“What, he didn’t come back from spring break last year?”
“That’s an old picture, from his college days. He’s a big boy now, twenty-six.”
“So we have to throw a bag over his head and bring him home to Mommy?”
“Nope. All we have to do is get his signature on a couple of documents, notarized, and we’re done. We can FedEx them back, then take a few days off and play some golf or some tennis or something.”
Stone explained the sale of the family business.
“What’s the problem between the kid and his daddy?”
“One of them is a kid; the other one’s a daddy.” Stone told Dino about the message on the postcard.
“That seems pretty definitive,” Dino observed.
“We don’t have to get him to kiss and make up—just sign the documents and collect a big check, his share of the sale of the business. That shouldn’t be too diffi cult.”
“Not the check part, anyway.”
“The kid has already got what the daddy describes as ‘a nice little trust fund,’ from his mother’s side of the family, so I doubt if he’s hurting too much.”
“Still, the other check sounds like a big one, if they’ve got nineteen factories around the world.”
9
S t u a r t W o o d s
“I didn’t ask, but I guess so.”
“You didn’t read the documents?”
“Not yet.”
“Read them; I’d like to know what we’re dealing with.”
Stone opened the envelope and flipped through the pages.
“Well, the tone is a little Dickensian— I guess that’s what you get when you’re dealing with his great-great-grandfather’s will.” Stone stopped flipping. “Holy shit,” he said.
“That much?”
“That much. It would be a breach of attorney-client confi dential ity to tell you how much, but I think you’d be impressed.”
“This is getting easier and easier. Where are we staying?”
“Good question.” Stone got out his cell phone and called his twenty-four-hour-a-day travel agent. He explained himself and waited for a moment. “Sounds good,” he said. “A week, I guess. What’s the address?” He jotted some notes, thanked the woman on the line and hung up.
“Find something?”
“Place called the Marquesa. It sounds comfortable, and it has a good restaurant, too.”
“All I’m eating is shrimp and conch.”
“Conch? That spiral shell thing you find on the beach?”
“Something lives inside that shell thing, and there are lots of ways to cook it, and it’s really, really good.”
“If you say so.”