Washington, D.C. ? Two close friends of Sen. Ted Stevens schemed to conceal the fact that one was paying for expensive remodeling and repairs done at the senator’s cabin in Alaska, according to FBI audiotapes played Tuesday at Stevens’ corruption trial.

Bill Allen and Bob Persons are heard on tape fretting in February 2006 after Stevens contacted Allen about a $1,000 plumbing bill that says, “Labor paid for by Bill.”

“We need to make that disappear from (the plumber’s) records,” Persons says in one conversation captured by an FBI wiretap of Allen’s phones. “Tell him Ted’s paying for everything. I mean, that’s the safest thing, Bill.”

Stevens, 84, is accused of lying on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal more than $250,000 in home renovations and gifts from Allen, the former chief of an oil pipeline company. The patriarch of Alaska politics hopes to clear his name with an acquittal before voters go to the polls next month to decide whether to return him to the Senate seat he’s held for 40 years.