Frensic was horrified. 'Sue them? What do you mean 'sue them'? You can't sue the Mafia and anyway...'
'Not them. The police.'
'Hutchmeyer's going to sue the police?' said Frensic now totally out of his depth.
'Well first off they accused him of doing it. They held him for hours and grilled him. They didn't believe his story that he was out on the yacht with me. And then the gas cans didn't help.'
'Gas can? What gas can?'
'The ones I tied round his waist.'
'You tied gas cans round Hutchmeyer's waist?' said Frensic.
'I had to. To stop him from drowning.'
Frensic considered the logic of this remark and found it wanting. 'I should have thought...' he began before deciding there was nothing to be gained by regretting that Hutchmeyer hadn't been left to drown. It would have saved a lot of trouble.
'What are you going to do now?' he asked finally.
'I don't know,' said Sonia, 'I've got to wait around. The police are still making enquiries and I've lost all my clothes...and oh Frenzy it's all so horrible.' She broke down again and wept. Frensic tried to think of something to cheer her up.
'You'll be interested to hear that the reviews in the Sunday papers were all good,' he said but Sonia's grief was not assuaged.
'How can you talk about reviews at a time like this?' she said. 'You just don't care is all.'
'My dear I do. I most certainly do,' said Frensic, 'it's a tragedy for all of us. I've just been speaking to Mr Cadwalladine and explaining that in the light of what has happened his client will have to wait for his money.'
'Money? Money? Is that all you think about, money? My darling Peter is dead and...'
Frensic listened to a diatribe against himself, Hutchmeyer and someone called MacMordie, all of whom in Sonia's opinion thought only about money. 'I understand your feelings,' he said when she paused for breath, 'but money does come into this business and if Hutchmeyer finds out that Piper wasn't the author of Pause...'
But the phone had gone dead. Frensic looked at it reproachfully and replaced the receiver. All he could hope now was that Sonia kept her wits about her and that the police didn't carry their investigations too far into Piper's past history.
In New York Hutchmeyer's feelings were just the reverse. In his opinion the police were a bunch of half-wits who couldn't investigate anything properly. He had already been in touch with his lawyers only to be advised that there was no chance of sueing Chief Greensleeves for wrongful arrest because he hadn't been arrested.
'That bastard held me for hours with nothing on but a blanket,' Hutchmeyer protested. 'They grilled me under hot lamps and you tell me I've got no comeback. There ought to be a law protecting innocent citizens against that kind of victimization.'
'Now if you could show they'd roughed you up a bit we could maybe do something but as it is...'
Having failed to get satisfaction from his own lawyers Hutchmeyer turned his attention to the insurance company and got even less comfort there. Mr Synstrom of the Claims Department visited him and expressed doubts.
'What do you mean you don't necessarily go along with the police theory that some crazy terrorists did this thing?' Hutchmeyer demanded.
Mr Synstrom's eyes glinted behind silver-rimmed spectacles. 'Three and a half million dollars is a lot of money,' he said.
'Of course it is,' said Hutchmeyer, 'and I've been paying my premiums and that's a lot of
