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“Perhaps you’d better stay there for a while.”
“Where else am I going to go?”
“I know you’re due back in New York. Don’t go.”
“I can’t swim that far.”
“Has the state police become involved?”
“The island-based Sergeant Young is at Stone’s lunch table as we speak.”
“I don’t want them to have the body.”
“Nobody can move it in the present weather.”
“Ask the sergeant to move it to Stone’s garage at the first opportunity, then to call me on this line. You stay where you are and watch your ass.” Lance hung up.
Holly returned to the table. “That was Lance Cabot on the phone. You’re about to have another guest, Stone; one John Collins, says Lance. Sergeant,” she said, handing him a note. “Please call Lance at this number as soon as you’re able. He asks that you not remove the body from the island but store it in Stone’s garage.”
“So now I’m running a mortuary?” Stone asked.
“Looks like it. They won’t be able to get a chopper in here today.”
“I’ll have to call my captain,” the sergeant said.
“If I know Lance, he’s doing that right now. Call himbefore you speak to your captain.” The sergeant’s cell phone rang. He walked away from the table and answered it, then returned. “Stone, you have an ice machine, don’t you?”
“Two of them.”
“Can I borrow some plastic garbage bags and all your ice?”
“Leave enough to fill a few whiskey glasses,” Stone replied.
The sergeant nodded. “Somebody from our station told me that we’re going to get more rain here this weekend than we’ve had since the hurricane of ’47. That one was about nineteen inches, as I recall.”
“Stone,” Ed Rawls said, “if we get that much rain, your two boats down at the dock are going to end up on your back lawn.”
“As long as they don’t end up in my living room,” Stone said.
After lunch, everybody had a glass of whiskey, because there wasn’t anything else to do. Around nightfall, the sergeant’s colleagues deposited the remains of John Collins in the garage, next to Stone’s MG TF 1500, with bags of ice around him. Stone and Holly both had a good look at him.
“Know him?” Stone asked.
“No,” she said, snapping the man’s photo with her iPhone. “But Lance might.”
3
Stone slept longer than usual,and so did Holly. He got up and looked out a window: it was still raining, but not as much, and occasionally, a bit of blue sky could be seen. He switched on the TV, muted it to let Holly sleep, and looked at the weather radar. “Oh, good,” he said to himself.
Stone was at breakfast when Holly came down, dressed, but looking a bit bleary. “What’s happened?” she asked, sitting down. “Why is the rain gone?”
“Are you complaining?” Stone asked.
“No, just disoriented. I’ve grown accustomed to wind, rain, and thunder.”
“God changed his mind. Live with it.” He sipped his coffee. “We may be able to fly today.”
“Lance said I can’t go back to New York,” she said.
