by Dark Harbor
“Why the hell should you care if you piss him off?”
“Because it’s a small island, and I might need some cabinetwork done someday. And because we need him.”
“What, that business about breaking into Dick’s house?”
“You know anybody more qualified?”
“Now that you mentioned it, no,” Dino replied, settling down a little. “Of course, it’s a perfect opportunity for him to case the place in preparation for a later visit, maybe in the winter, when you’re not here.”
“No, Rhinehart has too much to lose. He’s got a new life now and, apparently, a good one. He’s not going to piss in his own well.”
“Oh, all right,” Dino said. “I never could talk to you when you get this way.”
RHINEHART SHOWED UP at six, when Stone and Dino were having a drink in the study.
“Would you like a drink, Hal?”
“Thanks, no. I’d better get started. I’m going to go outside, and I want you to go through the house and make sure that every window and door is closed and locked, then turn on the alarm system.” He turned and left.
“You take the upstairs,” Stone said to Dino, then headed for the kitchen. He went around the ground floor, checking and locking windows and doors, then went to the front door, tapped in the alarm code, then back to the study and his drink. Dino was already there. He had barely sat down when he looked up to see Hal Rhinehart standing in the doorway.
“How the hell did you get in?” Dino asked.
“Upstairs bathroom window on the south side,” Rhinehart said.
“What are you, a human fly?”
“No, the climbing part was easy; there was a ladder leaning against the house.”
Stone looked at Dino. “I believe that was one of your windows,” he said. “You want to go close it and double-check the others?”
Dino got up and stalked from the room.
Rhinehart crooked a finger. “Come here, I want to show you something.” He led Stone to the keypad by the front door, then opened the door. “Tap in the code,” he said, looking away.
Stone tapped in the code.
“Now look at the little screen on the keypad. What does it say?”
Stone peered at the screen. “Front door open,” he said.
“Before, it would have said ‘Upstairs bathroom window open.’ And the alarm won’t arm if there’s something open. The house has to be sealed tight.”
Dino came back downstairs. “All right, everything’s closed.”
“I’m going outside again,” Rhinehart said. “Arm the alarm.”
Stone did so, then returned to the study with Dino. They had finished their drinks when the front doorbell rang. He went and let Rhinehart in. “Will you have a drink now?”
“Yes, thanks. Scotch, if you have it.”
Stone poured them all another one, and they sat down in front of the fireplace.
“I couldn’t get in,” Rhinehart said. “Not without taking a chain saw to a wall, anyway. This is the most secure family home I’ve ever been in, and I’ve been in a lot of them. The front door is steel, sheathed in mahogany; the windows are steel and the glass armored; and there are no gaps in the installation—every door and window is alarmed.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Stone said.
“What the hell was Dick expecting?” Rhinehart asked. “He must have spent fifty thousand dollars on security.”
“Dick worked for the State Department,” Stone said. “I think they had the work done.”
“State Department? More like the CIA or NSA,” Rhinehart said. “I doubt if the Secretary of State has this much hard-wired security.”
Stone shrugged.
“The problem, though, is the same as with any two-thousand-dollar installation: You leave a window cracked or just forget to arm the system, and all this security is useless.”
Stone nodded. “You have a point.”
“Is that what happened? Did Dick screw up and not arm the system?”
“Either that, or he let somebody in,” Stone said.
“The locks are something special, too. They’re Swedish, and they use a key that has magnetic points built into it as well as tumblers. I couldn’t pick one of them, and I’m pretty good.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Dino said.
“Hal,” Stone said, “do you have any theories about how or why Dick died?”
“Was anything taken from the house?”
“No.”
“You mean, nothing that you knew about was gone, but then, had you ever set foot in the place before Dick was killed?”
“No, and I wouldn’t have known what he had here. The caretaker and his wife would have known, though, especially the wife, since she cleans the place every day. The only thing she noticed amiss was that a vacuum cleaner was left by that door over there.” He pointed at the door to the terrace.
“So the killer cleaned up after himself.”
“It appears so, and he took the vacuum bag with him.”
“Did the alarm go off?”
“No.”
“Then it wasn’t armed, unless the killer had the code. What time of night did it happen?”
“Some time after midnight, according to the state police.”
“Anybody see anybody come or go?”
“No.”
“Nobody moves on this island after ten o’clock. It would be noticed if somebody was driving around. Maybe the guy came by boat.”
“That’s a good guess,” Stone said.
“You don’t think it was a local?”
“Do you?”
“Nah; everybody liked Dick. I mean, there are some folks on this island I wouldn’t trust with a gun after a few drinks, but nobody had anything against Dick; word would have gotten around. From what I read in the papers about the inquest, it sure sounds like a pro hit, doesn’t it?”
“More and more,” Stone said. “But I’d appreciate it if you’d keep that notion to yourself. I wouldn’t want the folks to start worrying about hit men stalking their island.”
Rhinehart tossed off the rest of his drink and stood up. “I’ve got to get home for supper.”
Stone walked him to the door and thanked him for coming, then returned to the study.
