He went to his office and wrote a check to the Samuel Bernard Foundation and gave it to Joan, along with the file on Dick’s estate and a letter to his old mentor. “Please have this hand-delivered to Sam Bernard,” he said. “I want it to pass through his hands on the way to the foundation. Then book a table at Elaine’s and call Lance Cabot and tell him I’d like to have dinner with him and Holly Barker.”

ELAINE’S AND ELAINE were as ever. Stone and Dino shook some hands, then sat down at their usual table, waiting for Lance and Holly.

Elaine came over and sat down. “So, you couldn’t stand it up there any longer, huh?”

“It was very nice up there, but I had to fly Arrington back.”

“So, you couldn’t stand it up there with Arrington, huh?”

“You’re not gonna win this one,” Dino said.

“I give up,” Stone said, raising his hands in surrender. “I just couldn’t stand it up there any longer.”

“That’s what I thought,” Elaine said, then moved on to another table.

Lance and Holly arrived, they ordered drinks, then Stone got down to business. “It looks as though our theory of a work-related death for Dick and his family may have been wrong.”

“I’m not convinced of that,” Lance said.

“There’s more news. After Don Brown’s death, his niece, a seventeen-year-old named Janey Harris, was kidnapped, raped and murdered on the island. Ed Rawls thinks the two deaths are connected, that Janey told Don something that got both of them killed. Ed thinks it’s local, and I have to agree with him.”

“And how about the Stone family’s deaths. Does he think those are connected, too?”

“Dick’s daughter was eighteen, and the two girls had to have known each other. Maybe whatever Janey told Don she had told Esme Stone, too.”

“And the killer wiped out the whole family to protect himself?”

“It makes more sense than the Russian mob theory,” Stone said.

Lance seemed unconvinced. “For somebody who used to be a cop, it’s odd that you would form a theory on so little evidence,” he said. “This is an air theory, like air guitar is making music.”

Dino spoke up. “I’ve seen solutions of a lot of murder cases that were based on less, in the beginning. An investigator needs a theory, if only to have it proved wrong. You have to work with the evidence you’ve got, even if it’s thin.”

“Lance,” Stone said, “have you heard anything from your friend at Langley about who Don Brown wanted the background check on?”

“Not yet,” Lance said. “It could be days or weeks before I hear from him.”

The waiter brought menus, and they ordered.

When they were halfway through dinner, Lance spoke up again. “My people are not going to buy your local theory.”