Page 92 of Near Miss

“Yes?”

“It’s Peter.”

“Hello, are you in the new house?”

“My wife is, and she thanks you for the roses. I should arrive at the airstrip at four. Are you in New York?”

“Just departing Teterboro. I’ll be at Islesboro myself in an hour.”

“May we meet at the new house at, say, five? I have business to discuss with you.”

“All right,” Stone said. “I was surprised to see you on a report on the morning shows about the Greek’s funeral.”

“Not as surprised as I was to be asked to attend. Things are... never mind. We can talk more about that later. See you at five.”

Peter sat in the copilot’s seat in the Pilatus. It was an airplane he knew but had not flown in: a single-engine turboprop, good on short runways. Noisy, without a headset.

“Islesboro dead ahead,” the pilot said.

Peter checked his watch. Five minutes till four. “Good.” He watched closely as the pilot set up his approach: flaps down, throttle retarded. The pilot aimed at a spot just below the runway numbers, then set the airplane down, reversed the prop, and braked. The airplane landed with a thousand feet to spare.

“Excellent,” he said to the pilot, then he got up, went to the door, and walked down the airstairs. Marla waited in a Mercedes station wagon.

“Whose airplane?” she asked, after a kiss.

“Ours, when we want it,” he replied.

“Ours?”

“I’ll explain it to you later. Stone Barrington is coming for adrink at five o’clock. After, he and I will need to talk privately for a while. I’ll ask you to excuse us.”

“All right. How did it go with the family?”

“Better than expected. I’ll explain that, too.”

She nodded and drove on, chattering all the while. She unpacked for him, then came down in time to greet Stone.

Stone accepted a Knob Creek and looked around. “Looks like people live here,” he said.

“We can thank Jimmy Hotchkiss’s wife for that,” Peter said. Tracey Hotchkiss was an expert interior designer. “Marla, will you excuse us for a while?”

“Of course,” she said, and took her drink with her.

The two men settled themselves in comfortable chairs before a small fire. “My situation has changed.”

“How so?”

“Today, my family chose me to succeed Alexei Gromyko. It was against my wishes, but they prevailed.”

“You understand that I cannot discuss matters of a criminal nature with you?”

“That won’t be necessary. I just want to tell you that I am, starting on Monday, going to decriminalize all my family’s business interests.”

“From what little I’ve heard of the extent of your businesses, that will be quite a task.”

“Not as great as you may think. Gromyko, during his tenure and under the influence of the Bean Counter, began structuring the majority of the businesses involved into corporate groups or holding companies that are transparent and pay taxes. There are, of course, a few enterprises the family has been involved in that can’t be incorporated for legal reasons. While Gromyko hadplanned to keep those businesses, I will be eliminating them completely.”

“A good start. What about your testimony to Assistant Director Kinder?”

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