“All right. What will I need in the way of clothes?”
“Nothing you couldn’t find at L.L. Bean.”
“I’ve got to run; I have a hair appointment, but I’ll call you later and give you an ETA.”
He gave her the number and hung up, feeling wonderful. He bounded out of bed, shaved, showered and began getting dressed when the phone rang. “Hello?”
“It’s Ed Rawls. I need to see you at Don Brown’s house right now.”
“Okay. Where’s the house?”
Rawls gave him directions.
“What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
Stone finished dressing and went downstairs. Dino was having breakfast in the kitchen, and Stone grabbed a piece of his toast. “Come on. We have to be somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Not far.”
It was a beautiful day, and they took the little MG, top down.
“Arrington and Peter are coming up tomorrow or the next day,” Stone said.
“You’re horny, huh?”
“Oh, shut up.”
They drove through some woods and stopped at the end of a short, paved driveway. There were other cars parked there.
The house was a shingled Cape Cod with a porch. The front door was opened by an obviously upset woman wearing an apron. Rawls emerged from another room and waved them in. Harley Davis and Mack Morris were seated in the living room, while Jimmy Hotchkiss talked on the phone. Stone introduced Dino to everybody, then followed Rawls into a bedroom.
&n
bsp; “Uh, oh,” Dino said.
Don Brown, The Old Fart who used the electric scooter, was sitting up in bed, a bullet hole in his right temple and a much larger hole in his left. A Colt .45 lay on the bed, and brains and blood were scattered around the bedspread.
“We’ve got another one,” Rawls said.
“How long have you been here?” Stone asked.
“Less than half an hour. I’ve mostly been on the phone calling people.”
“Has somebody called the state police?”
“Jimmy’s on the phone with them now.”
“Let’s get out of this room,” Stone said. “Have you touched anything?”
Rawls shook his head. “I know better than that.”
They went back into the living room and took seats, while the woman served them coffee.
“This is Hilda,” Rawls said. “She found him when she came to clean the house.”