“I’m trying to find this alarming, Ed. Are you afraid they’re going to start shooting each other?”

“Something like that. Everybody’s really on edge. They were all shocked by the killings of Dick and his family and Don, but Janey’s murder has really got them spooked. A bunch of people have just packed up and left.”

“I can understand that, Ed, but why does that make it important for me to get back up there right away?”

Rawls cleared his throat. “Well, your name came up at the meeting.”

“In what regard?”

“Somebody, I forget who, asked a question that implied that you might have had something to do with Dick’s murder, since you inherited his house. The guy was shouted down, but the thing is, the idea is in the air now.”

“Oh, swell. Did somebody mention that I was in New York at the time of the murders and that I didn’t even know about Dick’s murder until the day after?”

“I said you weren’t on the island that night, but that just started a discussion about how anybody could get onto the island in a boat. I think you need to be seen up here dealing with this. There’s another meeting at five o’clock this afternoon, and I think you ought to be here for it.“

Stone clicked on the TV and went to the weather channel just in time to see the national radar displayed. “All right. I’ll be there,” he said. “But I don’t know what I can do to placate them at this point.”

“Just being there will let them know that you’re not afraid to show your face. That’ll mean something.”

“All right, Ed. I’ll see you this afternoon.” Stone hung up and called Holly.

“Hello?” She didn’t sound sleepy.

“Good morning. It’s Stone.”

“Good morning.”

“I just got a call from Ed Rawls. He thinks I’d better get back up there today, before the merry villagers torch my house and slay my cattle.”

“What?”

Stone explained the best he could what he didn’t understand himself. “Can you be ready to go at, say, one o’clock?”

“I’m sure I can. I’ll talk to Lance.”

“Pick you up at one?”

“I’ll come to your house.”

“Okay, bye.” Stone hung up and called Dino.

“I’ve got to go back to Maine this afternoon.” He explained the situation. “You want to go?”

“Can’t do it; a couple of big cases landed on my desk while I was gone, and I have to deal with them. Maybe later.”

“Go back to sleep.” Stone hung up and struggled out of bed.

THE MIRAGE TOUCHED down on the Islesboro airfield at 3:30 that afternoon, and he was surprised to find not a single airplane parked on the ramp. When he had departed the day before, there had been at least half a dozen there.

Seth Hotchkiss met them in the station wagon. “Glad you’re back,” he said, and that was all he said.

The drive through Dark Harbor was a little spooky; no cars were on the street or parked in front of the shop. He and Holly parked, went inside and found Jimmy Hotchkiss at his desk in the back office. He was wearing a gun on his belt.

“Hi, Jimmy,” Stone said.

“Hello, Stone. I thought you’d left the island.”

“I just flew Dino down to the city and brought back another friend.” He introduced Holly.

Jimmy stood up and shook her hand. “I’m glad you’re back, Stone,” he said. “You know about the meeting this afternoon?”

“Yes. Ed Rawls called me.”

“I think you should be there.”

“I will be. Where is everybody? The village is deserted, and there are no airplanes at the airport.”

“A lot of folks ended their summer yesterday,” Jimmy said. “We’ve got a couple of state cops due in this afternoon. I found them a rental, so they’re going to stay on the island for the rest of the summer. They’ll be at the meeting.”

“See you there,” Stone said, and left.

SETH PUT STONE’S BAGS in the master bedroom and Holly’s in Esme’s room; Stone didn’t correct him. The phone rang.

Stone picked it up. “Hello?”

“It’s Lance. Put Holly on an extension.”

Stone paged Holly, and she picked up. “Okay, we’re both here.”

“I finally got an answer from Langley about the inquiry Don Brown made right before his death.”

“And?”

“He wanted to know if Caleb Stone’s twin sons, Eben and Enos, had criminal records.”

“Did he say why he wanted to know?”

“No. He just asked that they be checked. He stayed on the phone while they ran the search.”

“What did they come up with?”

“Zip. They checked in both Boston and in New Haven, since the twins are at Yale. They’re clean. Even the campus police didn’t have a bad word to say about them. They’re apparently upright lads.”

“One more dead end, then?”

“Looks that way.”

“Thanks, Lance.”

“Have you heard anything else since you got back?”

“A bunch of people have packed up and left for the summer; a bunch of others have bought guns.”

“Swell.”

“There’s a town meeting at five o’clock, and the state cops are supposed to be there. Maybe they’ll have something new.”

“Good luck,” Lance said, then hung up.

Chapter 33

STONE WALKED OVER to the yacht club, passing a group of children playing in the parking lot watched over by two women. Nobody was taking any chances.

Inside, people were gathered in little groups, talking quietly but earnestly. Stone shook the hands of a few people he’d met before. He waved at Caleb Stone, sitting at a table with his twin sons. A moment later, Sergeant Young of the state police and another uniformed officer walked into the club, and the commodore rapped on a table with a beer bottle for quiet.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “Sergeant Young from the state police is here and would like to speak to us.” The commodore stepped aside, and Young replaced him.

“Hey, everybody,” he said. “I’ve met a lot of you, but I’d like to introduce my colleague, Corporal Tom Best. Tom and I are going to be living on the island for the rest of the summer, or until there’s an arrest for the crimes that have occurred here. We’ve had a telephone line installed.” He gave them the number, and many people wrote it down. “You can call us anytime, night or day, if you have anything important to report. Make that anything at all, whether it seems important or not; we need all the information we can get.

“Now, I want to bring you up to date on our investigation, tell you what we’re doing. We’re running criminal record checks on everybody on the island, full-time and part-time residents, and yes, this means you, no exceptions. We’re particularly interested to know if anybody on the island has ever been arrested or convicted of a crime of a sexual nature, so if there’s something like that in your background or the background of a person you know, I urge you to come to me directly about it, rather than wait for the record to turnup.

“We’re also rechecking the ferry records to see who was and wasn’t on the island at the time of the first murders, those of Richard Stone and his wife and daughter. There are no records of which private airplanes were parked at the airstrip at that time, but a resident who lives within sight of the airport has told us what he remembers about who was here, so we have a pretty good list of owners. Tom and I are going to be visiting every single residence on the island, so you will be seeing us at your house pretty soon. We’ll be talking by telephone with those residents who have recently left the island to return to their homes.

“We are going to determine from these interviews the name of every single person who was on the island the day the Stone family died, the day Don Brown died and the day Janey Harris died, so we’ll be asking each of you about that, and believe me, we’re going to verify every statement you make, so I want the truth from everybody first time out. Anybody who lies to us will immediately be treated as a suspect.