The Cold Blue Blood

by David Handler

  “He put the moves on Mandy repeatedly,” Bud spoke up angrily. “She was not the least bit interested. But he wouldn’t leave her alone. I finally confronted him about it. Do you know what that bastard said to me? He said, ‘Don’t blame me if your wife is a common slut.’ I popped him one right in the nose. First time I’d hit someone in thirty-five years.”

  “Niles used to smack Dolly around,” Red recalled. “I saw the bruises. So did Tuck Weems, who threatened to strangle him. That put a solid scare into Niles—Tuck not being the stablest individual around. Niles reported Tuck to Tal Bliss.”

  “Did Bliss arrest him?” Mitch asked.

  “No, that’s not Tal’s style,” Bud answered. “He just told Tuck that it would be best if he didn’t work here on Big Sister anymore. Now that Niles is gone, he’s back. Dolly insisted. She’s always been fond of Tuck.”

  Red stared morosely into his empty glass. “I must confess there’s one thing that greatly concerns me …”

  “What’s that, Red?” Bud asked.

  “What’ll happen when Niles comes back. Because he will be back—just as soon as the money runs out.”

  “Never,” Bud snapped. “That’s totally unthinkable.”

  Jamie said, “I agree with Red. The bastard will come crawling back. What’s more, Dolly will take him back.”

  “After what he did to her?” Mitch said. “How could she?”

  “Oldest reason of all,” Red replied. “She still loves him.”

  They fell into grim silence. Outside, ominous clouds were rolling in over the Sound. The sky was growing dark.

  “Understand you got yourself locked in your crawl space yesterday, Mitch,” Bud said offhandedly.

  “Yes, I did. Someone closed the trap door on me.”

  “Damned foolish thing to do,” muttered Red.

  “Who did it?” asked Jamie.

  “No idea,” said Mitch. “All I know is I heard footsteps. Heavy footsteps.”

  “I see …” Bud glanced uneasily over at Red, who seemed a bit uncomfortable himself. “May I ask—how did Dolly react to your little misadventure?”

  “Rather strangely, now that you mention it. She maintained I hadn’t heard any footsteps. She was quite insistent about it, actually.”

  “Well, she would be,” Red said heavily.

  “What do you mean by that?” Mitch asked.

  Red gazed out the window at the approaching darkness. “Not that it’s anything you should be concerned about—because, well, we are talking about someone who was clinically deranged—but Tuck’s father, old Roy Weems …”

  The madman who had shot his wife and himself in Mitch’s bedroom. Mitch leaned forward in his seat. “Yes …? What about him?”

  “In the weeks leading up to the incident,” Red Peck said, “Roy kept claiming he heard footsteps.”

  Now was when Mitch had his second nightmare.

  This one was a doozy. This time Mitch was back in Dolly’s study with those three men. Only now their eyes were red and their teeth very sharp, like the vampires in those garish Hammer Films horror flicks with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. And Maisie was in this one. In fact, she was one of them. She was trying to kill him. To get away from her he fled back down into the crawl space—only they followed him. They all did. Their eyes glowed at him in the darkness. And they had him surrounded. And they were edging closer and closer and …

  He awoke screaming. His heart was racing. His T-shirt was drenched with sweat. And his little house was shaking. A wicked storm had blown in. The wind was howling. Lightning crackled in the sky. Thunder rumbled. And the Sound had come to life, pounding angrily against the rocks.

  As Mitch lay there in the darkness, listening to this, he heard footsteps again. At first, he felt he might be letting his imagination get the best of him. But he wasn’t. These footsteps were real. And they were in the house. Downstairs. Now they were on the stairs. He could hear the stairs creak. Each creak was a footstep, each one louder than the last. Someone was moving steadily, stealthily toward him in the darkness. Growing closer. And closer …

  “Who’s there?” Mitch demanded to know.

  Silence. Only silence.

  He fumbled for matches. Lit his hurricane lamp, bathing the upstairs loft in a golden light.

  Dolly Seymour stood there at the top of the stairs.

