by Stuart Woods
Seth shrugged. “Nobody that I can think of. Dick was very strict about not giving a key to anybody but family. Caleb has one.”
“He returned it to me awhile back,” Stone said.
“Then just me and Mabel.”
“No repairmen, workmen, maybe the contractor who built the house?”
“Nope. After the locks were installed, I always had to be here to open the door for anybody who came to fix anything. I fix most things myself.”
“Any questions, Sergeant?”
“What have you had to have fixed by somebody else?”
“That Viking stove in the kitchen needed some adjustment once. Mabel let the fellow in and stayed with him while he did it. The installer of the TV and audio stuff made several trips, but I was always with him.”
“Nobody else?”
“Not that I can think of.”
“What about regular maintenance? Furnace, air conditioning?”
“I clean or replace the filters myself; I know how to light the pilot light.”
“Plumber? Electrician?”
“I do that stuff.”
“That’s all I’ve got,” Young said.
“Thanks, Seth. Oh, you should know that somebody got into the house last night and stole Dick’s safe out of the cabinet.”
Seth looked dumbfounded.
“I’ll tell you about it later.”
Seth left the room, and Stone heard the back door close.
Holly came back from her run and entered the study. “You two guys don’t look too happy,” she said.
“Good guess,” Stone replied.
Chapter 37
STONE AND HOLLY had lunch on the rear terrace, enjoying the sun, and as Mabel was taking away the dishes the doorbell rang. Dick Stone had installed an outside bell, apparently for occasions like this.
Stone went to the door and found the remaining three Old Farts standing there.
“Good afternoon,” Rawls said. “We disturbing you, Stone?”
“No, gentlemen, come in,” Stone replied, waving them inside. “We’re sitting out on the terrace.”
Stone led them out onto the terrace. “Holly Barker, this is Ed Rawls, Harley Davis and Mack Morris.”
“How do you do, gentlemen?” she asked.
They all muttered greetings.
“Stone, forgive me,” Rawls said, “but we need to speak to you alone.”
“Relax, Ed,” Stone said. “Holly is one of you; she works for Lance Cabot.”
Ed’s eyebrows went up. “Oh?”
“Yes, and she’s helping me with our, ah, situation. Anything you can say to me, you can say to her.”
The three men sat down around the table.
“Can I get anybody anything? A sandwich? A beer?”
“Maybe later,” Rawls said.
“What’s up, Ed?”
“We’ve been over and over this thing, and we’ve come to some conclusions.”
“I’m all ears,” Stone said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table.“
“First of all, we think we’re dealing with two different people,” Harley said.
“How so?”
“We think one person killed Dick Stone and his family and another, unconnected person killed Janey Harris.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” Stone said. “Do you have any ideas about who either of them is?”
Rawls spoke up. “Stone, I hope you’ll take this as reluctantly offered.”
“All right”
“We think Dick and his family were killed by Caleb Stone.”
Stone looked at the three men: They all looked dead serious.
“Tell me your reasons.”
“Money,” Mack said. “Dick’s wife’s money.”
“Money is always a good motive,” Stone agreed.
“Until Dick changed his will, we suspect that Caleb was his heir. Caleb’s never had a lot of money, and he has a reputation for living close to the line. He’s got two sons who’ve been educated expensively, a house in Boston and one here to run. He’s into his middle years with no hope of making much more than he is now.”
“All that seems to be true,” Stone said.
“And we guess he has a key to this house.”
“He doesn’t anymore; he gave it back to me.”
“After Dick and his family were dead?”
“That’s true.”
“He probably knows the security system code, too, unless Dick changed it,” Mack said.
Holly spoke up. “These are all good points, Stone.”
“Yes, they are. I’ll find out whether the security system code has been changed.”
“Why don’t you see if you can find out what was in Dick’s old will?” Harley asked.
“I suppose I can ask Caleb for it, but he’s under no obligation to give it to me.”
“Maybe you could ask him what caused Dick to change his will,” Rawls said. “Obviously, there was some sort of incident, some family breach for Dick to do such a precipitous thing. We’ve done some asking around on our own, but we haven’t been able to find out a thing. We suppose that it was something private, personal between the two brothers.”
“Again, I can ask, but I have no reason to believe Caleb would tell me.”
“It’s worth a try,” Rawls said.
“What about Janey?” Stone asked. “Why do you think her killer is a different person?”
