“You’ll recall that we met in my office this morning.”

“No, sir, that would have been my father. I’m Carson Rutledge Junior.”

“May I speak to your father, please?”

“I’m afraid he’s not in. We expected him in from New York a couple of hours ago, but he hasn’t turned up yet, and he’s not answering his cell phone.”

“Could you ask him to call me at my office when he returns? He has the number.”

“I’m afraid . . .” the man began, then stopped. “We’ve been having some trouble with our phone lines, so he will need to go to another location to return your call.”

“All right, thank you.” Stone hung up and called Dino.

“Bacchetti.”

“Did you read it?”

“I did. I was about to call you, but I wanted to check on something.”

“What do you think of Rawls’s book?”

“Ordinarily, I would think that the guy was just some conspiracy nut—the whole business seems so improbable—but having met him, he doesn’t seem like a nut.”

“I don’t believe he is.”

“I’ve got somebody checking on the two birth certificates.”

“Checking what?”

“Checking to see if there are corresponding death certificates.”

“In Virginia?”

“No, in New York. I had someone run them down, and both the mothers now live in the city. Hang on a minute.” Dino put him on hold. “You remember our conversation last night at Clarke’s?”

“I do.”

“You asked me if I thought Christian St. Clair was capable of murder?”

“I remember.”

“I’ve just had it confirmed that the older child and her mother are deceased—a traffic accident nearly two years ago.”

“And the other?”

“No record of a death on the twelve-year-old or his mother, but they have moved from the address we had, and we haven’t been able to find a new one.”

“What kind of a traffic accident happened to the seventeen-year-old?”

“They ran off the road on the New Jersey Turnpike and slammed into a bridge abutment. The state cops thought she probably fell asleep at the wheel.”

“Anything that made anyone doubt that?”

“Not until now,” Dino replied.

“Let me call you back,” Stone said.

“I’ll be here.”

Stone asked Joan to find a number in Virginia for Ed Rawls and waited while she made the call.

“No answer,” she said. “I left a message on his answering machine to call you.”

“Thanks.” He hung up and dialed the law offices of Rutledge & Rutledge again. This time he got an answering machine and left a message.

He called Dino again. “Do you have anything further on the second mother?”

“No, but I saw something on the birth certificate I hadn’t noticed at first.”

Stone picked up the original copies of the two certificates. “I’ve got the originals. What did you see?”

“Well, first of all, the father on both of them is listed as one N. R. Knott.”