Swimming to Catalina (22 page)
“What about Manny? Did you pick him up?”
Grant shook his head. “I’ve got somebody on it, but unless we pick him up before Mancuso’s lawyer can make a phone call, our chances of getting him anytime soon are poor.”
“How long can you hold Mancuso?”
“He’ll have dinner at home tonight. I can’t charge him with your murder.”
“I guess not.”
“His lawyer is going to wonder why, after Mancuso tells him about our conversation.”
“And Ippolito will know within the hour.”
“Probably,” Grant said. “I wonder how the information will affect him. I expect it will confuse and annoy him.”
“I hope so,” Stone said.
W
hen Stone arrived back at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he was approached by the parking valet.
“Oh, Mr, Barrington, I thought you said you wouldn’t be needing the SL500 for a while,” the man said.
“That’s right.”
“Well, your friend Miss Tierney left in it about ten minutes ago.”
“She
left
?” Stone asked incredulously.
“That’s right.”
Stone went into the hotel, baffled, and went to his suite. Barbara’s things were still there, and there was a single note on the bedside table.
Dear Stone,
I left my makeup kit on Marty’s boat, so I’ve gone to pick it up. I might do some window
shopping, too, but I’ll be back later this afternoon.
Barbara
“Oh, Jesus,” Stone groaned. He ran down the stairs and ordered his car.
The parking valet looked baffled when he brought it. “Mr. Barrington, if you’re only going to be a couple of minutes, we can keep your car here up front,” the man said.
“Sorry about that,” Stone said, slamming the door and yanking the car into gear. He drove to Marina Del Rey as quickly as he could, worried that Martin Barone might have turned up and caught Barbara in the act of moving out. He wasn’t sure of what story she’d tell under pressure, and the last thing he wanted was to put this girl in any danger. When he arrived, Arrington’s car was parked outside the chandlery.
He parked and walked quickly down the pontoons toward where
Paloma
was berthed. She seemed deserted. He looked around for unwelcome visitors, then jumped aboard. The cabin door was locked, and he couldn’t see Barbara inside. He got off the boat in a hurry and started back toward his car; then, a couple of pontoons away, he saw something that gave him pleasure. A large crane on a barge was being maneuvered between the pontoons. He walked down the main pontoon and found a spot where he could watch the salvage operation from a distance. It took the divers a few minutes to get lifting straps under
Maria’s
hull, and then the crane went to work. Slowly, the sports fisherman broke the water and was raised to pontoon level. The divers stripped off their wetsuits and got pumps going to empty her of water. It would take quite a
while, Stone reflected with satisfaction. He hoped her interior was thoroughly ruined.
He walked back toward the parking lot, and as he came back up the ramp he stopped in his tracks. Arrington’s car was gone. He climbed back on his old perch on the ice machine and looked up and down the street, but he could not see the car. He hopped down in time to see a Porsche turn into the parking lot and take the space that Arrington’s Mercedes had vacated.
A slickly handsome man in a pinstriped suit got out, locked the car, and walked down the ramp to the pontoon. Stone watched as he made his way toward where
Paloma
was berthed. This, he decided, was Martin Barone, and he was definitely not in Mexico. Barone disappeared among the boats, then, as Stone was about to leave, he suddenly reappeared, running.
Stone got into his car and pulled down the sun visor. Barone, in a great hurry, ran to the intersection and looked up and down the street, obviously looking for Barbara. He came back talking to himself, looking very unhappy indeed. He stood in the parking lot, deep in thought, for a minute, then got into the Porsche and drove out of the car park.
What the hell, Stone thought, let’s see where he goes. Staying at least a block back, he followed the sports car into the canyons of downtown Los Angeles. I know where he’s going, Stone thought, and he was right. Barone turned into the garage at the headquarters building for the Safe Harbor Bank. Stone wished he could follow him up to Ippolito’s offices and listen to him explain that his girlfriend had run off with Arrington Calder’s Mercedes. He would enjoy that conversation.
Stone sat in his car, waiting, for some forty minutes,
then, suddenly, the Porsche emerged from the garage and turned east. Stone followed the car to Beverly Hills and watched as it turned into the gates of a house on Beverly Drive. He made a note of the address, then drove back to his hotel.
