STONE WAS STANDING in front of the house with his golf clubs when Ed Rawls pulled into the driveway in a shiny, new Range Rover. Stone put his clubs in the back and got into the passenger seat. “Morning.”
“Good morning,” Rawls said. “Looks like we’ve got a good day for it.”
“Yep.”
“I had a call from Lance Cabot last night. We had a nice chat, and he offered me any support I might need in helping you with the Stone murders.”
“That’s good. Take him up on it.”
“He gave me a name at Langley as a liaison. I talked with her this morning, and she’s running down some things for me.”
“You want to tell me about the things?”
“Nah, it would take too long, and it wouldn’t help you. The information she gets might help, though, and I’ll tell you about that when I get it.”
“Okay.”
They drove through Dark Harbor and out to the golf course, where they unloaded their clubs. There was a wait while a foursome teed off before them.
“Let’s give them a good head start,” Rawls said. He looked down at Stone’s loafers. “What kind of golf shoes are those?”
“Oh, Dick’s were too small, and I didn’t have any of my own. I’ll have to send for some, I guess.”
Stone looked around; there were no carts. “We going to walk?” he asked.
“Oh, sure; it’s how I get my exercise.”
They teed off, and Rawls set a rapid pace down the fairway. Stone followed as best he could, but his loafers were not built for this.
TWO HOURS LATER they sat at a table at the Tarrantine Yacht Club, which was a modest building with a big dock and a lot of moorings, waiting for cheeseburgers. Stone took off his ruined loafers, which were soaking wet after a few tramps through the rough, and rubbed his feet.
“You gotta get some better shoes,” Rawls said, sipping his Coke.
“Tell me about it.” He had to replace the loafers, too. It had been an expensive round of golf.
“What did you shoot, finally?” Rawls asked.
“Don’t ask.”
“How’m I going to play you for money, if you won’t tell me your score?”
“All right, I shot a fifty-two. How about you?”
“Forty, a little off my handicap.”
“Which is…?”
“Six.”
“Jesus, Ed, how the hell are you playing to that kind of handicap at your age?”
“I practice a lot. There’s fuck-all else to do around here, if you don’t sail or play tennis. What’s your handicap?”
“I don’t know, probably around twenty-five.”
“You need to practice more.”
“Well, if I spend enough time up here, I might do that. Golf is tough when you live in the city. I have a place in Connecticut, and I belong to a club there, but I don’t get up there often enough.”
“You going to be spending any time around here?”
“Maybe. Dick left me his house.”
“No kidding? That’s a very tidy inheritance. You know what that place is worth?”
“I get to use it, and so do my heirs, but if it’s sold, the proceeds go to the Samuel Bernard Foundation.”
“You know what that is?”
“Yes. Bernard was a mentor of mine in law school.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t recruit you.”
“He tried to, but I didn’t know it at the time. It was many years later he told me he thought I might not have been suited for the life. Lance signed me as a consultant, though.”
“That speaks well of you; Lance is a good judge of talent.”
Stone shrugged.
“Well, if you’re going to be spending some time here, we’d better get you in the yacht club and the golf club. I’ll work with you, and we’ll bring your handicap down.” Rawls raised a hand and waved over two men who were standing in line for hamburgers. He introduced both men.
“I hear you’re Dick Stone’s cousin,” one of them said.
“That’s right.”
“How does that work? I thought I knew all of Dick’s family.”
“His father and my mother were brother and sister. I grew up in New York.”
“This your first time in Islesboro?” the other asked.
“No, I spent a summer up here with Dick’s family when I was eighteen.”
“Hey, I remember you,” the man said, laughing. “You’re the kid who knocked Caleb Stone on his ass.”
“I remember that, too,” the other man said. “It was the talk of the club for a week. Why did you never come back?”
“Caleb’s mother didn’t take the news as well as everybody else did. After that, I was persona non grata.”
“Welcome back,” the man said, then they excused themselves and went to get their food.
“Well done,” Rawls said.
“Well done what?”
“The tall guy was the commodore, and the other was the chairman of the membership committee. The commodore is on the golf club board, too. I’ll get forms and propose you today.”
“You think the business with Caleb will hurt?”
“Are you kidding? Everybody hated that kid; judging from their reaction, you were a hero.”
Stone glanced toward the door and nearly dropped his Coke. A ghost from his past had just walked in the door. He had a rush of déjà vu in which he and Dick were sitting in this club at this table when Dick’s brother, Caleb, entered the room. His gut tightened, just as it always had when Caleb was around, teasing and bullying the two younger boys. Now Caleb, aged twenty or so, was back, young again.
“What’s wrong?” Rawls asked.
Stone had trouble speaking. “Who is that?” And as he asked the question, he began to see double.
“Oh, those are the Stone twins, Caleb’s boys, Eben and Enos. I can never tell which is which.”
Stone breathed a little easier. “God, I thought I was going crazy for a moment; they’re both the image of Caleb at that age.”
“I guess they are, at that,” Rawls said.
The twins were loud, too, just like their father. They approached a table of teenagers, and the noise level went up with their arrival.
“I haven’t seen those boys since they were about twelve,” Rawls said. “I didn’t like them then; they were bullies, always picking on some younger kids. They’d double-team them.”
“Thank God there was only one of their father,” Stone muttered. He could not imagine what his summer in Islesboro would have been like if there had been two of Caleb. But now there were, and he didn’t like the idea much. He decided not to go over and introduce himself as Cousin Stone.