“Oh, Stone, come in,” she said, giving him a peck on the cheek. “Where have you been?”
Already, he needed an alibi. “I was at the gallery for a while, then I did some window-shopping.” In the pouring rain? That was weak; he’d have to do better than that if the police questioned him.
“Come on in; Lance is on the phone.” She showed him into the drawing room, which was empty. The place was handsome and spacious, but it looked as though it had been decorated by a bachelor with the help of a maiden aunt; the furniture was comfortable, but dowdy, and the curtains were too elaborate. “Awful, isn’t it?” Erica asked cheerfully.
“Fairly.”
“Can I get you a drink?”
“Yes, please; bourbon, if there’s any in the house; Scotch, if there isn’t.”
She went away and came back with a double old-fashioned glass filled with ice and a brown liquor. “No bourbon; try this.”
He sipped it—strong and dark and peaty. “It’s excellent, what is it?”
“Laphroaig—a single-malt Scotch whiskey from the island of Islay.” (She pronounced it “Islah.”)
“I’m not usually a Scotch drinker, but this will do just fine.” He thought she seemed oddly cheerful and unaffected for a young woman who had had to leave her home on a moment’s notice, for very odd reasons. “Are you doing all right?”
“Just fine. Lance will be off the phone in a minute, I’m sure; he’s already been on it since we arrived here. Ali and Sheila are upstairs napping—or something.” She smiled impishly.
Stone thought they must be napping, not something else, not after having seen their business explode before their eyes earlier in the day.
“Tell me about Ali and Sheila,” Stone said. He wanted to hear what Erica had to say about them before Lance returned.
“They’re just friends of Lance’s,” she said. “They have an antique shop in Chelsea.”
Had, Stone thought. “What nationality are they?”
“Ali is Syrian, Sheila Lebanese, I think.”
Syrian? Lebanese? Did they have something against the Greeks, or vice versa? He couldn’t make any sense of this. “How did Lance meet them?”
“Business—some importing or exporting thing, I think.”
“Does Lance have a lot of friends in London?”
“Just the ones you’ve met,” she said. “Monica, Sarah, Ali, and Sheila. He’s the sort of person who seems to have lots of acquaintances and few friends.”
I’ll bet, Stone thought. “Have you met a lot of his acquaintances?”
“Not really; once in a while someone will come to the house for a business meeting.”
“To the house? Doesn’t Lance have an office?”
“Not really; if he needs space for a meeting, he uses a club or a hotel meeting room.”
“I guess Lance travels pretty light, then.”
“Pretty light,” Lance said from the doorway.
“Oh, you’re finally off the phone,” Erica said. “Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, some Scotch, please.”
“Try the Laphroaig,” Stone said, raising his glass. Stone opened his mouth to tell Lance what he’d experienced in his wine cellar, then changed his mind. So far, nobody knew he’d actually been at the house; perhaps it was better to keep it that way, at least, for the moment.
The three of them chatted idly for a while.
“Anybody hungry?” Erica asked.
“Now that you mention it,” Stone replied.
“There’s no food here; I guess we’d better go out somewhere.”
“There’s plenty of food back at Farm Street,” Lance said. “Let’s go back there and fix something. I’ve been on the phone with some people, and I think it’s safe to go back now.”
Stone wondered what kind of people could tell Lance that.
“Great!” Erica said. “I feel like cooking. Shall we wake Ali and Sheila?”
“Oh, I think they’re down for the night,” Lance said. “Let’s leave them until morning.” He drained his glass and got up.
Stone got up, too. He thought of begging off, but he was curious. “I’ll see if I can find us a cab.”
The rain had stopped. He found a cab almost immediately.
Chapter 34
THEY GOT OUT OF THE CAB IN FRONT of the Farm Street house, and Stone paid the driver while Lance unlocked the door. Stone followed Lance and Erica up the stairs.
Lights were switched on and everything looked quite normal, Stone thought. Coats were hung up, and he followed them into the kitchen.
“Another drink, anybody?”
Stone nodded.
“We’ve got bourbon,” she said, “or would you rather stick to the Laphroaig?”
“I’ll stick with the Scotch, since I’ve started on it,” Stone replied.
There was a banquette in the kitchen, and Erica made Stone and Lance sit down there, while she began to put some dinner together.
“How about spaghetti Bolognese?” she asked.
“Fine,” Stone and Lance said together.
Erica put some ground steak on the stove to brown and a pot of water on to boil and began chopping an onion. After a few minutes she had all the ingredients in the pot; she covered it, poured herself a drink, and sat down next to Lance. “There,” she said, “we’ll let it simmer for a while; by the time the water has boiled and the pasta is done, it should be ready.”
Nobody seemed to have anything to say. If Erica had had any questions to ask Lance about why they had so suddenly abandoned the house, and just as suddenly returned to it, she didn’t ask them now, and neither did Stone, though he was dying to know. In his experience, Lance did not answer questions to which Stone wanted answers.