by Unknown
Mitch was aware of this happening to the children of film stars. The burden of carrying around a famous name brought many of them to their knees. Drug and alcohol abuse were common. Instead of trying to destroy herself, Takai had turned her anger outward. “Life isn’t fair,” he said to her. “You can’t use that as an excuse. It doesn’t justify what you did.”
“Evil,” Hangtown repeated, his voice barely more than a whisper now. “She was always evil.”
“And Moose was always good,” she jeered at him. “And look where it got her, Father. She’s in a body bag at the morgue. And look where it got Mother—a lonely grave in Laguna Beach. Because of you. All because of you. You killed them both, you bastard. And now you’re feeling the pain I felt. I want you to feel it. I hope you feel it for a long, long time. I hope you live for goddamned ever!” Takai broke off, glancing sidelong at Mitch. “My shoulder bag’s right there on the sofa next to you,” she murmured, her eyes flicking back at the Barrett.
“What about it?” Mitch’s own eyes were on the Barrett, too.
“I have another gun. It’s in there. He wouldn’t let me near it before, but—”
“Don’t try it, Big Mitch,” warned Hangtown. “I genuinely don’t want to hurt you.”
“He’ll never shoot you,” Takai said, urging Mitch on. “He likes you. And so do I. We could build something together, Mitch. We could be terrific.”
“Thanks, Takai, but somehow I don’t think it would work out.”
“I can’t tell you how I felt when you came to my rescue just now,” she went on, her voice getting throaty and seductive. “Everything fell right into place, Mitch. There’s nothing I won’t do to make you happy. And, believe me, I can do things to you that no one else has ever dreamed of—for sure not that uptight black girl. Get me that gun and I’ll show you, Mitch. Get it for me, It’s right there . . .”
“Don’t try it, Big Mitch.”
“I won’t,” Mitch promised, although he was thinking that if he had Takai’s gun he might be able to persuade Hang-town to drop his. Maybe this could be settled without bloodshed. It was at least worth a try. Slowly, he inched a bit closer to the sofa, his arm beginning to reach out . . . out . . .
And Hangtown fired at him—blowing out the window right next to his head.
Mitch instantly froze, his ears ringing all over again. “Okay, okay, I’m not moving! But listen to me. Just listen . . . If Takai did do these things, don’t you want her to suffer?”
“No, I want her to die,” Hangtown said, turning the gun back on her. “And now she’s going to.”
Takai cowered against the wall in her torn clothing, her eyes darting wildly around the room for a means of escape, a shield, something, anything. There was nothing. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
“But you’ll be letting her off the hook,” Mitch argued, his voice rising in desperation. “If you kill her, she won’t suffer. She wins. But jail, that’s something else. Think about it, Hangtown. She’ll have to live in a cage for years and years. She’ll get fat and ugly. Now that’s the ultimate revenge—not killing her.”
Hangtown considered this for a moment, his finger easing slightly off of the trigger. “You make a good point,” he conceded. The old master remained amazingly calm. “But she killed my Moose. And now I’m going to kill her.”
“You can’t kill your own daughter.”
“You couldn’t be more wrong. I’m the only one in the world who has that right.”
“How do you figure?” Mitch asked.
“Because I gave her life,” Hangtown answered simply. “I gave it to her, and now I’m going to take it away.”
“I thought only God had the right to do that,” Mitch said.
Hangtown let out a great big laugh. “Haven’t you heard the news—there is no God.” Then his creased face fell and he gazed at his daughter with nothing but profound sadness. “Good-bye, princess,” he said huskily, his finger tightening on the trigger.
“No, Father. No . . .!”
“Drop your weapon, Hangtown!” a booming voice abruptly commanded him. “Drop it now.” It was Des, blessed Des, standing there in the doorway with her Sig-Sauer aimed at Hangtown and every muscle in her body tensed.
Mitch had never been so happy to see anyone in his entire life. “Good evening, Trooper Mitry. We were just hashing out a family dispute here.”
“So I see,” she said, edging closer into the room, rain glistening on her slicker and big hat. “Drop your weapon, Hangtown.”
