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“Oh?” She squeezed.
Stone played his final card. “And you would have to deal with Eddie Jr. again.”
Her face fell, and she pushed away from him on the sofa. “I won’t ask how he’s doing, because I don’t want to know.”
“I think that’s wise,” Stone said.
She stood up and brushed away imaginary wrinkles on her skirt. “Well, thank you for coming, Stone. Please continue to keep me in the dark about Junior.”
“Certainly,” Stone said, shaking her hand. “And good afternoon to you.”
He made his way out of the living room and down in the elevator without encountering either the maid or the butler. He left the Charles residence and got into the car, breaking alight sweat in his haste. He rode downtown trying to make his breathing regular and his thoughts somewhere other than Annetta Charles’s sofa. He reflected that Dino was right. He had been too long without a woman, and resisting Annetta’s advances had been difficult to do.
TEN
Stone got back to his office and poured himself a Knob Creek, something he did not often do when alone in the afternoon. His breathing had returned to normal. Joan seemed to be elsewhere.
He sat down and his thoughts were irresistibly drawn to what might have happened on Annetta’s sofa if he had not managed to preserve his virtue. He was able to put her aside when he remembered that Joan had warned him that Annetta was sixty, not forty. He reflected that he had never had carnal relations with someone so much older than he, not that he was opposed to the idea, in principle. He had the very strong feeling that if he had followed her down the garden path that she would, after that, have had more influence on his actions than he wished her to have. There was a noise and he jumped, spilling some of his drink on his desk.
“I’m sorry to have startled you,” Joan said. “I was doing some filing in the back room and didn’t hear you come in.”
“That’s quite all right.” Here she comes, he thought.
“So, how did you and Annetta get along?”
“Passably,” he said. “When I brought up the subject of Eddie Jr. she remembered that she had something else to do.”
“What was she wearing?” Joan asked.
“A tweed suit with... What kind of a question is that?”
“Street clothes or, ah, something more comfortable?”
“What are you getting at, Joan?”
“I’m just wondering what Aunt Annetta might have been getting at.”
“What?”
“She has a reputation for getting at things with dispatch.”
“I wasn’t there long enough to find out.”
“I read the files of the Charleses while you were gone.”
“And...?”
“And I found them illuminating, but not surprising.”
“Which parts did you find illuminating?”
“The parts about Edwin’s sources of income and Aunt Annetta’s, ah, career path. Nothing about Eddie Jr. would be illuminating or surprise me.”
“And you think Annetta’s ‘career path’ might have affected her behavior today?”
“I read somewhere once—maybe Kinsey—that the chief reason that prostitutes chose their trade was, not money, but because they enjoyed the sex.”
“I have little experience of prostitutes, so I can’t argue with that. But it sounds like something written by a man, not a woman.”
