“Why don’t you call her, ask her to pack a bag or two for you and to FedEx them here. You’ll have them tomorrow.”
“Good idea.”
“Tell her to be cautious, not to let anyone have a look at where they’re going.”
“She’s very discreet,” Phil said.
“Use line three on the phone. I have to go talk to the security people.” He went downstairs and found their leader in the kitchen, drinking coffee, and told him of their experience of the previous night.
“You’d better not use the yacht again,” the man said. “If you need water transport, we’ll provide it.”
“Ms. Grant is going to stay for a few days, and she’s asking a friend to FedEx her some clothes.”
“We’ll have a man at the FedEx office to receive them and bring them back by a circuitous route.”
“Excellent.” Shep went to his study and called New York.
“The Barrington Practice,” Joan said.
“It’s Shep Troutman, Joan,” he said. “May I speak to Stone?”
“Of course.”
Stone came on the line. “Good morning. Everything okay?”
“Yes, but it wasn’t so last night.” He related the events as they had occurred. “I suppose I didn’t handle it well. Somebody spotted me.”
“I think you handled it as well as it could be handled,” Stone said. “You got out of there, and they can’t know where you went.”
“Not unless they knew where I came from,” Shep said.
“I would discount that theory. Is it all right if I come up and stay for a night or two?”
“We’d be glad to have you for as long as you like. Bring company, if you so desire. Phyllis Grant turned out well. You’d think she got shot at all the time.”
“Good. Don’t either of you leave the house before I get there. We’ll need to rethink your security.”
“All right. Do you want to be met at the airport?”
“I’ll get myself to the house. Safer.”
“As you wish.”
“I’ll bring Dino, too, if he can shake loose.”
“Sure.” They both hung up.
Stone called Dino.
“Bacchetti.”
“A little kerfuffle north of here,” Stone said.
“How little?”
“Could have been a lot worse, but nobody on our team got hurt. I’m going back up there for a couple of days. You game?”
“Sure. It’s boring here.”
“Pick me up in your car, and your driver can take us to the airport. Bring sporty clothes. We’ll want to blend in.”
“Okay.”
“Two o’clock?”
“Good.” They both hung up.
The Strategic Service Citation M2 set down at mid-afternoon.
“Did you book a rent-a-car?” Dino asked.
“No.”
“Are we hitchhiking?”
Stone pointed to a photograph of two tourists on Vespas.
“Like that.”
“I haven’t been on one of those things since high school,” Dino said.
“You’ve been on a police motorcycle or two,” Stone said. “It’s like roller-skating or sex. You never forget how.”
“I hope you’re right,” Dino said, “for the sake of my bones.”
Their bones made it all right. They stopped at the front gate of the house, took a leak, and tried to look like tourists. Finally, they drove to and around the house and parked in a shed at the rear.
Shep came down the back stairs to meet them. “Sorry, no tourists allowed,” he said.
“Make an exception,” Dino replied.
“Come inside.”
Thirty
Stone and Dino sat in the library with Shep, Phil, and two of the security detail, listening once again to Shep’s account of the events of the night before. Stone was very impressed with how calmly Shep and Phil had handled themselves after the rude shock of having been shot at.
“Did anybody get the name of the Hinckley boat?”
“No,” Shep said. “And the captain stressed that it wasn’t necessarily the Hinckley model 43, that was just an approximate length.”
“Pity about not having the boat’s name,” Dino said.
“Oh,” Shep said. “One of the crew got the Hinckley’s hailing port: it was Wilmington, Delaware.”
Stone and Dino exchanged a glance.
“Ah, I get it,” Shep said. “Our purchaser was a Delaware corporation.”
“Correct,” Stone said. “Tell me,” he said to the security people, “are there any very large yachts moored in Edgartown?”
“I don’t know,” the woman said, “but I can call the harbormaster and find out. Why do you want to know?”
“Because a Hinckley 43 is a nice boat — I own one — but it’s not nice enough to massage the ego of the kind of person we’re dealing with. It could, however, be a tender to a very large yacht.”
“A forty-three-foot tender?” Shep said.
“If your yacht is one hundred fifty feet, that would make perfect sense,” Stone said. “You’d sometimes have a lot of guests, and there would be a lot of work for a boat of forty-three feet to do. They might even have a pair. What color was the hull of the Hinckley?”
“Dark — blue or black.”
The security agent excused herself, then came back after a few minutes. “A two-hundred-footer came in yesterday morning,” she said. “She was too big for the available space in the marina, so she’s anchored across the harbor. Her name is Nostrovia, which is an English misspelling of a Russian name I can’t even spelclass="underline" it’s a toast — literally, ‘Let’s get drunk.’ ”
“Ah,” Stone said.
“Oh, and she has two tenders, both Hinckley 43s, dark blue.”
“Well,” Dino said. “Now we know who we’re dealing with.”
“What’s the length of Breeze, Stone?” Shep asked.
“One hundred twenty-five feet,” Stone replied.
“Let’s sink the Russian,” Dino said, and everybody laughed.
“You’d need a torpedo or two, Dino,” Stone said, “and a submarine to fire them from.”
“It was just a thought,” Dino said.
Everybody was tired, and they went to bed early. Stone was lying in bed, on the edge of sleep, when there was a soft knock at his door. “Yes?”
The door opened, Phil walked into the room, clad in what Stone suspected was only a terry robe, and sat on the edge of his bed. “You’re not asleep yet,” she said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Stone sat up. “And whose idea was that?”
“Mine,” she said. “Shep is a heavy sleeper, and I’m not. Have I offended you?”
“Not in the least,” Stone said, “but together, we might offend our host. However, you’ve given me an idea.” He picked up his cell phone and called a number, which was quickly answered. “Hello, there,” Stone said.
“What a nice surprise,” Brooke said.
“Are you up for a little travel tomorrow?”
“Where?”
“I can’t tell you that, but you’ll know when you arrive. Can you drive a Vespa?”
“I owned one in college.”
“Okay, here’s how it goes: Fred will pick you up tomorrow morning and drive you to Teterboro, then into a large hangar, where there will be a light jet called a Citation M2. You will board that and be flown for less than an hour. When you land, there will be a Vespa reserved for you. Write down these directions.” He gave her instructions on finding the house. “There will be a sign saying ‘private’ on the front gate. Don’t stop. Continue down the road to the village, make a few turns to make it difficult to be followed; narrow streets are best. Then drive out of town, back to the house, then around the house, and park in the shed with the other scooters and scratch at the back door of the house.”