“This case sure is a pisser, ain’t it?” Dino asked.
“It sure is.”
23
ARRINGTON WAS wonderfully naked, seated atop Stone, and he was sitting up, so that he could feel her breasts against his chest. They were moving rhythmically, and she was making little noises and contracting her vagina each time she moved. They were both nearly there, just on the brink, when a noise intruded.
“Stop that noise!” Arrington panted. “I’m going to come!”
Stone woke up in a sitting position, sweating, tumescent and angry about losing the orgasm. He could hear a noise from downstairs. What the hell was going on? He heard the noise again; it seemed louder. He struggled out of bed and into his trousers, picked up the .45 from the bedside table and left the bedroom, pausing on the landing to listen. He heard it again, and it seemed to be coming from the study. He started down the stairs, then stopped. This was what Dick had done, going downstairs in only his trousers, armed, and still he had died.
Stone thought for a moment, then went back into his bedroom, unlocked a window and opened it. Nothing happened; no alarm. Somebody had defeated it, in spite of Hal Rhinehart’s assurances. He picked up the phone to buzz the guesthouse and wake up Dino, then put it down again. Dino was unarmed, and Stone couldn’t let him walk into this without a gun.
Stone went back to the landing and listened again. Nothing for a moment, then the noise came, but more softly. He flicked off the gun’s safety and began to creep slowly down the stairs, staying close to the wall to avoid squeaks from the steps. He stopped on the landing midway down the stairs to listen again. Nothing.
His heart pounding, Stone continued down the stairs, stopping every step or two to listen. At the botto
m, he pressed his back against the wall and listened again. The noise came, as if someone were grinding something. Then, as from a great distance, a phone began to ring. It was faint, so it had to be coming from Dick’s secret office.
Stone took a deep breath, held the gun out in front of him in a combat stance and whipped around the corner, looking for any sign of movement, listening for any noise. The downstairs hallway was empty, but he heard the noise again, coming from the study.
Walking on tiptoe, even though he was barefoot, he went to the open study door and listened again. Nothing. He charged into the room yelling “Freeze, police!” the way he had done hundreds of times before, when he still was the police. Nothing. No one. He walked around the study, checking every corner, until he came to the alarm keypad glowing in the dark, near the door to the terrace. He checked the little screen: “Open window in master BR,” it said. The phone continued to ring. Stone tapped in the alarm code. The phone still rang.
Stone did a quick tour of the downstairs, checking every room, but found nothing. He got out his keys, went to Dick’s secret office door and opened it. The phone stopped ringing. Stone switched on the light in the little office and looked around, half expecting to find somebody there. Then he saw something he hadn’t noticed before. The wall opposite Dick’s desk was lined with cabinets, and one of them, with double doors, had a substantial lock on it.
He went through his keys until he found one that fit, then opened the cabinet. Inside, hanging on pegs, was an array of weapons: a stainless-steel riot gun with an extra-long magazine; a Beretta 9 mm semi-automatic, model 92, which was used by the armed services; a model 1911 Colt .45 officer’s model, with a beautiful mirror-blue finish and ivory grips; and a pair of Colt Government .380s finished identically to the larger pistol. So Dick had been well armed, after all.
The phone in the study started to ring. Stone rushed to answer it, lest it wake someone, then realized he was alone in the house. He picked it up. “Hello?”
“Stone? It’s Lance. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Stone said. “I was sound asleep, and I was wakened by a noise. I got my pants on and started downstairs, then I thought better of it, remembering that’s what Dick did. So I opened a window in my bedroom to set off the alarm, but it didn’t go off.”
“Yes, it did go off,” Lance said. “It’s silent, unless you program it not to be. The signal was transmitted to Operations, at Langley, and they called the house, but you didn’t answer, so they called me. Are you all right? Is someone in the house?”
“I’m all right,” Stone said, “and it appears I’m alone. I heard the phone ringing in Dick’s little office, but by the time I was able to get the door unlocked, it stopped. Then you called.”
“Are you alone up there?”
“Dino’s here, but he’s in the guesthouse.”
“There’s a manual for the alarm system somewhere in the house, probably in the little office, if you want to change the alarm from silent. It appears to be working properly.”
“Yes, I had the house checked out by an expert, and he says it’s pretty much impenetrable, unless you saw through a wall.”
“What expert?”
“A burglar.”
“What?”
“A guy Dino and I once busted for more than a hundred burglaries in New York. He’s out of prison now and living here. He’s a cabinetmaker.”
“Well, I guess that’s one kind of expert. If you’re all right, I’m going back to bed.”
“Sure, and thanks for calling.” They both hung up.
Suddenly, the front doorbell rang, and there was a hammering on the front door. Stone ran to the door, switched on the front porch light and looked through the peephole. Dino was standing there in his pajamas and robe. Stone opened the door.
“What’s going on?” Dino asked.
“I heard a noise in the house,” Stone said. “What woke you up?”
“The phone. I had just gotten up to piss, and I heard it ring. I wasn’t sleepy, anyway, so I came over.”
Stone closed the door. “Come in the study. You want a drink?”
