The Hot Pink Farmhouse

by Unknown

  Not now. Not ever.

  “You made a play and you lost, Mrs. Leanse,” Soave began, his voice chilly and authoritative. He played the blustering intimidator well. He loved to stick it to people. Especially rich people. “Your days as head of the Dorset school board are over. You are toast. That’s a given. But if you’re straight with us, we may be able to keep you out of jail.”

  Babette’s eyes widened with alarm. “Jail?”

  “Whoa, time-out here,” Bruce broke in, staggered. “What are you talking about?”

  “Melanie Zide is dead,” Soave fired back. “Maybe you heard the news.”

  Babette sat there limply, the color draining from her face. “Dead?” Evidently, she hadn’t.

  “Someone shot her,” Des said quietly. “And then tried to make it look like she left town.”

  “We now have a positive ID on Cutter,” Soave continued, staying on the offensive. “What we don’t have, Mrs. Leanse, is the real reason why Melanie was pursuing her sexual-harassment claim against the superintendent. What was in it for her? Who put her up to it?”

  Babette said nothing in response. Just sat there in tight-lipped silence, her small hand wrapped around a plastic water bottle.

  Her husband, however, flew into a panic. “Honey, if you know anything, you’d better tell them!” he said in an agitated voice. “I am trying to build something huge here. If there’s so much as a whiff hanging over me I am roadkill—no planning commission approval, no building permit, nada. They won’t let me build a damned phone booth in this town, get it?”

  Des was certainly trying to. Mostly, she found herself wondering if Bruce’s little speech was scripted for their benefit. She found it doubtful that anything this elaborate had been undertaken without his knowledge.

  Now he was getting up off his stool. “Do you want me to call Jack?” he asked his wife. “Maybe I’d better call him at home in New York. We’ll put this on speakerphone so he can advise you what to say or what not to say or—”

  “No, don’t,” Babette said faintly, putting a hand on his arm. “I want to tell them everything I know. I need to. I’m positively ill about this whole thing.”

  “Okay, if that’s what you want . . .” Bruce settled back down on his stool.

  Babette sat there for a long moment in silence, a deeply pained expression on her face. “But first I want you officers to understand that this was all my doing. My husband knew nothing about it. You must believe that. Everyone must believe that. If he had known, he most certainly would have told me not to do it.”

  “Fine, whatever,” Soave said impatiently. He wasn’t buying this either.

  “A few months ago,” Babette began slowly, “I discovered Melanie was mixed up in a kickback scheme involving our district’s classroom supplies—she’d switched us to a new distributor in exchange for money under the table. I found out about it from our old supplier, who’d refused to ante up. It wasn’t a lot of money—a few hundred here, a thousand there—and it is a fairly common practice among office managers who do institutional ordering. But it’s highly unethical.”

  “Grounds for dismissal, too, I’d imagine,” Des said.

  “Absolutely,” Babette concurred. “When I confronted Melanie about it she was extremely contrite. And laid this whole sad story on me about her poor sick mother in the nursing home. And then she said, ‘Isn’t there any way we can work this out?’ I said, ‘Melanie, I can’t imagine what you mean.’ And she said, ‘Well, what are our common interests?’ Of course, I knew immediately what she meant. She was well aware that I’d prefer to have a superintendent who backs the new school. Then she said, ‘I have this friend who’s a secretary in the tax collector’s office up in Hartford and she got rid of her boss, a real nasty jerk, by claiming he’d sexually harassed her.’ I said to her, ‘Melanie, has Colin been making improper advances to you?’ Melanie said, ‘No, but he doesn’t even have to.’ All her friend did was buy some gay porn magazines and leave them lying around her boss’s office. Then she filed a complaint against him, claiming that she’d been made to feel sexually harassed by his conduct. The state, which was not anxious to have the story hit the news, immediately offered him a lucrative early retirement package if he’d go quietly. And he did, even though it was a complete fabrication, because he didn’t want to put his wife and family through the embarrassment of having it go public.” Babette paused to drink thirstily from her water bottle. “Melanie knew that Colin was partial to online chat groups,” she continued, her voice low and strained. “Particularly the gay ones. She’d observed him participating in them during his lunch hour. She suggested we find someone to engage him in a male cyber romance. All she had to do was catch him at it in his office one time and she’d testify against him. Faced with public humiliation and shame, she felt sure Colin would fold his tent the same way her friend’s boss had.” Babette took a deep breath, swiping at the perspiration on her face with her towel. “And that’s the whole dirty, rotten little plan—Melanie would keep her job, Colin would lose his, and Dorset would get its new school.”

