“How?” asked Mitch, wondering if this particular swamp Yankee had smoked a bit too much of his own medicine.
“Next spring, soon as it gets good and warm, I’ll plant me some dope plants on his place up on the hill. Deep in the woods, where he can’t find ’em. Serve that bastard right.” Jim reached for a towel to dry his hands, his expression turning serious. “Whatever you do, son, stay away from Takai. She’s pure evil.”
She was in the kitchen now, sipping a glass of wine and looking exceptionally gorgeous in an artfully unbuttoned cashmere cardigan, skintight leather miniskirt and spiked heels. Takai’s legs were long, shapely and golden. She smelled of a musky perfume that was positively intoxicating.
“It’s like I found out a long time ago,” Jim added in a low voice. “Nothing that looks like that can possibly be good for you.”
“What’s that you’re saying, Jim?” Takai demanded.
“Just saying how good you look, baby.”
“Nice to see you again, Mitch,” she said, her eyes gleaming at him. “I have this damned business meeting to go to tonight, so I won’t be able to stick around for long. I apologize in advance.”
“Absolutely no need to,” said Mitch, who was starting to feel a bit light-headed. It was that perfume of hers.
Dinner was a roasted leg of lamb studded with garlic and rosemary, mashed potatoes and sauteed greens that Moose had harvested from the garden. All of it was superb. They ate in the low-ceilinged dining room, a very old room with exposed chestnut beams and a walk-in fireplace with a beehive oven and cast-iron crane. A big fire of massive oak logs roared in the fireplace, bathing the room in warmth and golden light. A highly precious handful of landscape paintings by Hangtown’s father and grandfather adorned the walls, all of them paintings of this very farm. Hangtown sat at one end of the scarred oak dining table, his back to the fire and Sam at his feet. Mitch, the guest of honor, faced the fire.
“Used to do all of their cooking in that fireplace,” Hang-town informed Mitch as they ate. “There was a spit with a clock-jack to turn it. House belonged to a clergyman then. There mm-rr-were a whole lot of clergymen in Grandmother’s family. Distinguished theologians and scholars.” He paused to sip his wine. “Obsessive foot fetishists, one and all. Inveterate toe suckers.”
“Father!” objected Moose. “What has gotten into you tonight?”
“It’s Big Mitch,” Hangtown responded, his blue eyes twinkling devilishly. “He’s a baad influence.”
“Mitch is behaving like a perfect gentleman,” Takai sniffed, gazing at him invitingly. Her eyes promised him unimaginable erotic riches. Strictly an act. Mitch knew a performance when he saw one. “Too perfect, if you ask me.”
“Well, he cheers me up,” Hangtown declared. “Nice to have a healthy young goat around here for a change.” He pointed a wavering finger at Moose. “What’s this I hear about Colin Falconer swallowing a bottle of pills today?”
“I was there,” she affirmed somberly. “He would have died if the resident trooper hadn’t gotten to him in time. Poor Colin’s just caught in this awful school-bond snare. For his sake, I hope he resigns. He’s a good, kind man.”
“He’s a wimp,” Hangtown shot back. “Never punish yourself-punish the other guy.”
“Besides, pills are the coward’s way out,” Jim added, nodding.
“I suppose if he were a manly man he would have blown his head off,” Moose said sharply.
“What Colin needs to accept,” Takai interjected, “is that there are a lot of people in Dorset who simply won’t rest until he’s out. They want their new school. And they want a superintendent who recognizes that we need it.”
“Like hell we do, princess,” Hangtown grumbled. “Fix the old one if it needs fixing. Fit it and shut up about it.”
“A fine new school will be a credit to our community,” Takai said.
“It will kill our community,” he argued. “Our property taxes will be doubled. The old folks on fixed incomes will be driven out. The working folks will be driven out. The only people who’ll be able to afford to live in Dorset anymore are the yuppie scum with their fat six-figure incomes and their fat, snot-nosed brats!”
Takai drained her wine, patting her lips with her napkin. “Nonsense, Father. It’s a very good deal for the town. Bruce is offering to donate that land on Old Ferry Road. And Babette’s waiving her fee. She’ll design it for nothing.”
“In exchange for what?” Jim demanded. “People like them don’t do anything for nothing.”
“Bruce Leanse is a man of integrity,” she responded, tossing her head. Her glossy black hair gleamed in the firelight, as if she were lit from within. “And he’s bending over backward to do the right thing. I think he should be given credit for it, not vilified.”
Jim lit a Lucky Strike and passed the pack over to Hang-town, who did the same despite Moose’s disapproving look. “And when the dust settles,” Jim said, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs, “he’ll have brung a town road, power and phone lines into what used to be nothing but farmland and old-growth forest. That school’s his damned Trojan horse, can’t you see that, girl? We’ll have sewers here before we know it. And town-house condos. And then this won’t be Dorset no more.”
