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“Nothing serious, I hope,” Elihu Barnes said.

“It was, but he received quick attention, and he’s recovering normally.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” They all took seats at the table.

“I’ll turn this over to Herb Fisher, of Woodman & Weld,” Stone said.

Bessie began to growl at the fireplace.

“Does she detect an intruder?” Stone asked Crenshaw, interrupting Herbie.

“Bessie doesn’t do intruders,” he replied. “She spent eight years at JFK as a sniffer dog.”

“Drugs?”

“No, her specialty was bombs.”

Stone froze. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said, “but would you all grab your papers and get out of the building as quickly as possible?”

“What?” Barnes asked.

Get out of the building now!” Stone commanded.

“Let’s go, gentlemen,” Herbie said, and began herding them toward the door. Only Crenshaw stayed.

Stone walked toward the fireplace, surveying the area. Bessie seemed to be concentrating on the wood box. The logs, Stone noted, were stacked neatly beside it, instead of inside it. He reached out for the latch and opened the lid a quarter of an inch, then he looked around the gap for any sign of wires. Nothing. He opened the lid.

There was no ticking clock, but there was a cell phone taped to a large brick of what looked like modeling clay. “Eliot,” Stone said, “take Bessie and go, right now.” Crenshaw hurried for the door, but Bessie had to be dragged.

Stone looked at his watch: two minutes before twelve; people had arrived a little early. He would normally have called Dino and asked for the bomb squad, but he had the very strong feeling that this phone was going to ring at noon. He ran over to the desk and found a large pair of scissors, then returned to the wood box. He snipped the tape that clamped the phone to the brick, and it came away attached to a single wire, running from the earbud receptacle on the bottom of the phone to a cylinder he believed was a detonator, pushed into the soft material. He unplugged the wire from the phone, and as he did the instrument lit up and rang.

Stone jumped back and dropped the phone, expecting the explosive to detonate. Then the phone rang a second time, and a third. He picked it up and pressed the send button. “Hello?”

“What number is this?” a male voice asked.

“What number did you call?” Stone asked.

There was a dead silence at the other end of the phone, then the man spoke in a half-whisper. “Barrington?

“Yes, Mr. Macher. Who or what were you expecting, Mr. Boom?” The connection was broken.

Stone got out his own phone and pressed the favorites button, then another.

“Bacchetti,” Dino said.

“It’s Stone.”

“Is it important? I’m with some people.”

“Is one of them a bomb expert?” Stone asked.

“Funny you should mention that,” Dino said.

Stone left the phone and the bomb in the wood box and joined the others on the street.

“Mr. Barrington,” Elihu Barnes said, “would you mind explaining what’s going on here?”

Stone went over and hugged Bessie against his leg. “This young lady, Eliot’s Bessie, who is a retired sniffer of bombs at the airport, has just saved all our lives, and probably those of half the neighborhood.”

Approaching sirens could be heard.

Two hours later, sitting at a lunch table with the others around the corner from the house, Stone answered his phone. “Stone Barrington.”

“Mr. Barrington, this is Lieutenant Marconi. Nice job on deactivating your bomb. We’ve secured it and searched the building for any other explosives. We didn’t find anything else, so you can return to the building whenever you wish.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Stone said, “and please thank your squad for arriving so quickly and making us feel safe again.” He put the phone away. “Gentlemen, I am informed that the house is now safe, and we may resume our business there.”

Everybody got up, Stone paid the bill, and they walked back to the mansion together. Forty minutes later, all i’s had been dotted and t’s crossed, and a check for half a billion dollars had changed hands.

“Congratulations, Mr. Barrington,” Barnes said, “you and your partners have just become the owners of a fine business.”

“Thank you,” Stone replied, and began escorting everyone out.

Along the way, Barnes leaned over and whispered into Stone’s ear, “Was it Macher?”

“Yes,” Stone replied, “but it’s going to be hard to prove.”

40

Stone went straight to the hospital to see Charley Fox.

“When you didn’t call I began to think something had gone wrong,” Charley said.

“You could say that,” Stone replied. He related the events of midday.

“Macher!” Charley said.

“Of course, who else?”

“Can we nail him for it?”

“I’ve already talked to Dino, who has talked to the DA. There were no prints on the bomb, and the phone was bought at a convenience store in New Jersey. And I can’t swear it was Macher on the phone. It’s called ‘insufficient evidence to indict.’”

“I’m glad there’s a guard on my room,” Charley said.

“There are a dozen Strategic Services people in the building. You’re quite safe.”

“When I’m out of here,” Charley said, “Macher and I are going to have a reckoning.”

“Don’t let that weigh on your mind,” Stone replied. “You’ll internalize your anger, and it will affect your recovery.”

“I feel an intense need to deal with it on a personal level.”

“I can understand that, but it’s not the way to go about it. The DA is still considering whether to charge Macher with the murder of Christian St. Clair, so he’s far from out of the woods.”

“Something else,” Charley said.

“What?”

“He’s not going to stop.”

“Charley...”

“No, I’m happy about that — it will give us other opportunities to kill him legally.”

“Not while I’m your attorney,” Stone said.

“Then at some point I’ll just have to fire you.”

“You know who we should talk to about this?”

“Who?”

“Ed Rawls.”

Charley managed to sit up a little straighter in his bed. “You’re damned right,” he said. “Ed is smarter than any of us, and he knows more ways to skin a cat than anybody alive.”

“What can I get you to make your stay more pleasant?” Stone asked. “Magazines? Books?”

“They have a very good library here. A lady comes around every day with a cartful of reading material.”

“Anything else?”

“A bottle of single-malt scotch and a straw.”

“All in good time.”

“I must be getting better — I’m horny.”

“Maybe you should discuss that with Kaley,” Stone said.

“Don’t you worry, I will. Oh, I didn’t tell you — Kaley’s going to move into the mansion with me.”

“Now that’s good news.”

“She’s out shopping now for enough new furniture and stuff so that we can forget Macher ever lived there. She’s going to keep her job at Strategic Services.”

“By the way, there’s a locksmith at the mansion as we speak, rekeying the locks, and Mike’s people will change the alarm code. I’ll send everything over to Kaley as soon as the locksmith drops off the new keys.”

“I think you’d better call the old employees — the accounting people and the cleaning and cooking staffs — and tell them to come back to work tomorrow.”