“Drop your own weapon, Desiree,” he growled. “This is a private matter. We have no need for any law.”
“It was Takai who murdered Moose and Melanie,” Mitch told Des. “And the trooper down at the gate.”
“We just found Trooper Olsen. Soave’s phoning it in.” Des glared at Takai and said, “That man had a wife and two young children. But I don’t suppose that matters to you very much.”
“Of course it matters,” Takai said indignantly. “Do you think I’m some kind of a psychopath?”
“I really don’t know what you are, Miss Frye. I’m just here to arrest you.”
A sudden sob of relief came from Takai’s chest. “Well, thank you for that.”
“Don’t thank me,” Des snapped at her. “Whatever you do, don’t thank me.”
“You can’t have her,” Hangtown objected. “She’s mine.”
“It’s no use, Mr. Frye,” Des said, moving in still closer. “Lieutenant Tedone is right outside. And this place will be swarming with cruisers any minute. You’ll just end up getting yourself shot. Don’t do it. Let us have her.”
“Give me a reason,” Hangtown insisted. “Give me one good reason.”
Now Takai was starting to edge slowly away from the fireplace. She did have a means of escape, Mitch suddenly realized. The trapdoor. The open trapdoor on the other side of the sofa. True, she was a good ten feet from it. But if she could manage to dive through it without getting shot she might actually get away through the catacombs.
“Trooper, I’d like to call my lawyer,” she said in a soft, trembly voice, inching her way closer and closer to the trapdoor. “Before we go, if I may.”
“You just chill out, Miss Frye,” Des said, her eyes riveted on Hangtown as Takai continued to edge closer to that gaping trapdoor. “And for God’s sake, shut your pretty-girl hole, or I’ll shoot you myself . . . Please put it down, Hangtown,” she begged, her own gun still aimed right at him, clutched tightly in both hands. “I have great respect for you. I like you. But if you don’t put it down, I’ll have to shoot you. Don’t make me do it. Don’t make me shoot you. Please.”
“Let the law take its course,” Mitch urged him. “Think about Crazy Daisy. Think about how you and Gentle Kate felt.”
“I am being punished for my sins,” Hangtown muttered under his breath, his finger on the trigger, eyes on Takai.
“Who the hell’s Crazy Daisy?” Des demanded, her finger on the trigger.
Mitch didn’t respond. He was standing there thinking: I am not in the living room of a historic home in Dorset, Connecticut, anymore. I am in a hot, dusty saloon with a name like the Silver Dollar or Last Chance, and somebody is about to end up dead on the floor.
But who?
Hangtown said it again: “Good-bye, princess.” His finger tightening on the trigger . . .
“No, Father . . .!”
“Hangtown, don’t—!”
“Drop it! I’m warning you . . .!”
And an animal roar came out of the old man—
And Takai made her move—a sudden, desperate lunge for that trapdoor—
And never made it.
He blew her away. The sheer force of the Barrett’s blast flinging her hard up against the wall, her chest torn wide open. What slid ever so slowly down the wall to the floor was no longer a person, let alone a gorgeous and deeply, deeply troubled one.
Des still had her Sig-Sauer aimed right at the old man. But she hadn’t fired a shot at him. Co
uldn’t. She was frozen there, a stricken expression on her face.
Mitch couldn’t move a muscle either. He could barely breathe.
As for Hangtown, he calmly laid the Barrett flat on the table, went over to the butler’s tray by the desk and poured himself a brandy from a leaded glass decanter. Then he raised his glass to what had once been his younger daughter and in a deep, solemn voice said, “Good fight, good night.”
Mitch never got a chance to speak to Wendell Frye again.
The great artist had told him that when the will to live is gone, a person can go very fast. Hangtown went very fast. A massive heart attack killed him two days later. The page-one obituary in Mitch’s newspaper called him a “colossus of twentieth-century art.” Hangtown never had to stand trial for Takai’s murder. He was never even formally charged. He was already a man of leisure by then, taking his nice long dirt nap.
