are you having lunch with my wife?” Hedger asked, as if he had a right to know.
“A business meeting.”
“What business are you in, Mr. Fisher?”
“I’m an attorney.”
“With what firm?”
“Woodman & Weld.”
“Ah, yes, and what is your specialty?”
“Today, divorce.”
Hedger looked suddenly concerned. “Whose?”
Herb took an envelope from his briefcase and handed it to Hedger. “Yours,” he said. “You’ve been served.”
Hedger opened the envelope and scanned the documents.
“You may have noticed that one of the documents is a temporary restraining order, which means that, until the divorce is final, you may not approach Ms. Calder any closer than three hundred feet, which at the moment means anywhere in this restaurant.” Herb snapped his briefcase closed and set it down. “You may go now, Mr. Hedger.”
Hedger turned on his heel and, tucking the papers into a pocket, made his way across the restaurant and down the stairs. Toward the exit.
Robbie returned from the ladies’ and sat down, simultaneous with the arrival of her second martini.
“That man you were talking to is my husband.”
“He informed me of that, and during the resulting conversation I was able to inform him of his impending divorce, serve him, and explain the TRO.”
“What will the next step be?”
“A call to me from his attorney, I expect. But since you are not asking for alimony or any division of property, it will be a brief conversation.”
“And then?”
“He will either fold or contest the divorce, in which case I will turn him into mincemeat. And if he tries to get any of your money, I’ll humiliate him.”
“Oh, good,” she said, and raised her glass.
22
The following morning, Max was seated with Dino and Viv, who rarely missed an opportunity to travel with Stone, in the rear of the Latitude, with Stone in the left pilot’s seat and Faith in the right. A third pilot traveled in the jump seat.
Stone flew the departure procedure, then got a climb directive to FL440 and headed west. Once he was at altitude and on course, he was replaced by Faith in the left seat and the spare pilot in the right, and he walked back, sat down with the others, and picked up the Times. “Everybody comfortable? Can I get anyone anything?”
“I’ll have a double scotch,” Dino said.
“He will not!” Viv said reprovingly. “It’s ten AM!”
“Don’t worry, I’m just trying to annoy you,” Dino said.
“Well, it’s working, so stop it. Sometimes I think I should just give him a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label with a nipple on it,” Viv said.
“Would you, please?” Dino replied.
She slapped a New Yorker into his lap. “Shut up and read,” she said.
By the time Stone had read the Times thoroughly, and completed the crossword, they were crossing the Mississippi, and the copilot served hot sandwiches and cold beer.
After the remains of lunch had been cleared away, Max got out her iPhone and went to her photo file, then handed the phone to Stone. “Take a look at these,” she said.
Stone took the phone and gazed at a photograph of her Mercedes 300S convertible. “Oh, my goodness,” he said. “That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” He scrolled through the other photographs. “And it’s a gorgeous restoration.”
“Only nineteen thousand miles on the odometer,” Max said, “and she owned it since new.”
“Are you really going to sell it to somebody?”
“No, I’m going to sell it to you,” she said, “by making you an offer you can’t refuse.”
“I’d like to hear that number,” he replied.
“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars,” she said.
“That would look really good at the L.A. house,” Stone said. Then he got down his briefcase from the overhead compartment, found his checkbook, wrote one out, and signed it. “There you go,” he said, handing her the check. “Now, how am I going to get it to L.A.?”
“There are two ways,” Max said. “It can be flatbedded across the country in four days, or it can be flown.”
“Flown?”
“The restorer has access to a lot of delivery systems, which include a cargo airplane. It can be there tomorrow.” She handed him the restorer’s card.
Stone reached for the satphone, made the call, talked for a couple of minutes, then hung up. “He’s going to fly to Key West, pick it up from your house, drive it aboard the airplane, and take off this afternoon. It will be at the Arrington in L.A. by five o’clock tomorrow.”
“Now everybody’s happy,” Max said. “What’s an Arrington?”
“I’ll give you the short version: I used to have a girlfriend named Arrington Carter, but she left me