Dark Harbor (Stone Barrington 12)

“I don’t take a class in it or anything, but I was having trouble with my handwriting, and my teacher said it would help if I copied from a book, just for practice.”

“That’s a great idea,” Stone said. “I have to go out for a while; when your mother gets up, please tell her I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

“Okay.” The boy went back to work.

Stone walked over to the yacht club and found a little group of people boarding a small motor yacht at the end of the pier. Rawls, Harley Davis and Mack Morris were there, along with a couple and their teenaged daughter, who was in tears. Rawls introduced them.

“This is Ralph and Martha Harris and their daughter, Janey,” he said. “Martha is Don’s sister.”

The boat was Ralph’s, apparently, and he got the engine started. They motored out a ways, then Rawls and Martha said a few words, and she emptied the ashes into the water. Janey seemed more upset than anybody, Stone thought.

They returned to the yacht club, and Stone excused himself and returned home.

Peter was still copying lines from the book, and Arrington was seated by the fireplace, drinking coffee with Dino. Stone poured himself a cup and was about to sit down when the phone rang, and he went to the desk to answer it.

“It’s Lance. I’ve got the phone information.”

“Great.”

“On the day Don Brown died, he called the Agency WATS line a little after three p.m. and was connected to an Operations officer named Jake Burns. I tried to call Jake, but he’s left on an assignment and is unreachable. An office assistant said that Jake did a criminal records search for Don, but she doesn’t know the results or even who the subject was. That’s all I could get.”

“Well, that’s very interesting, indeed, and very frustrating, too.”

“I know. I left a message for Jake, but there’s no way of knowing when he’ll be able to respond to it. I wish there were something else I could do.”

“Thanks, Lance. I appreciate that.” Stone hung up, called Rawls and told him the results.

“Shit,” Rawls said.

“That’s pretty much how I feel about it, too.”

“I guess we’ll just have to wait for Jake Burns to get back.”

“I guess so.”

“Thanks for coming this morning. Martha appreciated it.”

“I was glad to be there. Janey seemed particularly upset.”

“Yeah, Don was her favorite uncle; they were close.”

The fax machine rang and began to spit out pages.

“Hold on a minute,” Stone said. He went to the machine and retrieved two pages, then returned to the phone. “Sergeant Young faxed me Don’s phone records,” he said, looking over the pages.

“What’ve we got?”

“Not much. He called you a few times and a couple of other numbers.” Stone read them to Rawls.

“That’s Harley and Mack.”

“Then there’s the call to the WATS line, and that’s it for the past week.”

“Shit again,” Rawls said.

“Yeah. Do you have any idea at all whose criminal records Don could have been checking on?”

“Not a clue.”