The Bright Silver Star bam-3

by David Handler

  Des leaned forward in her chair, watching Abby closely. “Doing what?”

  Abby went over to the minibar and pulled out a small bottle of Perrier and opened it. “Sitting parked outside of Jeffrey’s condo in my car,” she replied, taking a dainty sip.

  “What are you, stalking him?”

  “God, no. I’m not parked out there with an Uzi or anything. Just a box of Cocoa Pebbles and a pair of b-binoculars.” She paused, reddening. “Okay, maybe I’d better explain myself.”

  “Maybe you’d better.”

  “I just… I wanted to see for myself who he’s sleeping with. I need to know. And I am so humiliated to admit this out loud to you that I could just about crawl under that sofa. I mean, how pathetic am I? But it’s the truth. I’ve been sitting in my damned car every night, watching that little weasel entertain one gorgeous woman after another and crying my poor baby blues out.”

  “Have you been in direct contact with him?” Des asked, shoving her horn-rimmed glasses up her nose.

  Abby returned to the sofa and sat back down. “Define direct contact.”

  “Well, does he know you’ve been watching him?”

  “God, he’d better not. I would just die if he found out.”

  “You haven’t spoken to him?”

  “Of course not. Why would I?”

  “Because you still love him, that’s why.”

  “I do not still love him,” Abby said angrily.

  “Tie that bull outside, as my good friend Bella Tillis likes to say. A girl does not sit in her car all night with a pair of binoculars unless she feels the love.”

  “Okay, so maybe I feel it a little,” Abby admitted reluctantly. “That’s really beside the point.”

  “And the point is?…”

  “That I’m telling you the truth. Check with my garage on Broadway and Ninety-second. They’ll tell you what time I took my car out and when I brought it back. It’s a black Mercedes station wagon. I’ve practically been living in it since I got back. Night after night I sit there-until dawn, when I drive back. What a rotten drive that is, too.”

  “Have you been making it alone?”

  “Of course. Who else would sit there with me all night like some nut?”

  “Frankie would.”

  “I am not involved with Frankie. We were, very briefly. But not anymore. I’ve been alone. Just little me.”

  Which meant that Abby Kaminsky had no one to vouch for her, Des reflected. No one who could say she hadn’t pushed Tito Molina off that cliff. True, she was a tiny thing. But the element of surprise can add a good deal of muscle. And that granite ledge was plenty slick. Only, what about Donna Durslag? Why would Abby want to see her dead?

  “You do believe me, don’t you?” Abby asked, watching her uncertainly.

  “I don’t disbelieve you,” Des responded. “How about you tell me what you saw while you were parked out there?”

  “Sure, okay, I can do that. I saw, let’s see, I saw Esme Crockett show up there the first night.”

  “This is the night Tito died?”

  “Correct. She got there at around midnight. I could see her andJeffrey sucking face through the kitchen window-until he turned the lights out and they did God knows what unspeakable things to each other in the dark. She left at about four in the morning.”

  Which backed up what Esme and Jeff had said. “And the next night?”

  “Her mother showed up at around eleven.”

  “Did Martine stay the night?”

  “She was there less than ten minutes,” Abby said gleefully. “Tossed a major hissy fit on the front porch. She even threw a flower pot at Jeffrey.”

  “She’d found out he was two-timing her with Esme,” Des ventured.

  “You got that right, cookie. And what a mouth that bitch has on her. She’s standing out there screaming at the top of her lungs about how she’s going to make a bow tie out of his balls. Unbelievable! Then she took off in a huff.”

  “And what did you see last night?”

  “Last night I was here in Boston,” Abby said hastily. “But… why are you asking?”

  “Because someone else got murdered last night, that’s why.”

  “Really, who?”

  “Donna Durslag.”

  “Oh, sure. She owned The Works with her husband.”

  “You knew her?”

  “By name. Jeffrey rents his space from them.”

  “So you’re saying you weren’t watching his condo last night, am I right?”

  “That’s right,” Abby said, lowering her eyes.

