STONE WENT BACK to bed and tried to retrieve the dream with Arrington, but it wouldn’t come back. He overslept, not waking until after ten, and he felt fuzzy around the edges. He wasn’t accustomed to drinking in the middle of the night.

He sat up in bed and called Arrington’s home in Virginia. A maid answered.

“She’s not here, Mr. Barrington. She’s in New York, she and Peter. You can reach her at the Carlyle.”

“Thank you,” Stone said. He called the Carlyle and asked for Mrs. Calder.

“Hello?” she said, sounding chipper and cheerful.

“It’s Stone.”

“Oh, hi. I was about to call you. I’m in New York.”

“I know; I just called you.”

“Oh, that’s right. Sorry. You want to have dinner tonight?”

“I’d love to, but it’s a plane ride.”

“What?”

“I’m in Maine.”

“Why? What are you doing in Maine?”

“I have a new house on an island called Islesboro. Why don’t you summon up the Centurion jet, and you and Peter come up here for a few days?” As the widow of Centurion Studios’ largest stockholder, she had access to their jet.

She was silent for a moment. “All right, but it will have to be tomorrow, maybe the next day. I have some shopping to do here.”

“Tell the flight department at Centurion that you’ll be landing at Rockland. I’ll meet you there in my airplane. It’s only another ten minutes of flying, but the strip on the island is too short for a jet.”

“All right. What will I need in the way of clothes?”

“Nothing you couldn’t find at L.L. Bean.”

“I’ve got to run; I have a hair appointment, but I’ll call you later and give you an ETA.”

He gave her the number and hung up, feeling wonderful. He bounded out of bed, shaved, showered and began getting dressed when the phone rang. “Hello?”

“It’s Ed Rawls. I need to see you at Don Brown’s house right now.”

“Okay. Where’s the house?”

Rawls gave him directions.

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here.”

Stone finished dressing and went downstairs. Dino was having breakfast in the kitchen, and Stone grabbed a piece of his toast. “Come on. We have to be somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Not far.”

It was a beautiful day, and they took the little MG, top down.

“Arrington and Peter are coming up tomorrow or the next day,” Stone said.

“You’re horny, huh?”

“Oh, shut up.”

They drove through some woods and stopped at the end of a short, paved driveway. There were other cars parked there.