those little spats can arise over nothing.”
“Yeah,” Stone replied, as if he knew what the reporter was talking about. It occurred to him that he and Arrington had never had that sort of spat in their time together. He hadn’t heard from her since she had arrived in L.A., and he wondered how she was.
“Let’s see,” Stone said, “you first met Paul Manning in the bar at the yacht club in Las Palmas?”
“Well, no; I had met him earlier, much earlier.”
“You didn’t mention that,” Stone said.
“Well, it was a long time ago. I went to Syracuse University, and Paul went to Cornell at the same time. The towns are not far apart, and we had an interfraternity basketball league. I played against Paul two or three times. I just knew him to speak to, though; at the time, I don’t think we ever had a conversation that didn’t involve who fouled who.”
“I guess we can use that; it gives you some sort of history with Paul, however slim. What were your impressions of him in those days?”
“Pretty much the same as in Las Palmas: cheerful, outgoing, good company.”
“Not the sort who might commit suicide?”
“No, absolutely not. In Las Palmas he was enthusiastic about getting back across the Atlantic; said he had an idea for a new novel based on their trip, and he was anxious to get started on it.”
“That we can use,” Stone said. “He apparently kept some notes in a leather-bound book; did he mention that at all?”
“He said he had made a lot of notes; he didn’t say anything about a leather-bound book.”
“That will be helpful, nevertheless. Sir Winston is taking Paul’s notes as complaints about Allison; it’s the most damning evidence he has.”
“Look, I don’t want to get you into some sort of ethical quandary here, but if you want me to mention the leather-bound book, I’ll be glad to do it. It’s not as though the other side is playing anything like what we would call fair.”