  “Don’t disrespect me, girl. If you took your town car out of the hotel parking garage last night, I’ll know. If you rented a different car, I’ll know. If you so much as walked out that lobby door, I’ll know. I have the means. I have the skills. I have the-”

  “Okay, okay, no need to get all huffy on me.”

  “I do not get huffy.”

  “I was at Jeffrey’s last night,” Abby conceded. “I was staked out just like the other two nights-from eleven till about four. I took the town car.”

  “Why lie to me about it?”

  “Because I’m embarrassed,” she wailed plaintively. “Wouldn’t you be embarrassed? I mean, God, this is so humiliating.”

  “Who visited Jeffrey last night?”

  “No one, I swear.”

  “Did he go out?”

  Abby shook her head. “He was there by himself all night.”

  “Did you think about knocking on his door?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Why not, was Frankie with you?”

  “Look, I’d rather not involve Frankie in this, okay?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  There was a tapping at the suite door now.

  Abby let her breath out, clearly relieved by the interruption. “Would you mind getting that, cookie?”

  Des got up and went to the door and opened it.

  A frail young man with a concave chest and a two-day stubble of beard stood out in the hallway clutching a pair of battered metal carrying cases. “I’m here for Abby,” he announced.

  “Come in, Gregory!” Abby called to him as she bustled over toward the desk. “I’m afraid I’ll have to cut this off now, Trooper. Gregory has to do my mouth.”

  “That’s fine,” Des said. “I got what I came for. Where will you be tonight?”

  Abby frowned at her. “Right here in Boston, why?”

  “Just checking. You’re a happening little girl. Liable to turn up anywhere.”

  “Well, I’ll be here. That’s the truth. And I always tell the truth.”

  “Except for when you don’t,” Des said, smiling at her. “Right, I heard that.”

  One of the doormen down in the lobby gave Des directions to theEast Coast Grill. Her cruiser was double-parked out front. She got in and called Yolie on her cell phone to tell her what she didn’t want to hear-that Abby Kaminsky backed up Esme and Jeff’s story.

  “Did you believe her?” Yolie asked, sounding thoroughly dejected.

  “Yolie, I honestly don’t know. She’s rich, wiggy, in love. Anything’s possible. What have you got?”

  “So far, not a damned thing. None of the guests at the Yankee Doodle saw our boy come or go. And, Lordy, were they not happy to be questioned. Kimberly Fiore backs up her boyfriend, Rich Graybill. He got home from his late shift at The Works by midnight. Word, we are nowhere,” she grumbled at Des.

  “Hey, we’ll lick this, Yolie. You keep that chin up for me, okay?”

  “Girl, I am all about that,” Yolie vowed before she hung up.

  Des started up her cruiser and glanced in her rearview mirror, spotting big Frankie. He was seated at the wheel of the black town car parked behind her in the hotel’s loading area, glowering at her with as much menace as he could muster. Definitely a yard face. The man had done time. She was positive.

  As she pulled away, Des ran a check on him on her digital radio. She got her answer befo
re she’d made it across the Charles into Cambridge on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge. Frank Ramistella had wriggled his way out of two assault charges when he was in his late teens, then served three years of New York state time for armed robbery. As far as the law knew, he had been clean for the past six years.

  All well and good, Des reflected as he steered her way toward Central Square. The man was still hired muscle. And he was way into Abby. He’d do what that little blond asked him to, even if it meant pushing Tito Molina off a cliff. But that still begged the question about Donna. What possible reason could Abby have for wanting Donna dead?

  This question Des could not answer.

  And it troubled her big-time. Actually, this whole case did. Because the more she learned the more confused she got. In truth, she wasn’t getting any closer to figuring this one out at all.

  In truth, her damned fool head was reeling.

  CHAPTER 13

  “um, okay, tell me again why we’re sitting here like this?”

  “Because I have a feeling, that’s why,” Mitch explained to her for the umpteenth time.