He didn’t even have to leave his beloved farm. He was buried there later that week among his forefathers in the family’s cemetery overlooking the river, right alongside his Gentle Kate. Moose and Takai were laid to rest there at the same time. It was a small private ceremony. Some of Moose’s schoolteacher friends were there, as were a few members of the art academy faculty. Greta Patterson was there with Colin. Jim Bolan was there. So was Takai’s ex-husband, Dirk Doughty, whose bags were in his car—he was driving home to Toledo right after the funeral. And Mitch was there. He’d brought Sheila Enman along with him, as promised.
As Mitch was driving the old lady to the ceremony, he told her about Moose’s quest to discover the secret ingredient in her chocolate chip cookies.
“If only she’d asked me,” Mrs. Enman lamented sadly. “Gracious, I would have told her.”
“Of course you would have,” Mitch agreed. “It’s the sour cream, right?”
Mrs. Enman smiled at him enigmatically, but remained silent. She would not tell him.
This was Dorset, after all.
Melanie Zide was buried later that same day in the town cemetery. No one came.
CHAPTER 14
The skeletal remains of the young sculptress known as Crazy Daisy were found in a shallow grave under a tree, a stone cairn marking the spot. Mitch had been told about the grave by Hangtown, but chose to keep the news from Des until after the funeral. Des found this both curious and upsetting. She could not believe he had kept silent. But she did not hassle Mitch about it. He had just buried his friend. He had told her when he was ready. And that would have to do for now.
Soave tried to find out who Crazy Daisy really was. A dental mold was made, a DNA sample taken, the FBI informed. Word was put out through the media. But she matched no missing person report filed in 1972, and no relatives stepped forward now to claim her. Truly, she was a lost soul, gone and forgotten. After a suitable waiting period she was reburied in the Dorset town cemetery in a proper casket set inside a sealed concrete burial vault, according to Connecticut state law. Her headstone read simply DAISY, SUMMER OF ’72.
Funeral costs were paid for by the Patterson Gallery.
Des did have to be debriefed up in Meriden about the Takai Frye shooting by a lieutenant from Internal Affairs. She told him what she’d walked in on after she and Soave found Trooper Olsen dead at the front gate: Wendell Frye pointing the loaded Barrett at his daughter, Mitch Berger standing there alongside of her, unarmed. She said that she’d ordered the old man to drop his weapon but that he’d opened fire before she could get a single shot off. She did not raise the question of whether she’d held her fire too long. The lieutenant did not raise it either. He had what he needed, including Soave’s unequivocal backing of her actions. Besides which, Wendell Frye was dead anyway. Case closed.
After the debriefing, she ran into Soave on his way into the old headmaster’s house, the red brick mansion with the slate mansard roof that was home to the Central District’s Major Crime Squad.
Soave grinned at the sight of her and said, “How did it go in there?”
“It went. Thanks for watching my back.”
“Hey, that’s what teammates do,” he answered emphatically.
They lingered there in the parking lot for a moment, the barking of German shepherds serving as steady background noise. The state police’s K-9 training center was located there on the secluded hilltop campus, as was the world-renowned Forensic Science lab.
“Where’s little Tommy?” she asked.
Soave made a face. “I got him transferred to arson. My brother said I should have spoken up sooner. I put in for somebody smart. Maybe I’ll get lucky this time, huh?”
“You never know. Maybe you’ll even get a woman.”
He leaned against his cruiser, smoothing his see-through mustache. “Des, I think maybe I’ve got a better handle on you now than I did before. What do you think?”
Des considered this for a moment, Soave glancing at her unsurely. He was trying. He really was. She couldn’t slap him down. Understanding was too precious a commodity, no matter the history or the circumstances. So she smiled and said, “Rico, there’s hope for you yet. Get yourself some decent threads, lose that caterpillar on your lip, and lil’ Tawny will have herself quite some catch.”
“What, you don’t like my mustache?” he demanded, flabbergasted.
“That’s correct.”
“Why didn’t you say something before?”
“It’s your face, wow man.”
“Des, are you honestly happy down there in Dorset?”