  “Honey, I don’t believe this!” Bruce protested, aghast.

  Again Des found herself wondering whether his reaction was strictly for their benefit.

  “This whole scheme was Melanie Zide’s idea?” Soave demanded, glaring at Babette Leanse accusingly. “You had nothing to do with it?”

  Babette lowered her eyes. “I—I had the power to tell her no. And I didn’t.”

  “It means that much to you?” Des said to her.

  Babette looked at her blankly. “What does, trooper?”

  “The school. It’s worth ruining a man’s life just for the sake of a new building?”

  “Nothing is more important than our children’s well-being,” Babette replied with total conviction. “Colin was too bound up in local tradition to see that.”

  “And so you flattened him,” Des said.

  “Yes,” she admitted quietly.

  “The new school’s also pretty important to the future of The Aerie, am I right?”

  “One’s got nothing to do with the other,” Bruce argued hastily. “Not a thing.”

  “Really? That’s not what I’m hearing,” Des said.

  “Why, what are you hearing?” he demanded.

  “That you’d like to build a New Age retirement village on three thousand acres of prime farmland and forest adjacent to the river,” she replied. “That in order to lock up zoning and wetlands approval you’ve paid to play by donating the land and the design plans for this new school that you insist the town needs, even though a lot of people don’t happen to agree with you. From where I sit, Mr. Leanse, you’re the one who needs the new school.”

  “Our children need the new school,” Babette insisted. “Center School is unhealthy.”

  “And there’s no quid pro quo,” Bruce said vehemently. “That’s a lie. A vicious, evil lie. People repeat it often enough, they think it becomes the truth. It doesn’t. It’s still a damned lie!”

  God, they were cagey, Des reflected. From their lips it was impossible to tell truth from spin. Perhaps the two were one and the same to people such as these. Perhaps the whole cyber-romance scheme had been Babette’s idea, not Melanie’s. It wasn’t as if Melanie were around anymore to dispute her version of the facts.

  “I-I didn’t want Bruce to know about Colin,” Babette spoke softly. “I wanted this to be my own contribution. To accomplish something on my own.”

  “You accomplished something, all right,” Soave said to her coldly. “You placed yourself right in the middle of two murders.”

  “And a suicide attempt,” Des added. “Let’s not forget that.”

  “I shouldn’t have let it happen.” Babette’s eyes were beginning to shimmer, as if she might cry. “It was sneaky and wrong, just wrong. And I am deeply ashamed. But Colin did willingly engage in that pornographic online relationship. And he did leave smutty material on his screen for Melanie to see. That was his own doi
ng. No one held a gun to his head. If he had behaved appropriately, then he would have had nothing to fear. He’d—” She broke off, her voice quavering. “Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself. But it was an awful thing to do to someone, and I know it. I could have stopped it from happening, and I didn’t. And now I will have to accept the consequences.”

  Soave stared at her in disapproving silence. “Who shot Melanie Zide, Mrs. Leanse?”

  “I have no idea who, Lieutenant,” she replied. “Or why. Possibly Melanie got greedy. It was certainly like her to get greedy.”

  “Forgive me if I sound dense,” Bruce cut in, running a hand through his short, spiky hair. “But there’s one thing I’m still not getting . . .”

  “Which is what, Mr. Leanse?” Soave asked him.

  “This online lover of Colin’s,” he said slowly. “This Cutter fellow—just exactly who the hell is he?”