  “You have a feeling,” Des repeated from next to him in the darkness. She was still in uniform, her collar opened, sleeves turned back.

  “I do. I have a definite, undeniable feeling.”

  “Oh, it’s undeniable, all right.”

  They were sitting in his pickup a hundred yards up Turkey Neck Road from Dodge and Martine Crockett’s driveway, their bellies full of barbecue. Carriage lanterns framed the driveway entrance, bathing it in a dim, golden glow. Across the darkened meadow, lights were on inside the house. It was just past eleven. Warm, sticky air had moved in from the south as the afternoon had given way to evening, bringing low clouds and fog with it. Now it was humid and still and the cicadas were whirring. In the distance, Mitch could hear the foghorn on the Old Saybrook Lighthouse.

  “What’s more, you need my help,” he added. “You’ve got two murders that don’t seem to connect with each other except for the simple fact that they must. And you’re totally flummoxed by it- you, Soave, Yolie, all of you.”

  “Well, you’re not wrong there,” she growled at him.

  “Would you like to know why you’re so flummoxed?”

  “One way or the other, I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”

  “Because all three of you think inside the box. I’m not being critical, mind you. I’m just saying that you’re encumbered by the rules and procedures of your job, and I’m not. This allows me to function as a freer thinker. You might even think of me, well, as a visionary.”

  Des reached over in the dark and squeezed his hand. “Baby, I’m not going to have to hit you, am I?”

  “What you’ll be doing, before this night is over, is thanking me.”

  “Mitch?…”

  “Yes, Des?”

  “What damned feeling?!”

  “That we’ve let our heads get turned by all of this sex. We’ve got so many Dorseteers hopping in and out of bed with each other that we don’t know who loves who, who loathes who, who might want who dead.. . Are you with me so far?”

  “You’re talking, I’m listening.”

  “Okay, good. We’ve got Abby, Chrissie, and Martine all without alibis for the night Tito died. Two of them had been romantically involved with him. The third was his mother-in-law. Now, we don’t know why Donna Durslag had to die. Therefore we have no idea which one of those three had any interest in killing her. But here’s something that we do know-that Dodge Crockett is a sick, bad, morally depraved guy.”

  “I won’t disagree with you there.”

  “Let’s say that this qualifies him to be our prime murder suspect, okay?”

  “That’s a bit of a leap, but go ahead and run with it.”

  “We know that he’s home alone tonight. He told me so this morning. So all we have to do now is wait and he’ll show his hand.”

  “What hand?”

  “Something is going to happen tonight,” Mitch declared with total certainty. “I’m telling you, I can feel it.”

  “Whoa, time out, cowboy-this is your feeling?”

  “Well, yeah. Put yourself in his shoes, Des. It’s not as if a perverted sociopath like Dodge is going to spend his night watching Send Me No Flowers on American Movie Classics. Not that it’s a bad movie, mind you. Rock Hudson and Doris Day were an underrated comedy team, and Paul Lynde absolutely goes to town as a funeral home director who loves his work just a bit too-”

  “Okay, I am going to have to hit you.”

  “Someone is going to visit Dodge tonight. Or he’s going to go see someone.”

  “And?…”

  “And that’s our chance to find out what he’s really up to and who he’s up to it with. If he leaves, we follow him. If someone comes by, we tiptoe our way to the house and put our noses to the glass. It’s smart, it’s simple, and it’ll work. What do you say, Master Sergeant, am I right or am I right?”

  Des sat there in the darkened silence for a long moment before she said, “You do know that this particular move is straight out of the Hardy Boys, don’t you?”

  “Maybe it is,” he admitted. “But it was a darned effective maneuver when they’d exhausted their other options. Besides, Frank and Joe cracked a number of Fenton’s toughest cases.”

  “You do know that was fiction, don’t you-for little boys?”

  A possum moseyed its way out of the brush and up the Crocketts’ driveway, its long, slinky tail trailing along behind it. Truly one of God’s ugliest creatures, Mitch observed. Right up there with the lowly woodchuck. Just one of the many new things he had learned since he moved to Dorset. “You think this is a stupid idea, is that it?”