“Couldn’t hurt,” Dino said. “Keep out the cold night air.”
“Oh, let me show you something.” He led Dino into Dick’s little office and showed him the array of weapons. Dino picked up the officer’s .45. “I like this,” he said. “I’ll sleep with it under my pillow.” He checked and found a full magazine in the gun.
Stone pointed to a shelf that held a lot of gun leather. “Find yourself a belt and holster.” He went to the bar and got down a couple of glasses. As he was about to open the door to the ice machine, he heard the noise again.
Dino approached. “Is that the noise you heard?”
“Yes,” Stone said sheepishly.
“The ice machine, making ice?”
Stone sighed. “Yes. I wonder why I’ve never heard it before.”
“I think you’re a little too tightly wound,” Dino said. “Sit down and drink that bourbon.”
Stone followed orders.
24
STONE WENT BACK to bed and tried to retrieve the dream with Arrington, but it wouldn’t come back. He overslept, not waking until after ten, and he felt fuzzy around the edges. He wasn’t accustomed to drinking in the middle of the night.
He sat up in bed and called Arrington’s home in Virginia. A maid answered.
“She’s not here, Mr. Barrington. She’s in New York, she and Peter. You can reach her at the Carlyle.”
“Thank you,” Stone said. He called the Carlyle and asked for Mrs. Calder.
“Hello?” she said, sounding chipper and cheerful.
“It’s Stone.”
“Oh, hi. I was about to call you. I’m in New York.”
“I know; I just called you.”
“Oh, that’s right. Sorry. You want to have dinner tonight?”
“I’d love to, but it’s a plane ride.”
“What?”
“I’m in Maine.”
“Why? What are you doing in Maine?”
“I have a new house on an island called Islesboro. Why don’t you summon up the Centurion jet, and you and Peter come up here for a few days?” As the widow of Centurion Studios’ largest stockholder, she had access to their jet.
She was silent for a moment. “All right, but it will have to be tomorrow, maybe the next day. I have some shopping to do here.”
“Tell the flight department at Centurion that you’ll be landing at Rockland. I’ll meet you there in my airplane. It’s only another ten minutes of flying, but the strip on the island is too short for a jet.”
“All right. What will I need in the way of clothes?”
“Nothing you couldn’t find at L.L. Bean.”
“I’ve got to run; I have a hair appointment, but I’ll call you later and give you an ETA.”
He gave her the number and hung up, feeling wonderful. He bounded out of bed, shaved, showered and began getting dressed when the phone rang. “Hello?”
“It’s Ed Rawls. I need to see you at Don Brown’s house right now.”
“Okay. Where’s the house?”
Rawls gave him directions.
“What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
Stone finished dressing and went downstairs. Dino was having breakfast in the kitchen, and Stone grabbed a piece of his toast. “Come on. We have to be somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Not far.”
It was a beautiful day, and they took the little MG, top down.
“Arrington and Peter are coming up tomorrow or the next day,” Stone said.
“You’re horny, huh?”
“Oh, shut up.”
They drove through some woods and stopped at the end of a short, paved driveway. There were other cars parked there.
The house was a shingled Cape Cod with a porch. The front door was opened by an obviously upset woman wearing an apron. Rawls emerged f
rom another room and waved them in. Harley Davis and Mack Morris were seated in the living room, while Jimmy Hotchkiss talked on the phone. Stone introduced Dino to everybody, then followed Rawls into a bedroom.
“Uh-oh,” Dino said.
Don Brown, the Old Fart who used the electric scooter, was sitting up in bed, a bullet hole in his right temple and a much larger hole in his left. A Colt .45 lay on the bed, and brains and blood were scattered around the bedspread.
“We’ve got another one,” Rawls said.
“How long have you been here?” Stone asked.
“Less than half an hour. I’ve mostly been on the phone calling people.”
“Has somebody called the state police?”
“Jimmy’s on the phone with them now.”
“Let’s get out of this room,” Stone said. “Have you touched anything?”
Rawls shook his head. “I know better than that.”
They went back into the living room and took seats, while the woman served them coffee.
“This is Hilda,” Rawls said. “She found him when she came to clean the house.”
“What time do you normally get here, Hilda?” Stone said.
“Usually, at nine,” the woman replied. “But it was ten, today; I had to do Mr. Brown’s grocery shopping. I always do that for him.” She went back to the kitchen.
“Dino,” Stone said, “you ask the questions.”
Dino nodded. “Gentlemen, did any of you know Mr. Brown to be depressed?”
“This wasn’t suicide,” Harley Davis replied.
“Please, just answer the question.”
“Don wasn’t depressed,” Mack Morris said. “He was pissed off.”
“About what?” Dino asked.
“About being in that fucking wheelchair thing. He didn’t like it at all; he was permanently pissed off about it.”
“Did he ever talk about suicide?”
All three men shook their heads. “He wasn’t the type,” Rawls said.
“Is the gun his?” Dino asked.
“Probably; he had a .45,” Rawls said. “If the cops don’t find another one, then it’s his.”