“Stone,” Tommy said, “do you have anything to say about this?”
“Not a thing,” Stone said. “This is as much a surprise to me as it is to you. Evan—sorry, Charley—refused to tell me anything he was going to say when we were on the way here, except that he was going to clear up the Charley Boggs homicide, and I guess he’s done that.”
The woman came back. “We didn’t take prints from the Boggs corpse,” she said. “The body was identified by two people.”
“Who?”
“The woman who lived on the houseboat next to Boggs’s.”
“And the other one?”
“That would be you.”
“Thanks, that’ll be all,” Tommy said. “Wait a minute, go pull the Florida driver’s license photos of Charley Boggs and Evan Keating.”
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L o i t e r i n g w i t h I n t e n t
She left again.
“Lieutenant Sculley,” Charley said, “I think I should tell you that Evan and I strongly resembled each other, before he grew the beard. In school, most people thought we were brothers. Once, we even attended each other’s classes for a day, and nobody noticed.”
The woman came back with the two photos, and Tommy and Rawlings looked at them.
“May I see them?” Stone asked, and Tommy pushed them across the table. Stone looked at the two photos. “Damned if he isn’t right; I might be able to tell them apart if they were sitting next to each other, but not if I saw them in different places.”
Rawlings was shaking his head. “I don’t know what to make of this,” he said.
“Gentlemen,” Stone said, “it appears that no crime has been committed here, so will there be anything else?”
Tommy and Rawlings looked at each other, and Rawlings shook his head.
“I guess not,” Tommy said.
“Well, then,” Stone said, “if you’ll excuse us.” He stood up, and so did the new Charley Boggs. “Please send the completed immunity agreement to me at the Marquesa today.” Rawlings nodded. Stone half expected to be stopped, but he and Charley walked out of the building unmolested and got into Stone’s car.
“Well,” Stone said, “that was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen in my law practice.”
“I guess it was kind of strange,” Charley said. “Thanks for negotiating the immunity agreement. It’s a load off my mind, and it will be for Gigi, too.”
“I’m going to assume you told them the truth,” Stone said, “and if you didn’t, I don’t want to know.”
“Of course not,” Charley said, “you’re a lawyer.”
“Where to?”
“The Marquesa; I took your advice.”
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S t u a r t W o o d s
Stone drove there and parked the car in the guest garage.
“Oh,” Charley said, “I almost forgot.”
“What?”