Defeated, Stone got into a bathrobe and went downstairs to the kitchen. He stuck the muffins into the toaster oven, got coffee started, and went to the front door. He peeked up and down the street, then tiptoed out onto the frosty stoop and retrieved the Sunday Times. He was back inside before he registered all that he had taken in. He cracked the door again and looked up the block. A plain green, four-door sedan was parked on the other side of the street, and two men inside it were sipping coffee from paper cups. He didn’t know them, but he knew who they were.

He went back to the kitchen, got the breakfast together, loaded it onto a cart, and wheeled it into the old elevator, which made the usual creaking noises on the way up.

Cary was asleep, sprawled across the bed, the sunlight streaming across her naked body. He stopped and looked at her for a moment, that length of delicious woman, the flat belly, the swelling breasts with their small, red nipples, the dark hair strewn across the pillow. Slowly, quietly, he sneaked onto the bed and carefully set a glass of chilled orange juice onto a nipple.

“Oooooo,” she said without moving. “What a nice way to wake up. Could I have something on the other one, please?”

“You’re unsurprisable,” he said, setting the orange juice on her belly and returning for the rest of the breakfast. He put the tray on the bed between them while she struggled into a sitting position and fluffed up the pillows.

“I like the sun in the morning,” she said. “It’s better than blankets.”

He drank his juice and reached for the Times.

“I get the front page,” she said, snatching it away.

He settled for the book review and munched on a muffin.

“Oh, shit,” she said suddenly.

“What is it?”

She clutched the front page to her breast. “You aren’t at fault here,” she said. “You have to get that through your head. This is not your fault.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He tugged at the newspaper, and she gave it up reluctantly.

SUSPECT IN NIJINSKY CASE IS APPARENT SUICIDE

Henrietta Morgan, a makeup artist for the Continental Network who police sources say was implicated in the fall of television anchorwoman Sasha Nijinsky from the terrace of her East Side penthouse apartment, last night apparently took her own life in her Greenwich Village apartment.

Ms. Morgan, who was known as “Hank” and who was active in gay and lesbian rights issues in the city, had been questioned about Ms. Nijinsky’s fall, then last week was arrested and charged with possession of an unlicensed pistol. She had been released on bail, but sources in the New York Police Department had told the press that Morgan was the chief suspect in the Nijinsky case.