Stone Barrington 36 - Scandalous Behavior (26 page)

“So what will your day be like?” she asked him, her mouth full of toast.

“I’ll take a ride over to the Curtis place with Stone and Peter and have a look at how the work is going there.”

“That interests you?”

“Building is one of my many interests.”

“Do they need any guarding here? Is that why you’re going?”

Billy shook his head. “They’re safe enough, since the Reverend Don got run out of the country, and all his people with him.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

They finished breakfast and Billy walked downstairs and out the rear door of the house to the stables, where the three horses had been saddled for their riders. They snorted, and their breath could be seen in the chill morning air. Billy greeted his mount with a stroke of the neck and offered her a sugar cube, which the horse quickly made disappear.

Peter appeared first, stretching his body and yawning, and Stone arrived soon after. They mounted and trotted off across the broad meadow before Windward Hall. They took the trail through the wood and emerged a hundred yards from the stone wall. Stone and Peter took the wall abreast, while Billy followed a few yards back. He was about to spur his horse on for the jump when something he saw ahead made him rein up and dismount.

He approached the stone wall and reached out to feel the two marks, one on a lower stone, one at the top of the wall. They were the marks of bullets striking the stone, and they hadn’t been there yesterday. Billy turned and looked back the way they had come, then focused his attention on the wood.

—

A
l watched the third man, who had spoiled his aim, as he dismounted and inspected the wall. It had never occurred to him that someone might notice the marks where his bullets had struck. He watched as the man looked back, then trained his attention on the wood. Al shrank back behind a tree and saw the man walking toward him, leading his horse. He moved to another tree, then another. The man came relentlessly on, his eyes raking the edge of the wood. Al turned and ran back as far as the empty little house and waited there. If the man approached this far, he would kill him.

—

B
illy walked through the first trees, his eyes sweeping the area, particularly the ground. He had gone only a few yards when the gleam of something in the sunlight got his attention. He bent and picked it up, then sniffed it. He avoided looking farther into the wood, because he knew a man was waiting there with a rifle. Rather, he slipped the brass shell casing into his jacket pocket, remounted his horse, and ran her toward the wall, clearing it easily, then rode on toward the house and its collection of parked workmen’s vehicles. He dismounted, tied his horse to a hitching post, and went into the house in search of Stone. He found him talking earnestly with Susan Blackburn, who held a book of wallpaper.

Billy waited until they had finished their conversation, then caught Stone’s eye and with a motion of his head, beckoned him into the hallway.

“What’s up, Billy?” Stone asked.

Billy fished the casing from his pocket and handed it to Stone. “I found two bullet marks in the stone wall, and I walked into the wood far enough to come across this.”

“Two-two-three?”

“Right—a military round.”

“I thought the army were all up on Salisbury Plain, not down here. Any idea when this was left in the wood?”

“The marks weren’t on the wall yesterday,” Billy replied. “I’d guess this morning. I think someone was further back in the wood, but I wouldn’t pursue an armed man into the trees. Are there any firearms in the house?”

“Half a dozen shotguns and a couple of deer rifles. They’re in a concealed case in the study.”

“With your permission, I’d like to arm myself and have a look around the wood.”

“Of course. Be careful, and for God’s sake don’t shoot anybody if you can possibly avoid it, and if you can’t, don’t kill him. The police around here don’t spend a lot of time dealing with men dead of gunshot wounds. They’d be all over us for days.” Stone explained how to open the gun closet.

“Well, I don’t want to make their day,” Billy replied, “but I will search the wood.”

“Do it carefully,” Stone said. “Do you want company?”

“No, thank you.” Billy left the house and got back onto his horse.

—

A
l watched Billy through the trees as he rode back toward Windward Hall, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He thought he might wait for the two Barringtons to return; maybe he’d get a shot, after all.

51

B
illy found the button under the mantelpiece and pressed it; the panel to his right swung open, revealing a rack of weapons. Billy chose one of the two deer rifles, found a box of cartridges, and loaded the gun with thirty-ought-six rounds. He went outside, remounted his horse, and, resting the rifle across his lap, rode off toward the wood.

He rode as far as the hermitage, got down and tied the reins to a tree branch, then he stood still and listened. From his right, toward the road, he heard what could have been a footstep. He listened again but heard nothing, so he started through the wood toward the road, moving carefully and quietly. Silence made for slow going, but soon he heard a noise—something metallic scraping on something hard. He quickened his pace, not worrying
about the noise. Shortly, the stone wall along the road came into sight, but he saw nothing else. He ran to the wall, leaned over it, and looked up and down the road, first to his left, then the right. He caught a glimpse of motion to his right and concentrated, but it was gone. Billy closed his eyes and tried to replay what he had seen. It wasn’t much: a man on a bicycle, disappearing around a bend in the road. He concentrated: big man, broad shoulders, thick neck, wool cap. That was it. Billy stayed on the estate side of the wall; no point in chasing a man on a bicycle.