  “Actually, I’m sitting here thinking you make a shocking amount of sense.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “For starters, I think you have you a personal vendetta thing going on. You admired Dodge and he’s turned out to be a total sleaze and now you want him to fry. Your judgment is clouded, Mitch. That’s not to say I disagree with you. The man is bad news, and he should pay for what he’s done to Esme and Becca and who knows who else. But that doesn’t necessarily make him a murderer. Just a sleaze.”

  Mitch considered this for a moment. “Okay, what else?”

  “I also think there’s an exceptionally good chance that we’re going to sit here until four in the morning and have nothing to show for it except stiff necks.”

  It was awfully quiet. They hadn’t seen so much as single passing motorist since they’d been parked there.

  “Maybe, but at least we’re together.” He leaned over and kissed her smooth cheek. “You don’t mind that part, do you?”

  “No, baby, I don’t mind,” she said, her own knowing lips finding the sweet spot under his ear, the one that turned him into a quivering mass of man Jell-O.

  “Did I remember to thank you for stopping at East Coast Grill?” he murmured, finding her mouth with his.

  “Three times… This makes four.”

  “I’m overwhelmed. I’ve never had a woman bring me pork before.”

  “If I’d known you were this easy I’d have done it a lot sooner,” she said, groaning softly. “But you’d better pass me some of that coffee. I’ve been up since before dawn.”

  Mitch poured her some from the thermos he’d brought, thinking about what she’d said. Because she wasn’t wrong. Not one bit.

  He did want it to be Dodge.

  They’d had words that morning at Will’s house. Mitch hadn’t needed to stay there with Will for long. As soon as Des took off the poor guy headed straight for the phone to call his father figure. Dodge’s arrival was Mitch’s official cue to leave. Mitch was in no mood to hang around with that man.

  Still, their paths crossed out on the front porch as Dodge came bounding up the steps, looking all tanned, virile, and fit, a manila folder tucked under one arm. “Mitch, I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, face etched with concern. “This
is just such an awful business. Why would anyone want to hurt Donna?”

  “I really don’t know, Dodge.”

  “How is our boy holding up?”

  “Our boy is pretty shook.”

  “We missed you out there this morning,” he said, eyeing Mitch carefully. “The tide was out. It was beautiful.”

  “I couldn’t make it,” Mitch said, rather stiffly.

  “Sure, sure.” Dodge seemed stung by Mitch’s chilly response. “Oh, hey, I’ve got something for you,” he said, holding the manilafolder out to him. “This is the application for that teen mentoring program over at the Youth Services Bureau. They’d love to have you if you can spare an hour a week.”

  Mitch reached for it gingerly. He did not actually wish to touch anything that Dodge had touched. In fact, he felt a form of visceral revulsion just standing on the same porch with him.

  After an awkward silence Dodge said, “I’m sorry you had to walk in on my… private moment with Becca yesterday.”

  Mitch said nothing. He knew that the older man was waiting for him to put his mind at ease. But Mitch didn’t particularly feel like doing that.

  “I can tell that you’re still upset,” Dodge persisted.

  “Dodge, I really don’t want to talk about this right now. Why don’t you go inside? Will needs you.”

  “It’s wasn’t what it looked like, Mitch. Becca and I have a real history together. We go way back.”

  “Kind of like you and Esme?” Mitch snapped, immediately regretting it. He should have kept his mouth shut.

  Dodge didn’t lose his composure. He simply looked Mitch straight in the eye and said, “I don’t know what you’ve been hearing, or from who, but I love my daughter, and I would never, ever hurt her. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.”

  “You never touched her?”

  “I’d like to have an opportunity to discuss this further with you, Mitch. Martine will be with Esme tonight. I’ll be home all evening. We can have a drink on the terrace and talk it through, okay? Maybe by then you will have cooled off.”

  “Dodge, one thing keeps puzzling me-why’d you tell me that Martine was having an affair?”