by Stuart Woods
“The shotgun was processed for fingerprints, and the only ones found were those of my deputy. Rutledge apparently wiped it clean. Shall I return the shotgun to you?”
“No, please give it to the butler at the house. He will send it to me in New York, along with some other items from the house that are being packed.”
“Just one other thing,” the sheriff said. “The autopsy on Mrs. Barrington revealed that one of her ovaries had been removed, and the remaining one was in the early stages of ovarian cancer. The pathologist says that it’s unlikely that she knew. Whether she would have survived the illness would have depended on how long she waited to be treated.”
“I see,” Stone said. “She had an examination in December, but nothing was found.”
“As the pathologist said, the cancer was in the early stages.”
“What are the chances of finding Tim Rutledge?” Stone asked.
“That will depend on how well he prepared his disappearance. We know, since he cleaned out his bank accounts, that there was premeditation, but we don’t know how long he was planning this. We’re tracking his credit cards, but nothing has been charged as yet.”
“How much did he take from his bank accounts?”
“About two hundred thousand dollars in cash, from checking and savings, and a cashier’s check for half a million from investments, including an IRA. That check hasn’t cleared the bank yet. When it does, we’ll find out where he cashed it, and that might help us.”
“So, he’s not hurting for funds.”
“No. He left the station wagon in his parking spot at the university, so we think he has a second car, though there is not one registered anywhere in his name.”
“Finding him may be harder than you think,” Stone said.
“You could be right. In any case, I will keep you posted on any developments. May I have your e-mail address?”
Stone gave it to him. “Thank you for checking in, Sheriff.” He hung up.
“Anything?” Joan asked.
“Nothing. The man is on the run, he’s smart, and he’s got money. My bet is he’s already out of the country, probably in Mexico.”
The phone rang again. “It’s Sean Patrick for you,” Joan said. She handed him the phone and went back to her office.
“Hello, Sean.”
“Hello, Stone. Thank you for being so kind to Hattie while she was in Virginia.”
“It was a great comfort to Peter to have his friend there,” Stone said.
“We were both very taken with Arrington, and we’re sorry we won’t have her as a permanent friend.”
“Thank you.”
“Stone, when we left to fly back to New York with Mike Freeman, one of your pilots was kind enough to show me your Gulfstream jet. Mike thought you might want to sell it.”
“I think so, Sean. The Mustang is adequate for my purposes.”
“My partners and I have been looking for an airplane to buy, and I think a G-III might suit us very well.”
“It’s a very nice airplane,” Stone said. “Arrington bought it a little over a year ago, and it had had only one elderly owner up until then, so it’s a low-time airplane. I’d be happy to send you copies of the paperwork she used to make her decision. Mike advised her on the purchase, so he knows a lot about it, too.”
“Thanks. I’d like to see the paperwork and perhaps have our consultant on the purchase go down to Virginia and see it.”
“Of course. If you like the airplane, you might consider hiring the crew, too. Arrington was very pleased with them.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Have you given any thought as to what you’ll do with the house and farm?”
“We’ll sell it, I think.”
“I’m not in the market for such a place, but I have a lot of very wealthy clients, so I’ll mention it here and there.”
Stone reminded him to read the Architectural Digest piece, and they said good-bye. Stone asked Joan to make copies of the aircraft material and messenger it to Sean Patrick.
“I think I’m going to go upstairs and lie down for a while,” he said to her.
“Aren’t you feeling well?”
“Just very tired,” he replied. He went upstairs and stretched out on the bed. He’d been having these periods of feeling exhausted since Arrington’s death, and right now, he couldn’t face any further work for the day.
55
S tone and Peter got ready to go to Elaine’s for dinner and met downstairs.
“I’m going to go pick up Hattie,” Peter said. “We’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”
Stone gave him some cash. “We need to open a bank account for you and set up an allowance.”
“Thanks, Dad, I’d appreciate that.”
“Joan will set it up on Monday.”
They walked to Third Avenue together and took separate cabs.
Peter wondered what this was about. Ordinarily, the doorman in Hattie’s building would have put her in a cab, and she would have met them at Elaine’s, but Hattie had said she wanted to talk about something.
He got out of his cab at her building, and she came outside. He opened the door for her.
“Can we walk for a little bit?” she asked.
“Sure,” Peter replied. He paid the driver and got out. She slipped her hand into his, and he put both in his coat pocket. They walked up Park Avenue in silence for a couple of minutes.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” she said.
“All right.”
“No one else knows, and you have to keep it a secret.”
“Of course.”
Hattie took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m pregnant.”
Peter stopped and turned to face her. “But we haven’t…” He stopped, his mind reeling.
“It was someone I went out with before I met you,” she said. “It only happened once.”
Peter thought about that. “I want to help,” he said.