  CHAPTER 13

  There was so much sobbing coming from the other end of the phone that at first Mitch couldn’t even tell who the caller was. When he finally recognized the voice he laid down his fork and said, “Slow down, Takai. What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Father!” she cried out. “I-I don’t know what to do or who to . . . I’m so sorry to bother you, but I—”

  “It’s okay, I’m not doing anything special.” In truth, he was busy wolfing down a third helping of Des’s remarkable Hoppin’ John. Des was still on the job. Bella had headed back to the Frederick House for the night and the Deacon had gone home. So had the helicopters that had been circling overhead for the past two hours, making him feel as if he were living in a war zone. “Just tell me what’s happened—is Hangtown all right?”

  “No, he is not all right! He’s in one of his drunken rages. Totally out of control. And they’re not releasing Jim until the morning and I’m all by myself and—”

  “Wait, isn’t there still a trooper stationed there?”

  “He’s parked way down at the gate to keep the damned press out. There’s no one here besides me. And I just can’t handle him. H-he’s really scaring me, Mitch. I’ve never seen him this bad. Could you . . .?”

  “Don’t say another word. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  He went right out the door into the darkness, jumped into his pickup and headed over the wooden causeway to Peck Point. It had gotten windy out, and a cold drizzle was beginning to fall. A couple of TV news reporters from Hartford were still huddled under bright lights at the gate, trying to hold on to their hairdos as they filed their stories on Melanie Zide’s murder for the eleven-o’clock news. He steamed right past them and got onto the Old Shore Road and floored it, heading north with his brights and wipers on.

  By the time he turned off of Route 156 onto Old Ferry Road the drizzle had become a hard, steady rain. There was no press corps clustered at the foot of Hangtown’s private drive at this hour. Only the one state police cruiser that Takai had mentioned, which sat there blocking the entrance to the drive, its lights on, its engine running, a lone trooper behind the wheel. Mitch pulled up and waited but the trooper wouldn’t budge from his nice dry ride, so Mitch had to get out and slog through the rain with his head down to tell him that Takai was expecting him. The trooper didn’t seem the least bit interested. He didn’t even roll down his window when Mitch tapped on it. Asleep. The big oaf was asleep.

  Annoyed, Mitch yanked open the guy’s door and—

  Out he tumbled, his weight bowling Mitch over onto the wet ground underneath him, the trooper staring right down at him with half of his head blown off and a look of blind terror on what was left of his face.

  Mitch let out a strangled cry and scrambled out from under him, shuddering with revulsion. Now he was seeing blood and more blood in the light of his truck’s beams. Some of it had gotten on him. And there was broken glass all over the dead man and the seat and the dashboard. Whoever shot him had fired right through the passenger-side window.

  Mitch stood frozen there, overcome by the shock and the horror of it. Briefly, he thought he might pass out. Dazed, he stumbled blindly away . . . And then . . . And then he started running, slipping and sliding on the wet leaves, falling, getting back up. Up the long, twisting dirt drive he ran in the black of night, hearing himself panting, his footsteps chunking heavily. Mitch ran and he ran. Past the totem poles made of personal computers, alongside the meadow filled with car parts, around the big bend toward Wendell Frye’s hot pink house. The place was ablaze with lights. Every light in every window was on. Mitch ran and he ran, staggering to a halt only when he’d reached Moose’s old Land Rover, which was parked right out front.

  He fell against it, gulping for breath, his chest aching, when suddenly Sam came lunging furiously at him from the front seat, throwing himself against the rolled-up windows, barking and snarling.

  Someone had locked Hangtown’s dog in the car, and the normally mellow German shepherd was totally beside himself, a hundred and twenty savage pounds of fangs and muscles. Mitch didn’t know why he’d been locked up. But he wasn’t going to let him out. Not the way he was acting.

  The front door to the house was wide open.

  Mitch proceeded inside, calling out Takai’s name, calling out Hangtown’s name, listening, hearing nothing in response. No sound at all except for his own heart pounding in his chest. Dripping wet, he headed straight for the phone in the kitchen to call for help. Des. He would call Des. He picked up the phone and was starting to punch in the numbers when he realized it was dead. Nothing but stone-cold silence greeted his ear.

  The line was out. Someone had made sure it was out.

  Mitch did have a cell phone for emergencies, but in his mad haste he had left it in his truck. He was standing there in the big farm kitchen thinking seriously about going back for it when he heard the scream.

