by Unknown
Hangtown flicked his cigarette away and went back to pawing through the trash bin. “You mm-rr-might enjoy my house. It’s rigged with all sorts of secret passageways and chambers. They used to hide slaves there back in the days of the Underground Railroad. Emma Teasman owned it then.”
“The poet?”
“That’s the one. My great-grandmother. Mind you, I’ve made a number of modifications and I’ve put in . . . Aha!!!” he exclaimed suddenly. He’d found himself a bent-up old rooftop television aerial. It must have been eight feet high when it was intact. It was still plenty large. “A monument if ever I saw one!” he proclaimed, hoisting the ruined aerial up in Mitch’s general direction.
“A monument to what?” Mitch grabbed it by the other end and yanked it up onto the ground.
“To when the one-eyed monster was king,” Hangtown replied, starting his way slowly up the ladder out of the Dumpster. “It’s not anymore. That damned Internet’s the big boss now. Point and click. Point and click. Now the nincompoops are buying crap they don’t need without even getting up off the sofa. Hate those damned computers. Only good thing about ’em is they killed television—except for Celebrity Deathmatch on MTV, of course. Ever watch it?”
“You bet. Martha Stewart removed Sandra Bernhardt’s inner organs with an ice cream scoop last time I saw it.”
“So you have cable at your house?” the old man inquired slyly.
“Why, yes. Don’t you?”
“Nope. Still aren’t wired out by us.” Hangtown reached the top of the ladder and climbed out, wheezing. He was a big, lumbering old man, at least six feet three, and he had a lot of trouble moving. “I’d love to get me a satellite dish. But then I’d never do a thing except sit and watch old movies all day. Hey, what are you looking for down here anyway, Big Mitch?”
“A bucket to hold my kindling.”
“Hell, got some old copper apple-butter tubs in my barn. Fix you right up.”
“That’s awfully generous of you, Hangtown.”
“The hell it is. You’ll pay me for it.”
“Why, sure,” Mitch said hastily. “How much did you have in mind?”
“I need you to take this aerial home for me. Won’t fit in my sidecar.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Mitch said, glancing admiringly at Wendell Frye’s antique ride. “That’s quite some old bike.”
“It’s a 1936 Chief,” Hangtown said, as the two of them deposited the aerial on the tarp in the back of Mitch’s truck. “Manufactured right up the mm-rr-road in Springfield by the Indian Motorcycle Company. Found her in a barn in Higganum a few years back. Cylinders still had the original nickel plating.” He climbed slowly on and donned his leather helmet and goggles, cackling at him. “Spiral Staircase was another good one. Remember that eye in the peephole? Man, that’s the good stuff! Who was the villain in that?”
“George Brent.”
“George Brent! Whatever happened to him?”
“He died.”
Hangtown shook his huge white head at Mitch. “Wish people would stop doing that. Makes me wonder if it might happen to me someday.”
“You think it won’t?” Mitch found himself asking.
“I don’t think at all, Big Mitch,” the great artist roared, kick-starting the bike’s engine. It caught right away, spewing clouds of thick exhaust in the morning air. “Thinking is what kills you. Christ, didn’t you know that?”
CHAPTER 2
Ohh . . . Ohhh . . . Ohhhh . . .
They were at it again up on the third floor. Those damned Sealy Posturepedic gymnasts in the room right above hers. They’d been humping away up there nonstop every night for the past week, that bed of theirs shaking like a washing machine in its final spin cycle.
Ohh . . . Ohhh . . . Ohhhh . . .
Whoever she was, she was not quiet. Her love cry was plaintive, the cry of a sad young girl. As for him, Des hadn’t heard the man make one single sound yet. Assuming that it even was a man up there. Because if there was one thing Des Mitry had learned so far in life, it was this: Never assume.
Ohh . . . Ohhh . . . Ohhhh . . .
