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 middle. 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.”