Two-Dollar Bill

8

STONE WOKE to the smell of absolutely nothing-no steak, no bacon. Maybe Billy Bob and his girl were sleeping in. Then, as he got out of bed, he noticed a sheet of his stationery on top of the pile of luggage at the foot of his bed. He picked it up.

"Hey, Stone," it read. "I got to go to Omaha right away to set up a deal. Tiffany is going to her place. I'll be back at the Four Seasons tomorrow night. Let me buy you some dinner. Billy B."

There was no date or time on it. He got himself together and went down to the kitchen for some breakfast, this time, his usual bran cereal. Helene, his Greek housekeeper, was tidying up.

"Good morning, Mr. Stone," she said, in her heavily accented English.

"Good morning, Helene. You can clean the big guest room; the occupants have checked out."

"Yes, sir," Helene said, and she went about her work.

Stone was halfway through his cereal when he heard her scream. He ran toward the back stairs and met her halfway up, coming down.

Helene seemed unable to speak, but she was pointing up the stairs.

Stone ran all the way up to the top floor, which was more exercise than he had planned on that morning, and into the guest room. Tiffany was lying on her back in the bed, and he didn't have to look for a pulse to know she was dead. Her eyes and mouth were open, and there were big bruises on her throat. When he felt for a pulse she was cold.

Stone stepped back and looked at her, then around the room. Nothing was in disarray; her clothes were hanging neatly in the closet, and the guest bathrobe she had worn at breakfast the day before was thrown over a chair. He found her handbag under the robe but didn't touch it. He went back to his own bedroom and called Dino.

"Bacchetti."

"It's Stone."

"Whatsamatter? You sound funny."

"Billy Bob's girlfriend is dead in my guest room; looks like she was strangled."

"Did you screw with the scene?"

"Of course not."

"I'll be there with troops."

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, there were cops, crime-scene analysts and EMTs all over his house. Stone sat in his study, answering questions from two cops, Morton and Weiss, while Dino watched and listened.

"Where is the note?" Morton asked.

"In the trash basket next to my bed, where I threw it after I read it."

"Where is this Billy Bob guy?"

"The note said he had gone to Omaha. He's doing some kind of deal with Warren Buffett."

"How do you know that?" Dino asked.

"First, he told me so; second, he's had two phone calls from Buffett, on successive days. I checked out the first one, and it originated from Buffett's residence in Omaha."

"You check it out, too," Dino said to the two detectives. "And talk to Buffett. We got a time of death, yet?"

"The ME is upstairs working on it," Weiss said.

As if on cue, the ME came into the room, and he didn't waste any time. "Preliminary conclusions, death by strangulation, between nine and eleven, last night."

Stone breathed a sigh of relief.

"Where were you between nine and eleven?" Morton asked.

"At Elaine's." He pointed at Dino. "He can confirm."

"I can confirm," Dino said. "I got there a little before nine, and he was already there; I left a little before eleven, and he was still there."

"I didn't leave until about eleven forty-five," Stone said. "Elaine or the headwater, Gianni, can confirm that."

Weiss had left the room, and he came back with Billy Bob's note, holding it by a corner in his rubber-gloved fingers. "It's on your stationery," he said to Stone.

"I keep it on my desk in the bedroom, and in a pigeonhole over there." He pointed at a bookcase in the corner. "I guess Billy Bob found it when he was looking for something to write the note on."

A young man came into the room. "No prints," he said.

"Whadaya mean, no prints?" Dino demanded.

"No prints anywhere in the bedroom or bathroom, not even the corpse's. It's been wiped clean, the whole area."

"I like your purse," Dino said, nodding at the bag hanging on the young man's arm.

"It's the corpse's. Her name is Hilda Marlene Beckenheim, lives in Chelsea. There's credit cards, a Pennsylvania driver's license, a thing of birth-control pills and enough condoms to start a whorehouse."

"Hooker," Dino said.

"I'm so glad her name isn't Tiffany," Stone said.

"What?"

"Billy Bob introduced her to me at breakfast, yesterday, as Tiffany. One Tiffany in my life is enough."

"Had you ever met her before that?"

"No, but I saw her at a party at the Four Seasons the night before last. Somewhere there's a photograph of her with Billy Bob. Oh, yes, and with the mayor."

"The mayor?" Weiss asked.

"Don't worry, it's not a scandal; it's just a party photograph."

"Where else in the house might Billy Bob have left his fingerprints?" Morton asked.

"On that note," Stone said, pointing, "and in the kitchen. No, forget the kitchen, my housekeeper has already been in there this morning, wiping everything down. She's very thorough. By the way, she discovered the body. She's lying down in the second-floor guest room. Maybe she's recovered enough to talk to you by now."

Weiss headed for the stairs.

Joan Robertson, Stone's secretary, came into the room. "What's going on?" she asked.

"Joan," Stone said, "when did you last see Billy Bob?"

"Yesterday morning around ten, when he was on his way out. He said he had to go to Omaha, and he'd be back in the city tonight, at the Four Seasons."

"Do you have any idea why he didn't come see me before he left?"

"I thought you had gone out. Were you in the house?"

"I was here, in the study, reading, all day."

"When you didn't come down to the office, and when Mr. Barnstormer came down, I just assumed you had gone out."

Dino spoke up. "Did you see him leave the house?"

"Yes; a driver put his luggage into a black Lincoln and they drove away."

"How did you meet this Billy Bob?" Morton asked Stone.

"The head of the law firm I work for introduced him to me as a new client." He gave the man Eggers's name and number.

"I was there for that, too," Dino said. "Make a note; somebody took a shot at Billy Bob's limo the other night. DiAngelo caught the case; he'll give you details."

"Billy Bob's original name was Barnstetter," Stone said. "He says his grandfather changed it to Barnstormer, but it might help in running down his background. He came into Teterboro on a Gulfstream Four corporate jet, and he said an engine had to be replaced because of a bird strike."

"Where in Texas is he from?"

"I don't know."

"Anything else about him you can tell us?"

"He leaves a trail of two-dollar bills wherever he goes," Stone said. "Tips, mostly."

Weiss came back. "I called the Four Seasons Hotel. They know Barnstormer, and they have a reservation for him tonight, for a week."

"Be there when he arrives," Dino said.

TWO HOURS LATER, the corpse was gone, and people were trickling out of the house. Stone took Dino aside.

"You'll notice I didn't bring Tiffany Baldwin into this."

"I noticed."

"Can we keep it that way?"

"I don't see why not; we can confirm your alibi without her."

"Good; the press would be all over it, if her name came into play."

"I'm not going to be able to keep your name out of the papers," Dino said. "They're already outside your door."

"Think you could give them a statement, exonerating me and saying I've left on a Caribbean vacation?"

"I'll see what I can do," Dino said.

"I want to be there when your people question Billy Bob."

"Let's have dinner; they'll call me when he gets in, and we'll go over there."

"Tell them they're not to ask him any questions until I get there."

"You think he needs to lawyer up?"

"Wouldn't you lawyer up, in the circumstances?"