Stuart Woods_Stone Barrington 12

asked.
    â€œSomething happened to the girls while they were drunk—maybe they were raped—but Z, or Janey, swore Esme to secrecy, so she didn’t tell anybody, and the next day they left the island with their parents. Dick and Barbara took Esme back to London, and Janey went home to Boston with her parents.”
    â€œOkay. Say you’re right, then what?” Dino asked.
    â€œX and Y are the twins, and they went back to Yale for the fall semester. Neither of the girls told anyone. Maybe they talked on the phone and reinforced their secret that way. But somehow, Dick Stone learned what had happened. Maybe Esme’s mother read her diary.”
    â€œMothers will do that,” Ginny said. “Mine did.”
    â€œSo Dick is furious. On his way from London to Washington, Dick stops in Boston and confronts Caleb with this information. Maybe Caleb doesn’t believe it or believes it and refuses to do anything about it, so Dick, in a fit of pique, draws a new will disinheriting Caleb and, by extension, the twins, and sends the will to me.”
    â€œWait a minute,” Dino said. “Are you saying that the twins murdered Dick, Barbara, and Esme because they were disinherited?”
    â€œNo. What’s more important is that they didn’t know they were disinherited. They wouldn’t have known, because Caleb didn’t know until I told him.”
    â€œSo they killed the whole family thinking they would inherit Dick’s wife’s money? That seems like a stretch, Stone.”
    â€œNo, no, at least not directly. Esme had talked, or at least her parents had read her diary, so they were at risk for being sent to prison for two rapes.”
    â€œSo they killed both the girls, and Dick and Barbara were either collateral damage or killed because they knew about what happened. What about Don Brown?”
    â€œJaney must have told him about the rapes, or at least Eben and Enos thought she did.”
    â€œWell,” Dino said, “your theory covers most of what we know, but what about Caleb?”
    â€œWhat about him?”
    â€œIf his boys raped these girls, then, according to your theory, he knew about it because Dick told him. Do you think he wouldn’t do anything about it?”
    â€œI don’t think he would send his sons to jail for rape,” Stone said.
    â€œHow about five murders? Would he take exception to that?”
    â€œIt’s hard to imagine he would,” Stone said, “but maybe he didn’t know the boys were connected to the murders or at least was in denial about them.”
    â€œThen there are the other two women on the island who were murdered,” Dino said.
    â€œRight,” Stone said, “and four more in New Haven.”
    â€œChrist,” Ham said suddenly. “That just doesn’t sound possible. If your theory is right, then these boys from a nice Boston family have murdered, what, eleven people?”
    â€œHam,” Stone said, “when you learn about serial killers on television or in the newspapers, what do people who knew them say after the fact?”
    Ham nodded. “That they were nice boys.”
    The doorbell rang, and Stone let in Sergeant Young.
    â€œI just had a call from Nantucket,” he said. “The Stone twins didn’t sail on the yacht when it left this morning, but two young men answering their description left Nantucket airport yesterday afternoon in a light airplane, some sort of Cessna.”
    â€œYou’d better take a seat, Tom,” Stone said. “We have some things to tell you.”

55
    C ALEB STONE GOT INTO the big Boston Whaler tied up at his dock, started the engine and motored slowly out to open water, then he increased power and headed for the southern end of the island. Once clear of the island he turned for Camden and increased his speed to thirty. It was a sparkling-clear day, and the water was flat.
    In Camden he tied up at the local marina and walked a couple of blocks into the business district. He went into a Radio Shack and bought a throwaway cell phone and a kit for hooking the phone to a computer, asking the sales clerk for instructions on how to use it to connect to the Internet.
    He then returned to the marina and headed back to Islesboro. He made it before sunset, having been gone less than two hours. Then, instead of returning to his own dock, he motored past it for another half a mile and, with the engine at idle, turned into