Free 6 Stone Barrington Novels by Stuart Woods

replied. “I’d rather not be sleeping alone, myself.”
    â€œThen don’t,” she said. “I don’t plan to.”
    â€œI meant that I’d rather be sleeping with you.”
    â€œYou’d be my first choice, too,” she said, “but you’re not here, are you?”
    Stone hardly knew what to say to that. Dolce had been mildly difficult, at times, but she had never behaved like this. He was shocked.
    â€œNo answer?”
    â€œWhat can I say?”
    â€œSay good night,” she said, then hung up.
    â€œWell,” Stone said aloud, “that was very peculiar.” He turned his attention back to the desk and began opening drawers. The contents were pretty much the same as in his own desk, but they were much more neatly arranged. He had never seen anything quite like it, in fact; it was as if a servant had come in and arranged the contents of the desk every day. He looked around for filing cabinets, but there were none. Apparently, all business was done from Vance’s studio office.
    Stone opened the center drawer, and, to his surprise, it pulled right out of the desk, into his lap. The drawer was lacking at least eight inches in what he had expected to be its depth. But why? He examined the bottom and sides of the drawer, which seemed perfectly normal, then he looked at the back. At the bottom of the rear of the drawer were two small brass hooks. Then he noticed that the drawer was slightly shallower than it might have been expected to be. He set the drawer on the desktop and looked at it for a minute. There was no apparent reason for the drawer to have hooks at its back. Unless . . . He took hold of the two drawer pulls and twisted, first to the left, then to the right. They moved clockwise for, perhaps, thirty degrees. He looked at the hooks on the back of the drawer; instead of lying flat, they were now positioned vertically.
    He turned the knobs counterclockwise, and the hooks returned to their horizontal position. He reinserted the drawer all the way into the desk, turned the drawer pulls clockwise again, then opened the drawer all the way. The hooks had engaged another, smaller drawer that accounted for the missing depth, and in that drawer were some sealed envelopes, which he began opening.
    The envelopes contained a copy of Vance’s will, a note to Arrington with instructions in the event of his death, and two insurance policies, with a value of five million dollars each, payable to Vance’s estate.
    He placed the will on the desk and read it. There was a long list of bequests, most of them for a hundred thousand dollars or more. Two, to universities, were for a million dollars, for the establishment of chairs in the theatrical arts, and one was personal, in the same amount, to his secretary, Betty Southard. Arrington and Lou Regenstein had been appointed executors. The will was dated less than a month before. If everything else in Vance’s estate was as well organized as his will, Stone reflected, then his affairs were as neatly arranged as his desk drawers. Stone made a note of the law firm that had drawn the will, then he replaced the documents in the secret compartment, closed the drawer, turned the pulls counterclockwise, and opened it again, just to check. Everything was as before.
    Stone then went to the bedroom and searched it thoroughly; he assumed that the police had done the same thing and that the maid had tidied the place after them. Maybe that was why Vance’s desk drawers were so neat. He found nothing but the ordinary detritus of wealthy married couples’ lives—keys, address books, family photographs, bedside books, remote controls. Stone realized that the room did not appear to have a television set. He pressed the power button, and the lid of an old trunk at the foot of the bed opened, and a very large TV set rose from its depths and switched on.
    The local news was on, and it was about Vance. A handsome young woman