“Any sign of Miss Tierney?” he asked the parking valet as he surrendered his car.
“No, Sir, not yet.”
“Thanks,” Stone said, then went to his suite.
He had been there for two hours, idly changing channels on the television, when Barbara walked in.
“Hi,” she said brightly.
“Hi,” he replied. “I’m glad to see you’re still alive.”
“Why shouldn’t I be?” she asked, flopping down beside him on the sofa.
“Because the people Martin Barone deals with are bad people, and if they thought for a minute that you could be a bother to them, they would hurt you.”
She frowned. “Why would they do that?”
“Barbara, I’m going to tell you as much of it as I can,” Stone said. “The car you were driving belongs to Arrington Calder, Vance Calder’s wife. She’s a friend of mine.”
“How good a friend?” Barbara asked.
“We used to be close, but she married Vance.”
“You know Vance Calder?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you say hello to him in the restaurant the other night?”
“Because I didn’t want Vance to see me.”
“Why not?”
“Let me explain, and please don’t ask any questions until I’ve finished.”
“All right.”
“Vance’s wife disappeared a couple of weeks ago; nobody knows where she is.”
“Not even Vance?”
“Especially not Vance. You promised not to ask any questions until I’m finished.”
“Sorry, go ahead.”
“Something is terribly wrong. Vance called me in New York and asked me to come out here and find Arrington, but when I got here, he was no longer anxious for me to find her. I thought that was very suspicious, so I started looking into her disappearance on my own. Apparently this became a concern to Mr. Ippolito, Martin Barone’s boss.”
“You know Mr. Ippolito?”
“I met him at a dinner party at Vance’s.”
“You’ve been to Vance’s
house
? What’s it like?”
“Barbara…”
“I’m sorry, I won’t ask any more questions until you’re finished.”
“Good. Now, where was I”
“You made Mr. Ippolito mad.”
“Yes, I did. He invited me to a dinner party on his boat, then he had two goons tie an anchor to me and throw me into the Pacific Ocean.”
She opened her mouth in horror, but Stone put a hand over it.
“I didn’t drown; I got loose, and some people on a boat picked me up. Now I’m trying again to learn what happened to Arrington Calder, and I don’t want Ippolito to know that I’m still alive. I asked you to take Arrington’s car and bring it here because I want to worry Ippolito and his people. Apparently, that worked because Martin showed up at Marina Del Ray this
afternoon, found you and the car gone, and then he went directly to Ippolito’s office to report the missing car. That means that they will want to know what happened to the car, and they will want to know what happened to you, so I think you should be very careful and stick close to the hotel. If you really have to go somewhere, I’ll rent a car for you, but don’t drive the Mercedes again, because it could be dangerous. Understand?”
She nodded, opened her mouth, then closed it again.
“Now you can ask questions.”
She smiled brightly. “What’s Vance Calder’s house like?”
T
hey ordered dinner sent to the suite and ate well. Barbara had only one glass of wine, but it seemed to have an amorous effect, since she was playing footsie under the table. Stone, though, was preoccupied. He felt that having Arrington’s car at the Beverly Hills Hotel was a liability, no matter where it was parked; in fact, he was beginning to wonder if he’d chosen the best possible hotel for his purposes. The traffic of movie people through the lobby and the Polo Lounge was phenomenal, he knew, and he didn’t want to run into Louis Regenstein or David Sturmack, or anybody he had met at Vance’s house. He’d deal with that in the morning, but in the meantime, he wanted to get rid of Arrington’s car. He thought it might be time, too, to explain some facts to Vance Calder.
“Let’s go for a drive,” he said.
“I thought maybe we’d…”
“Love to, but later.”
“Where are we going?”
“To Vance Calder’s house.”
“Great!”
“We’re not going inside.”
“Oh.” Her face fell.
“But you can get a good look at it.”
“If we’re not going inside, why bother?”
“I’m going inside, but I don’t want Vance to see you; it might be dangerous.”
“How?”
“Trust me on this, Barbara.”
“Oh, all right.”
