As he arrived upstairs his doorbell was ringing. He buzzed her in.
Crane took the elevator upstairs, and by the time she got to the bedroom she was half undressed.
Stone was already in bed, and he greeted her hungrily.
An hour later they lay beside each other panting.
“Wow,” she said.
“Me, too.”
“Can we talk now?”
“Do we have to?”
“We can do it again, but not until I’ve said some things.”
“Speak to me.”
“Don is dangerous.”
“Swell, just what I wanted to hear. How dangerous?”
“He’s hit two men he thought were paying too much attention to me, and one of them he put in the hospital. He had to buy the guy off to stay out of jail.”
“Does he go around armed?”
“At least some of the time. He’s got a carry license.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I was going to shoot him.”
“Please try to take this seriously, Stone.”
“I am taking it seriously. You know, I’m six-two, and I only come up to his collarbone.”
“He keeps himself in perfect condition, too, and he was a boxing champion in college.”
“Maybe I should just carry a baseball bat everywhere I go.”
“It couldn’t hurt,” she said.
Then they did it again.
8
They awoke at dawn and started all over again, doing everything they could imagine, and they were both inventive. Finally, when they had showered and were having breakfast, Stone changed the subject.
“Dugan has told his lawyer he’ll sign the settlement,” he said.
She looked at him unsurprised. “It seems to me I’ve heard that song before.”
“It’s time to consider what you’ll do if he actually signs it.”
“What’s your advice?”
“It’s the easy way out. You get your divorce, and you’re free of him.”
“But I will have to have paid him a quarter of a million dollars for the privilege of having a life again.”
“That’s certainly true.”
“So what’s your advice?”
“The other side of the coin is that you drag him into court and slug it out. You could walk away without paying him anything, but you’d still owe a bunch of attorney’s fees. It won’t be two hundred and fifty grand, but it could be fifty, even a hundred, depending on how long Dugan drags it out.”
“If I win, can I make him pay attorney’s fees?”
“Possibly. No guarantee, though. The other thing is, we’ll have to wait for a court date, and that could take another year.”
She thought about it some more. “All right, tell his attorney that when I get the document with his signature on it, I’ll sign it.”
“And no alterations to the document.”
“Not unless they’re in my favor.”
“I’ll pass that along the food chain, and we’ll see what happens.”
—
When Stone got to his desk, albeit a little late, he called Herbie Fisher. “When she gets the signed document, she’ll sign it,” Stone said, “and we’re done with it.”
“I’ll call his attorney and tell him we need it today without fail.”
“Let’s say a prayer,” Stone said.
Joan buzzed him. “Mike Freeman on two.”
Stone picked it up. “Hey, Mike.”
“Good morning, Stone. Question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“What do you think of Crane Hart?”
“Can you be more specific?”
“I don’t want to know about your sex life. I want to know if you think she’d make a good employee for us.”
Stone thought about it.
“It troubles me that you’d take so long to answer the question,” Mike said.
“It’s not because I have anything derogatory to say about her, it’s just that my business experience with her amounts to a single meeting about my insurance claim.”
“Did she handle that efficiently?”
“Very much so,” Stone said. “But I don’t know anything about her investigative skills, and that’s what you’re interested in, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t know how to help. You can hardly call her ex-husband for a reference, and I don’t know how she’d feel about your calling Steele.”
“You’re right.”
“Why don’t you ask her in and have some of your people interview her thoroughly?”
“That’s my next move. Thanks, Stone.” Mike hung up.
Stone had another thought. He called Herbie Fisher. “When you talk with Dugan’s attorney, tell him that Crane’s acceptance of the deal is contingent on his agreement not to harass her further.”
“Too late, I’ve already called him, and he says that Dugan has already signed the agreement and that I’ll have it forthwith.”
“Okay.” Stone hung up.
Joan was standing in the doorway. “Why do you get involved in these things? Do you need more tsuris in your life, is that it?”
“Your Yiddish is impressive.”
“I’m half Jewish, you know.”
“I’d forgotten.”
“You want me to ask the question again?”
“No.”
She went back to her office. She was right, he knew; why didn’t he just stay out of it?