Dead In The Water

CHAPTER 41

They took their time over dinner, talking like old friends and lovers. They had champagne with their fish, and, as always, the wine was an exhilarant, making them laugh easily. They emptied the place, outlasting Sir Winston and Colonel Buckler, as well as the rest of the crowd. Thomas brought them cognac at the end of the meal, and they nursed it past midnight.

There was a lull in the conversation, and Stone asked a question. "Allison, what are you going to do with yourself when this is all over?" He regretted it immediately, but to his surprise, she answered him as if she would not be on trial for her life in a short time.

"Gosh, I really haven't looked all that far ahead," she said. "I've sold the house-it's under contract now-so I guess the first thing I'll do is go back to Greenwich and start getting ready to move out."

"Where do you think you'll go?"

"Oh," she murmured, "I was thinking maybe New York. Would you be glad to see me there, conveniently located, as it were?"

He felt a little stab in the chest; after all, Arrington would soon be back from California. "Of course I'd be glad to see you," he said, after perhaps too long a pause.

"Oh, yes, there is the other woman, isn't there? What are your intentions, sir, if I may ask?"

"I don't honestly know," he replied, and it was the truth.

Allison leaned forward on her elbows. "Do you think she's fucking Vance Calder?"

Stone shrugged. "She's had the opportunity before, and she says she never did, never thought of him as anything but a friend."

"I would be," Allison said.

"Would be what?"

"Fucking Vance Calder."

"Oh. Well, if she is, then that would make life easier for me, in a way."

"Oh, Stone, you're the perfect old-fashioned man."

"How's that?"

"You'd leave Arrington for fucking Vance Calder, but you wouldn't want her to leave you for fucking me."

"What I meant was, if she left me for Vance, I wouldn't have to make a decision, she'd have made it for me. Also, I'd have some things to tell her."

"You mean about me?"

Stone nodded. He hadn't allowed himself to think about it until now, but he knew he would tell her.

"For God's sake, why?"

"I guess I'm not as old-fashioned as you think-not your idea of old-fashioned, anyway."

"Why, Stone, I believe you're an honorable man."

He felt his ears turning red, and he wondered why he was embarrassed. "If I were as honorable as you think, why would I be fucking you at all?"

She smiled. "It's not your fault," she said. "I simply made myself irresistible."

"That you did."

"Women can do that, you know-make themselves utterly irresistible."

"Some women."

"Thank you, kind sir. Do you know when I decided to seduce you? I mean, the very moment?"

"When?"

"When I was on the stand at the inquest."

"Nonsense."

She shook her head. "No, really. I was sitting there, and Sir Winston was making me absolutely furious, and I caught a glimpse of you sitting there."

"You never looked at me."

"I did. You were looking at Sir Winston. You see, after Paul's death, I was alone for another two weeks, and I had a lot of time to get used to being a widow. I had a friend once who lost her husband; she was in her forties at the time. It took her months just to accept the idea that he was actually dead. She'd walk into his study, expecting to find him sitting there reading the newspaper. It wasn't like that with me. I wasn't distracted by a funeral, or by friends and relatives coming to call or by all the details of settling the estate. I was all alone, right there, in the place where he had been for so and he was dead. I think that after the first week I accepted that completely. Then I started to get horny."

Stone smiled. "I was angry with Arrington for not being here."

"And that gave you an excuse to crawl into the sack with me."

He nodded. "I guess it did."

"You are the best lover I've ever had," she said. "Not that I've had all that many, but I had the years between puberty and the time I met Paul, and I enjoyed myself. But you are the very best."

"That's high praise," he said, satisfyingly flattered.

"Do you know why?"

He shrugged.

"It's not because you're a beautiful man, though you are, and it's not because you're experienced and inventive, though God knows you are: it's because you're so considerate. I know when we're fucking that you really care that I'm enjoying it as much as you. It makes me want to please you even more."

"And you do, believe me."

"I know I do; I can tell. I think you like me best when I'm wanton, when I do the things a proper Greenwich, Connecticut matron isn't supposed to enjoy, and when I do them well."

He smiled, but said nothing.

"Take me back to the boat," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," he said. They walked past the two policemen on guard and boarded the yacht, and as they started down the companionway, she began undressing. So did he. She led him to the after cabin and threw off the bedcover, then made him lie on his back. She began slowly, kissing him here and there, using her tongue, but staying away from his genitals until he was completely erect, which didn't take long. Then she spent several minutes bringing him to the edge and backing off, playing him as if he were a musical instrument.

Stone then found himself in a condition where he knew he could resist coming for as long as he liked but still remain rigidly erect. Finally she rolled over on her stomach, took him in her hand, and guided him home. Then, after a while, she let him slide out.

"Now here," she said, guiding him into a different place. She let him ride her for a short time, then turned on her back and reinserted him in the same Place. Then, without parting from him, she rolled him onto his back and sat astride him, moving slowly up and down, making little noises. Half an hour had passed before she said to him, "Now. Come for me."

And he did.

They passed the night alternately sleeping and making love, as the mood took them.

She woke him at dawn and made him do it again, then they slept for another hour.

"Want some breakfast?" she said, yawning.

"Sure."

"Oh," she said, "all my stuff is packed. Will you bring me the smallest duffel? It's got my toothbrush in it."

"Sure." He rolled out of bed and stretched.

She kissed him on the belly. "You were perfectly wonderful last night."

"You were way beyond wonderful. I don't think ever had a night like that. I'm exhausted."

"You'll live." She slapped him on his naked buttocks. "Now get me that duffel."

Stone went forward to the door of the engine room, the companionway. He opened it, walked down steps, and looked around the small compartment, contained the two engines and a small workshop. was as clean and neat as the galley, he thought. On bulkhead behind the workbench, all the ship's tools arrayed in motion-proof brackets. He Picked up a and saw that each tool had been traced in black He marveled at the time Paul Manning had spent ordering his ship. He turned and looked at the other equipment. There was a wet suit, hung neatly on a hanger,and a pair of diving tanks resting in custom-to the bulkhead.

Then, in a sudden, sickening flash, Stone became a cop again.

He saw something that, in an earlier day, would have made his heart leap in triumph, but now made him sick with revulsion.

Next to the tanks, fixed to the bulkhead and outlined in black paint like all the tools, was a spear gun for underwater fishing, with brackets for the gun and three spears. One of the spears was missing, its outline empty. That would have given him pause, but it was something else that immobilized him. The spear gun was there, but it had been taken down and awkwardly replaced backward in its brackets, the opposite of its painted outline.

Stone knew in an instant that Paul Manning would never, never have replaced the gun in anything but its proper position. It had been put there by someone else, of course, but the third spear had not been returned to its place.

The third spear, he knew beyond a doubt, was still in what was left of Paul Manning's body, out there in the depths of the cold, cold ocean.