Page 128 of Near Miss

Joan rolled her eyes. “Stop overreacting. If I didn’t know thesender, I would have told you first. This came from the office.” She handed an identical envelope to Carly. “And this one is for you.”

Carly opened hers first. “A party. How fun.”

Stone pulled the card out of its envelope. It was an invitation to a dinner being thrown by the New York State Bar Association. The fete was occurring the following Friday, and would be honoring a trio of attorneys for their charitable work.

Stone said to Joan, “Send the usual ‘thank you for inviting me, but I will be unable to attend.’ ”

“Perhaps you should read the entire invitation first,” she said.

“One of the celebrants is Bill Eggers,” Carly said.

“Or Carly can tell you,” Joan said.

Stone looked at the invitation again, and Bill’s name was there in black and white. “I guess there’s no way I can get out of this, is there?”

“Not unless you want Bill reminding you of the fact every time you see him.”

“I do not.”

“It can’t possibly be that bad,” Carly said.

“Sitting around listening to a bunch of lawyers talk about lawyering is not my idea of a good time.”

“I know something that should help.”

“What?”

“We can go as each other’s date,” she said.

“I accept.”

The next day, another gift arrived. This time it was a basket containing a bottle of cabernet sauvignon and a bottle ofsauvignon blanc from Screaming Eagle winery in California, worth an easy ten thousand dollars. Accompanying the bottles was a brochure from Riegel Mortuary in Queens.

As before, three bugs were found. Thankfully, none were hidden in the corks of the bottles. Stone would have hated to waste such fine wines. Instead, they were located within the weaved fibers of the basket.

Stone let the basket remain in his office for an hour while he made innocuous calls to clients, then asked Joan to put the wine in the cellar and discard the basket, a reasonable action that those listening in would be unlikely to question.

The day after that, a third gift was delivered.

The modicum of subtlety the sender had been using to this point was gone. This gift was entirely contained in an envelope. In addition to the expected brochure—this one from Grob & Grob Mortuary on Staten Island—there was a gift certificate for a top-of-the-line bronze casket. On the upside, there was no room in the envelope for another bug.

Stone shredded it and burned the remains in the fireplace.

That afternoon, as Stone continued to contemplate the Sarge problem, something Ed Rawls had said kept playing in his mind.

The plan may have to include using you for bait.

This, in turn, spawned an idea.

Stone didn’t relish the thought of being a worm on a hook, but all the other schemes he had come up with had been even less likely to flush the Sarge out.

He called Teddy Fay and told him what he was thinking.

“That’s not bad,” Teddy said. “Not bad at all. Itisa little short on details.”

“Which is why I called you,” Stone said. “Details are your specialty.”

“Is Carly around? I found spitballing ideas with her last time to be very productive.”

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