Double Jeopardy

55

Stone finally couldn’t stand it anymore. Primmy and Carly were gone and unreachable. Ed Rawls couldn’t be phoned. And Viv wasn’t speaking to him.

“Dino,” he said finally, “I’m going to take a look around the island. You want to come along?”

Dino opened his mouth to speak, but Viv spoke first. “Dino,” she said, “I’d feel safer if you would stay here with me.”

There must have been something in her voice that Dino could hear, but he was deaf to, Stone decided. “Oh, the hell with them,” Stone muttered to himself.

“What was that you said?” Viv asked.

“Never mind, I was just talking to myself.”

“Why don’t you just calm down, sit down, and read a book.”

“Dino,” Stone said. “Do you have any idea what’s going on here?”

Dino looked at him dolefully, then put a finger to his lips.

Stone got his shoulder holster and pistol from Dick Stone’s little office, put them on and grabbed some ammunition magazines, and shoved them into his bush jacket pocket. He struggled into that and walked across the living room toward the front door. “Good afternoon to you,” he said putting on a straw hat to keep the sun off.

“Bye,” Viv replied. Dino said nothing, apparently having been switched off by Viv.

Stone walked into the garage and found it empty. He remembered that Seth had gone into Camden for something and had taken the station wagon, but the MG was gone, too. Primmy’s car was apparently at her house, so he was stranded.

Then Stone remembered that he had legs and that there were feet attached to them. He started walking.

It took him twenty minutes to get to the village and the store. He looked inside and saw Billy seated at his desk, as usual; otherwise, the store was empty.

“Hey, Stone,” Billy said.

“Any word on the cell service?”

“I got a call on the landline saying that the repairmen were on the way from Augusta, then the landline went down. I don’t know why.”

“Will you do me a favor, Billy?”

“Sure.”

“Call me on my cell when the service is restored?”

“Sure, glad to, Stone.”

Stone continued up the road toward Ed Rawls’s house.

A few minutes earlier, Sally had come out onto the porch where Ed Rawls was reading the papers. “The girls are on the move,” she said.

“Okay, thanks.” Ed got up, went inside, got into his shooting vest, and stuffed magazines into his pockets. He mounted the scope to his rifle and attached a shoulder strap, then he went into a closet and got out the pair of strap-on lineman’s blades, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and took his binoculars to the window and surveyed the twins’ property. All was quiet, and so was the Jackson property.

“Ed, I don’t often say this to you,” Sally said, “but you need to be extra careful today. It’s going to be dangerous out there.”

“I know it,” Ed said. He put on his floppy, cotton khaki hunting hat and let himself out the door facing the dock. He turned right and went around the side of the house facing away from the twins’ place, then walked to the back corner. He took out a hand mirror from one of the vest’s many pockets and held it around the corner, getting a fix on the upstairs wraparound porch, and watched for signs of movement. Nothing.

Across the road, in the Jackson house, Primmy and Carly sat silently in the upstairs bedroom. Primmy looked at her watch. “It’s time,” she said.

“Okay,” Carly replied, getting to her feet.

“Any second thoughts?” Primmy asked.

“I don’t think so,” Carly said. “I’m committed.”

“Me, too,”

The girls leaned Primmy’s shotgun against the doorjamb, along with their handguns, then walked out onto the upstairs front porch. “Don’t look at the twins’ house,” Primmy said, “not even for a second.”

“Right,” Carly replied.

“Ready?”

“Ready,” Carly replied.

“Slowly,” Primmy said. “There’s no hurry.

The two women began removing their clothing.

Rawls checked his wristwatch, then got onto his belly and began crawling through the high grass behind his house. On his elbows and knees, he worked his way slowly to the side of the road. He looked across at the Jackson house and couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but he knew it was real, so he kept at it. He used his binoculars to survey the twins’ house, then stood up into a crouch, then ran across the road and dived into the grass on the other side. He crawled a few more feet to a large tree, then got behind it before he could be seen.

Ed was momentarily transfixed by the sight of the two women on the upper porch, stark naked and, apparently, doing stretching exercises.

Ed took a long strap from a pocket, handed it around the tree, fastened it to his belt, and started climbing the tree, using his gloved hands and the barbs strapped to his ankles.

Stone trudged on up the road toward Rawls’s house. Then he came around a corner and caught a glimpse of what appeared to be naked flesh on the upstairs porch of the Jackson house. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing, so he ran across the road and continued slowly toward the house. A little winded from his exertions, Stone leaned against a tree and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. Then he heard a voice.

“Stone, don’t move. Freeze right there!” said the voice in a loud whisper.

It took Stone a moment to realize that the voice was Rawls’s. “Ed?” he whispered back.

“Shut up, and stay on the side of the tree away from the twins’ house.”

Stone froze for a moment. “Where are you?” he whispered.

“In a deer blind,” Rawls whispered back. “In the tree above your head.”

Stone looked up. “What are the girls doing on that porch?” Stone asked.

“Sun bathing,” Rawls said. “Now shut up, or they’ll hear you and ruin everything.”