  She wore a long white nightgown and an utterly blank expression. She was barefoot. She was shivering. She stood with her hands clasped behind her, rather like a child posing for a class picture. Except she was no child. She was a mature, lovely woman. And her nightgown was very nearly sheer. Mitch could make out the fullness of her breasts, the rosy hue of her nipples, the darkness of her pubic hair.

  “What is it, Dolly?” he asked her huskily. “Are you all right?”

  She didn’t answer him. Just stared at him, her gaze eerily unfocused. She seemed to be in a kind of trance. Was she sleepwalking? Drugged? He couldn’t tell. Her lips were moving, a low murmur coming out of her mouth. But no words. At least, none he could comprehend.

  He raised his voice. “Dolly, can you hear me?!”

  “The mother,” she said in a soft little sing-song voice. Saliva bubbled from her lips.

  “What about the mother?”

  “The mother is hurt.” Now she started across the loft toward Mitch, unclasping her hands, raising one of them over her head.

  She held a carving knife in her hand. A long carving knife. And she was coming right at him with it.

  Mitch clambered from the bed and grappled with her, wrestling the knife from her hand. Dolly relinquished it with little resistance. Their brief struggle seemed to rouse her from her trance. She blinked her eyes several times now. And she looked around at the loft, wide-eyed. Then she let out a gasp of utter horror and fainted dead away in Mitch’s arms. He stood there holding her for a moment. He thought about putting her right to bed here in his bed. But then he thought better of it. He carried her sideways down the narrow stairs, hugging her to his chest, feeling the aliveness, the animal warmth of her in his arms and his hands. He carried her out his open front door into the darkness, the wind howling, the trees rustling. Fat raindrops were beginning to patter down. Soon it would pour. He started down the gravel path with her toward her place. It was a long way to carry someone but she was as light as a feather. He made it through the laundry room door with her and managed to flick on the kitchen light. Several drawers were open, the contents strewn on the floor as if the place had been burgled. He carried her up to her bedroom and set her down gently on her bed. He turned on the nightstand light. Dolly was stirring now, her eyes flickering. Her tiny hands and feet were frozen. He began rubbing them for her.

  That was when she came to. She panicked at the sight of him there. “Why, Mitch!” she cried, pulling her nightgown tightly around herself. “Wh-What are you doing here in my … ?”

  “You were wandering in the night, Dolly. You were in my house.”

  “That’s not possible!”

  “I assure you it is. You came all the way upstairs to my room.”

  “Oh, dear.” She swallowed, reddening. “I’m so sorry, Mitch. I do sleepwalk from time to time. I-I’m sorry to have put you to so much trouble.”

  “Not a problem. That’s what neighbors are for.”

  “Thank you for being so kind.” Her eyes softened now, her gaze holding his. She reached out for his hand and took it, gripping it tightly. She seemed very frightened and alone at that moment, very vulnerable.

  And, suddenly, Mitch was keenly aware of just how awkward the silence was becoming. He remembered how she had felt in his arms. He realized how long he had gone without a woman. But he was also aware that it was a genuinely bad idea to go down this road. So he said, “Can I get you anything—a glass of water, another blanket?”

  “No, no,” she said quickly. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’m just so sorry I bothered you. Imagine what you must have thought …” She yawned. She suddenly seeme
d overwhelmingly sleepy. “Good night, Mitch,” she mumbled, burrowing under the covers. “And thank you.”

  Mitch shut off the light and went back downstairs, only to discover he was not alone.

  Bud Havenhurst was standing there in the kitchen in a silk bathrobe, glowering at him. “I saw the light,” he said to Mitch accusingly. “Just exactly what do you think you’re doing here?”

  “She was sleepwalking. She came into my bedroom. I brought her home.”

  “Do you honestly expect me to believe that?”

  “I honestly don’t care what you believe,” Mitch shot back. “But that’s what happened. I didn’t invite it. I didn’t enjoy it. And I sure as hell don’t appreciate where you and your dirty mind are going. So back off, understand?”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” Havenhurst said hurriedly. “You’re absolutely right. I had no call to …” He ran a hand over his face, slumping against the kitchen counter. “I was out of line. My apologies.”

