“Please don’t. Have you killed anybody?”

“Not yet, but you don’t want to cross me.”

Stone kissed her. “What can I do to keep you sweet?”

“You know what,” she breathed in his ear.

He knew, and he did it.

After a long lunch at the Mayflower Inn, they called Barton and went back to his house. He took them into the study.

“We want to get into Abner Kramer’s house,” Holly said.

“Correction,” Stone said. “She wants to get into Kramer’s house.”

“I think that’s a terrible idea,” Barton said.

“How else are we going to know if he has your secretary?” Holly asked.

“I don’t think Ab has it,” Barton replied.

“Have you got a better candidate?” Stone asked. “You’ve said he’s the only person you told about it. You’ve also said that, when he wants something, he gets it, and the implication was that he doesn’t care how.”

“He wouldn’t steal from me,” Barton said. “After all, I gave him the basis of the fortune he’s made.”

“And you cut him and the others out of the deal on the Saint-Gaudens double eagle,” Stone pointed out. “Ab could be nursing a grudge, and how better to get back at you than to take your most prized possession?”

“We just want to look around,” Holly said.

Stone pointed at Holly. “She just wants to look around.”

“Oh, yeah?” Holly said. “What do you want to do, hold my coat?”

“I’d be happy to hold your coat,” Stone said.

“Holly,” Barton said in a fatherly tone, “why do you think you can even get inside the place? Ab, no doubt, has state-of-the-art security in place.”

“I’ve been trained by the best to breach state-of-the-art security,” Holly said. “All I need is a few tools that I can buy at the local hardware store.”

“Come on, Barton,” Stone said, “let her at least case the joint.”

“Is there some vantage point from which we could take a look at the estate from a distance?” Holly asked.

“As a matter of fact, there is,” Barton replied.

They followed Barton’s directions, turning off the highway and onto a dirt track that wound for miles through the woods. Twice they had to get out of the car and move fallen tree limbs aside in order to pass. Finally they got out of the car, and Barton, carrying a binocular case, led them a few yards into the trees.

The hillside fell away, and they found themselves looking across a small lake at the back of a large house, perhaps half a mile away. A barn and some outbuildings stood to one side, enclosed by a stone wall.

Barton took his binoculars from the case and handed them to Holly. “Here you go. They’re fifteen power at full zoom, so you’ll need to brace against a tree to hold them steady.”

Holly braced herself and synchronized the two eyepieces. “Wow,” she said softly. “These things are great.”

“Let me take a look,” Stone said. He received the binoculars and braced against a tree. “ ‘Wow’ is right,” he said. “I can see a picture on a wall, right through a window.”

“Do you see a large mahogany secretary?” Barton asked.

“Sorry, no.”

Holly tugged at his sleeve and demanded the binoculars back. “He wasn’t lying about the painters,” she said. “I can see a corner of a van behind the stone wall, and a man in white coveralls just came and took a bucket out of it and went back into the house.”

“There’s got to be a caretaker,” Stone said.

“There is,” Barton replied. “I know the fellow. He would probably live in the little house you can see a part of behind the barn.”

“So when the painters leave, there’ll still be somebody there.”

“Of course. You don’t just drive away and leave a house like this, containing an important collection, all by itself.”

“What kind of security is there likely to be, Holly?” Stone asked.

“Oh, every door and window in the house will be wired, and there’ll be motion detectors galore, sensors under the rugs. Like that.”

“Will there be battery backup?”

“Of course, and maybe a generator, too.”

“So, if we could cut the power, the generator would come on automatically?”

“Yes.”

“So we could fix the generator so it wouldn’t come on, then cut the power?”

“But there’d be a battery backup. It would be crazy not to have that.”

“Where would the batteries likely be?”

“Inside the house, probably. But the generator would be outside, since it’s noisy when it comes on.”

“How noisy?”

“Probably like a big truck idling. They’d have a big one for a place like this, at least twenty kilowatts, I’d imagine.”

“Right,” Stone said. “When you’ve got that much money, you don’t tolerate the slightest inconvenience. The power goes off in the middle of your favorite TV program, you want it back on instantly.”

Holly panned the scene with the binoculars. “I see a power transformer on a pole about a hundred yards from the house,” she said. “We’d have to knock that out in such a way that it would appear to be a normal failure. Short it out. Could take them a while to reset it.”

“Then what?” Barton asked.

“I want to watch the painters leave for the day,” she said, “and then I want to go to the hardware store before it closes.”

“Impossible to do both,” Stone said. “Give me a list, and I’ll go now. I can be back in an hour.”

Holly took a notebook from her pocket and began scribbling. She handed it to Stone. “No shortcuts, no substitutions.”

“Right.”

“Stone,” Barton said, “there’s a gate where you can drop us along the way. It’s closer to the house.”

“All right.”

Stone dropped them a mile back down the dirt road.

“We’ll leave the gate open,” Barton said. “You can drive closer to the house with your lights off, but don’t slam any car doors.”

“I’ll be back shortly,” Stone said. He drove away reminding himself that he was not – not – going to enter that house.

19

Stone drove into town to the Washington Supply and walked around, filling Holly’s order. He picked up a small screwdriver set, needle-nose pliers, wire cutters, electrical tape, a small roll of wire, an electrical meter, some alligator clips, two tiny flashlights and lithium batteries and, of course, a roll of duct tape. He also bought her a nylon tool belt with a pouch, and three pairs of paper socks that workmen wore over their boots to keep from tracking up nice houses. As an afterthought, he grabbed a box of latex gloves, then he went to the cashier’s counter.

“Stocking up, huh, Mr. Barrington?” the man at the counter asked.

“Yeah, just a few things for around the house, do a few repairs.” He charged the goods to his account and left. Half an hour later, he turned off the dirt road and through the opened gate onto an almost grown-over lane. It was getting dark, and he switched off his lights to avoid being seen from the house. The lane ended in a little clearing, perhaps a hundred yards from the house. He stuffed all his purchases into the tool belt and its pouch, then, carrying the socks and the latex gloves, he followed Holly’s and Barton’s tracks through some fairly tall grass until he found them behind the barn.

“Hey,” Holly whispered. “Did you get absolutely everything?”

“Of course. That and a bit more.” He handed her the tool belt and issued everybody latex gloves and paper socks. “Wait until we’re inside the house before you put on the socks over your shoes,” he reminded them.

A vehicle door slammed, and they peeked around a corner of the barn.

“The painters are packing up,” Holly said.

“Hey, Randy!” somebody yelled.

A door opened at the caretaker’s house, and a man stepped out. “Yeah?”

“We’re done for the day; you can lock up and do the security thing.”

“Okay, as soon as I finish dinner. See you guys on Monday.” He went back inside and closed the door. The van drove away.