Stuart Woods_Stone Barrington 12

by Dark Harbor

  Jimmy hung up the phone. “The state boys will be on the next ferry,” he said, looking at his watch. “They should be here in an hour or so.”

  “Gentlemen,” Dino said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d all go sit on the porch until the cops get here. Stone and I will take a look around the house.”

  The four men went outside, and Dino went into the kitchen, followed by Stone.

  “Hilda,” Dino said, “when you got here this morning, did you find anything unusual about the state of the house?”

  “Well, Mr. Brown was dead in his bed,” she said.

  Dino nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Anything else?”

  “Well, the vacuum cleaner is normally in the broom closet, but it was sitting in the kitchen, by the back door, there.” She pointed. “And there wasn’t no bag inside it.”

  25

  STONE AND DINO WENT and stood in the bedroom doorway, so as not to disturb anything further by entering the room.

  “He’s sitting up in bed,” Stone said, “so whoever shot him woke him up first.”

  “Unless he wasn’t asleep when the guy arrived,” Dino said.

  “The TV isn’t on, and there’s no book present, so he wasn’t sitting up in bed reading. Nobody just sits in bed, doing nothin’.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But why would the guy wake him up?”

  Stone shrugged. “Maybe he had something to say to him before he shot him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, ‘Here’s one from your pal, Joe,’ or whoever ordered the hit.”

  “You should write novels.”

  “Short stories, maybe. There’s always a little story that goes with a murder. This wasn’t the burglary story, was it?”

  “Nothing seems disturbed.”

  “Let’s take a look outside,” Stone said.

  They walked through the kitchen, where Hilda was sitting, disconsolately, drinking coffee, and out the back door. The sea was, perhaps, thirty paces away, and they avoided walking on the path, looking for footprints.

  “Got a good one here,” Dino said, pointing.

  “Deck shoe,” Stone said. “See the little ridges? That narrows the suspect list to everybody on the island and everybody on the coast of Maine.”

  “Big deck shoe,” Dino said. “Size eleven or twelve. There are other partials here, going in both directions, but just this one good one.”

  “That’s more than the cops found at Dick’s house,” Stone said. “I’d consider that a break.” He walked down to the rocky beach and pointed. “Some scrapes on the stones here; our man arrived by boat and pulled it ashore, but only a foot or two.”

  “Must have been a sizable boat,” Dino said. “Not just a whatchamacallit…?”

  “Dinghy.”

  “Yeah.”

  They walked back up toward the porch, and Dino pointed: “Sand and dirt on the porch.”

  “That’s about it,” Stone said. “Let’s take a look out front.”

  They walked around the house.

  “Too many cars and people here to find any usable footprints,” Dino said, “but I’m satisfied the killer came by boat.”

  Stone walked up to the porch, where the Old Farts and Jimmy Hotchkiss had sat down. “Where’s the nearest house?”

  Rawls pointed. “Over there, a couple of hundred yards.”

  “The cops will want to know if anybody heard the shot.”

  “Why? We know he was shot.”

  “Fix the time of death,” Dino said.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Anybody got any thoughts about this killing?” Stone asked the group.

  “We’ve all got the same thought,” Harley Davis said.

  “Don and Dick were of different generations,” Stone said. “Would they have ever worked together on something?”

  “Not recently,” Rawls said. “Don’s been retired for, I think, six years.”

  “Where was his last posting?”

  “Berlin.”

  “And where was Dick at the time?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Could it have been Berlin?”

  Rawls shrugged. “Everybody based in Europe got to Berlin sooner or later.”

  Stone and Dino sat down on the front steps, and everybody fell silent.

  An hour later a state police car drove up, and four men got out. Sergeant Young was the driver. “Good morning,” he said.

  “No, it ain’t,” Rawls replied.

  “What have we got here?”

  Stone and Dino took him into the house and showed him the corpse in the bedroom, then told him what they had observed since arriving, including the footprint. “Nearest house is a couple of hundred yards over there,” Stone said, pointing. “They should have heard the shot.”

  “It’s a whole lot like the other killing, isn’t it?” Young asked.

  “Sure is,” Stone replied.

  “What did Dick Stone and Don Brown have in common?”

  Stone spoke up. “They both lived on the same island, and they both worked for the same government agency. Brown retired six years ago.”

  Stone and Dino left the sergeant and the crime-scene people to their work and went back to the front porch.

  “Ed, when did you last talk to Don?”

  “Last night, after supper, about nine.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Don called me, wanted to have lunch with the three of us tomorrow, that is, today. Said he had something to tell us.”

  “Any hints about what he wanted to tell you?”

  “No. Don liked to think things over before he spoke.”

  “You think it had anything to do with Dick’s murder?”

  “My guess is yes. He asked me to call Harley and Mack, and I did.”

  The other two men nodded.

  “He wouldn’t have made a lunch date if he’d intended to shoot himself,” Rawls said.

  “That makes sense. Be sure and tell the sergeant about the call.”