Thoroughly wide-awake now, she flicked on her bedside lamp and fumbled for her heavy horn-rimmed glasses, the ones that were forever sliding down her nose. It was 4 A.M., according to the clock on the nightstand, and more than anything in the whole wide world she wished she were in her own bed in her own home. But that was not possible—the renovations on her new place still hadn’t been completed. In fact, every single aspect of the job was taking twice as long as the contractor had said it would. She knew this was normal. But knowing it didn’t make it any less aggravating. Besides, it was just plain impossible to get comfortable in a new job in a new town when everything she owned was in storage and she was sleeping—make that trying to sleep—in a strange bed. Even if it was a damned canopied bed.
Ohh . . . Ohhh . . . Ohhhh . . .
The inn was fine, really. Except for those damned X-games upstairs, of course. But they weren’t the real reason why she was awake. After four years at West Point, Des could sleep through a carpet bombing. No, it was the wondering. Wondering if she’d made the right decision when she gave up a job she was good at to chase after something she really loved, but—let’s face it—might be no good at at all. Wondering about this new, highly unlikely relationship she was in with a pigment-challenged man who sometimes made her feel as giddy as a schoolgirl and other times just plain scared to death.
It was entirely possible, Des realized, that this was the happiest she’d ever been in her life. It was also entirely possible that she had completely lost her mind.
Ohh . . . Ohhh . . . Ohhhh . . .
She got up and put on her sweatpants and started in on her homework exercises. A succession of hand and wrist studies by Dürer to be copied out of Robert Beverly Hale’s Anatomy Lessons of the Great Masters. Des was studying figure drawing two evenings a week at the world-renowned Dorset Academy of Fine Arts, one of the only institutions in America that still taught art the same painstaking way the Renaissance masters had learned it—line by line, stroke by stroke, with serious attention to craft and a refreshing absence of baloney. One night a week they worked with a model, the other they studied perspective and anatomy. Paul Weiss, her professor, was so serious about anatomy that he had taken them to the morgue at Yale–New Haven Hospital to watch medical students dissect cadavers. Not that Des had needed to tag along. She knew what was underneath the skin only too well—violent death was what had driven her to the drawing pad in the first place. In fact, when Paul got a look at her portfolio of murder victims he became so disturbed that he fled the studio and vomited. When he returned, looking exceedingly pale, he’d asked her if he could show her portfolio to some other faculty members. She let him, naturally. Now they all stared at her, wide-eyed, when she strode the corridors with her drawing pad and tackle box filled with charcoals.
They did not know what to make of her. She was not like the others.
Ohh . . . Ohhh . . . Ohhhh . . .
Seated on the edge of the bed, she went to work diligently replicating Dürer’s intricate hatchings and cross-hatchings. She worked in pencil, focusing her considerable attention on the flexor tendons of the palmaris longus, transfixed by how, somehow, each line articulated tendon and sinew and bone, how the human wrist slowly came to three-dimensional life on the drawing pad in her lap. It was sheer magic.
And, God, was it ever fun.
Shortly after five she heard a door open upstairs, then a low murmur of voices, followed by light footsteps on the stairs. A woman’s footsteps. The moaner was leaving. Des could get back to sleep now, if she desired. But she was so totally into her work that sleep was the farthest thing from her mind.
At six she stowed her homework, did fifteen minutes of stretching and made her bed, pulling the corners tight. The housekeeper would happily have done that for her, but Des did not feel right about having someone else pick up after her. It was her bed. That ma
de it her mess. When she was done she put on her New Balances and a fleece pullover and headed downstairs.
Outside, the early-morning air was crisp and clean. She inhaled it deeply, enjoying the country quiet, her eyes still seeing the lines and shapes from her drawing pad in the dewy meadow before her. She walked, her stride swift and sure. Des was six feet tall, lithe, long-stemmed and high-rumped. When she wore tight jeans she could cause fender benders. Up Frederick Lane she strode, past the historic homes that backed up on the Connecticut River. One narrow dirt drive led its way back to a goat farm, another to a llama ranch. Occasionally, there were new houses, houses so huge and gaudy that they stuck out like the gold teeth in a gangbanger’s mouth.
