“Well, I have an ace up my sleeve—my source for the information about the flight and the money. This would be a reluctant witness, but a subpoena can work wonders, especially if the witness may be an accessory to the crime because of withholding information.”

Barker looked down at the table. “Stone, I know you were seeing Cary Hilliard—you brought her to my house, remember? Might Cary be your source?”

Stone played cagey. “Why do you ask?”

“I didn’t want to bring this up; I got the impression at that time that you and Cary were close.”

“You could say that.”

Barker’s voice was sympathetic. “Stone, I have to tell you that Barron Harkness and Cary Hilliard are being married this afternoon, at three. I was invited to the wedding.”

Stone took a quick breath. “I wasn’t,” he said.

“And, Stone, after they’re married, Cary can’t be subpoenaed to testify against her husband, can she?”

“No,” he said.

Chapter

46

The carpet layers took up much of Stone’s time on the afternoon of Cary Hilliard’s wedding, but his mind was not on the work. He walked through the house looking for the thrill that usually came when he thought about its completion, but it did not come.

He mustered his defenses and thrust the thought of Cary into a corner of his mind from which he was determined not to let it escape. Instead, he thought about Barron Harkness, of his every contact with the man, their every conversation, trying to remember something that would help connect him with Sasha’s fall.

He told himself that his desire to nail Harkness had nothing to do with the loss of Cary, but, when he looked at his watch and saw that it was a little after three, he fantasized that he was interrupting the ceremony at the point where the minister asks for reasons why the marriage should not take place. “Reverend,” he would say loudly from the back of the congregation, “I am here to arrest the groom for murder. I should think that sufficient cause for the wedding not to take place.” For some reason, in his fantasy, he spoke these words with an English accent.

He used an old technique for when he was stumped on a case—go back to the beginning and review possible suspects. But in his attempt to incriminate Barron Harkness, he came up dry. There was only one other conceivable suspect, now that Hank Morgan had removed herself from the scene: Herbert Van Fleet. But, in spite of his obsession with Sasha, Van Fleet had come up clean. Dino didn’t think so, he remembered, and Dino’s instincts were often good; but, for that matter, so were his own, and he could not bring himself even to dislike Van Fleet, strange as he was.