“Shit list? I thought for sure you had an orgasm.”
“Two, actually. But you are still on my shit list. You were supposed to call the FBI or the sheriff or somebody. Remember?”
“And tell them about your two orgasms?”
“I’m being serious.” She hit me.
Did I mention I really loved this lady? “I told you, although you may not recall since it was a little early…”
“A little early! You woke me up at five-thirty!”
“Okay, a lot early. But I did tell you that I was going to talk to her friends.”
“And how are you going to find her friends from twenty years ago?” she asked with a scowl on her face.
I leaned in and whispered, for dramatic effect. “Harkers Island is a pretty small place.”
“And you think you know who they were already?” she asked, again the skeptic.
“Um, actually, I already interviewed one of them this morning.”
She sat up. “Are you serious?”
“Yup. Mike Jackson.”
“Stonewall’s son?”
It took me a second to get her joke. Everybody’s a comedian. “Might be a relative, but no, Caleb’s son.”
I spent the next ten minutes catching her up on the locals and tried my best to reproduce a Hoi-Toider accent. She looked at me like I had three heads. “You’ll see,” I said. When I had related to her just about everything I could think of, she told me she had decided she wanted to see the diary. She also told me she was starving. Did I mention some asshole had awakened her at five-thirty and she had driven all the way over? She had only stopped for coffee, then had another one at my house. Poor girl. We decided to take a shower together, although my excellent idea for making love in the shower was overruled in favor of having lunch. I now saw where her priorities were.
Having already eaten at the diner, I figured we would try Elijah’s Coal Pot near the bridge. I was ready to walk it, but she preferred the air-conditioned car. It was a quick ride to the faded one-room house that was a local favorite for Harkers cuisine.
Elijah’s, as it was commonly known, was a seafood place, but had just about everything on the menu that a person could think of. During duck season, hunters brought ducks. During deer season, locals would go hunting on the mainland and bring back venison. The local fishermen provided the seafood menu, and probably the calamari was leftover flounder bait. It was decorated with carved decoys to the point that it rivaled the decoy duck museum. The museum didn’t have food, though, so fuck ’em.
It was early enough that we had the place to ourselves. I introduced us as the newest Harkers Islanders to the man I presumed was Elijah. Turned out he was the owner, but his name was Tad. Seriously, Tad? His grandfather was Elijah. Anyway, he gave us a nice welcome in the thickest Hoi-Toider accent yet. I answered him like I had a clue what he was talking about, and Amanda just stared in disbelief. He sat us at a booth next to a window that looked out at the Back Sound.
“Was that English?” she whispered when we sat down.
I tried not to gloat.
She smiled. “It’s one of the reasons this place made my Bucket List. I’ve always wanted to hear the famous High Tider accent. Now that I’ve heard it, I have no idea what they’re saying! It’s awesome.”
Tad returned with a basket of ‘hush puppies’, deep fried balls of corn bread deliciousness that should have been the main course. We each took a bite and stared at each other.
“Oh my God,” she moaned with a mouthful of hush puppy. “These are amazing!”
“You didn’t moan like that in the dining room,” I said.
“You weren’t as good.”
I looked at the basket to keep from laughing. There was only one more in there. The bastard gave us three?
Amanda saw me looking at it. “Don’t even think about it,” she said with her war face.
We had a delicious fish lunch, conversed briefly with Tad, who quite frankly might have been speaking Old English, Latin or Gaelic for all I knew, then drove back to the house along Harkers Island Road, which follows the south coastline. ‘South coastline’ is a bit of an overstatement, since the entire island is only a bit over two miles long, but we enjoyed the scenery.
When we got back to the house, Amanda asked me again if I was going to call the sheriff or the FBI. I told her I would, but I still had one more person to speak with—Lynn Hopkins. Her parents still lived here, according to Agatha Miles, my detective agency personal assistant who just didn’t know her job title yet. I found the listing for Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hopkins and saw that they lived a few streets over from my house. Well, that made sense. The girls had been friends and hung out all the time.
I decided to pay them a visit. Amanda insisted on coming along. I tried to get her to stay home, to protect her from what they might say, but she was having no part of it. She was not going to miss my ongoing investigation. I decided that she probably thought it was sexy, watching me work as a super detective.
We walked over to the Hopkins’ house and up the oyster-shell driveway. The house was a medium-sized bungalow, with a faded cedar shake front that might have been painted green twenty years ago. It was a typical Harkers-looking house. I knocked on the front screen door, and a man who looked to be in his late sixties opened the door. He left it closed and said hello through the screen.
“Hi,” I said in my cheeriest voice. “I’m Cory Walker. This is my friend Amanda. We’re trying to locate your daughter, Lynn. I heard she moved away and is a nurse now. Could I trouble you for her address?”
“You the ones bought the Stone House?” he asked in his thick accent.
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you should learn to let sleeping dogs lie. I heard what happened to Ben up in Maury. Lynn’s got nothin’ to say to you.” He shut the door in my face.