A milkman passed by in his delivery truck. He waved to her. Otherwise, she saw no one. A mile up the road she turned in at Uncas Lake and made her way around it to her new place. It was a snug little two-bedroom cape on a hilltop with a great view of the lake and, best of all, incredible light. The living room, where she intended to set up her easel, had skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows. And it was hers. All hers. Gazing at it, Des positively tingled with excitement.
This is my house.
The price had been right, too. Of course, it had needed a whole lot of work. A new roof. New kitchen. New furnace. New wood floors, plaster, paint. Plus the back deck was all rotted out. A young contractor named Tim Keefe, who was Dorset’s assistant fire chief, was handling the whole thing. She’d hired Tim because he knew the local workmen, and she was way too busy.
Trouble was, so were they. Everything was half-completed. The roofers, who were supposed to have been done a week ago, still hadn’t even finished stripping the old shingles off. In place of a roof she had a festive blue tarp held in place by two-by-fours. She unlocked the front door and moseyed inside, fearing the worst. And encountering it—her floors had not been polyurethaned yet either. Damn. Tim would never be done by Friday. She had hoped to be all moved in by then—Friday was the Deacon’s birthday. This could get complicated, she reflected anxiously.
Way complicated.
By seven Des was back at the inn eating her Grape-Nuts with banana and skim milk in the quaint dining room. She still wore her fleece sweats, since once she got dressed for work she scared the hell out of people. As she ate she found herself glancing around at her fellow guests, wondering once again about the identity of her indefatigable upstairs gymnasts.
It had been a gradual process of elimination. The first night she’d heard them, a young power couple from New York had been staying there, eager to impress everyone in the place, especially each other. Des had been positive they were the ones, but they left the next morning and the X-games continued. Next her suspicion had fallen on a honeymoon couple. The man did look like a computer nerd, and his bride was as plain as milk, but appearance was no measuring stick for ardor. Age was, however, and the honeymooners were well into their sixties. Des doubted that they could keep up such a torrid pace night after night, Viagra or not.
Now that she’d heard those light footsteps on the stairs this morning, her suspicions fell elsewhere—on two single men who had been staying at the Frederick House all along.
One was Colin Falconer, the school superintendent. If Des had been told that Colin was the town pastor, she would have believed it. He was a gentle soul in his early forties, with a shy, kindly manner. Very tall and thin, almost storklike, with cheeks like polished apples and neatly brushed ginger-colored hair. Behind his rimless glasses Colin’s eyes were earnest and sincere. He was very popular with the kids in town. Played the banjo at school assemblies. Took the Cub Scouts out to Peck Point to see the piping plovers. Colin was also an ardent environmentalist who rode his bicycle to school every day, dressed in a tweed jacket and corduroy trousers, a jaunty red knit scarf wrapped around his throat. Colin was staying at the Frederick House because he and his wife, Greta, were presently separated. Des was not up on the details.
The other single man in residence was someone Des did not know. He was a big, weather-beaten man in his thirties, muscular and ruggedly handsome, with uncombed straw-colored hair, crinkly blond hairs on his big arms and no wedding ring on his finger. He looked as if he did some kind of outdoor work. He also seemed very chilly and standoffish. He did not smile or say good morning when he came down for breakfast every morning, generally clad in a polo shirt and jeans. Just sat there pecking away at the small laptop computer that he brought down with him every morning, his eyes rarely leaving its screen. Des did not like his face. It was a hard face, a user’s face. Her money was on him. Possibly he was bonking one of the housekeepers or waitresses. He was certainly the type that a pliant, not-too-bright smalltown girl would go for.
“Nu, did your roofer finish yet?” Bella Tillis plopped down in the chair opposite Des now, dressed in a sweatshirt and knit pants.
“Girl, I am not even going to answer that,” Des grumbled back at her.
“You know what your problem is, Desiree? And I say this with nothing but love in my heart . . .” Bella paused to pour herself some herbal tea from the pot on the table. “You are too nice.”
“So that’s it,” Des said, smiling at her.
