“Not to my knowledge,” he said.
“If she had, would she have had a claim?”
“There’s no mention of her in Paul Manning’s will.”
Kramer closed her notebook. “Well, I’ll phone this in after breakfast.”
They ate their food in silence, then Thomas waved some papers at Stone, and he went to the bar.
“Fax for you,” Thomas said.
Stone took a stool and read through Libby Manning’s divorce decree, then he laughed out loud.
“What?” Thomas asked.
“Nothing,” Stone replied. “By the way, did Libby Manning make any phone calls last night?”
“Nope; no calls on her bill. Anyway, you told me to unplug her phone.”
“Right.” Stone was looking at Libby’s divorce decree, at the instructions for alimony. “Plaintiff shall pay to the defendant the sum of three thousand dollars a month on the first day of every month,” he read, “beginning immediately and continuing for a period of ten years.” He checked the date on the decree. Libby Manning’s alimony had run out three weeks earlier. She must have been desperate, he thought, but she had been cool enough to shake down Allison for four hundred thousand dollars, with his help.
He walked away shaking his head.
Chapter
31
As Stone walked back toward the marina he could not stop thinking about Libby Manning. He was depressed, and he felt guilty, though he could not think why. Certainly a human being was dead, one he had known; but not one he had known well or had come to care about. So why couldn’t he shake the feeling? He boarded Expansive and went below. Allison was putting something away in a cupboard.
“Libby Manning is dead,” he said.
“Come again? I don’t think I heard you right.”
“Libby is dead. Chester crashed shortly after takeoff this morning, and Libby and a local woman were killed, along with Chester.”
She stood, staring at him for a long moment. “Dead,” she repeated tonelessly. “No chance she might still be alive?”
“The airplane went down in at least six hundred feet of water. Chester’s body was recovered, but nobody else.”
Allison sank onto a sofa, looking as if the wind had been knocked out of her. “How could this have happened?” she asked.
“There was an engine fire, but nobody knows why, and my guess is that nobody is going to know. In order to figure out what made an airplane crash, you need the airplane, or at least a lot of it, and a wing tip was all that was recovered.”
“Some sort of mechanical problem, then?”
“Apparently.”
“What could cause such a problem?”
“A fuel leak, maybe. I have no idea what sort of rules a pilot like Chester would operate under on this island, but my guess is he was pretty much on his own. He’d have had the manufacturer’s service requirements to go by, but I doubt if there was anybody looking over his shoulder.” He looked at her. “Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but she didn’t sound it. “I’m just shocked, I guess. Three people dead.”
Stone sat down beside her. “It is pretty depressing,” he agreed.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be depressed,” Allison said. “After all, her death saves me four hundred thousand dollars.”
“Maybe,” he replied.