“Thank you,” she replied. “I’ve already decided to have an abortion, and I won’t brook any arguments about it. If you find that unconscionable, I’ll understand, and you can go your own way.”
“I want to help,” he said again. “Does the guy know?”
“No,” she said, “and he’s never going to.”
“Good,” Peter said.
“I’ve looked this up on the Internet, and I’ve found a clinic up on First Avenue in the Nineties.”
“What kind of clinic?”
“Licensed, part of a nationwide family planning organization.”
“Have you been there yet?”
“No.” Her lip trembled. “But I have an appointment after school on Monday. Will you go with me?”
“Of course,” Peter said, squeezing her hand. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
“The way I understand it is, first, I have an interview, then the procedure is scheduled-there’s a waiting list-and I have to be accompanied by someone.”
“That will be me,” he said.
“After the procedure I’ll be kept there for a few hours, until they know I’m all right, then I can go home. But I don’t want to go home.”
“You can come to my house,” Peter said. “I’ll take care of you there, then take you home later.”
“What about your father? I don’t want him to know.”
“There’s a way into the house through the garden. He’s usually in his office, so I can take you upstairs.”
“We have to face the possibility that something might go wrong. In that case I’ll have to go to a hospital.”
Peter thought about that. “I don’t see any way that we can keep you out overnight. If you need to go to a hospital, I think you’ll have to tell your parents.”
“I don’t want to do that,” she said.
“I understand, but you have to think of them, as well as yourself.”
“I know, but I’m afraid.”
“I know you love them, so think about what you’re afra
id of-disappointing them in some way?”
“Yes.”
“If I’m facing something I’m uncomfortable about, what I do to handle it is, I think about the worst-case scenario,” Peter said. “What is the worst thing that could happen? Then I figure out what I would do if the worst thing happened. Once I’ve decided that, I feel a lot better. What’s the worst thing that could happen in this case?”
“For my parents to find out what I’ve done.”
“Let’s think about what that would mean,” he said. “What would they say to you?”
“They would be shocked, especially my father.”
“Of course, but how would they react after that?”
“Once the initial shock was over they would be sympathetic,” she said. “And they’d want to know who the father was.”
“Would you tell them?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Do you think they would punish you in some way?”
“Peter, I’m eighteen; they can’t spank me.”
“Would they ground you? Place some sort of limitations on you?”
“They can’t do that, either. If they treated me like a child, I’d move out.”
“How would you support yourself?”
“I have a trust fund. I could get by very nicely on the income from that.”
“You couldn’t take money out of your trust without the permission of your trustee, right?”
“Right.”
“Who is the trustee, your father?”
“No, it’s a bank. They would let me take money out of the trust for living expenses and my education.”
“I can help, too.”
“I wouldn’t want you to do that.”
“You have to let me decide what I want to do,” Peter said. “I have a bank account in Virginia that receives automatic deposits for my prep school fees, but I left prep school early, so there’s something like fifty or sixty thousand dollars in that account. I can write checks on it.”
“I wouldn’t want to touch that money.”
“It’s my money now; my mother is dead. Just think of it as a safety net.”
“All right, I’ll think of it that way.” She smiled. “I feel better now.”
Peter took her in his arms and held her for a moment. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” he said. “We’ll make this work.”
56
T he group met at Elaine’s, and Stone’s first thought after they sat down was that both Peter and Hattie were unusually subdued. Normally, they would be talking a mile a minute, and instead, they were staring at their food or just into the middle distance. But, in the circumstances, what did he expect? He was pretty subdued himself.
“Have you kids thought about where you’re going to live at Yale?” he asked, just to get a conversation going.
Peter spoke up. “I thought we might look for a three-bedroom apartment,” he said.
“Hattie,” Stone said, “you’re going to have to speak to your parents about that.”
“I already have,” Hattie replied. “They’re good with it, as long as I have my own room. After all, lots of college dorms are co-ed, so it’s not very different from that.”
“I’ll want to hear that from them,” Stone said.
“Of course,” she replied, then went back to staring at her food.
“I think you should look sooner, rather than later,” Stone said. “I’ve looked at the Yale website, and starting in May, housing begins to disappear fast.”
“We could take the train up there one day and have a look around,” Peter said.
“You forget,” Ben interjected, “I have a driver’s license.”
“All right,” Dino said, “you can take my car. If you were seen on campus in that tank of Stone’s, you’d ruin your reputations. I think you should stay overnight in a hotel, too. Hattie can have her own room and you and Peter can bunk together.”
“Sounds good,” Peter said.
“Yes, fine,” Hattie echoed. Everybody stopped talking again.
“When do you want to go up there?” Stone asked.
“I don’t know,” Peter said, “maybe in two or three weeks?”
More silence. Stone gave up.
