Dead In The Water

CHAPTER 12

Stone dialed the number and waited. "This is Stone Barrington," his own voice said. "Please leave your name and number and I'll get back to you." "Arrington?" he said into the phone. "Pick up, Arrington." Nothing. He hung up.

He felt he had done all he could for the moment, so he left the room above the restaurant and walked down to his chartered yacht; he was weary and aching, as if he had run several miles. He fell onto his bunk and slept.

A rapping on the hull woke him; a glance through the hatch showed him dusk outside. He poked his head up.

Allison was standing on the pontoon between their boats. "How you doing?" she asked.

"How you doing is a better question."

"I had a little cry; now I feel better. Come over and have some dinner with me?"

"Sure, I'd like that."

She held up a finger. "One condition: no talking about my problems; I've put them out of my mind until tomorrow."

"Agreed. Give me time for a shower? I've been asleep, and I'm a little groggy."

"I hate a groggy date," she replied. "See you in half an hour."

Stone hunted down his razor, then squeezed himself into the tiny head and turned on the cold-water shower. In St.Marks, it wasn't all that cold.

He rapped on the deck of the big blue yacht and stepped aboard.

"Come on down," she called out from below.

Stone walked down the companionway ladder, which, on a yacht this size, was more a stairway. Allison was at work in the galley, and the saloon table had been set for two, side by side. Whatever she was wearing was mostly concealed by a large apron.

"Can you make a decent martini?" she asked.

"I believe I can handle that."

"The bar's over there." She pointed. "Just open those cabinet doors."

Stone followed her instructions and found a hand some bar setup, nicely concealed. He found a cocktail shaker, two glasses, and ice cubes, then the gin and vermouth. "You sound awfully cheerful," he said as he mixed the drinks. "I don't know how you do it."

"It's a gift," she said. "For my whole life, when faced with something awful, I do as much as I can, then I put it out of my mind. I mean really right out of my mind. Then I find that the next day, things seem clearer."

"That's a great gift," he said.

"You can cultivate it if you work at it."

He handed her a martini. "I'll start right now."

She was sauteing chicken breasts in a skillet on the four-burner gas range, which was large for a yacht.

"When did you find time to get to the grocery store?" he asked.

"I didn't. I provisioned in the Canaries, and I've got lots of cold storage here, plus a large freezer. There won't be a salad, though; sorry about that."

They clinked glasses. "Better times," Stone said.

"I'll drink to that." She took a swig of her martini. "Expert," she said.

"A misspent youth. I tended bar in a Greenwich Village joint one summer, during law school." He leaned against a galley cabinet and sipped his drink. "Tell me about you," he said.

"That's easy," she replied. "Born in a colonial village in Litchfield County, Connecticut, father a country lawyer, mother a volunteer for this and that; went to local private schools, then Mount Holyoke, in Massachusetts; did a graphics course at Pratt, in Brooklyn, worked as an assistant art director for an ad agency in Manhattan, met Paul, married Paul; lived… well, lived. What about you?"

"Born and raised in the Village, father a cabinetmaker, mother a painter; NYU undergrad and law school. NYPD for fourteen years, eleven of them as a detective."

"Why'd you quit?"

"A very bad boy put a twenty-two slug in my knee, and the force quit me, gave me their very best pension. That's the short version; I won't bore you with the long one, which involves a lot of department politics and a strange case I worked on. Anyway, once off the force, I crammed for the bar, and an old law school hooked me up with Woodman and Weld."

"How much money do you make?"

The bald question stopped him for a moment, then recovered. "I made about six hundred thousand last year," he said. "My best year so far."

"You're doing well, then."

"By New York law firm standards that's only middling, but I have a lot more freedom than I would as a partner in a firm. I'm lucky that I can pick and choose my cases. If I want to bugger off to St.Marks for a week's sailing, I can manage it."

She put an oily hand against his cheek. "But you got stood up, didn't you? Poor baby."

"That's me."

"Who is she?"

"Name's Arrington Carter; she's a freelance writer."

"And when the blizzard was over, what kept her in New York?"

"She's writing a New Yorker profile of Vance Calder."

"Ooooh, lucky girl."

"I guess. She's known him for a while; matter of fact, she was his date the first time I met her."

"And you won out over Vance Calder? You must be sensational in bed."

He laughed. "You think that was it? I always thought it was my boyish charm."

She gave him a bright smile. "That, too." She opened a sealed packet of smoked salmon and arranged the slices on two plates. "First course is almost ready," she said. "There's a bottle of white on the table; will you open it?"

Stone went to the table, found a corkscrew, and opened a bottle of Beringer Private Reserve '94, then tasted it. "Excellent," he said. "Was Paul a connoisseur of wines?"

"Paul was more of a wino; I'm the authority." She handed him a bottle of red. "For the main course; might as well open it and let it breathe."

"Dominus '87. Very nice."

"You know wines?"

"Enough to stay out of trouble." He opened both bottles. She set the two plates of smoked salmon on the table and untied her apron. Underneath it she was dressed in a very short skirt and a white cotton blouse, unbuttoned and tied under her breasts.

Stone remembered that the first time he had seen her she'd been wearing that sort of blouse, tied that way.

They finished their smoked salmon, then she whipped up a chicken dish over rice, with a lovely sauce. They were both warm with the wine and laughing easily. Allison cleared the table, then pressed a button and it folded away electrically.

"Very slick."

"Glad you like it." She caught him looking at her breasts. "Any yachtsman should be able to deal with a simple square knot," she said, knocking back the last of her wine.

Uh-oh, Stone said to himself. But he had had nearly a bottle of wine on top of the martini, and he was feeling hurt by Arrington, feeling incautious, and feeling extremely attracted to Allison Manning. She went to a switch panel and lowered the lights; when she came back the knot in her shirt had been untied. She bent to kiss Stone, and her breasts fell free. "Let's forget about the attorney-client relationship for the night," she said.

Stone had a decision to make, and it didn't take long. "It's forgotten," he said. She straddled his bare legs, and he found that there was nothing under the short skirt. He shucked off his shorts, and she pulled his polo shirt over his head. A tug at a zipper and a shrug of her shoulders, and they were both naked.

"I don't think I can wait," Stone said.

"I can't wait, either," she said, reaching down and slipping him into her. "We'll wait longer next time."

They were both very quick and very together; they finished, clutching each other and smothering their cries in each other's flesh. When they had both stopped trembling, she stood up, took his hand, and led him toward the aft cabin.

"Now we can start working on the next time," she said, "and we can practice waiting."