“Jim, you’re a paranoid lunatic,” Takai said flatly.
“I know what I know,” Jim insisted, glowering across the table at her. “Too many places in this valley are getting gobbled up all of a sudden. Big chunks of acreage, too.”
“Not this chunk,” Hangtown roared, pounding the table with his fist. “That bastard will never get his hands on my place.”
“Look at a map sometime,” Jim said. “Connect the dots-the school site, my place, them others… You’ll see just how nuts I am.” He turned his squinty gaze on Mitch. “You’re the journalist, son. Ought to write about it. Tell the people what’s going on here.”
Mitch shot a glance over at Hangtown, whose face had immediately turned to stone, his bright-blue eyes icy and unyielding. “I’m not that kind of a journalist,” Mitch said carefully. “Besides, I’m not even sure I see a story here.”
“Then maybe you ought to try opening your eyes,” Jim growled at him.
“Leave him alone, Jim,” said Moose, rushing to Mitch’s defense.
“Well, I think we should be flattered that Bruce Leanse has taken an interest in Dorset,” Takai said, glancing at the Rolex on her slim wrist. “He believes in environmentally sensitive growth. He believes in preserving an area’s tradition. Whether you know it or not, he’s our best hope for the future.”
“Our best hope for the future is that he gets cancer,” Hangtown snarled.
“You’re wrong about him, Father,” she said, angry red splotches forming on her chiseled cheeks. “He’s not Satan.”
“He’ll do,” cackled Hangtown, who clearly relished these sparring sessions with his younger daughter.
His older daughter did not seem to be enjoying it at all. Moose’s eyes were cast down at her empty plate, her hands folded in her lap.
“This is the price you pay for living in paradise,” Takai said emphatically. “Other people want in, too.”
“In which case it’s not paradise anymore,” Hangtown said. “We never learn. We destroyed southern California. We destroyed Florida. We destroyed Long Island-”
“Wait, I have to take issue with you there,” Mitch interrupted. “Long Island was never nice.”
“It’s enough to make one wish for a nationwide economic calamity,” Hangtown argued. “People need to simplify their lives. Spend less. Consume less. We are pigs.”
“I’m going to have to take issue with you again-on behalf of Elrod,” Mitch said. “He seems like a very efficient fellow who’s doing no harm to anyone.”
“I like this man,” Hangtown said to Moose, as Jim refilled the wineglasses. “You ought to marry him.”
“You are the pig, Father,” Takai spoke up angrily. “You get to live here in luxuriant splendor but no one
else can. That’s not a community-that’s a country club with a ceiling on its membership.”
“I just want to be left in peace. Don’t I have that right?”
“Not if it means denying other people their rights!”
Hangtown sat there in heavy silence for a moment, the fire crackling behind him. “You’ve been blinded by your own greed, princess. You think Bruce Leanse will line your pockets with gold, and you don’t care who or what gets destroyed.”
“You’re wrong, Father. He’s a good, good man.”
He leered at her. “Well, you ought to know just how good he is.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Father, please,” Moose interjected, glancing uncomfortably at Mitch, who was sitting there wondering if Hangtown was always so hard on Takai. “This is getting a little out of hand.”
The old man ignored her, glaring across the table at Takai. “Shall I tell you what your problem is?”
“What is it?” she demanded hotly, glowering right back at him. “I’d really love to know.”
“You inherited the Frye artistic vision but none of our talent. So you have to feed on real people in order to express yourself. You’re a leech, my dear. A lovely, silken parasite.”
“Th-that…” Takai was practically speechless, nothing but bottled-up fury. “That was an awful thing to say to anyone.” She got up suddenly, toppling her chair over behind her, and threw her wine in her father’s face. Then she stormed out, her spiked heels clacking, her hips swinging.
The dinner table fell silent as Mitch heard the front door slam, then the roar of the Porsche’s engine. It pulled away in a splatter of gravel.
“Hot damn!” the great Wendell Frye exclaimed happily, using his napkin to dab at the wine that was streaming down his face and neck. “Another quiet evening at the Ponderosa. More lamb, Big Mitch?”
• • •
“I thought I’d make dinner for Bella here on Friday,” Des said drowsily as she kneaded his chest with her bare toes. The two of them were lolling in Mitch’s claw-footed bathtub together, still aglow from the atomic passion they’d just detonated upstairs in the sleeping loft. “I had hoped to be in my new place by now, but…”
“Not a problem,” Mitch murmured contentedly, stroking her smooth, taut calf. “That’s fine. Wonderful…”
With the bathroom door open they could see the fire in the fireplace and hear the vintage Doug Sahm on the stereo-Sir Doug’s old San Antonio recordings with The Pharaohs. Both Clemmie and Quirt were balanced precariously on the edge of the tub, transfixed by the plopping, shifting water below. Quirt even dangled a paw down toward it, only to yank it back when Des playfully flicked water at him. It was strange how Quirt would only hang around in the house when Des was there, Mitch reflected. Even Clemmie seemed happier.
