Dark Harbor (Stone Barrington 12)

Rawls shrugged. “Everybody based in Europe got to Berlin sooner or later.”

Stone and Dino sat down on the front steps, and everybody fell silent.

An hour later a state police car drove up, and four men got out. Sergeant Young was the driver. “Good morning,” he said.

“No it ain’t,” Rawls replied.

“What have we got here?”

Stone and Dino took him into the house and showed him the corpse in the bedroom, then told him what they had observed since arriving, including the footprint. “Nearest house is a couple of hundred yards over there,” Stone said, pointing. “They should have heard the shot.”

“It’s a whole lot like the other killing, isn’t it?” Young asked.

“Sure is,” Stone replied.

“What did Dick Stone and Don Brown have in common?”

Stone spoke up. “They both lived on the same island, and they both worked for the same government agency. Brown retired six years ago.”

Stone and Dino left the sergeant and the crime-scene people to their work and went back to the front porch.

“Ed, when did you last talk to Don?”

“Last night, after supper, about nine.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Don called me, wanted to have lunch with the three of us tomorrow, that is, today. Said he had something to tell us.”

“Any hints about what he wanted to tell you?”

“No. Don liked to think things over before he spoke.”

“You think it had anything to do with Dick’s murder?”

“My guess is yes. He asked me to call Harley and Mack, and I did.”

The other two men nodded.

“He wouldn’t have made a lunch date if he’d intended to shoot himself,” Rawls said.

“That makes sense. Be sure and tell the sergeant about the call.” Rawls nodded. “This sort of stuff isn’t supposed to happen,” he said. “You do your work for thirty-five or forty years and you retire, and you’re out of it. Nobody comes looking for you five or six years later.”

“Don found out something,” Harley said. “God knows what.”

“Any of you know how Don spent his day yesterday?”

Jimmy Hotchkiss spoke up. “I know he was here at lunchtime, because I send the papers out to him every day.” He looked around him. “And don’t you other fellers get any ideas; I’m not running a paper-delivery service, except for a couple of people, like Don, who couldn’t get in the store easy.”

“So we need to know what he was doing between lunchtime and bedtime.”

Sergeant Young had appeared in the front doorway. “Hilda says he got in his car and went out about one o’clock. He had this way of getting his scooter in and out of the trunk. We’ll ask around, see if anybody saw him around the island.”

“You need us anymore?” Stone asked.

The sergeant shook his head. “I’ll call you if I think of anything.”

Stone and Dino got into the MG and headed down the drive.