6 Stone Barrington Novels (56 page)

“Will do.”

Stone returned to his table, stopping to whisper in Callie's ear. “It's looking good. When dinner's over, try to slip a glass or something with his fingerprints on it into your purse.”

“Love to,” she said.

Stone returned to his seat and the attentions of Lila Baldwin, glancing at Paul Bartlett, who seemed to be having a good time. Stone wanted to end his good time.

T
HE WOMAN SITTING BETWEEN STONE AND PAUL Bartlett got up between courses and went to the powder room, and Stone took the opportunity.

“Paul, I was out at the airport this morning. Did I see you leave in a BMW?”

Bartlett looked at him as if Stone had seriously invaded his privacy. “Were you following me?” he demanded.

“Of course not,” Stone said. “I was at the airport, and I saw you. that's all. I didn't mean to upset you.”

Bartlett waved a hand. “Sorry. I guess I'm being paranoid.”

Stone wondered what he had to be paranoid about.

“I took my rental car back to Hertz. I bought a car this morning, and the salesman picked me up and drove me to the dealership.”

“Oh, what did you buy?”

“A Bentley.”

“Very nice.”

“Were you considering one?”

“No, the Bentley is out of my league. If you're making that sort of investment, you must have decided to stay on in Palm Beach.”

“Well, I am looking for a house.”

Callie was on her feet, digging into her purse. “Let me get a shot of you two,” she said. “Stone, move over a seat.”

Bartlett waved her away. “No, please. I don't enjoy being photographed.” When Callie seemed to persist, he nearly barked at her. “Sit down,” he said. “Please. I take a Muslim view of photography: It steals one's soul.”

“If one has a soul,” Stone said.

Bartlett shot a glance at Stone, picked up a liqueur glass, downed the contents and stood up. “Excuse me,” he said.

“You're not leaving,” Callie said.

“Terrible headache,” Bartlett replied.

“Still at the Chesterfield?” Stone asked.

“Sure, call me anytime. Good night.” He strode toward his hostess's table, spoke to her for a moment, kissed her on the cheek and left the room.

Callie reached over, picked up the small liqueur glass, wrapped it in a tissue from her purse and dropped it into her bag. “Better than a photograph,” she said.

Stone looked up to see Frank Wilkes coming toward them. He sat down in Bartlett's chair. “Paul has abandoned us, I see.”

“Yes, he seemed uncomfortable.”

“Stone, after speaking with him, do you think he may be the man you're looking for?”

“I think he may be,” Stone said, “but even if he's not, he's not the man he says he is.”

“Then who is he?”

“I hope to know more about that soon, Frank. I'll let you know when I find out.”

“I'd appreciate that. Margaret and I introduced him to Frances, his wife, and the thought that he might have had something to do with her death is, naturally, very disturbing to us.”

“I can understand that. Can you tell me everything you remember about the accident?”

“It was on a Sunday afternoon, I remember. Paul and I had a golf date, and Frances picked him up at the clubhouse when we had finished—must have been around six. They were on the way home when . . .” He stopped. “No, they weren't on the way home. We played at the Manitou Ridge Golf Club, in the Minneapolis suburbs, and their house—Frances's house—is west of there. The accident happened along the shore of White Bear Lake, which is east—no, northeast of the club. After the funeral, I remember asking Paul what they were doing out in that direction. He said Frances had wanted to go for a drive along the lake. I didn't say anything at the time, but that seemed odd to me. I can't explain why, exactly, but it seemed out of character for Frances to want to do something as idle as go for a drive. She was the sort of person who would never take the long way home, if there was a shorter route.”

“And what do you remember about the accident itself?”

“The papers said that they were coming around a curve when a deer jumped out of the brush, and in trying to avoid it, Paul went off the road and smashed into a tree. Frances went through the windshield and hit the tree, killing her instantly.”

“You said earlier today there was something wrong with the seat belt?”

“Yes, I remember reading that. I told Paul he should sue, but he wanted no part of that.”

“Do you remember anything else about the accident or its aftermath that struck you as odd?”

Wilkes thought about it. “A few weeks later I was playing golf with a friend of mine, Arthur Welch, who was Frances's lawyer. He mentioned that Paul had sold Frances's house, and that surprised me.”

“Why?”

“Well, I knew that when Frances and Paul married, she insisted on a prenuptial agreement that severely limited any inheritance for him in the event of her death. The bulk of her estate was to go to a local art museum. When Arthur told me Paul had sold the house, I mentioned the prenup, and he told me that Frances had rescinded the prenup and had made a new will.”

“When?”

“Less than a month before her death.”

“I see.”

Wilkes rubbed his forehead. “I think I see, too. I didn't want to believe it, but now . . .”

“Let's not jump to any conclusions just yet,” Stone said. “Let's wait until we know more.”

Wilkes nodded. “You're right,” he said.

“And please don't do anything that might make Bartlett feel that your relationship with him has changed, or that you don't want to see or talk to him.”

“I'll try,” Wilkes said. “Margaret will, too.”

As they left the party, Stone called Chief Dan Griggs.

“Dan, can you meet me at your office?” Stone asked. “There's something I need to talk to you about.”

“Sure, Stone. I'll be there in ten minutes.”

 

Stone took a minute to bring Griggs up to date on what he had learned that evening.

Griggs nodded as he heard the story. “So, if Bartlett is Manning, and if he killed his wife for her money, he
has
committed a crime, after all. We'd have grounds for an arrest.”

“I think you'd have to have a long talk with the Minneapolis police department before we'd know about that,” Stone said. “After all, if they'd suspected him, they'd probably have already arrested him.”

