by Stuart Woods
“There wasn’t all that much luck involved,” Stone said ruefully. “I have a lot of weak moments.”
“You mean you weren’t faithful to Arrington, even before you met me?”
“Oh, yes, I was faithful to her, but not out of trying to be; we were just together all the time, and I was content, and I didn’t give much thought to other women.”
“Were you living together?”
“Yes.”
“I sometimes wish I’d lived with somebody before Paul. Maybe I would have had a better idea of what it was like to be married.” She was uncharacteristically quiet as she took her dishes to the galley.
“Is something else bothering you?” he asked.
“I guess I’ve been feeling a little guilty about how much fun we’ve been having. The sex, I mean; that’s the only fun I’ve had lately. I mean, Paul’s only been dead for a short time, and I confess, I’ve already been looking forward to a new kind of life.” She smiled at him. “In addition to inordinately enjoying your body.” She sat down beside him and held his hand.
“And I yours,” he said, smiling. “And I don’t think you have anything to feel guilty about. What happened at sea wasn’t your fault; you did the best you could in the circumstances. You go right ahead and look forward to that new life.” If you have one, he thought. If I can somehow pull off an acquittal.
“Are you going to be in this new life of mine?” she asked.
“That remains to be seen,” he said. “I do have some unresolved issues to take care of.”
“When they’re resolved, I’d like to know about it.”
“I think I can promise you that. But you’re going to be a very popular lady, you know. Men are going to come out of the woodwork. They’ll all want your money; you’ll have to be careful.”
“I will be. You want to go to bed?”
“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll sleep on my boat tonight.”
“Going off me?” she asked, pouting.
“Not in the least.” He kissed her lightly. “I’m awfully tired, though; the negotiation with Libby seems to have taken a lot out of me, and I ought to write to Arrington. She probably thinks I’m sulking.”
“Okay, you do that; I’ll see you in the morning.”
He got up. “By the way, you should fax the Libby document to your lawyer and have him let your banker know that check is coming through. It’s a very large amount, and it will make him nervous if he’s not expecting it. And whatever you do, don’t have second thoughts and stop payment. All hell would break loose.”
“I’ll write him a note and take it over to Thomas tonight,” she said.
He kissed her again, and left her yacht for his own.
He wrote Arrington what was, for him, a long letter; the longest he had ever written anybody—two pages. He apologized for being incommunicative and told her about Allison’s case, though he knew she would have seen the papers. Then he got romantic—unusual for him—and by the time he had signed the letter, he began worrying about faxing something so personal to her L.A. hotel; he didn’t want some clerk reading it. Then he had a better idea. He would take care of it in the morning.
Some time after he had fallen asleep he stirred, hearing footsteps on the dock; Allison returning from the inn, he guessed. Then he fell asleep again and heard nothing else.
Chapter
29
When Stone woke it was seven-thirty, and he jumped out of bed and into some clothes; he didn’t want to miss Libby’s departure, still harboring a lingering fear that she might not, after all, leave. He grabbed the letter to Arrington and ran toward the inn, zipping up his trousers. He arrived at the bar in time to see Thomas disappear around a corner, going toward the parking lot with some suitcases. “Thomas,” he called, “where do you keep the Federal Express packaging?”
“Under the bar,” Thomas called back. “See you later; I’ve got to get Mrs. Manning to the airport. We’re running late.”
“Just give me a minute to address…” But Thomas was gone. Stone grabbed a FedEx envelope and ran after him. Thomas was pulling out of the parking lot when he flagged down the car and jumped in the backseat. “Morning, Libby,” he said. “I’ll come to the airport with you, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure, why not?” she said. She was wearing the straw hat in which she had arrived.
“Thomas, have you got a pen?”
Thomas handed one back to him.
“Libby, I’d appreciate it if, when you get to Miami, you’d drop this into the nearest Federal Express bin for me. I want it to be in California tomorrow.”
“Sure, glad to,” she replied.
“Nothing you can fax?” Thomas asked.
“No, I want it delivered.” He sealed the letter into the envelope and handed it to Libby, who put it into her large handbag. “You’re sure this is no trouble?”
“Of course not; it’s like mailing a letter—they have those bins all over the airport.”
“I appreciate it,” Stone said.
“Do you always drive this fast?” Libby asked Thomas, fastening her seat belt.
“No, but we’re running late, and I don’t want Chester to leave you behind. He has to keep to a schedule.”
“We were half an hour late arriving in St. Marks,” she said. “Chester owes me. Besides, if you hadn’t been delivering breakfast to somebody or other, we wouldn’t be late. I was on time.”
“I didn’t know you offered room service, Thomas,” Stone said.
“I took Jim Forrester up some food; took him his dinner last night, too, but he couldn’t keep it down.”
“He’s sick?”
“As a dog. I tried to get him to let me call the doctor, but he said he’d be all right. He did look a little better this morning, but not much.”
“He said something yesterday about not feeling well.”
“At least he cleaned up after himself,” Thomas said. “The maids hate it when folks get sick all over the place.”
“Is there a bug going around?”