  Rawls nodded. “This sort of stuff isn’t supposed to happen,” he said. “You do your work for thirty-five or forty years and you retire, and you’re out of it. Nobody comes looking for you five or six years later.”

  “Don found out something,” Harley said. “God knows what.”

  “Any of you know how Don spent his day yesterday?”

  Jimmy Hotchkiss spoke up. “I know he was here at lunchtime, because I send the papers out to him every day.” He looked around him. “And don’t you other fellers get any ideas; I’m not running a paper-delivery service, except for a couple of people, like Don, who couldn’t get in the store easy.”

  “So we need to know what he was doing between lunchtime and bedtime.”

  Sergeant Young had appeared in the front doorway. “Hilda says he got in his car and went out about one o’clock. He had this way of getting his scooter in and out of the trunk. We’ll ask around, see if anybody saw him around the island.”

  “You need us anymore?” Stone asked.

  The sergeant shook his head. “I’ll call you if I think of anything.”

  Stone and Dino got into the MG and headed down the drive. “Dino,” Stone said, “I think it would be good if you moved into the house, into Esme’s bedroom. Arrington can bunk with me, and there’s another bedroom for Peter.”

  “Why move? To cover your ass?”

  “That and because there’s no alarm system in the guesthouse.”

  “Oh.”

  26

  TWO DAYS LATER, Stone stood on the tarmac and watched the Centurion Studios’ Gulfstream IV land at Rockland Airport. Peter was the first down the airplane’s stairs, at a run. He was six now and taller than when Stone had last seen him the year before. His mother followed, carrying her overnight case, and the two pilots then dealt with the luggage.

  There were hugs, then Stone loaded their luggage into his airplane. “Peter, I think we’ll let you be copilot today, and your mother can be the passenger.”

&nbs
p; The boy was delighted. Soon Stone had them buckled in and was running through his checklist, giving Peter a running commentary.

  “I hope this isn’t going to be like my last ride with you,” the boy said.

  Stone laughed. On their last ride Stone had been at the controls of a helicopter, a machine he hadn’t known how to fly, had made a very rough landing, and they were both lucky to be alive. “I think you’ll find this a smoother trip; shorter, too.”

  They lifted off and turned out over Penobscot Bay. “There’s our island,” Stone said, pointing. “Can you see it, Arrington?”

  Arrington could hear and speak from the rear through her headset. “Yes, it’s beautiful.”

  “There’s our landing strip,” Stone said to Peter.

  “It looks a lot shorter than the one we just landed on,” Peter said.

  “It is, but my airplane is a lot smaller than the Centurion jet, so it can use shorter strips.” Stone lined up for the runway, announced his intentions over the radio and looked for traffic. A moment later they were on the runway and braking. Dino sat in the station wagon, waiting for them.

  They stopped at the Dark Harbor Shop for the papers and an ice cream cone for Peter, then continued to the house.

  “It’s lovely, Stone,” Arrington said. “How did you find it?”

  “I’ll tell you the story later,” Stone said. He took them into the house and got them settled. Peter ran out to the dock to have a look at the boats, and Arrington relaxed in the study.

  “So, tell me why you bought a house in Maine,” she said.

  Stone sat down beside her. “It belonged to my first cousin, Dick Stone, who died recently and left me the house. Well, the use of the house for my lifetime and that of my heirs.”

  “How old a man was Dick?”

  “My age.”

  “Heart attack?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Stone, I’m beginning to get the feeling that I’m not going to like the rest of this story.”

  “Dick and his wife and daughter were murdered a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Not in this house, I hope.”

  “Dick was at his desk, over there; his wife and daughter were in Dino’s room.”

  “Who murdered them, and why?”

  “Dick was CIA; the murders seem to be related to his work.”

  “Seem to be related to his work?”

  “There’s evidence to suggest that and no evidence to suggest otherwise.”

  “Am I going to find his wife’s clothes in my closet?”

  “All their personal effects have been removed. It’s my house now.”

  “Why is Dino sleeping upstairs instead of in the guesthouse?” Arrington didn’t miss much.

  “There’s no security system in the guesthouse.”

  “And why do we need a security system on this tiny island?”

  “It’s only a precaution. Another man, this one a retired CIA officer, was killed in a fashion similar to the way Dick was killed a couple of days ago.”

  “Has anyone tried to kill you yet?”

  “No, and there isn’t the slightest reason to suppose that anyone might.”

  “Stone, every time I see you somebody is trying to kill you or trying to kill me.”

  “Those incidents were not my fault.”

  “No, it’s never your fault; it just seems to happen to you.”

  “I have that history, but I believe we’re all quite safe here.”

  “How good is the security system?”

  “It was designed and installed by the CIA. By the way, don’t go downstairs at night before I disable the system. There are motion detectors downstairs.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  Peter came running back into the house.

  “Peter, don’t run indoors,” his mother said.

  “I’m sorry. The boats are neat, Stone. Can we go out in one of them?”

  “Sure, we can. Which one would you like to go out in?”

  “The sailboat.”

  “All right, we’ll go out after lunch.” Stone glanced at Arrington. “I think there’s a life jacket just your size on board, Peter.”