  Mitch stood there studying him. “Are you always up at three in the morning watching your ex-wife’s house?”

  “Old habits die hard. I learned to sleep lightly when she and I were married.”

  “Meaning what, she does this often?”

  “Look, she’s fine, all right?” Bud said wearily. “Everyone’s fine. So just go home.”

  Mitch didn’t budge. “That woman nearly stabbed me in my own bed.”

  Bud drew his breath in. “She had a knife with her?”

  “She did.”

  “I wondered, when all I saw all of the drawers open …” A horrible thought seemed to cross his mind now. “You aren’t planning to call Tal Bliss about this, are you?”

  “I will if you don’t tell me what the story is.”

  “Fair enough,” Bud agreed reluctantly. “Dolly has episodes. They come and go. There have been stretches where she’s fine for three, four years. And then—” He snapped his fingers. “She’s off to the races again. No one knows why. The shrinks at Yale–New Haven never could come up with anything concrete. ‘It’s an inexact science,’ was how they kept putting it. Care for a glass of milk, Mitch?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I think I may have one.” He fetched it from the refrigerator. It came in a glass bottle from a nearby dairy in Salem. He poured himself some and sipped it thoughtfully. “This storm might have set her off. Wind scares her. Always has. Or she might still be upset about Niles. Hard to say. Apparently it all dates back to when she found the bodies of Louisa and Roy Weems. Did she speak at all? Did she say anything?”

  “Just one thing: ‘The mother is hurt.’”

  Bud nodded gravely. “That would be Louisa Weems, Tuck’s mother. Dolly was seventeen years old, Mitch. A sheltered and sensitive young girl. It was more than she could handle. The brutality, the horror. She was severely traumatized by it. It made her …” He broke off, pained by the memory. “She became a different person. She’d been a carefree, sunny girl up until then. Always laughing, full of fun. After that, she went into a dark depression. Had to be hospitalized for months, under heavy sedation. There was even talk of electro-shock therapy. Fortunately, she pulled out of it before that became necessary. But she’s still very, very delicate. Still needs to go on her medication from time to time. And she … she still acts up in the night sometimes. So I keep an eye out.”

  “Did she ever attack you?”

  “No, never,” he said quickly. “But she did go after Evan once. Or she tried to—with a steak knife. I stopped her in time, thank God, and we sent him away to boarding school. As long as it was just we two, I always felt I could control the situation.”

  “What about after she married Niles Seymour?”

  “He was told about it. Red told him. As far as I know, there were no episodes. Dolly was happy with Niles,” Bud added with ill-disguised bitterness. He finished his milk and rinsed out the glass, sighing heavily. “Well, now you know all of the family secrets, Mitch. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep this to yourself. No need for anyone around town to know about it, right?”

  Mitch stared at him a moment. Appearances. Gossip. That’s all that was on the man’s mind. All that he was worried about. “They won’t hear about it from me,” Mitch said.

  “I appreciate that,” he said, looking around at the mess. “I’ll take over from here. Good night.”

  The rain was starting to come down in windblown gusts as Mitch scampered back to his place. He found the bread knife on the floor next to his bed and put it away in a kitchen drawer. He had just climbed back into bed when it truly began to pour outside, the rain furiously lashing the house, gale force winds buffeting it. Mitch felt as if he were in a ship in an angry sea. After one particularly loud clap of thunder he heard a pop and Dolly’s porch light went dark. Downstairs, his refrigerator had gone silent. The power was off all over the island. Mitch burrowed under the covers, feeling curiously calmed by the violent storm. It made sense. It was real. He slept.

  The worst of it was gone by morning, but it was still raw and drizzly out, the sky and the Sound an identical shade of pewter. He could hear a foghorn from somewhere in the distance. No boats were out. Not a one. And his power was still off, meaning he had no heat and no water—both the oil burner and his well pump required electricity. He climbed into his heavy wool robe and built a huge fire in the fireplace against the damp and the cold. His stove ran on propane, so he was able to light a burner with a match and boil some bottled water for coffee. He was huddled before the fire with a cup of it, feeling very groggy after his adventurous night, when the power finally came back on. He showered and shaved and dressed. He made himself some scrambled eggs and slab bacon and toast. He was just finishing up the dishes when he heard the clatter of a garden cart out on the gravel path.

