Chapter 46

THE AFTERNOON WORE ON until the shadows were long. Ham, who was asleep on the study sofa, suddenly sat up. “Daisy!” he said.

“What?” Stone asked.

“We’re not using Daisy!”

“For what?”

“To track Holly.”

Stone slapped his forehead. “Why didn’t I think of that?” He ran upstairs to the master bedroom and started going through Holly’s clothes, looking for something that had been worn and not laundered, which was tough, because Mabel laundered everything as soon as it hit the hamper. He found a spare pair of sneakers and ran back downstairs with one.

“Come on, Daisy!” he called to the dog. He grabbed her leash and ran for the door, with Ham and Dino right behind him. When they reached the end of the driveway, Stone rubbed the sneaker on Daisy’s face, and she sniffed it eagerly. “Has she been trained to track?” he asked Ham.

“She’s been trained to do just about everything,” Ham replied. “Daisy! Where’s Holly? Go find Holly!”

Daisy reacted at once, pacing around the area, then suddenly, she was moving at a brisk trot up the road, away from the village, on the left side, facing traffic, her nose to the ground. The three men hurried along, trying to keep up with her.

“We should have brought a car,” said Dino, who did not enjoy running.

“Why don’t you go back to the house and get the station wagon,” Stone said, handing him the keys. “Follow along, but don’t get close enough to spook Daisy.”

The sound of her name caused Daisy to jerk the leash almost out of Stone’s hand, and she resumed her tracking.

Stone and Ham jogged along after her, and a couple of minutes later Stone looked over his shoulder and saw Dino in the station wagon, moving slowly twenty yards behind them.

Daisy rounded a curve and started down half a mile of straight road. Then, after a couple of hundred yards, she stopped, seeming confused. She paced about, sniffing the road and the graveled shoulder, circling back and doing the same area again.

Ham unclipped her leash and pointed at the dense underbrush beside the road. “There, Daisy,” he said, pointing, “go find Holly.”

Daisy plunged into the brush, and they could hear her crashing around in the thicket, going this way and that, until she came back to Ham and sat down, looking at him.

“It happened here,” Stone said. “She got into a car.”

“I don’t think a dog can track a car,” Ham said.

Dino pulled alongside them in the old Ford wagon. “That’s it, huh?”

“That’s it,” Stone said. “At least we’re sure of which way she went.” He looked down the road. “South.”

They got into the car and drove back to the house.

“Any luck?” Sergeant Young asked as they came into the study.

“Holly ran south, then on a straight stretch. She got put into a car, so we’re at a dead end. But at least we know she ran south. Should we concentrate the search there?”

“In a car, she could have been taken anywhere,” Young pointed out.

“She could have been taken off the island in a boat, too,” Dino said.

“None of the others was taken off the island,” Stone reminded him. “I think this guy will stick to his pattern.”

“I need a drink,” Dino said, heading for the wet bar. “Anybody else?”

Stone looked at the group. “Everybody else.”

“I still don’t have the after-midnight thermal scan,” Lance said.

Dino came back with drinks on a tray. “How’s Ginny doing with the diary?”

“She’ll let us know when she gets somewhere,” Ham said.

They sipped their drinks quietly.

“At least we know the guy’s got a boat,” Stone said. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have dropped the safe in the water trying to get it out of here.”

Sergeant Young, who was staring into his drink but not drinking it, spoke up. “Just about everybody on the island has a boat.”

“Yeah,” Stone said, racking his brain for some other thought that might help.

Ginny came down the stairs with the diary and some sheets of paper. Everybody stood up as she walked toward the desk.

“What have you got, Hon?” Ham asked.

“Are you people drinking?” she asked. “Why am I not drinking?”

“Dino, get the girl some bourbon,” Ham said, looking over her shoulder as she spread out her papers.

“What I’m doing here is working backward through the thing, drying pages one at a time, then trying to read the handwriting. It’s gorgeous handwriting, but the ink has run from being wet, and that makes it slow going, but I’m copying out everything I can get and numbering the pages to correspond with the diary.”

“What is she saying?” Stone asked.

“Well, it’s mostly high school girl stuff,” she said. “The last entry is the day before the family got to Islesboro. She mentions that they have to make the five o’clock ferry the next day.”

“Is there any other mention of Islesboro or Dark Harbor in the days before they arrived?”

“She’s looking forward to going, she says, and right here, she mentions that and says ”“… especially with X and Y neutralized.”“

“Any idea what that can mean?” Stone asked.

“There’s a Z mentioned, too.”

“Are these people male or female?”

“Z seems to be female, but I can’t tell about X and Y. These could be friends of hers at school.”

“But what does she mean by ”neutralized‘?“

“I don’t know. ”Made harmless,“ maybe?”

“How do you make somebody harmless?”

“Take away their weapons; take away their freedom of action?”

“How far back have you gotten?”

“January,” Ginny said. “It’s slow going,”.

“She’s glad to be going back to Islesboro, now that X and Y are neutralized,” Stone said. “X and Y must be on Islesboro, too.”

“Z, too,” Ginny pointed out. “She says that Z will be relieved, too.”

“So, both Esme and Z would have been anxious about returning to Islesboro for the summer, if X and Y hadn’t been neutralized?”

“That could fit what she’s saying.”

“Does she give any hint about why they have to be neutralized?”

“Not so far.”

“Go back further in the diary, Ginny. Go back to last summer, say the month of August.”

“That part of the diary is in very poor condition,” Ginny said, “but I’ll try.” She grabbed her drink from Dino and went back upstairs.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” Stone called after her. “We’ll let you know.” He sank back into a chair.

A bell chimed in the little office, and Lance got to his feet. “Something coming in,” he said. “Maybe the new thermal scan.” He went into the office. A moment later he came out with some sheets of paper.

“What is it?” Stone asked.

“It’s a report from one of our people who used to be a Boston cop. You remember, we checked to see if Caleb Stone had a criminal record? His boys, too.”

“Yes, and they were all clean. The report from the New Haven police and the Yale campus cops had the boys clean there.”

“Well, this isn’t much,” Lance said, “but the boys had a juvenile record.”

“For what?”

“Don’t know; the records are sealed.”

“Can your man get at them?”

Lance got up and walked back toward the office. “I’ll ask him to try.”

Stone got up and followed him. “There’s something else I’d like to know from New Haven.”