  Arrington nodded approvingly.

  AFTER LUNCH IT TOOK an hour for Stone to get familiar enough with the yacht to be comfortable, and to get the engine started and check the chart for deep water and hazards to navigation, before they were skimming smoothly over small waves in a good breeze, with Peter steering the boat from Stone’s lap. Dino stretched out in the cockpit and went to sleep, a beer still clutched in his hand, while Arrington sat quietly next to Stone and Peter, taking in the scenery.

  Stone felt eighteen again, except that his son was along for the ride. He and Arrington had had an affair years before, when she had chosen to marry Vance Calder, the movie star, not knowing that she was already carrying Stone’s child. It had taken a long time for her to admit to Stone, if not to herself, that Peter was his son.

  Stone wondered if Peter would ever know. He saw a small island coming up and showed the boy how to tack the boat. He hoped to show him a lot more while they were here.

  As Peter was turning the boat and Dino was hauling in on the jib sheet, a motorboat appeared from nowhere, dousing them with spray and making their ride bumpier.

  Dino laughed. “I think you’ve just had sand kicked in your face, Stone.”

  Stone watched the boat disappear toward the yacht club. The two occupants were Caleb Stone’s twin sons.

  THAT NIGHT, after Peter was sound asleep in his room, Stone lay in bed and watched Arrington undress. Her body had changed little with childbirth, and she obviously took very good care of herself. She switched off the bedside lamp and got into bed, snuggling close to him.

  “This is why you wanted me here, isn’t it?” she asked, flicking his ear with her tongue. “You were just randy.”

  “I’m always randy when you’re around,” Stone said, kissing her and cupping a breast in his hand. “But that’s not the only reason I invited you.”

  “We can discuss the other reasons in the morning,” she said, taking him in her hand and kneading gently.

  Stone responded instantly. He rolled on top of her, and she guided him in.

  “It’s not the only reason for me, either,” she said, her hips rising to meet him. “But I love it all the same.”

  27

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING a fax came from Sergeant Young of the state police. Stone read the report, and as he did, the phone rang.

  “It’s Ed Rawls,” the gruff voice said. “Did you get the report?”

  “I’ve just read it,” Stone said. “It’s nice that Young didn’t call it a suicide.”

  “I think you and Dino saw to that,” Rawls said. “I’m glad you were there, because none of the rest of us has any credentials that would make Young take us seriously.”

  “I would have thought that your careers would have been enough.”

  “We don’t talk about that to civilians,” Rawls said.

  “A state cop is a civilian?”

  “Everybody who isn’t Agency is a civilian.”

  “What about me?”

  “You’re kind of a semipro, because of your relationship with Lance Cabot.”

  “Thanks.”

  “The fellows and I put together Don’s day, before he died,” Rawls said.

  “And?”

  “He had lunch at the yacht club, picked up his mail and went home. He had dinner alone, called me, then got himself murdered.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. If he’d been anywhere on the island, he’d have been seen.”

  “Did he talk to anybody anywhere, except at the yacht club?”

  “Nothing more than to say hello.”

  “Who’d he have lunch with?”

  “He had lunch alone, talked to anybody who dropped by, nothing important.”

  “And then he called you and said he’d found out something?”

  “A
fter thinking about it all day.”

  “Was he alone at home when he called?”

  “Until he was joined by his murderer later in the evening.”

  “Did he make any phone calls?”

  There was a brief silence.

  “I’d like to see his phone records,” Stone said.

  “He had that caller ID thing,” Rawls replied.

  “Then there might be a log of the calls he received.”

  “Yeah, but not the calls he made.”

  “Can we get into the house?”

  “I’ve got a key, and Harley and I are his executors. Fifteen minutes?”

  “See you there.” Stone hung up.

  RAWLS WAS ALREADY at Don Brown’s house when Stone arrived. He let them into the house, and they went into Brown’s den.

  “Here we go,” Stone said. The phone was a Japanese-made combination of answering machine and cordless phone with other features. Stone looked at the buttons carefully, pressed a couple, then a number appeared on the little screen. “Looks like he received only one call.” It was an 800 number.

  “That’s an Agency WATS line,” Rawls said. “It’s unpublished, of course, but it’s one of the lines that Agency people can call in on from outside or, of course, receive calls from.”

  “Any way to tell who called?” Stone asked.

  Rawls shook his head. “Nope. Anybody with an extension from the main switchboard can pick up a phone, dial a number and get a dial tone, then call anywhere in the world.”

  “There must be an internal record of which extension used the WATS line,” Stone said.

  “I expect there would be.”

  “Do you have any way of checking on it?”

  “The best way would be through Lance; he’s active, and most of my friends are retired.”

  “I’ll call him,” Stone said.

  “You can use this phone.”

  Stone dialed Lance’s cell number.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Stone. Bad news from up here.”

  “Don Brown? I heard. This is not a good development.”

  “Lance, Don received a call from Langley in the late afternoon on the day of his death. Whoever called used an Agency WATS line. Can you find out who made the call?”