He looked around the ground on his side of the wall, then at the wall itself. He found a smidge of green paint on a stone, smaller than his little fingernail. A green bicycle. That cut the search to half the two-wheelers in the country, he reckoned. Billy walked back to his horse, went to the house, unloaded and put away the rifle.

—

S
tone and Peter returned to the house for lunch, and Peter excused himself to wash up; Billy was already at the table when Stone came in and sat down. “See anything?”

“A man was watching us from the wood this morning, and we know he had a rifle. I rode out as far as the hermitage and tracked him back to the road: just missed him. I caught a glimpse of a large man on a bicycle as he rode out of sight around a bend. That’s it.”

“You think we have something to worry about?”

“I do.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I think he’ll be back, probably tomorrow morning. I’ll see if I can get there first. Don’t ride over there tomorrow—drive.”

“All right.”

Peter joined them, and they changed the subject.

—

A
l got back to his hotel suite breathless and sweaty, so much so that he took a drink, something he rarely did before the cocktail hour. He sat down in an easy chair and reviewed his experience, and he was satisfied that no one had seen or heard his test shots fired; it just wasn’t possible. It was the third man who screwed up things. He had gotten in the way of Al’s firing line and inspected the wall, then looked toward the wood, where Al awaited in the trees. Al had ducked behind a tree, and the man came on, on foot, but he showed no sign of seeing anything.

Al reached into a pocket for the brass he had policed and found only one shell casing. He stood up and dug into all his pockets, looking for the second one, but he found nothing. He had a clear memory of picking up both shells, but he had been interrupted by the approaching man. Had he dropped one? And even if he had done so, had the man found it? The floor of the wood was carpeted in all sorts of ground cover—ivy, pine seedlings, other things. It would be easy for a shell casing to get lost in there.

He went over his flight to the bicycle, getting it over the wall and vaulting over. He had struck the wall with the bicycle, making a sound. Had it left a mark? He had looked back from down the
road and seen a movement, not much, but enough to be a man emerging from the wood. His only remedy at this point would be to go back and find the shell casing. After all, he knew approximately where it was.

The bourbon began to relax him, and his fears subsided somewhat. That was what he’d do. He’d go back tomorrow and find the casing, then he’d know his presence in the wood had gone undetected. He thought about calling Dr. Don and confiding in him, but he dismissed the idea out of hand. Such a call would show fear and indecisiveness on his part—not the sort of thing he would want communicated to someone who had hired him and was paying him a stiff fee.

No, he’d go out early tomorrow, before dawn, and police the wood for the shell casing. He’d rethink his whole plan and make it right, perhaps even better. Next time, he’d shoot all three of them, if he had to.

52

D
r. Don Beverly Calhoun sat at the breakfast table, reading the morning papers. He finished the
Times
, then picked up the
Daily News
, and to his regret, found what he had been looking for.
MAD EVANGELIST VISITED BY THE POLICE. AGAIN.
Mad? This upset him. Did people really think that of him? Whatever; it was time to act. He went into his study, looked up a number, and called the charter company with whom he held a quarter of a share of a Citation CJ4. “This is Dr. Calhoun,” he said.

“Good morning, Dr. Don,” the woman replied. “What can we do for you today?”

“I’m going to need a larger aircraft,” he said.

“Are you reaching for a new destination? Something beyond the CJ4?”

“Rio.”

“Well, let’s see, that’s a little over four thousand nautical miles. That would require two fuel stops in the CJ4, being conservative.”

“What would it take to go nonstop?” He had visions of getting successfully out of the country, then being arrested at a fuel stop. “What about a Gulfstream 450?”

“Lovely airplane, with a range of 4,350 nautical miles. Even in that you’d be cutting it close to go nonstop. You’d really need a Gulfstream 550 for that distance. May I make a suggestion?”

“Go right ahead.”

“We’ve recently received a new Citation Latitude, one of the first off the line. She has a very comfortable wide-body cabin with six feet of headroom, and a range of 2,700 nautical miles. She could do just one fuel stop, say one of the Caribbean islands, then on to Rio, and she wouldn’t cost you anything like the 550, or, come to that, even the 450. The Latitude might be the ideal compromise.”

“I’ve read about that airplane in the aviation magazines. Sounds good.”

“When did you contemplate traveling, and will your wife accompany you?”

“Oh, it’s not for us, we’re sending a couple of employees down to do some business. I’d like for them to go tomorrow morning.”

“Let me check.” A pause, and the sound of a keyboard being tapped. “Yes, we can do that: say, an eight
AM
departure? It’s going to be a good eight-hour flight, plus the fuel stop, in, shall we say, Aruba? The good news is, you remain in the same time
zone, so there’ll be no jet lag, the way there would be on a transatlantic crossing.”

“That’s fine.”

“May I have your employees’ names?”

“Herman Carter and Cheylyn Stefan.”

“You’ll have to spell that last one for me, and I’ll need their dates of birth and passport numbers. We have to file them a day ahead of the flight with the IACRA program.”

“Hold on a minute, and I’ll get them.” He went to his safe and extracted the two passports from a file, then returned and read her the information.

“And the expiration dates of their passports?”

He gave her those and their addresses.