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“Yes.”
“It will be done.” Both men hung up, and Stone buzzed Joan.
“Print out a boilerplate divorce document with Herbie as the complainant and the cause as abandonment by Stephanie, contingent on an agreed settlement, then messenger it over to Keener.”
“Will do.”
Stone went back to his crossword, but almost immediately, Joan buzzed him again.
“Arrington on line one.”
Stone picked it up. “Good morning. How are you feeling?”
“Much better,” she said. “It was just an infection, not a recurrence, so an antibiotic fixed everything. I’ll be arriving late this afternoon. Can you have your car meet me?”
“Of course. What time?”
“Five o’clock?”
“You can avoid rush hour if you land at three.”
“Good point. I guess I can do that. How are you and Peter getting along?”
“Famously.” Stone told her about the meeting at Centurion.
“The little devil!”
“Not so little; you should have warned me.”
“You didn’t tell him anything, did you?”
“Not a word,” Stone said. “He told me.”
“What!”
“He picked up the photograph of my father in my study, and it was all over. I answered a few questions, but he’s still going to want to hear from you.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “I’ve dreaded this.”
“Everybody’s very impressed with him, especially his maturity,” Stone said.
“I know, I know. He taught himself to read at three, and by four he was speaking like an adult, in complete paragraphs. He was just astonishing; he still is.”
“I’ll go along with that.”
“You have to remember, Stone, that although he speaks like an adult, he’s still only sixteen years old, next month, and in many ways, that’s his emotional age.”
“I haven’t seen a single sign of that,” Stone said.
“It will come up, believe me.”
“You didn’t tell me he was about to have a birthday.”
“I apologize; that was a lapse on my part. Do you want to know what to get him for a present?”
“That’s already taken car
e of.”
