Dead in the Water

all…”
    Paul Manning looked at his nails again. “When did you figure it out?”
    “Oh, I was very slow. It didn’t all come together for me until I was sailing the boat from St. Marks to Fort Lauderdale. No, a little earlier, I guess, when I saw the repair you’d made to the headsail reefing swivel.”
    “What else do you think you’ve figured out?”
    “The dinghy was never stolen in Las Palmas.”
    “Wasn’t it?”
    “You just made some noise about it, replaced it, then sailed the old one back to the Canaries after Expansive was over the horizon.”
    “If you say so.”
    “What did you do about clothes and papers? You couldn’t use your own passport.”
    Manning looked at Stone for a long moment, then apparently decided it didn’t matter anymore. “All right, I left a car on the south coast of Gran Canaria with some clothes.”
    “How long did it take you to lose the weight?”
    “I started dieting the minute we left the States,” Manning said. “Losing weight has never been easy for me, but I had some time; I lost a pound or two a week. By the time we got to Las Palmas, I was as slim as I am now.”
    “Careful you don’t gain it back, Paul; somebody might recognize you.”
    “Not where I’m going.”
    “And where would that be?”
    “You figure it out.”
    “It’s going to be tough without the money, isn’t it?”
    “Damn Allison!” Manning said suddenly, and with some venom.
    “Wasn’t the money in the Cayman Islands account? Didn’t you have access to it?”
    “The money was moved to a different account the day before Allison’s trial.”
    “I thought it might have been.”
    “I’d like to get my hands on her.”
    “I’ll bet you would, but it’s going to be a little difficult, isn’t it?”
    “She’s not dead, is she?”
    “Suppose she’s not? I doubt if you could find her. After all, you must have given her lessons in how to obtain a real U.S. passport, how to establish new identities, and all that. All the research you did for your books, and for your own use.”
    “All that insurance money—tax free—the money from the sale of the house and the cars; it’s all gone,” Manning said bitterly.
    “And even if you could find it, you’ve no way to get at it, have you?”
    “Sir Leslie Hewitt showed me the will he drew for her, leaving everything to the Girl Scouts of America!”
    Stone burst out laughing. “Paul, you’ve made my day, you really have.”
    “And she gave the goddamned boat to you,” Manning said through clenched teeth.
    “That’s right, pal, but your heart will be warmed to know that Libby’s mother got four hundred thousand of the proceeds.”
    “Shit!”
    “So you killed Libby for nothing, didn’t you?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Come on, Paul; you had the skills to screw up thatairplane engine. You’d flown with Chester; you knew he never did a runup, that he’d never notice his fuel problem until he was already in the air. You killed Chester, too, and that other poor woman who was aboard.”
    “You can’t prove that,” Manning said.
    “You know, right up until the moment that plane crashed, this was all just a lark, a bit of insurance fraud. But when that plane went down, you became something else entirely. You became a murderer—not just three times, but four. You stood there in that jail in St. Marks and let Allison walk out to the gallows. I’ll bet she thought until she was standing over that trap door with the rope around her neck that you would step forward and save her. You could have at any time; all you had to do was to tell Sir Winston that you were Paul Manning. He couldn’t prosecute her for a murder that hadn’t taken place. But you didn’t do that, did you? You thought all that money was safe in the Caymans account, and it would all be yours. But Allison out-smarted you.”
    “I can’t figure out why she did it,” Manning said, looking dejected.
    “Because she knew you. At first she thought you’d save her, but finally she knew you’d never turn yourself in, even to save her. If you had turned yourself in, you’d have had all that money to buy your way out of the business in St. Marks, but you decided to go for broke, to keep it all for yourself, and now you’re just that—broke.”
    “I want the money you got for my boat,” Manning said. “And I want all of it.”
    Stone laughed aloud. “I took the boat as paymentof my fee; it was all legal and aboveboard. Why should I give it to