I looked at Amanda. “Well, that went well.”
We started to walk away and I heard some voices behind the front door. It opened back up and Mrs. Hopkins was standing there behind the screen.
“He didn’t mean to be rude, Mr. Wal-kah,” she said, trying to sound polite, her accent even thicker than his. “But please, leave our daughtah outta this. Now y’all go on and have a nice day, hear?” She gently closed the door.
I looked at Amanda. “Well, that was a much more polite version of ‘go fuck yourself,’” I whispered.
She wasn’t amused. “These people are scared, Cory. That should tell you something. Now let’s get your shit together and go home.”
“I am home, remember? And I’d like you to make this home, too.”
She shook her head, walked past me and headed for my house. Man, that girl had a bit of Irish in her or something.
In the kitchen, we both saw it at the same time—the answering machine blinking. I didn’t get many calls other than Amanda and potential witnesses to a capital case, so I was intrigued as I hit play.
“Hello, Cory. This is Grant Williams over at the County Prosecutor’s Office. Sorry to ruin your day, but it looks like your case may be going to a grand jury. I didn’t think it would happen this way, but it looks like you should be expecting some mail. The Eastern District of North Carolina will be seating a Federal Grand Jury in about four weeks. We’ll be in touch.”
Amanda looked as shocked as I felt. “This is ridiculous!” she burst out. “A bunch of thugs try to rape me and kill you and they want to prosecute you? This is outrageous!”
I nodded, wondering if Congressman Earl Stone had made a few phone calls.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A Tough Read
It took me a while to get Amanda to calm down. It was good that she’d freaked out. It prevented me from doing that. I had all but been promised that I could forget the whole thing had ever happened. That was before I had flown onto Congressman Earl Stone’s radar.
We sat down in the library after I dug Casey’s diary out of the basement crawlspace for Amanda to read. As I handed it to her, I warned he
r it was going to be pretty intense. I was happy to have a second opinion on what was in it, but I also knew that Amanda would be very upset after reading it.
I sat down and put the TV on while she read. Almost like it was planned just to piss me off more, as soon as the power came on, the newscaster was talking about Earl Stone’s bid for the White House. I listened and watched the clips of this lying-sack-of-you-know-what from the comfort of the old couch that had come with the house. I could feel my face getting hot as I watched him. When the news showed a still shot of him with his new wife and son, I turned it off. Amanda was totally engrossed in the journal, and I excused myself to the backyard. Maybe pulling weeds would relieve some stress.
The sun had gotten lower and the pines provided a bit of shade in my yard, so it was pretty nice outside. I spotted Agatha in her yard clipping her roses, and waved. She walked over, and I cursed myself for being so friendly.
“Hello, Mr. Cory. Did that reporter talk to you?” she asked, brushing white hair out of her face with a gloved hand.
“What? What reporter?”
“That nice young man who was here earlier. He was from the Carteret Inquirer. He’s writing a story about Congressman Stone. He wanted some comments from his old neighbors out here on Harkers Island. I saw him on your veranda, but I think you were out with your lady friend.”
I smiled to myself. My lady friend. “He didn’t leave a business card. Did you talk to him?”
“Just for a moment, really. He asked me if I knew who lived in the Stone house now. I told him I did and you were a lovely young man.”
That didn’t sit quite right. If he were doing a piece on old neighbors, why would he want to talk to me? I asked Agatha, “What did you tell him about the old days with the Stones?”
Agatha put her hand to her mouth. The blue veins so visible in her bony hand reminded me just how old she must be. “You know, come to think of it, he really didn’t ask me very much at all. I think he must have been more interested in the house.”
I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck. “Did he walk around my yard for a while?”
“I don’t believe so.” She scanned the sky, trying to recall. “Timothy was making a big fuss over a bird in the yard, and I got distracted. Your house is pretty famous now, though. If the congressman becomes the next President, you’ll be living in quite a famous residence.”
I thanked Agatha and told her I needed to make a call, then hustled back inside and started checking all the windows to see if they had been tampered with. Quite honestly, how the hell would I know? My special forces training did not include the fine art of breaking and entering, unless I was blowing a door off and tossing in a grenade.
Amanda was engrossed in the diary and didn’t notice my strange behavior until I walked past her with Ice across my back.
“Cory!” she screamed, as I passed by her toward the kitchen.
I stopped. “Yes, dear?”
She just stared at me. She knew I knew damned well what she was thinking. I played dumb. “Hmm? You say something?”
She put the diary down in her lap and folded her arms. I used my thumb to point to the Mossberg on my back, my eyebrows raised. “That’s just my home security system.”
“What’s going on, Cory?”
“Not sure. I guess you didn’t get to the good parts yet. Keep reading.”
I walked out to the kitchen and hunted through some old phone numbers. It took a while searching my very sophisticated filing system to locate the business card I was looking for. It was one of about fifty cards all jammed together in the front of a very old phonebook. Organized people are just too lazy to look for stuff.