Bella was a short, feisty, entirely round widow from Brooklyn in her seventies with four grown children, eight grandchildren and nine million causes. She’d lived next door to Des in Woodbridge. After the breakup with Brandon, Bella had rescued her. Brought her homemade mushroom-barley soup. Dragged her out on her feral-cat rescue patrol every morning. Des quickly became ardently devoted to saving the strays—it is a known fact in pet rescue circles that people who are trying to save stray animals are really trying to save themselves. Staking out supermarket dumpsters together in the pre-dawn cold, the two of them had become unexpectedly close. Bella was her best friend now. “If you want results,” she declared, stabbing the air with a stubby finger, “you’ve got to kick some tuchos.”
“I try to treat people with respect.”
“You see, that’s where you’re wrong. Tim’s not people. He’s a contractor.”
“What’s up with you today?” Des asked, to get her off of the subject.
Bella took a loud slurp of her tea and sat back in her chair, shaking her head in disgust. “I’m looking at more places, if I can get a realtor to return one of my calls.” When Des relocated to Dorset, Bella decided she would, too. Her house in Woodbridge was on the market, and she was in town house-hunting. Or trying. “But I’m getting nowhere fast. I finally got through to that realtor on Dorset Street, that Takai Frye. Know what she did when I told her my price range? She laughed at me. Can you imagine the nerve?” The waitress brought Bella her All-Bran and berries. Bella thanked her and got busy with it. “What kind of a name is Takai Frye anyway?” she demanded, munching. “Sounds like a Polynesian fast food dish. No, no, this is hopeless. If I pay the going rate for what they call a starter home around here I’ll have nothing left to leave my grandkids. Not one penny.”
“So why don’t you just rent something?”
“I can’t. There’s nothing. And what landlord would be willing to put up with our cats?” Bella presently had nineteen boarders looking for good homes—eight in her garage, eleven in her basement.
“The cats can come live with me,” Des assured her. “And so can you. My guest bedroom is yours for as long as you like.”
“Desiree, I appreciate the offer. Truly, I do. But rooming with you is not an option. For one thing—and I can tell you this because we have no secrets from each other—I snore in the night. Late in our marriage, Morris took to sleeping in Abe’s room at the far end of the hall, with the door closed, wearing earplugs. Besides which, you’re young and gorgeous and you’re in love with a nice Jewish boy who treats you like a princess.”
“Um, okay, I think you’re confusing us with another couple.”
Bella raised an eyebrow at her impishly. “Am I? How so?”
“Well, for starters, the aforementioned L-word has not exactly arisen.”
>
“Well, something has,” Bella cracked. “Or should I say someone.”
“Bella, you are being bad today. Better ease off of that All-Bran.”
“My point is you don’t want some fat old broad around the house when you two want to have wild sex on the kitchen floor at one o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Okay, now I know you’re confusing us with another couple.” Des finished off her cereal, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin. “Actually, we aren’t even a couple yet, per se.”
“Tie that bull outside, as we used to say on Nostrand Avenue. Are you seeing anyone else?”
“You know I’m not.”
“Is he?”
“Not if he wants to remain among the walking and talking.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Who says there’s a problem?”
Bella didn’t respond, just stared at her intently from across the table.
Des sighed. “The problem is that I am so not in control of my emotions.”
“Congratulations. That means you’re someone who’s in love.”
“Or a candidate to be a serial killer. Bella, this is a vastly more insidious creature than I’ve ever encountered before. The man keeps doing deplorable things to me. Like when I was packing up my house last week, feeling bluer than blue, he shows up out of nowhere with a bunch of wildflowers he’d picked from his yard. You know what he said to me? He said that they reminded him of the color of my eyes in the candlelight. Shut up, that is so not fair . . .” Come to think of it, they had ended up on her kitchen floor that afternoon. “I mean, no one is that sweet. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Which you know it will. If he’s human. Only, he’s not human. He’s straight out of one of his horror movies—The Stepford Boyfriend. Except he doesn’t cook, unless you count that damned American chop suey of his, which I sure as hell don’t.”
Bella reached across the table and grabbed Des’s hand in her Vulcan death grip. “Listen to me, Desiree, all men are animals.”