  It was Bitsy Peck, bustling along in bright yellow Gore-Tex bib overalls and green rubber rain boots, her cart loaded down with tray upon tray of seedlings. The woman had brought Mitch a small nursery. He went outside to greet her.

  “Good morning, Mitch!” she burbled at him excitedly. “We seem to have Big Sis all to ourselves this morning. Red left at five A.M. for New York. Mandy hitched a ride with him. The boys are at their shop. Bud’s at the office. And Dolly’s at the dentist. I understand she paid you a little visit last night—she’s totally aghast. Embarrassed beyond belief. Afraid you might have gotten the wrong idea. That was quite some Nor’easter, wasn’t it? I do hope someone warned you that we almost always lose power. All it takes is one hiccough and poof. I can live without the lights but no shower, no toilets, no way.” She came up for air, puffing slightly. “I’ve been up since four, in case you’re wondering why I’m chattering away like a magpie.”

  “This is incredibly nice of you,” Mitch observed, sorting through the trays of seedlings.

  “Nonsense,” she clucked. “After a storm is the best time to plant. I can help you get started—unless you have something else you need to do right now.”

  He needed to work on his damned book. But he was thrilled to have such a good excuse not to. Besides, she seemed downright anxious to get at it. She’d even brought her own fork and spade. A true garden zealot. “There’s nothing else I need to do,” Mitch assured her. “Let’s get cracking.”

  The vegetable patch that Niles Seymour had tended was out behind the barn. This was the sunniest spot on the property when the sun happened to be out, which it was not. It was roughly twelve by sixteen feet. A crude, homemade chicken-wire fence served as an enclosure.

  “That’s to keep the rabbits out,” Bitsy informed him as she nudged the rickety gate open. “Although, to be perfectly honest, nothing can keep them out if they want in.”

  The patch was in a state of serious neglect—lumpy, furrowed and weedy. Wild berry bushes and small volunteer trees had begun to take hold. Bitsy knelt and pierced the muddy earth with a trowel, inspecting its composition with an expert eye. She fetched her spade and dug deeper, sifting the dense soil through her fing
ers, muttering under her breath. She reminded Mitch of Walter Huston studying a gold vein in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

  “As my son Jeremy would say,” she concluded, “it’s totally bogus.”

  “Bogus how?”

  “All Niles did was dress the top layer, that’s how. If you go down six inches it’s thoroughly compacted. Look at this—there’s zero drainage. Nothing will take root here. Nothing. Either he hasn’t a clue how to garden or he’s just plain lazy. Probably a bit of both.” She leaned back on her ample haunches, sighing. “Mitch, we’re going to have to double dig.”

  “What does that mean exactly?”

  “Going down two spade-lengths. Removing the rocks. Enriching the soil with compost and manure, adding peat moss for drainage. Then, and only then, can we plant.”

  “I didn’t realize it would be so much work,” Mitch said doubtfully.

  “This is what proper gardening is, my young friend. Soil preparation is everything. We can take your truck to my place for the organic matter. But first …” She thrust a chubby index finger in the air. “We dig!”

  A nut, Mitch reflected. This woman was a nut.

  He went to the barn for a shovel and a fork and returned with them. She was already at it, turning soil like a demon.

  And so they dug. Soon they began hitting rocks. Some of these were small. Some could be loosely classified as boulders. They piled them just inside the fence, Mitch quickly working up a sweat in the damp morning air. Fine pinpoints of perspiration formed on Bitsy’s upper lip, but she was surprisingly fit for such a round woman. Downright tireless. And raring to gossip.

  “You are probably filled with a million questions after last night,” she said gaily. “In answer to what is no doubt your first one, Mandy is the only one on this island who has any real money. The girl’s filthy with it, actually. Her family started a brewery in St. Louis back in the eighteen-hundreds. What the poor dear hasn’t got is any social class. The women in town loathe her—she wears too much gold and not enough clothing. She didn’t go to Miss Porter’s. She didn’t graduate from Smith.”