by Stuart Woods
“Not yet. I learned from the DDO’s office that they were house shopping in Georgetown, but they hadn’t found anything yet.”
“How long had they been back in Washington?”
“Less than a week. They sold the house in London, apparently.”
“I guess that means this house was Dick’s only residence, so I can go to the local probate court. Mabel, what’s the name of this county?”
“Waldo.”
“And what’s the county seat?”
“Belfast, up the coast.”
“How long a drive?”
“From Lincolnville, half an hour, forty-five minutes.”
“Thanks. I guess I’ll go up there first thing tomorrow.”
A lunch of shrimp and rice was served, and everyone ate quietly until Mabel left the room.
“What did you learn from Seth this morning?” Lance asked.
“The two women were sleeping in Esme’s room and took two shots in the head, each. Dick was sitting at his desk downstairs and suffered a contact wound to the left temple.”
“Dick was right-handed,” Lance said.
“You’re sure?”
“I worked for him for four years.”
“Seth said that he had a very small pistol with a silencer in his hand when he was found.”
“Sounds like a Keltec .380; it’s one of a number of handguns issued by Agency technical services.”
“Do you have any insight into Dick’s state of mind the past few weeks?”
“I spoke to his deputy, who’s replacing him in London. He said Dick was his usual cheerful self, and he was excited about the new job. He said that he’d had a farewell dinner with Dick and Barbara the night before they left London, and they were in great form.”
Dino spoke up. “Is anybody ready to say this wasn’t a murder-suicide yet?”
“Let’s talk to the trooper first,” Stone said.
AFTER LUNCH THEY went into the study. Lance pointed at a door near Dick’s desk, which sported a dead-bolt lock. “I think I know what that is,” he said. “Let’s find a key.”
Stone fished Dick’s keys out of his pocket and found one that fit the lock. He opened the door to find what appeared to be a small office, containing a computer, a large fax machine and an odd-looking telephone, along with a filing cabinet. “This is strange,” Stone said.
“No, it isn’t. Dick spent a month or so here every year, and this is Agency equipment. The computer is linked to the Agency mainframe, and the phone and fax are scrambled.”
“I take it you know how to use such a computer?”
“Ida”
“Do you think you could get me some background on Caleb Stone?”
Lance sat down at the computer. “Sure.”
“I’d particularly like a credit report and any other financial information you can dig up. Also, any criminal record.”
“Give me a couple of minutes,” Lance said, switching on the machine. He picked up the scrambled phone and dialed a number. “Give me your supervisor,” he said. “This is Lance Cabot. I’m authorized by the DDO to conduct an investigation into the death of Richard Stone; that office will confirm. I’m at Stone’s Maine residence now, using his scrambled phone and his computer. I want to use my own access card in the computer. Thank you.” Lance hung up. “It’ll be a few minutes while the necessary checks and setup are done.”
“Let’s lock up this room, then; the trooper will be here soon, and I doubt if you want him looking in here.” He locked the room, and they sat down to wait.
“This is a beautiful house, Stone,” Holly said. “You’re lucky to have it.”
“I haven’t gotten used to the idea yet,” Stone replied. “It’s all very strange. Most of my mother’s and father’s families haven’t spoken to them since long before I was born, and yet I’ve inherited two houses from my mother’s side of the family. The Turtle Bay town house came from my great aunt, who took an interest in me. She also gave my father his first large commission: the cabinet work and much of the furniture for the house. And now there’s this place. The strange thing is, if I’d built it myself it would be exactly as it is. The whole thing is spooky.”
The doorbell rang, and Mabel answered it. A moment later, she showed a uniformed sergeant of the Maine State Police into the study. Stone introduced himself and the others.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Barrington?”
“I am Richard Stone’s first cousin, his attorney, and the executor of his will. I’d like to know as much as possible about the circumstances of his death.”
“The local constable called my office in Belfast two days ago and said that the caretaker here had found the owner and his wife and daughter dead in the house, apparently shot. I and a crime-scene investigator choppered over here, and when we got to the house we found the wife and daughter in the same bed upstairs with two bullets in each of their heads. We found Mr. Stone’s body at the desk with a wound to the head and a small pistol in his hand.
“We fingerprinted the corpses and had them removed to the Belfast morgue for postmortem examination. We dusted the study and the upstairs bedroom and found only the fingerprints of the occupants and the housekeeper. There were no fingerprints of any other person in the house. The place was locked, and there was no sign of an intruder.
“In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I judged the circumstances to be murder-suicide, possibly while the mind of the perpetrator was disturbed. I removed the weapon to our offices for ballistic comparison with the bullets removed from the bodies.”
