“And remember, I have a gun.” Dino went through the kitchen out to the guest house, where he and Lance each had a room.

Lance came out of the little office. “Okay, let me have the dial,” he said.

Stone handed it to him.

Lance inspected the safe closely, then fitted the dial back onto the stem protruding from the front of the safe. “Now we find out whether it’s on right, or whether I have to take it off again and rotate it a hundred and eighty degrees. I don’t suppose any of you has a stethoscope on you?”

They all looked at him blankly.

“That’s what I thought.” He pressed an ear to the safe and began slowly rotating the dial.

“I didn’t know you were a safecracker, Lance,” Stone said.

“Jack of all trades, definitely master of none.”

“Holly opened it, now that I recall.”

“We attended the same safecracking academy. Now be quiet; I can’t listen to you and the safe at the same time.”

Stone walked over to an easy chair and took a seat.

Lance stood up straight, turned the handle on the safe door, opened it and peered inside. “It’s a mess,” he said.

Stone walked back to the desk and looked inside the safe. The estate papers he had stored in it were a sodden mass. He lifted them out in a big lump and deposited them on the newspaper. Then he reached inside and brought out Esme’s diary. It was heavier than before, being soaking wet. He opened the cover and found the pages stuck together, the ink running.

“Have you got a hair dryer?” Lance asked.

“In my bathroom upstairs,” Ginny replied.

“Ginny,” Lance said, “would you like to help?”

“Of course,” she replied, running over to the desk.

“Will you take the diary upstairs, put it on a table and start drying it?”

“Sure.”

Lance reached into a desk drawer and found a letter opener. “Use this to separate the pages as they dry, but don’t force them.”

“Okay.” Ginny took the diary and went upstairs.

A bell sounded in Dick’s little office almost simultaneously with the front doorbell.

Lance disappeared into the office, and Seth went to the front door and came back with Sergeant Young, who looked tired.

Stone introduced him to Ham; he’d already met everybody else.

“Anything new?” Stone asked.

“I’m afraid not. We’ve pretty much started the search over again, and this time we’re concentrating on the beaches and shoreline.”

“Why?” Ham asked.

Sergeant Young looked away.

Stone spoke up. “Because the bodies of the missing women were all found in the water.”

Ham nodded.

Tags: Stuart Woods Stone Barrington Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net