Peter took Hattie home in a cab. “Tomorrow, after school,” he said.
“Right,” she replied. “We can play hooky one day for the procedure.”
They kissed, and she went inside.
Stone heard Peter come in, and he went to the boy’s room and sat down. “How are you doing?”
“Okay, I guess,” Peter replied. “How about you?”
“I think we’re both still pretty shaken up,” Stone said.
“I think you’re right,” Peter said. “I never expected anything like this to happen. I thought you and Mom would grow old together.”
“We thought so, too,” Stone said.
“Have they caught the architect guy yet?”
“Not yet,” Stone said. He told Peter about the call from the sheriff. “They’ll get him, don’t worry.”
“Then there’ll be a trial, right?”
“Yes, there will.”
“And you and I and Hattie will have to testify?”
“Maybe not all of us; maybe I can do it alone. That will depend on the district attorney’s case.”
“Nobody actually saw him there, did they?” Peter asked.
“No.”
“And his fingerprints weren’t on the shotgun.”
“No.”
“So what evidence do they have against him?”
“It sounds as though it would be circumstantial.”
“Does that mean there’s less of a chance of conviction?”
“Not necessarily. The man did run, after all, and took all his money with him. That’s damning. If he did it, he won’t have an alibi, unless someone is willing to lie for him.”
“Would someone do that?”
“It sometimes happens,” Stone said.
David Rutledge got home from work and found Kelli sitting at the dining table, tapping away on her laptop. She had been living with him since they got back from Virginia.
“How’s your piece going?” he asked, kissing the top of her head.
“It’s practically writing itself,” she said.
“Drink?”
“Please. Scotch.”
David went to the built-in bar and poured them both one. He brought the drinks back to the table and set them down. “Good news. We had to pull a piece, so we’re running the Virginia spread in the next issue.”
“The one that closed today?”
“Yep.”
“That’s wonderful!”
The phone rang. David walked into the living area and picked up the extension on the coffee table. “Hello?”
“Listen carefully,” a familiar voice said. “Are you alone?”
“No,” David replied.
“I’m around the corner from your apartment in a bar. You know the place?”
David identified the voice now. “Yeah, I guess I’ll have to come in. Be there in ten.” He hung up.
“Be where?” Kelli asked.
“At the office. I forgot to check some pages before I left, and we have to go to press tonight. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“You want me to cook dinner?” she asked.
“Can you actually do that?” he asked back. She never had before.
“I can make very respectable spaghetti Bolognese,” she said.
“Okay, I’m game,” he said, putting his coat on. “I’ll pick up some Alka-Seltzer on the way home.”
She threw a pencil at him.
“You need anything else?”
“You can pick up a head of romaine lettuce and some bread,” she said.
“Okay.” He closed the door behind him and got on the big freight elevator.
David walked into the bar and spotted the back of his cousin’s head immediately, in a booth at the rear. He shucked off his coat, hung it on a hook
, and sat down. “Hello, Tim,” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Aren’t you going to ask what I’m doing here?”
A waitress came, and David ordered a scotch. “You’re running, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t do it,” Tim said.
David said nothing.
“They’re trying to hang it on me, though.”
“Who’s trying?”
“The sheriff, the university-everybody.”
“If you didn’t do it, why did you run?”
“I didn’t have a chance. I got a call from somebody who told me she was dead. It was the first I knew of it.”
“Who called you?”
“You don’t want to know that,” Tim replied. “It’s better if you don’t.”
“All right.”
“Will you help me, David? You’re all I’ve got.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Can you put me up for a few days, until things cool down and I can move around more freely?”
“I can’t, Tim; my girlfriend has moved in with me, and she works for the New York Post.”
“Oh, Jesus, don’t tell her anything, then.”
“I don’t know anything,” David said. “Do you need money?”
“No, I’m okay there.”
“Then I suggest you move into a hotel. Not near here, please; uptown somewhere.”
“Can you suggest a place?”
“No, I’m not going to suggest anything, Tim. I won’t go to jail for you.”
“I just got into town; I haven’t found a place yet. Do you know a hotel called-”
David stopped him with an upraised hand. “I don’t want to know the name,” he said.
Tim took a cell phone from his pocket and pushed it across the table. “I bought two of these,” he said. “They’re untraceable.” He handed David a card. “Here’s my number.”
David looked at the phone for a long moment, then he put it and the card into a pocket.
“It’s set on vibrate, and the voice mail is already set up, so we can leave messages.”
“Do you know a lawyer in Virginia, Tim? A criminal lawyer?”
“No. I mean, I have an attorney, but he doesn’t have a criminal practice.”
“Call him on your new cell phone and ask him to recommend one, then go back to Virginia and let him turn you in to the sheriff. That’s your best move, Tim, believe me.”