“The crimes are very different,” Rawls said. “There was no sexual crime in the deaths of Barbara and Esme, and they were all simply executed, two of them in their bed. We think Janey’s murder was one of opportunity, and the murderer was your garden-variety rapist-killer. You can find those anywhere, and our guess is that, eventually, Sergeant Young is going to figure out who this one is.”
Harley spoke up. “We think Janey knew her killer and that she wrote something about him in her diary; that’s why it was stolen.”
“What about Don Brown? Who do you think killed him?”
Rawls looked uncomfortable. “We think it could be either the Stones’ killer or Janey’s. I’ll admit, we’re on shakier ground here, but we think the Stones’ killer is the more likely suspect, and that’s Caleb.”
“Frankly, Ed, I think your original idea of Don’s being killed because Janey had told him something is the better theory, and the theft of her diary supports that.”
“Yeah, that’s good,” Rawls replied, “but we have the similarities of the Stones and Don being killed under similar circumstances: I’m talking about being shot with their own guns and the vacuum cleaner being left by the door. There’s nothing to connect Janey’s killer with Don’s.”
“Something else has come up,” Stone said. He told them about the entry into Dick’s house the night before and the theft of the safe. “So another girl’s diary has been stolen, and the vacuum cleaner was left by the door, as when the family was murdered. That’s a connection.”
“But how did your burglar know the diary was in the safe?” Rawls asked. “For that matter, how did he know that Esme even kept a diary?”
“As to the diary, I think the killer could have supposed that most or all teenaged girls keep diaries, and he had to find both of them, if they existed, in order to protect himself.”
“But how did he know it was in the safe?” Harley asked.
Stone shrugged. “Because he’d looked everywhere else in the house, and the safe was the only place left?”
“Maybe,” Rawls said. “But I think we should concentrate on Caleb for the time being.”
Holly spoke up. “The state police have verified that Caleb was in Boston when the Stone family was murdered. How do we get around a solid alibi?”
“Maybe it isn’t as solid as they think,” Rawls said.
“These killings are like a crossword puzzle,” Stone said. “You think you know the answer to both the across clue and the down clue. They both seem solid, but when you write them both down, they don’t match in the midd
le. When that happens, it means that one of the words is wrong. Maybe both of them.”
“Are you still thinking about Kirov and the Agency connection?” Rawls asked.
“Well, it’s still on the table, though I think it’s not as strong a possibility as it once was. It looked pretty good when it was all we had.”
“Look,” Rawls said, “let’s pull out all the stops with Caleb: Look again at his alibi, check his finances, look at the old will, the works. If he doesn’t pan out, then we can turn our attentions elsewhere.”
“All right,” Stone said. “You work your end, and I’ll work mine, and Holly can work whichever end appeals to her.”
“Okay,” Rawls said. The Old Farts got up and shuffled out.
Stone went to the phone and called Caleb Stone.
“Good afternoon, Stone,” Caleb said amiably.
“Caleb, can I buy you lunch at the yacht club tomorrow?”
“Sure, but we should be there by twelve o’clock; it gets crowded.”
“Fine, twelve o’clock. And Caleb, if you have a copy of Dick’s previous will handy, will you bring it?”
“I don’t have one here, but I’ll call my office and have them FedEx it to me. It should be here by lunchtime.”
“Thanks, Caleb. See you at noon tomorrow.”
Chapter 38
STONE ARRIVED AT the yacht club promptly at noon to find Caleb already there. A FedEx envelope was on the table. Caleb shook his hand.
“I’ve already placed an order for two burgers and fries. I hope that’s okay,” Caleb said. “The kids gang up on the kitchen around this time, and we could wait half an hour if we don’t get our order in early.”
“Great.”
“You want a beer?”
“Sure.” Caleb retrieved two beers from the counter and set them on the table. He tore open the FedEx package and removed a blue-bound document, scanned it quickly and handed it to Stone. “That’s the previous will, which was superceded by the one you gave me.”
“Thanks, Caleb.” Stone tucked it into his pocket.
“The substance of it was that he left all his assets to Barbara and she to him. If she predeceased him, then everything would go to Esme in trust, until she was thirty, with me as the sole trustee. If they died together, say, in a car crash—or as they did die—then everything would come to me.”
“I understand,” Stone said. Their burgers arrived, and they began to eat. “Caleb, I know you’ve already been through this with the state police, but I’d like to go through the time line with you. Until all this is substantiated, they’ll still consider you a suspect, but I’d like to do what I can to eliminate you as such.”
