Stone shrugged.
“Well, if you’re going to be spending some time here, we’d better get you in the yacht club and the golf club. I’ll work with you, and we’ll bring your handicap down.” Rawls raised a hand and waved over two men who were standing in line for hamburgers. He introduced both men.
“I hear you’re Dick Stone’s cousin,” one of them said.
“That’s right.”
“How does that work? I thought I knew all of Dick’s family.”
“His father and my mother were brother and sister. I grew up in New York.”
“This your first time in Islesboro?” the other asked.
“No, I spent a summer up here with Dick’s family when I was eighteen.”
“Hey, I remember you,” the man said, laughing. “You’re the kid who knocked Caleb Stone on his ass.”
“I remember that, too,” the other man said. “It was the talk of the club for a week. Why did you never come back?”
“Caleb’s mother didn’t take the news as well as everybody else did. After that, I was persona non grata.”
“Welcome back,” the man said, then they excused themselves and went to get their food.
“Well done,” Rawls said.
“Well done what?”
“The tall guy was the commodore, and the other was the chairman of the membership committee. The commodore is on the golf club board, too. I’ll get forms and propose you today.”
“You think the business with Caleb will hurt?”
“Are you kidding? Everybody hated that kid; judging from their reaction, you were a hero.”
Stone glanced toward the door and nearly dropped his Coke. A ghost from his past had just walked in the door. He had a rush of deja vu in which he and Dick were sitting in this club at this table when Dick’s brother, Caleb, entered the room. His gut tightened, just as it always had when Caleb was around, teasing and bullying the two younger boys. Now Caleb, aged twenty or so, was back, young again.
“What’s wrong?” Rawls asked.
Stone had trouble speaking. “Who is that?” And as he asked the question, he began to see double.
“Oh, those are the Stone twins, Caleb’s boys, Eben and Enos. I can never tell which is which.”
Stone breathed a little easier. “God, I thought I was going crazy for a moment; they’re both the image of Caleb at that age.”
“I guess they are, at that,” Rawls said.
The twins were loud, too, just like their father. They approached a table of teenagers, and the noise level went up with their arrival.
“I haven’t seen those boys since they were about twelve,” Rawls said. “I didn’t like them then; they were bullies, always picking on some younger kids. They’d double-team them.”
“Thank God there was only one of their father,” Stone muttered. He could not imagine what his summer in Islesboro would have been like if there had been two of Caleb. But now there were, and he didn’t like the idea much. He decided not to go over and introduce himself as Cousin Stone.
Chapter 13
DINO BACCHETTI’S UNMARKED CAR pulled up in front of the Palatine mansion in the outer reaches of Brooklyn, the home of his father-in-law, Eduardo Bianchi. “Wait here,” Dino said to his driver. “My guess is, this won’t take long.”
Dino got out of the car and trudged toward the front door, dreading every step. He had never had lunch alone with Ed
uardo, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. The meeting with Mary Ann and her lawyer yesterday had been a disaster that had ended in shouting and harsh words, and Dino thought he had probably been summoned here to be disciplined. He was well aware that Eduardo had only to lift an eyebrow and some obedient servant would slip a stiletto between his ribs.