“I am, Rico. That’s where the real job is.”
Soave stuck out his hand and said, “Let’s stay in touch this time, okay?”
“Deal,” she said, shaking it firmly.
“Yo, would you come if I invited you?”
“Come where, Rico?”
“To the wedding.”
“I wouldn’t have to be a bridesmaid, would I?” Des loathed bridesmaid dresses. They were always made out of something pink and shiny, and made her look like one of Count Dracula’s girls.
“Nah, Tawny’s got like a million sisters and cousins.”
“In that case,” Des replied, “I’d be proud to come.”
She got there at ten o’clock.
She did not want to take a chance on being late. Nor could she bring in another officer. Not if she wanted to keep this off the books. She did consider calling Soave, but decided not to. Even though he’d said all the right things, she was still not sure if she could trust him. She had to be sure on this one.
So she called Mitch. He brought his truck, as well as a half dozen six-by-eight-inch panes of glass, a tin of glazing compound and a putty knife. They sat there on watch together in his cab. He’d parked about halfway down the block, close enough to keep an eye out. Her own ride was stashed well out of sight.
“Are you sure we’re not partners?” he asked her.
“Totally.”
“Still, you have to admit that this is getting to be a habit.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“At the very least, I should get an honorary badge.”
“Tell you what—if you’ll stop flapping your gums, there’s a Darren doll in it for you. Now listen up—once this breaks I want you out of sight. You’re not to get involved, understood?”
Mitch said he understood.
“Is there anything else we need to go over?”
“Yeah, we haven’t discussed how pretty you look in the moonlight,” he said, beaming at her. “Aren’t you going to say anything about how I look in the moonlight?”
“White. You look awfully white.” She glanced at her watch and said, “Okay, let’s split up. Anything goes down from your end, you signal me with your flashlight, deal?”
“Deal.” He solemnly stuck out his hand so they could shake on it, Des wincing from his grip. “Hey, what’s wrong with your hand?”
“Nothing,” she growled, flexing it, feeling the soreness. “I ran into something, that’s all.” Which was entirely true. Nose cartilage qualified as s
omething.
They split up, Mitch taking up a post in the bushes around back, with a thermos of coffee and his leather jacket for warmth against the late-October chill. If the Mod Squad tried to get in from that side, he would spot them. Des had chosen a spot for herself behind a privet hedge in front of an historic mansion on the other side of the street, two doors down. From there she could keep her eyes trained both on the front of the building and on Mitch. She’d also scored herself a spare set of keys. When she needed to go in, she’d be ready.
She flashed her light at Mitch to let him know she was in position. He flashed his back. Then she settled in for the wait, her hands stuffed deep in the pockets of her heavy wool pea coat. Her thoughts were on him. There had been a bit of strain between them ever since that night Hangtown shot Takai. They had not talked about it. They needed to. But now was not the right time.
It was Mitch who spotted them first, shortly after one o’clock. When Des saw his signal she immediately took off across the street, sprinting up the path to the front of the building. Swiftly, she unlocked the front door, shutting it softly behind her. Now she stood in the darkness of the front hallway with her ears pricked up, waiting for the sound that she knew would come next. Because a ground-level window was the obvious way in. All they had to do was break a single pane, reach inside and unlock it. There was no security alarm to worry about. She stood there poised on the balls of her feet, waiting, waiting . . .
And then she heard it—the sound of glass breaking. It was down the hall to her right. She darted in that direction, pausing in the darkness at each open door she came to . . . Nothing . . . nothing . . . still nothing . . . until she’d reached the room at the end of the hall. And could hear them hoisting themselves in the window, one after another. Des waited there just inside the doorway with her hand on the light switch. Waited until they were all safe and snug inside.
That was when she flicked on the glaring overhead lights and said, “I understand this is where the Claire Danes Fan Club meets.”
There were five of them altogether, Ronnie and four other boys. All of them wearing those same dark hooded jackets they’d had on when she spotted them at the market. All of them cradling as many family-sized bags of potato chips in their arms as they could handle.