Double Jeopardy

7

Stone dialed the Dark Harbor Shop, on Islesboro.

“Billy speaking.”

“Billy, it’s Stone.”

“Stone, I got word from Joan your paperwork and funds are en route. We’ll close at ten on Friday morning.”

“That’s fine, Billy, but I called about something else.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“You don’t know what that is.”

“Let me guess: you’ve run out of options on influencing the parole board. But now it has occurred to you that two of the women raped and murdered by the Stone twins were among our summer people. Now you want to involve me in that. Well, I don’t have anything to testify about, so I’m not going to testify about it.”

“I don’t want you to testify, Billy.”

“You don’t?”

“You don’t have any knowledge of those events.”

“Only what I hear, and I hear a lot. What is it you want?”

“Do you believe that the Stone twins raped and murdered those two women?”

“With all my heart and soul, which is to say, none of that would be useful to the board.”

“I understand that. That’s why—”

“Wait a minute, I think I know what’s on your mind.”

“Do you want to tell me, or the other way around?”

“Those two women had husbands and children.”

“Right.”

“You want the husbands to testify that they believe that the twins murdered their wives.”

“Something like that.”

“Let me tell you why they’ll never do that.”

“All right, tell me.”

“The husband of the first victim has remarried, and his kids are too young to remember anything about their mother’s death.”

“You can stop right there,” Stone said. “What about the other husband? Has he remarried?”

“No, but he’s engaged to a woman who is a lot richer than he is, and his kids are old enough to remember their mother and how she died. He’s not going to want to fuck up his life or theirs.”

“Got it,” Stone said.

“There’s another reason why nobody would testify, even if they had certain knowledge of the events.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t know if you remember, but a gossip rag got ahold of the murder-scene photographs, and they were, shall we say, graphic.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well, everybody else on this island does. And nobody wants to end up posing for pictures like that.”

Stone sighed. “Well, I guess I can’t argue with them.”

“No, you can’t. And you ought to give some thought to what’s going to happen when the Stone boys learn who bought their family house out from under them.”

“I’ve taken precautions. The buyer is a Delaware corporation, and they can’t penetrate that.”

“Well, that’s exactly what I’m going to tell them, when they get around to asking. And they will.”

“Good idea, Billy.”

“I expect you know that I keep a forty-five automatic stashed under my cash register.”

“Everybody knows that, Billy.”

“Well, I’ve added a sawed-off shotgun to my little armory, and I don’t care who knows it.”

“I’ll be sure and mention that to the twins, when they come to see me.”

“Just you remember that those boys are wicked clever, with the emphasis on ‘wicked.’ And you might not see them coming.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“My story is that the buyers are a family from down south, and they don’t know anybody here. The only person I’ve talked to about the house is a lawyer from Savannah, and he doesn’t know who they are either, just that they like their privacy.”

“That sounds good to me.”

“Are you coming up here to close the sale, Stone?”

“No, Ed Rawls will stand in for me. He can sign everything, then I’ll release the funds.”

“Good, I hope it works. Is that all, Stone?”

“That’s all, Billy.”

Billy hung up.

Stone checked off the boxes in his brain. He was all out of options.