While Barbara followed in the E430, Stone drove Arrington’s car, and it made him nervous; the vanity plate was just too conspicuous. Still, he made it to Bel-Air unmolested. A block from Vance’s house he stopped the car, got out, and went back to the sedan. “I want you to wait here,” he said.
“But I haven’t seen his house yet,” she complained.
“I promise I’ll show it to you when I’m finished, all right?”
“All right. Suppose the police come and want to know what I’m doing here?”
“The police are not going to bother a beautiful woman in a Mercedes,” he said. “But if anybody asks, just tell them you’re waiting for a friend.” He wrote his portable number on a card and gave it to her. “If you have any problems, just use the car phone and call me; my cell phone is in my pocket.”
“Okay.”
Stone got back into the convertible and drove around the corner to Vance’s house. He could see lights on inside, but the gates were locked. He was about to press the buzzer outside the gates when he
had a thought. He opened the compartment under the center amirest, rummaged around, and came up with what he had been looking for. He pressed the remote, and the gates swung silently open.
Farther up the drive, it forked and he turned toward the garages. Using the remote control again, he opened the garage door, drove the car inside, and parked it next to Vance’s identical, except black, convertible. He didn’t want to enter the house this way, so he left the garage, pressing a button inside the door to close it, and started up the walk toward the front door. As he did, a car’s lights flooded the driveway, and he stopped behind a bush. The car was at the front gate, and a moment later, the gates swung open, and the visitor drove up the driveway.
The visitor parked his car and entered the house, but Stone’s view of the house was not good enough to reveal the identity of the driver. He had wanted to see Vance alone; a visitor was not in his plans, so he started back down the driveway. Another time, he thought.
He reached the gates and found them closed. How would he open them now? From the inside, he reflected, they probably opened on a magnetic sensor as a car approached them; what he needed was some object of ferrous metal large enough to make the sensor react. He looked to his left and right and saw a rake on the edge of a flower bed; that might do it. He walked toward it, and as he did, another car suddenly arrived at the gate. Stone jumped into the shrubbery and waited while the car was admitted and made its way up the drive. The gates closed before he could get to them.
He was about to try the rake when he became curious about who was visiting Vance at this hour of the evening. It was after ten, too late for a social occasion.
He dropped the rake and walked up the driveway again, remembering the layout of Vance’s house. Lights were on at the front, so he couldn’t go peeking in windows; then he remembered Vance’s study, which was at the rear of the house, off the living room.
He walked past the garage and around toward the rear of the house. He saw a light in a window ahead and made for that. Keeping low, parting the shrubbery as silently as he could, he made his way to the window and, at a comer, raised his head above the sill. Three men were in the room—Vance, Louis Regenstein, and a man Stone didn’t recognize. He was around forty, casually dressed in a tweed jacket, red—haired, probably of Irish extraction.
Regenstein was saying something, but Stone couldn’t hear what it was. Whatever he was saying, it was making Vance angry. “No!” Vance said loudly, then lowered his voice and continued in a strident manner.
Regenstein and the other man were obviously trying to placate him, but Vance was very angry indeed. Stone looked across the room and saw that Vance was standing near a window on the far wall. Maybe Stone could hear from there. He was about to move to that side of the house when the telephone in his pocket rang, loudly. He flattened himself against the house and scrambled for the phone, finally getting to it after the second ring.
“Hello,” he whispered.
“Vance, it’s Barbara; how much longer are you going to be? I’m getting tired of sitting here.”
“A few minutes; listen to the radio or something, and don’t call me again unless it’s an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?”
“Just don’t call again.” He snapped the phone shut
and peeked into the room again. The three men were looking around, trying to discover the source of the noise. Stone pushed slowly back through the shrubbery, and as he did he was hit from all sides by water. Half blinded, Stone blundered through the flowerbed to the grass, but got no relief from the continuous spray. It must be on a timer, he thought, and the sprinkler heads were placed to give full coverage. He ran to the corner of the house, and as he turned it, lights came on—bright lights, floodlights, activated by a motion sensor, most likely. There was probably a silent alarm, too. There was nothing for it but to run.