“He ate some conch from one of those street vendors in the capital yesterday. Don’t you ever do that, Stone, not unless I point out the good ones.”
“I promise.”
They raced into the airport and across the tarmac, where Chester was waiting next to his airplane with the baggage compartment standing open. There was one other passenger, a black woman, already aboard. Thomas hustled Libby’s bags into the airplane and locked the compartment, then shook hands with Libby.
“You come back when you can stay longer,” he said.
Stone shook her hand, too. “You find yourself a good broker and invest that money conservatively,” he said to her. Her answer was drowned out by an engine starting. He helped her into the airplane, got her seat belt fastened, and closed the rear door.
Libby held up the Federal Express envelope and gave him a thumbs up, then she stuck it back into her handbag. The airplane began to move, and Stone stepped out of its way.
Thomas turned toward the car. “Let’s go,” he said; “I want to get back to work.”
“Hang on just a minute, will you, Thomas?” Stone replied, watching the airplane. “I just want to be absolutely sure she’s really gone.”
Thomas laughed. “Glad to have her off the island, huh?”
“I can’t tell you how glad.” He pointed at the airplane. “Look, Chester must really be in a hurry; he’s not even doing his runup check.” The little twin was already rolling down the runway.
The two men stood and watched as Chester roared off the runway and got the landing gear up. The airplane turned north toward Antigua, visible in the distance across the channel separating the two islands. The early morning sun glinted on the water.
“There goes a happy woman,” Stone said, waving. “Good-bye, Libby!” He turned toward the car. As he did, he noticed a change in the sound of the engines, and he looked back at the airplane. “What was that?” he asked.
Thomas looked at the airplane, now out over t
he water. “He’s just reducing power after takeoff. It’s only a few minutes’ flight, and he has to start slowing down if he wants to make Antigua on the first pass.” Thomas frowned. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing. Smoke was trailing from the airplane’s left engine.
“Looks like Chester’s got a problem,” Stone said. “He must have already shut down the engine.”
“I see flames,” Thomas said.
Stone shielded his eyes from the morning sun. “So do I,” he said. The airplane began a rapid descent toward the water.
“Why doesn’t he return here?” Thomas asked.
“He’s trying to blow out the fire,” Stone said. “When I was training for my license, that’s what I was taught to do with an engine fire, a power-on descent, to blow it out.” The airplane seemed to be headed straight down into the sea, and then it leveled off. “The fire isn’t out,” Stone said. “He’s going to ditch in the water.”
“Jesus help him,” Thomas said.
“If the engine doesn’t blow and he can get the airplane down, they’ve got a good chance.” He looked at the wind sock; it was standing straight out. “There’s going to be a chop on the surface, though. Put her into the wind, Chester.”
The airplane was flying level, just off the surface of the water now.
“Why doesn’t he put her down?” Thomas asked. “He’s still flying.”
“He’s bleeding off air speed; he’d built up a lot on the descent. He wants to touch down right at stall speed, as slowly as it will still fly. Look, he’s raising the nose now; he’ll be down in a second.”
“I hope he’s got a raft,” Thomas said. “It’s going to take a while to get to him.”
“Surely he has; he’d have to. Here comes touchdown; don’t stall the thing, Chester!”
The nose came up some more and the airplane headed toward landing. Then a wing dropped, touched the water, and the airplane cartwheeled, breaking into pieces.
“Oh, shit,” Stone said, watching as the wreckage scattered over the water.
“Come on,” Thomas called, running for the car. “I know a man with a boat.”
Stone jumped into the car and Thomas, driving like a madman, headed out of the airport and along the coast road. “There’s a little fishing settlement along the coast, right near where Chester went down,” he said.
“Thomas,” Stone said, “nobody on that airplane is alive; don’t kill us in the bargain.”
Thomas slowed a little. “Somebody might have made it,” he said.
“They might have if he’d gotten the thing down in one piece,” Stone said quietly. “But when it broke up, that ended it. Anybody alive would be unconscious, and anybody unconscious would have drowned by now.”
“Still,” Thomas said. He threw the car into a left turn and careened down a short dirt road, screeching to a stop at a small dock. A man was already taking in the lines on a fishing boat. “Henry!” Thomas yelled, “wait for me!” He and Stone jumped onto the moving boat. “You saw the plane?” Thomas asked the skipper.
“Everybody saw the plane,” Henry replied. “We’re goin’, but cain’t be nobody alive out there. How many folks was on it?”
“Three, including Chester.”
“Chester gone,” Henry said. “They all gone.”
Twenty minutes later they saw the first piece of wreckage—a wing tip, floating on the surface; then smaller bits of flotsam.
“Look,” Thomas said, pointing to some woven straw in the water. “That’s Libby’s hat, I think.”
“There somebody is,” Henry called out, pointing and changing course. “Peter, get the boathook!” His crewman got the tool and ran forward as Henry slowed the boat. “It’s Chester,” Thomas said.
“He’s missing an arm,” Stone said quietly.
