“I like wines you can’t see through.” Stone’s cell phone vibrated on his belt. He let it go to voice mail.
She untied a string and slipped out of the scrubs, revealing a red dress with considerable cleavage.
“You look gorgeous,” he said, taking her by the waist and kissing her lightly. The cell phone vibrated again.
“Answer that,” she said. “I can’t stand an unanswered phone.”
Stone flipped open the phone. “Hello?”
“Is this Stone Barrington?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“Did you once work homicide at the one-nine with Dino Bacchetti?”
“Yes, I did.”
“This is Charley Sample. I worked robbery out of the one-nine for two years.”
“I remember you, Charley. What’s up?”
“I run the detective squad out in Morristown, New Jersey, now, been out here for six years. We got a situation here.”
“Tell me.” Stone had a very bad feeling.
40
Stone closed the phone and put his notebook away. “Eliza, I’m sorry, but I have to leave.”
“What’s wrong?”
“An emergency-the client I told you about.”
“I do emergencies for a living,” she said, turning off the stove. “This will keep. I’m coming with you.”
“All right,” he said, glad of the company.
In the car, he entered the Morristown address into the dashboard
GPS navigator and left the garage. “Turn right,” the navigator said in a soft female voice. Stone turned right. He was instructed to turn left on Eleventh Avenue, and he followed the voice’s orders to the Lincoln Tunnel.
“I’ve never seen one of these things work,” she said.
“It’s really quite amazing. It’s especially good when there’s a hard-to-find address in a place you’ve never been.”
Forty minutes later, Stone stopped across the street from a neat white bungalow, a few steps up from street level. He showed his badge to a questioning cop. “Where’s Charley Sample?” he asked the man.
The cop nodded toward the house. “In the living room,” he said.
Stone and Eliza walked up the front walk and up the steps to the porch. As they got to the front door, he gave a passing glance to something in a porch chair, covered with a sheet of plastic. They stepped into the front hall, and Stone spotted Sample standing to his right, in the living room. He also spotted a pair of bare female feet, protruding from behind a chair.
“Stone,” Sample said, walking toward him, extending his hand, which was clad in a latex glove.
“Charley, it’s good to see you again. This is Dr. Eliza Larkin. She might be helpful with preliminary forensics, if you need her.”
Sample shook Eliza’s hand. “We may,” he said. “I’m sorry to get you all the way out here, and I’m sorry for the circumstances.”
Stone stepped past the chair, expecting to see Celia’s body on the floor. The woman was a stranger to him; her throat had been cut. “Who is she?”