“I’m a suspect?”
“Everybody on this island is a suspect until eliminated by an alibi, and the police are trained to always start with family. This whole thing is baffling to the police and to me, and the only way they can clear the case is to start with everybody and narrow it down.”
“I understand. Do I need a lawyer?”
“No, I’m not a policeman; I’m just doing what I can to help.”
“All right, ask me anything you like.”
“Let’s talk about the day before the night of the murders. Can you give me an account of your day and evening?” Stone took out a notebook and opened it. This was a common cop technique with suspects: If they knew everything was being written down, it concentrated their minds on getting it right.
“It was a normal day. I was at the office by eight-thirty a.m., as usual. I worked through the morning, ordered in a sandwich, ate lunch at my desk, then worked until six-thirty. I had a lot of dictation, letters involving several estates. My wife came to the office at six-thirty, and we had a drink. Then, at seven, we went to a retirement dinner at the Ritz-Carlton for Alden Hayes, head of our litigation department. It was Alden’s last day; he was retiring to Florida. We got home around ten, watched a program on television, then the eleven o’clock news. We were asleep by eleven-forty-five.”
“Who else was in the house?”
“Only the twins; we don’t have any live-in help. The boys had gone out to dinner and come home late.”
Stone noted all the times. “Tell me about the following day.”
“I had breakfast with my wife; the boys were still asleep. I was at my desk by eight-thirty. Shortly after that I got a call from Seth Hotchkiss, telling me what had happened. We had planned to leave at noon that day for Islesboro; I called home, gave the family the news and told them to get ready for an immediate departure. We were on the road by ten-thirty, in two cars. My wife and I drove the Suburban, and the boys followed us in their car.”
“What kind of car do the boys drive?”
“A BMW convertible. One of the nice things about having twins is that they don’t mind sharing.”
“What time did you arrive on the island?”
“We came over on the three o’clock ferry, so we would have landed at three-twenty, and fifteen minutes later we were at home. I went over to Dick’s house and talked with the state police, who were still there.”
“Were the bodies still in the house then?”
“No. Thank God, I didn’t have to see that.”
“You still had the key to Dick’s house at that moment?”
“Yes, the one I gave to you later.”
“Where was the key?”
“It was in a little key cupboard in the butler’s pantry. There are so many keys in our lives these days, I keep the spares there, all labeled.”
“Did you have the security alarm code?”
“Yes. The key wouldn’t have been much use without it.”
“Do you know if Dick set the alarm at bedtime, as a matter of habit?”
“No, I don’t. I think Dick probably had the alarm installed to use when he wasn’t on the island, but I don’t think he would have used it every day. He mentioned to me when he was building the house that, with Seth and Mabel living on the property, he wouldn’t have bothered with the security system, except that the State Department insisted.”
“Did you know much about Dick’s work?”
“Not really. When it came up in conversation I got the impression that it was pretty unremarkable diplomatic work.”
“Did you know that he didn’t work for the State Department?”
“But he did,” Caleb said. “His degree was in international relations, and he took the foreign service exam before graduation, then went to work at State shortly after that”
Stone shook his head. “That was a cover. Dick was a career CIA officer.”
Caleb appeared dumbfounded. “Are you certain about that?”
“Perfectly. Operations people at the Agency commonly have diplomatic cover.”
“But when he was still in this country and I called him at work, it was through the State Department switchboard.”
“It may have sounded that way, or State could have rerouted the call to Langley.”
“You’re saying that my brother was a spy?”
“He was a high-ranking officer in the Operations Division of the CIA. I don’t know how much actual spying he did. At the time of his death he had been promoted to Deputy Director, Operations, but he hadn’t started the job yet.”
“I knew he was coming back to Washington, but I thought it was as an Assistant Secretary of State.”
Stone shook his head. “That job is a key position at the Agency, one of the top three.”
“Well, I’m glad Dick did well at his work,” Caleb said.
“From what I know, he was highly regarded.” They had finished their burgers now, and Stone had most of what was needed. “Just one more thing, Caleb.”
“What’s that?”
“When did you last see Dick?”
“He came to the house for drinks after his return from London. He was on the way to Washington. That was a week or so before his death.”
“Did you spend any time alone with him?”
“A few minutes.” Ca
leb looked over Stone’s shoulder toward the water; he seemed to be remembering the occasion.
“What did you talk about?”