“Good point,” Griggs admitted.

“We may be able to confirm his identity anyway,” Stone said. “Callie, the glass?”

Callie removed the liqueur glass from her purse and set it on the table.

Stone picked it up by the stem and held it against the light. “There's at least one good print on here,” he said.

Griggs picked up the phone and pressed a couple of buttons. “Sam, it's Griggs,” he said. “I want you to lift some prints from a drinking glass and run them through the computer.” He hung up, and almost immediately, a detective came into the room, took the glass and went away with it.

“Well,” Stone said, rising, “let me know what results you get.”

“Hang on,” Griggs said. “This won't take as long as you think.” He got up and left the office for a few minutes, then returned. “A good right thumbprint and two partials,” he said. “My guy is running them through the FBI computer now. Come on, let's go see what he comes up with.”

Stone and Callie followed Griggs down a hallway to another office, where the detective was sitting at a computer.

“Got anything yet, Sam?” Griggs asked.

Sam hit the return key and sat back. “Shouldn't take long,” he said. “Hang on,” he said, “what's this?”

The group walked around the computer and looked over the detective's shoulder. The screen displayed a message:

“You ever seen anything like that before, Sam?”

“No, Chief, I haven't.”

“What's protocol ten-oh-two?”

“I don't have the slightest idea,” Sam said.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Griggs muttered.

“I'd really like to know that,” Stone replied.

T
HE NEXT MORNING, STONE CALLED DINO. “HOW ARE you?”

“Not bad. Where the hell are you now?”

“In Palm Beach.”

“You rotten bastard.”

“Yeah, I sure am.”

“And if I know you, you're getting paid for it.”

“Right again.”

“Why didn't I go to law school?”

“Listen, I want to run something by you.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“I'm trying to identify a guy down here who isn't who he says he is. You remember our friend Paul Manning that you arrested for me?”

“Sure, he's dead.”

“Nope.” Stone took Dino through what he knew about Manning/Bartlett thus far. “Then last night, I got his prints off a glass, and the local cop shop ran them for me.”

“And he turns out to be the Lindbergh baby?”

“Nope. At least, I don't think so. But something weird happened: We're logged on to the FBI print database, and when we transmit the print, we get a message saying access is denied without approval from the director level, and it mentions something called ‘protocol ten-oh-two.' What it sounds like to me is some sort of national security thing, like maybe he has a CIA connection.”

“Nah,” Dino said. “I'll tell you what I think it is, and I'll give you five-to-one odds I'm right. The guy is in the witness protection program.”

This stopped Stone in his tracks. “But that doesn't make any sense. Manning's background is not that of somebody the government would want to protect. In fact, he doesn't even exist, in a legal sense.”

“Maybe he testified against somebody in a criminal trial somewhere.”

“I suppose it's possible, but I would think that Manning would do everything he could to avoid putting himself in such a position. Also, Bob Berman checked out Bartlett, and he says the man's identity is thin, that he has no financial background to speak of. Even his driver's license is recent. That doesn't sound like the kind of identity the Department of Justice would create for somebody in the program.”

“No, it doesn't, but there's another possibility.”

“What's that?”

“Let's say that Manning or Bartlett, or whoever whatever the fuck his name is, gets involved in some criminal deal, and he gets busted and rats out his partners in return for immunity and the program.”

“Possible, but it seems unlikely.”

“Go with me, here, Stone. Anyway, they put him in the program and he finds himself stuck in Peoria or someplace, running a Burger King, and he doesn't like it. So he bails out of the program—happens all the time. Once the government gets these people in the program, the feds run their lives, and they've got fuck-all to say about it. Lots of them go overboard.”

“True enough.”

“So our guy is on the street, now. Maybe he sells the business and the house the government bought him, so he's got a few bucks. He finds someplace he likes, in this case, Minneapolis, though God knows why anybody would want to be stuck there in the winter, but he can't use his old name because whoever he ratted on still wants to cut his heart out and eat it for dinner. So he has to make up his own new identity, and he doesn't do the greatest job in the world. After all, he's not Justice; he can't call up the State Department and tell them to issue him a new passport, so he does the best he can. He gets a local driver's license, picks up a credit card and finds a business partner who's real and who can deal with the banks.”

“Makes sense.”

“Then he meets the rich widow, and pretty soon he's living in a much nicer house, and he doesn't need the business anymore, or, for that matter, the wife, so he sells one and does away with the other, and he gets away with it. Now he's rich, footloose and fancy fucking free, and he's house-hunting in Palm Beach and shopping for a Bentley.”

“Okay, I buy it.”

“I don't,” Dino said. “I don't buy it for a minute.”

“What? Why not? You just convinced me.”

“Yeah, well, you're a pushover for a good story, Stone. You always were.”

“What are you talking about, Dino? Have I missed something?”

“You usually do, pal, and this time it's this: If Bartlett is Manning, why would he hunt down his ex—well, his
previous
wife and start harassing her? He risks bringing himself to the attention of the local police, which he has already done, and exposing himself—in the fully clothed sense of the expression. Why would he want to do that?”

“Because he's pissed off at her for running off with all the money he stole, and he's crazy as a fruit bat, and he knows how to hold a grudge.”

Dino didn't say anything.

“Well?”

“Okay, maybe you're right. After all, you can't depend on criminals to behave sensibly. I got another question, though.”

“Okay.”

“He doesn't look enough like he used to look for anybody to ID him, even you. You didn't get a picture of the guy, so Allison can't identify him because she won't be in the same room with him, and the FBI won't tell you who his prints belong to. How are you going to know, once and for all, who he is?”