It took fifteen minutes in the swells to get a line around the body, and Stone was feeling a little queasy from the motion. He had seen enough bodies as a cop to be unruffled by the sight of Chester. The body aboard and covered, they patrolled the area for another two hours, but, except for the floating wing tip, which they brought aboard, found nothing larger than Libby’s hat. A police boat joined them.
“I reckon we go in now,” Henry said.
“How deep is the water out here?” Stone asked.
“Deep. We outside the hundred-fathom line.” He pointed to their position on his chart.
“How much of a search will there be?” Stone asked.
“You’re looking at it, I expect,” Thomas replied. “I reckon the two women must still be in the fuselage, but there’s no National Transportation Safety Board to go after the wreckage and the bodies, not down here in the islands. They’re gone.” They headed back toward the dock with their grisly cargo.
Stone thought about Libby Manning and her new-found wealth, which she would never spend.
Chapter
30
Stone poured himself some orange juice and sat down at a table. After a moment, Hilary Kramer from the New York Times came downstairs.
“Morning, Stone,” she said. “May I join you?”
“Please do,” Stone replied.
Thomas came over with menus. “What can I get you folks?” he asked quietly.
Kramer ordered bacon and eggs. “I’m hungry this morning,” she said.
“Stone, you want something?” Thomas asked.
“Just toast and coffee; I’m not very hungry.”
“You’re looking kind of grim, Stone,” Kramer said. “Something else go wrong with your case?”
Stone shook his head. “Plane crash this morning. Thomas and I saw it.”
Kramer dipped into her handbag and came up with a notebook. At that moment, Jim Forrester joined them, looking not very well.
“Morning, Stone, Hilary,” he said.
“Morning, Jim,” Stone said. “You want some breakfast?”
Forrester shook his head. “Thomas was kind enough to bring me something in my room this morning.”
“Oh, yes,” Stone said. “He said you were ill; you’re looking better.”
“Guess I got it out of my system,” the journalist said. “Hilary, take my advice; stay away from the street vendors in the capital, especially the ones selling conch. For a while there, I thought I was going to die.”
“Apparently someone did, only this morning,” Kramer said. “Stone was just about to tell me about it.”
“Yeah,” Stone said. “Chester’s plane went down; two passengers aboard; everybody died.”
“Jesus,” Forrester said. “In that plane we all came over in?”
“That’s the one.”
“It looked in pretty good shape,” Forrester said.
“Thomas and I watched them take off,” Stone replied. “Chester didn’t do a runup before he leapt off.”
“What’s a runup?” Forrester asked.
“With piston engines, you rev up to a couple of thousand rpms, then test the magnetos and the propeller and look for low oil pressure or other problems. It’s the last thing you do before takeoff, and it’s a very important check.”
“Any idea what happened?” Kramer asked.
“Engine fire; we saw the flames. He dived to try and blow out the fire, and when he couldn’t he ditched in the water, but he stalled and cartwheeled. We saw the airplane come apart. We went out in a boat and found Chester’s body, but the two women apparently went down with the fuselage.”
“Who were the two women?” Kramer asked, scribbling in shorthand.
“One was a local lady; don’t know her name; the other was Elizabeth Manning of Palm Beach. She stayed here last night.”
“The lady in the straw hat?” Forrester asked.
“That’s the one.”
“Any relation to Allison Manning?” Kramer asked.
“Not really; she was Paul Manning’s ex-wife.”
“What was she doing here?”
“I think she had some idea of claiming part of Manning’s estate,” Stone said. “But that’
s all being handled in Connecticut, so she went home.”
“Did she have some legitimate claim?” Kramer asked.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Stone said. He was skating close to a line here, but he hadn’t quite crossed it.
“Palm Beach, you said?”
“That’s right.”
“What did she do there?”
“She said she wrote a society column for one of the local papers.”
“That’s all you know about her?”
“That’s it,” Stone said.
“Is there going to be some sort of investigation of the accident?” Kramer asked.
“Beats me,” Stone said, “but the airplane went down in water deeper than a hundred fathoms, so I doubt if they could find much of it, even with a load of experts, which they don’t seem to have around here.”
“That’s over six hundred feet,” Forrester said. “No diver could go that deep; they’d need some sort of submersible, I think.”
“Something the St. Marks Navy, if there is one, probably doesn’t have,” Kramer chipped in. “Do you know if she had any family?”
“She didn’t say, but I got the impression she was unmarried. Her passport was still in the name of Manning, and they had probably been divorced for a good ten years.”
“How long had Manning been married to Allison when he died?”
“Four years.”
“Did the two women know each other?”
“They never met.”
“You think the other Mrs. Manning just came down here in the hope of money, then?”
“Seems that way, but please don’t quote me as having said so.”
“Is somebody notifying next of kin?”
“I suppose the local police will handle that.”
“Stone,” Forrester said, “do you think she might have been some sort of help to you at Allison’s trial?”
Stone shook his head. “I can’t imagine how. I don’t think she had seen Paul since the divorce.”
“Did Sir Winston Sutherland know she was here?” Kramer asked.
Stone shrugged. “I don’t think so. He was here for dinner last night; she was sitting with me, and they didn’t speak.”
“I take it you didn’t introduce them,” Kramer said dryly.