“I notice that the bullet that killed Mr. Stone passed through his head and lodged in the desk.”
“Yes, we were able to extricate that. It will be of less use than the ones removed from the two women, but I think that my preliminary conclusion will be confirmed: that the weapon in Mr. Stone’s hand was both the murder and suicide weapon.”
“Did you investigate Mr. Stone’s state of mind?”
“I interviewed the caretaker and his wife, and they maintained that he seemed normal at dinner the night before.”
“Did you determine the time of death?”
“The medical examiner has put it somewhere between midnight and four a.m. By the way, an inquest will be held tomorrow at eleven a.m. in the Belfast courthouse. You’re welcome to attend, if you like.”
“Thank you. What will be your recommendation at the inquest?”
“Death by murder and suicide.”
“I should tell you that our investigations”—Stone indicated the other people in the room—“have determined that Richard Stone was of sound mind and cheerful disposition and that he was excited and happy about his appointment to a new, high position by his employers.”
“And you consider yourselves investigators?” the sergeant asked.
“A reasonable question. I am a retired officer of the New York Police Department, where I spent eleven years as a detective, specializing in homicides. Lieutenant Bacchetti, here, commands the detective squad at the Nineteenth Precinct of the NYPD, and Ms. Barker is a retired military police officer and chief of police in the state of Florida.” He didn’t mention Lance.
“Well, that’s all very impressive,” the sergeant said. “I’m interested to know what you’ve learned about Mr. Stone’s state of mind, but do you have any other evidence that this was anything but a murder-suicide?”
“Take a look at this,” Stone said, beckoning the trooper to the desk. He took a pencil from a coffee mug on the desk and placed it in the hole left by the bullet. “Note that the angle of the bullet’s trajectory was only about twenty degrees off the vertical. I think that might indicate someone standing over Mr. Stone and firing a bullet into his head. Also, in your scenario, he would have fired with his left hand, and he was right-handed.”
“My crime-scene investigator, an experienced man, concluded that Mr. Stone laid his head on the desk before firing the fatal shot. That would account for the angle. I didn’t know he was r
ight-handed, but there was nothing to prevent him using his left hand.”
“Our consensus, based on Mr. Cabot’s investigation into Mr. Stone’s state of mind in the days and weeks before his death, is that an unknown person shot him in the head with a silenced pistol, then went upstairs and shot his wife and daughter.”
“You’re entitled to your theory, Mr. Barrington, but my investigation has not found any reason to believe that any person on this island had a motive to kill this family. I should point out that they resided in London for many years and they came into contact with the locals only for a few weeks a year and that no one knows of any local who had any animosity toward the family. Indeed, they were very popular summer residents. Also, my investigation revealed that no summer residents had yet arrived on the island at the time of the deaths. Mr. Stone’s brother and his family arrived only yesterday—we have the ferry operator’s testimony for that—and only one aircraft was parked at the airstrip, that belonging to a local. The people who live nearest the strip tell us that no aircraft landed or took off on the day or the day before the deaths. It’s a small island; people pay attention to who comes and goes.”
“Did you take any photographs of the crime scene?” Stone asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t bring them with me. If you come to the inquest, I’d be glad to show them to you, and the gun, as well.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. I appreciate your taking the time to come to the island to brief us. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The trooper handed Stone an envelope. “Here’s the original of the death certificate,” he said. “You’ll need it to file the will for probate.”
They shook hands, and the trooper left.
Stone turned to the group with a questioning look.
“The sergeant has some good points,” Dino said. “He did his job.”
“He didn’t spend much time on state of mind,” Stone said.
“I wouldn’t have spent much more time on that, in the circumstances,” Dino said.
Holly spoke up. “You didn’t mention to the trooper that Caleb Stone had been disinherited by Dick. That’s motive.”
“Not really. It would be motive if Caleb had known that he was about to be disinherited, but there is no indication of that. Caleb was very surprised to learn that Dick had made a new will. I’d be surprised to learn that they’d even communicated in recent months.”
“I can check Caleb’s home and office phone records, as well as Dick’s,” Lance said.
“Yes,” Stone said, “I would like you to do that. Maybe you’d better get started.”
Chapter 6
LANCE WENT TO WORK on Dick Stone’s Agency computer while Stone called his office.
“The Barrington Practice,” Joan said.
“Hi, it’s me. What’s up?”
“I trust you were met at the airport?”
“Yes, and we’re comfortably ensconced in the house. There are three phone lines, one for the fax.” He gave her all of them.
“How long will you be there?”
“I’m not sure; there’s a lot to do. There’s the inquest tomorrow morning, and I have to file the will for probate.”
“I take it you’re now the proud owner of a Maine house?”
