Lucid Intervals Read Online Free PDF Page B

shook his head. “I believe you should, perhaps, be more concerned with your own.”
    “Then you think she may be relapsing?”
    “I am very much afraid that she has already relapsed,” Eduardo said.
    Stone said nothing.
    Eduardo took a deep breath and sighed. “She did not come home yesterday,” he said.
    “She eluded Mario?” Stone asked.
    “Mario is recovering in a hospital,” Eduardo replied, “from a knife wound. Either he was very lucky to survive or Dolce was extremely skillful. She was taught these things by my man.” He nodded in the direction of the butler, who was standing a discreet distance away, watching everything. “She could not have been more than fourteen years,” he said sadly.
    “I see,” Stone said, because he could not think of anything else to say.
    “You may be sure that she is being sought by acquaintances of mine,” Eduardo said. “I have so far been able to avoid involving the police, and I hope that you will do so as well.”
    “Of course,” Stone said.
    “And I would be grateful if your secretary could call mine should Dolce visit your neighborhood again.”
    “Certainly,” Stone replied.
     
     
     
    ON THE DRIVE home, Stone felt a dread he had not felt since the day Dolce had shot him. The wound, he realized, had been deeper than he had believed.
    He drove around his block, looking for Dolce, before he pulled into his garage and closed the door behind the car.
    He went into the house and to Joan’s office.
    “How was lunch?” she asked, and she wasn’t asking about lunch.
    “Yesterday Dolce knifed her bodyguard, then disappeared,” he said. “I want you to keep the outside office door locked. Don’t let anyone in until you have seen who it is.”
    “Don’t you worry,” Joan said. She opened her desk drawer, removed the officer’s Model 1911 .45, racked the slide, put the safety on and put it back into the drawer with the hammer cocked.

8
    W hen Stone walked into Elaine’s, Dino was already half a drink ahead of him.
    “You look worried,” Dino said, as Stone sat down.
    “I didn’t know it showed,” Stone replied, as a waiter set a Knob Creek on the rocks before him.
    “Always,” Dino said.
    “Dolce’s on the loose,” Stone said, taking a swig from the drink.
    Dino’s face fell. “Bring us both another one,” he said to the waiter, then turned back toward Stone. “How the hell did she escape?”
    “I had lunch with Eduardo a few weeks ago, and to my shock she made an appearance at the table.”
    “She was running around loose?”
    “She appeared to be her old, premurderous self. Eduardo allowed her to go to the city on shopping trips, accompanied by an ape named Mario, and she started hanging around across the street from my house. It gave Joan the willies.”
    “I’m armed,” Dino said, “and it gives me the willies.”
    “Then yesterday Dolce slipped a knife into Mario and vanished.”
    After looking carefully around the restaurant, Dino summoned a waiter. “Go look in the other dining room and see if there’s anybody in there.” Elaine used the other room for parties.
    “There’s nobody,” the waiter said. “The lights aren’t even on.”
    “Go look anyway,” Dino said, “and look good.”
    The waiter went, looked and returned. “Nobody in there,” he said.
    “Thanks,” Dino said.
    “Don’t get all squirrely on me, Dino,” Stone said, but he was happy when the second drink arrived.
    “I suppose Eduardo’s got the troops out looking for her,” Dino said. He had once been married to Eduardo’s other daughter, Anna Maria, who, in rebellion, called herself Mary Ann. He knew the family well.
    “Does he still have troops?” Stone asked.
    “Eduardo knows people who know people who have troops. The last thing he wants is for Dolce to do something that gets noticed by the media.”
    “Like Mario?”
    “Mario was smart enough to call somebody. He’d have died on the street before he’d have gone to an ER. You, on