Stuart Woods: Cold Paradise

Stone put his feet up, sipped his drink and watched the yachts sail by. This was wonderful. Tomorrow he’d find the girl and she and Shames would live happily ever after. What could possibly go wrong?

Stone reappeared on the afterdeck just before eight, showered, shaved and wearing a gray linen suit, a cream-colored silk shirt, a yellow tie and black alligator shoes. He took a long look at the lights of West Palm, and then he was joined by Callie.

“Good evening,” she said.

He turned to look at her and was stunned by the transformation. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and she was wearing a tight-fitting, short dress of a dark brown espresso color. It was cut fairly low, showing off handsome breasts and a good tan. When she smiled, her teeth practically glowed in the dark. “Good evening,” he said, when he got his breath back.

“Shall we go?” She led him back through the gardens, their way lighted by low lamps along the path, through the house and to the car. “Would you like to drive?” She held out the keys.

Stone took them. “Sure. I haven’t driven one of these.” He opened the door for her, then went around to the driver’s side. The engine purred, rather than roared, to life, and he pulled into the lamplit street and accelerated. “Nice. What kind of power?”

“A two-hundred-and-ninety-horsepower V-eight.”

“Very smooth, too. Is it yours?”

“Yes.”

“Cooking must pay better than I thought.”

“Well, I don’t have rent, utilities or any other household expenses to worry about, and it helps when your boss gives you an interest-free loan.”

“Sounds as though you’ve made yourself important to Thad.”

“I try.” She directed him through a number of turns and shortly they pulled up before a restaurant called Cafe L’Europe. A valet took the car.

“I would have thought the ‘el, apostrophe’ was a little much,” Stone said as they entered.

“A great deal about Palm Beach is a little much,” she said.

They were shown to a table near the center of the room. “What would you like to drink?” Stone asked.

“A Tanqueray martini, please.”

“And a vodka gimlet,” Stone told the waiter. “This is a very good table,” he said to her.

“I booked it in Thad’s name,” she replied.

“Smart move.” Menus and a wine list were brought.

Callie closed her menu. “I’m sick of thinking about food,” she said. “Order for me.”

“Anything you don’t eat?”

“I can’t think of anything.”

The waiter returned. “Are you ready to order, sir?”

“Yes,” Stone said. “We’ll start with the beluga caviar and iced Absolut Citron,” he said. “For the main course, the rack of lamb, medium rare.” He opened the wine list. “And a bottle of the Phelps Insignia ‘ninety-one.”

“Very good, sir.” He went away.

They sat back and sipped their drinks until the caviar came, then they ate it slowly, sipping the lemon vodka and making it all last. A couple came into the restaurant, the young woman wearing a sleeveless sweater with the name “Chanel” emblazoned across her chest, in two-inch-high letters.

“A billboard,” Stone said.

“Typical of Palm Beach,” Callie replied.

“Eurotrash?”

“Just trash. There’s a lot of it about. Oh, there are still some old-line families around, living quietly, if grandly, but mostly it’s what you see here- people who somehow got ahold of a lot of money and want everybody to know it. They’ve bid up the real estate out of sight. A nice little house on a couple of acres is now three million bucks, and last week I saw an ad for what was advertised as the last vacant beachfront lot in Palm Beach-all one and a half acres of it-and they’re asking eight and a half million.”

Stone nearly choked on his vodka.

The waiter had just taken away the dishes when three people, two women and a man, entered the restaurant and were shown to a table by the street windows. Stone followed their progress closely. One of the women, a redhead, had something very familiar about her.

Callie kicked him under the table. “I thought that in this dress, I might get your undivided attention.”

“I’m sorry,” Stone said, “but I think I know one of the women. Except she’s a redhead, and the woman I knew was a blonde, like you. Well, not as beautiful as you.”

“She must have been important,” Callie said. “Tell me about her.”

“It’s not a short story,” Stone said. “More of a novella.”

“I’ve got all night.”

“All right.”

Dinner arrived, and Stone tasted the wine. “Decant it, please,” he said to the waiter.

When that was done, Callie said, “Continue.”

“Oh, yes. A few years back I scheduled a sailing charter out of St. Marks. You know it?”

“Yes, we’ve been in there on Toscana .”

“My girlfriend was supposed to follow, but she got snowed into New York, then she got a magazine assignment to interview Vance Calder.”

“Lucky girl,” she said. “My favorite movie star.”

“Everybody’s favorite. That’s why she couldn’t turn it down. Anyway, I was stuck there alone, and one morning I was having breakfast in the cockpit of the boat, and something odd happened. A yacht of about fifty feet sailed into the harbor, the mainsail ripped, and nobody aboard but a beautiful blonde. After customs had cleared the boat, the police came and took her away.

“The following day I was passing the town hall and there was some sort of hearing under way, and I went in. Turned out to be an inquest. The girl, whose name was Allison Manning, had been sailing across the Atlantic with her husband, who was the writer Paul Manning…”

“I’ve read his stuff,” she said. “He’s good.”

“Yes. Anyway, her testimony is that they’re halfway across, and he winches her up the mast to fix something, then cleats the line. She finishes the job and looks down to find him lying in the cockpit, turning blue. She’s stuck at the top of the mast, but eventually she manages to shinny down. He’s dead, probably of a heart attack. He’s the sailor, and she’s the cook and bottle-washer, and now she’s in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, alone, her husband starting to rot in the heat. She buries him at sea and, in a considerable act of seamanship for somebody who isn’t a sailor, manages to get the yacht across the Atlantic to St. Marks.”

“This is beginning to sound familiar. Wasn’t there something about it on Sixty Minutes a while back?”

“Then you know the story?”

“No, go on. Tell me everything.”

“St. Marks’s Minister of Justice doesn’t buy her story, and he charges her with murdering her husband. Stone to the rescue. I offer to help. She’s tried. With the help of a local barrister, I represent her. Long story short, she’s convicted and sentenced to hang.”

“Jesus.”

“Yes. I call New York and pull out all the stops on publicity. Sixty Minutes shows up, and many telegrams are sent to the prime minister, demanding she be released. On the day of the execution, fully expecting a pardon, I and the barrister and a priest visit her in her cell. Suddenly she’s taken out, and the three of us are locked in. A minute later, we hear the trap sprung on the gallows.”

“That’s horrible,” she said. “I don’t think I knew the end of the story. I must have been traveling at the time.”

“There’s more. Turns out her husband wasn’t dead; it was all an insurance scam. He’d lost a ton of weight and shaved off a beard and was unrecognizable, and he was there, in St. Marks, posing as a magazine writer covering the story.”

“And he didn’t stop the hanging?”