“In a manner of speaking. I can’t seem to get used to the idea.”
“Oh, by the way, for your information, the three witnesses who signed the will, besides Seth Hotchkiss, were the pilot, copilot and flight attendant on the private jet that delivered the Stone family to Rockport the day before they died. Apparently, they were considering buying into some sort of fractional jet program, and the trip from D.C. to Rockport was a sort of test run.”
“Good to know.”
“There’s no interesting mail. Can I reach you at this number?”
“For all of today; tomorrow morning, try the cell. I’ll talk to you sometime tomorrow.
“Bye-bye.”
Stone hung up and turned to Lance in the little office. The printer was spitting out sheets of paper. “What are you learning?” he asked.
Lance picked up the papers and consulted them. “Our boy, Caleb, is married to the former Vivian Smith; two sons, Eben and Enos, who share a birthday. Caleb graduated Yale and Yale Law in the bottom half of both classes; he is employed by the Boston law firm of Marsh, Andrews, Fields and Schwartz. Note his name is not on the letterhead. He’s been with the firm since law school but took twelve years to make partner. He heads their estate planning division, and given the number of the firm’s employees, I’m inclined to think he is the firm’s estate planning division.
“He belongs to a couple of good clubs, lives in a respectable suburb of Boston, summers here, and from his tax returns and credit report, it appears that he lives at the very limit of his income while still managing to pay his bills on time. I think he will be very relieved when his boys finish Yale next year.”
“Any criminal record?”
“None. He appears to have trod the straight and narrow his whole life long.”
“If he’s as financially strapped as you say he is, he must have been very disappointed, indeed, when he read Dick’s will.”
“No doubt. I expect he’s reassessing his retirement plans as we speak. One good thing: Since he now has no hope of ever seeing Dick’s and Barbara’s money, he has no motive to kill you.”
“Yes, well…”
“Caleb has led the most boring of all lives, I expect,” Lance said. “One of quiet desperation, as the saying goes. I hope his family loves him, because it seems to me that’s about his only comfort.”
“My experience of him is that he’s not an easy fellow to love,” Stone said.
Seth Hotchkiss came into the room. “Anything I can do for anybody?”
“Seth,” Stone said, “let’s you and I have a talk.” Stone led the caretaker outside, and they took seats on teak furniture on the stone patio. The sun was pleasantly warm, though Stone knew that by nightfall there would be a chill in the air. After all, it was only June in Maine.
“What can I do for you, Stone?”
“Tell me what Dick’s and Caleb’s relationship was like.”
“Well, you remember what it was like when they were boys?”
“Yes.”
“It was pretty much like that, except that Dick seemed to do better in life than Caleb, had a better job and a nicer wife. Dick was able to build this house, while Caleb had to be content with propping up the old family place. Funny, I would have stayed on there out of loyalty, but Caleb fired me a week after his parents died in that car crash. Dick hired me the same day, and I’ve been very happy ever since.”
“Caleb inherited the house?”
“They both did, but Dick signed his half over to Caleb, said to me he didn’t want any part of it; the place was filled with unhappy memories for him.”
“Why did he stay on the island?”
“Oh, he loved the island, he just didn’t love the old house. I think he took some pleasure in sticking Caleb with it.”
“Have you ever heard Caleb express any animosity toward Dick?”
“Caleb’s whole attitude toward most everybody is animosity, I guess. He was nice to those folks he had to get along with, which were most of the summer people. After all, he wanted the yacht club and the golf club, so he was nice to the members. The year-rounders hated him pretty good; he had trouble keeping help and all that. When he wanted a new roof, he had to go to somebody on the mainland, which cost him more money. He puts away the booze pretty good, and so does his wife.”
“How did the locals feel about Dick and his family?”
“Oh, Dick was a sweetheart, and everybody knew it. Barbara and Esme, too. If Mabel and I weren’t doing this job, folks would be lined up to get it.”
“I expect there’s a pretty good grapevine on the island among the locals?”
“There is.”
“I’d like to know what you hear on it.”
“Folks are real interested in
you, Stone.”
“Well, I don’t have any secrets, so feel free to talk. In particular, you might let it be known that I’m not very happy with the murder/suicide theory held by your state trooper.”
“Me, neither,” Seth said, “and nobody who knew Dick is going to put much stock in it. Folks start arriving tomorrow, and they’ll have seen about it in the Boston papers, so there’ll be a lot of curiosity.”
“Well, let’s not starve them for information, but don’t give anybody the impression that I think Caleb is in any way responsible. He and his family hadn’t even arrived on the island at the time, so let’s not hang it around his neck.” Then they got up and went back into the house.