Kim Predham of the Carteret Inquirer. She had been one of the reporters who had covered my story when I’d had my ass kicked on date number one with Amanda. Her story had been huge in my being treated as a hero instead of a trained killer picking on some poor defenseless locals.
I picked up the phone as Amanda walked in behind me. She had tears in her eyes. I knew she was going to be a mess. She walked over and gave me a hug, then just buried her face in my chest and hung on for a while.
“I warned you,” I whispered.
“That poor girl,” she said softly.
“He wants to be President of the United States, Amanda.”
“No way that’s going to happen, is it, Cory?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Can we call the FBI or the sheriff now?”
“I have one better—the power of the press.”
I called the number for Kim at the Inquirer and got her voicemail, which gave me her cell number. I called that, and she picked up, announcing her name. I put her on speaker phone.
“Hi, Kim. I’m not sure if you’d remember me, but you covered my story a few months back. My name in Cory Walker…”
“Oh my God, of course, I remember you, Cory! How are you feeling?”
She sounded a little too happy to hear from me, according to Amanda’s face. Amanda raised an eyebrow at me, and I stuck my tongue out at her, mature person that I am. “I’m fine, actually. I was wondering, though, if I could ask you a few questions, if you have a minute?”
“Sure, how can I help you?” she asked.
“Well, first of all, I moved to Harkers Island…”
“Down south? Below the Outer Banks?”
“Yeah. You’ve been here?”
“Only once, in college, while I was taking a class on linguistics.”
I laughed out loud. “Did you save your notes? Maybe you could translate for me.”
Even Amanda laughed.
“Yeah, really! That Hoi Toider accent is bit different, huh?”
“No kidding.”
“Wow. So you really wanted to get away, huh? Harkers is tiny.”
“Yes, and very peaceful. In fact, I bought Earl Stone’s old house.” I had just cast my fishing line.
“Earl Stone? As in Congressman Stone?”
“The very same.”
“That’s so cool! Is the house great?”
“It is…for a lot of reasons. We fell in love with it right away. I was wondering… Do you know if someone from your newspaper is down here doing a story on Earl Stone? Someone was nosing around my house today when my girlfriend and I were at lunch. He told my neighbor he was from the Inquirer.”
“Did your neighbor get his name?”
“No…and he didn’t leave his card.”
“Hmm…I’ll ask. By the way, how is the woman who was attacked with you that night at the bar?”
Amanda made a face, and I paused long enough to get a punch in the arm. “She’s fine. She’s here with me right now. We’d love to have you come down and see the house.”
I heard her say a quiet, “Wow.”
“Wow?” I asked.
“I’m Googling your house. I was about five years old when the daughter was killed. God. And his wife hanged herself? That’s terrible.”
“Yeah, there’s a lot of talk out here about all that. Forget the human-interest story. You might want to get an investigative reporter down here for that one.” I was now reeling in my fish.
“Why? What do you mean?”
“Well, I think there’s a big story down here, but no one talks about it to outsiders—close-knit community and all. The deaths of his daughter and wife. Maybe you could come down here and do little digging.”
“I’m not an investigative reporter. I do local interest. What kind of story?”
“It might be dangerous.” I was baiting her, true enough—but I wasn’t kidding about the dangerous part.
There was a pause. “Do you know something, Cory?”
I had to trust somebody, and the same cops who had let Stone off twenty years ago might not be the best place to start. “When I was in the hospital, some folks were looking to arrest me for murder. Your story was a big help and I owe you one, so I will tell you this. After I started asking questions down here about Stone, my case was coincide
ntally re-opened for a grand jury.”
I could almost hear her nod. “I’ll talk to my editor.”
“You can tell him you have something that will be front page news all over the world.”
“All over the world? Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“And you can’t talk on the phone, right?” I could hear the skepticism in her voice. “Okay, don’t talk to anyone else about this, okay? Let me get back to you.”
She hung up and I smiled at Amanda. “Are you happy now? I called in the cavalry.”
“She covers local fluff. She said it herself. You need more than that, Cory. And what was that about a reporter already being here?”
“Not sure.” I pointed to Ice, still on my back. “But I intend to find out.”
“You missed him? You didn’t see him? Did you ask Agatha how long he was here?”
“No. Why?”
“He could have come into the house.”
That stopped me cold. There were no locks on the doors. He could have walked in and looked around. But why? Nobody knew there was a diary…or did they?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tuckers
Amanda finished reading the diary, and looked completely wiped out afterward, pretty much the same reaction I’d had. I made her walk upstairs with me and go into what must have been Casey’s room. I pointed at the master bedroom. She understood without me saying a word.
“Right down the hall from her mother?” Amanda said. “No wonder she hanged herself.”
“Funny thing about that, Amanda. The medical examiner doesn’t think she did.”
“What?” she exclaimed.
“The gist of what he told me is that when a person is strangled, it’s a different injury from hanging. He says she was choked to death then hanged.”
Blood from a Stone Page 12