  It was a woman’s scream. A scream of absolute terror. No time for phone calls. Only time to do something. The scream had come from the direction of the living room. Mitch started that way . . . Only now he could hear footsteps running directly overhead. Doors slamming. A cackling of maniacal laughter. Another scream—this time it seemed to be coming from the basement.

  The passageways. They were in Hangtown’s secret passageways.

  He grabbed a flashlight from the counter and dashed into the living room, trying to remember which suit of armor activated which hidden door. And exactly where that damned trapdoor in the floor was. He was not anxious to take another wild funhouse ride down to the cellar. Bracing himself, Mitch took a deep breath and raised the right gauntlet of one of the suits . . . and the trapdoor immediately dropped open right next to his feet. Greatly relieved, he lifted the visor on the other suit, opening the bookcase next to the fireplace. He barged through it into the utter darkness of the narrow secret passageway, flashlight in hand, fingering his way along its damp, cobwebbed walls. His knees did not feel entirely normal. Rubbery was not normal. And the beam of the flashlight was beginning to flicker. The batteries were almost gone, and a horrified Mitch was suddenly realizing . . .

  My God, I have seen this movie a million times. There’s always a tight shot on the Amiable Boob who’s just trying to help out. And as he stupidly gropes his way along, the Drooling Madman jumps out of the darkness behind him with an ax and the audience sees him and the Amiable Boob doesn’t and . . . WHAM! Only I am NOT sitting safely in a darkened theater with a jumbo-sized tub of hot buttered popcorn in my lap. I am IN this. Moose and Melanie are really dead. That cop out at the gate is really dead. And, if I don’t watch out, I am really dead.

  Now the floor fell away before him. He’d reached the spiral staircase to the cellar. He went down slowly, the narrow wooden stairs creaking under his weight as small creatures skittered along the water pipes right near his head, squealing. Rats. They were rats. At the bottom of the stairs he reached a cement floor, the flashlight’s dimming beam falling on the slick catacomb walls. He inched his way forward, hearing footsteps running above him, alongside him, next to
him. And cackling. He heard a man cackling. And now a woman’s voice was crying, “No, don’t! No!” Christ, where were they? And now, yes, he was in the wine cellar. He’d found the wine cellar. Fumbling for the light switch, he flicked it on.

  Nothing. No lights came on.

  Mitch waved the flashlight’s faltering beam around. The hidden cupboard in the wall, the one where they used to stash booze during Prohibition, was wide open. He searched the shelves in hopes of finding candles or matches. But he found nothing but dust. And now his flashlight was practically dead and he was going to be stranded down here in the blackness, blind and helpless, if he didn’t come up with a plan, and fast . . .

  The kitchen. There were kerosene lanterns in the kitchen. If he could just find that passageway that Hangtown had led him down . . . Yes, here it was. This one . . . Okay, good, and here was the other spiral staircase, the one that led up to that secret corridor behind the upstairs bedrooms. On the other end of that corridor was the old service staircase to the kitchen. It was a plan. He could do this.

  Mitch felt his way up the winding stairs from the cellar to the second floor in almost total darkness. His flashlight was barely giving off a glow now. Groping the wall for balance, he heard a door slam. And then Hangtown’s voice cry out, “You won’t get away from me! You will never get away!” And Takai shriek, “Father, you don’t know what you’re doing!” Both of their voices seemed only inches away from him. But all he could see was blackness.

  Where were they? Where?

  Now he stumbled. There were no more stairs. He had reached that narrow second-floor corridor. He’d forgotten just how low the ceiling was. He ran headfirst into the cobwebs, his face covered with them. A spider moved across his cheek en route to his mouth. He swiped it away, his skin crawling, and felt his way blindly around one sharp corner, then another . . .

  Until suddenly he came upon blessed, golden light. It was the secret doors in back of the bedroom closets. They’d been flung open, the bedroom lights flooding the passageway with illumination. Blinking, Mitch halted at the first room he came to and parted the clothing that hung there in the closet before him. The entire room had been trashed. Furniture was overturned, bedding strewn.