“There’s somebody else I’d like to invite,” she told him. “One of my… that is to say, a certain individual with whom I’m related is having a personal occasion.”
Mitch eyed her curiously. Whenever she retreated into police-speak it meant she was ill at ease. “What kind of a personal occasion?”
“A birthday.”
“And which particular relative would we be discussing, Master Sergeant?”
“Um, it’s my father. And we have this tradition where I make Hoppin’ John for him every year on his birthday. That’s black-eyed peas and ham and-”
“Whoa…”
“Rice, with lots and lots of Tabasco sauce. I usually make cornbread to sop it all up and-”
“Whoa! Pull over a second, girlfriend. We’re not exactly talking about what we’re talking about, are we?”
Des frowned at him. “Which is what?”
“That you just said you want me to meet your father.”
She fell silent a moment, shifting uneasily in the tub. “Well, yeah. Unless you don’t want to, which I would certainly… Man, why are you grinning at me that way?”
“I’m kvelling.”
“What does that mean-kvelling?”
“It’s what your Jewish people do in lieu of an end-zone celebration. It means I’m tremendously pleased. But tell me, who am I supposed to be? A friend? An acquaintance? A portly, somewhat pink person you bumped into at the supermarket?”
“Okay, that’s a fair question.”
“And…?”
“And it’s none of his damned business.”
“Hey, this sounds promising.”
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. He’ll know what’s going on between us the second he walks through the door.”
“How?”
“He’s the Deacon, that’s how. You think you can read me. Compared to you, he’s Evelyn Wood. Besides which, I’m not a very good actress.”
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that,” Mitch said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because it means you weren’t faking just now when we were upstairs.”
“Boyfriend, nobody’s that good an actress,” she said softly, her eyes shining at him.
Mitch had not known whether to expect Des when he got home from Hangtown’s or not. Happily, he’d found her cruiser parked outside his cottage. And the lady herself parked on a stool at her easel, glasses sliding down her nose as she pondered an arrangement of empty bottles that she’d positioned on the floor at her feet. She’d stripped down to a halter top and gym shorts. And for Mitch there was something about the sight of her peerless caboose perched there on that stool that
… well, within sixty seconds they were out of their clothes and up in his sleeping loft together.
It was so different than it had been like with Maisie. Within two weeks, he and Maisie had moved in together. Des was much more guarded and careful. In many ways, she was exactly like one of her feral cats. One moment she would inch toward his outstretched hand, purring. The next moment she would hiss and dart away. She was the most skittish woman he had ever known. Also the most alluring. Sometimes, he felt he knew exactly what she was thinking. Other times she totally befuddled him. For sure, she was not the sort of woman who he ever thought he’d find himself involved with. It was not the racial thing-which was not a thing at all as far as he was concerned. It was that she was a goddamned state trooper. And big into rules. She refused to keep any of her clothes at his place-always carting them to and fro in a gym bag. Refused to stay in his New York apartment, which she felt was Maisie’s place. More than anything, Mitch felt, she was afraid of getting in too deep. Possibly this was the baggage she’d brought along from her divorce. Possibly this was because the two of them were so different. He didn’t know. He only knew that she was beautiful and smart and honest, and the thought of her got him through each day.
“How was your drawing class tonight?”
“Way frustrating. He’s trying to teach us three-point perspective. That’s where you’re looking directly down at the objects…”
“Hence the bottles on the floor?”
“Hence the bottles on the floor,” she affirmed. “And it looks easy, but there’s this killer foreshortening and I am so not getting it.”
“On the plus side, I understand you saved Colin Falconer’s life this morning.”
“Man’s a total mess,” she acknowledged. “You would not believe what he’s gotten himself into. But, word, you can’t tell anyone one syllable of this…”
“Not even Lacy?” Mitch usually told his editor everything.
“Okay, no one local. Promise?”
On his sworn oath she told Mitch about Colin’s online romance with another man, his secretary’s sexual-harassment lawsuit and Babette Leanse’s insistence that he resign. “Either he goes quietly or he’ll be outed,” Des said, shaking her head. “It’s amazing to me that somebody smart would mess up his whole life over cyber sex. Damn, it’s not even real.”
“What is real anymore?” Mitch countered. “Folks go to theme parks instead of actual places. They watch people do daring things on television instead of doing
them themselves. Hell, The Lord of the Flies is now a prime-time game show. Can real get any weirder than that?” Mitch reached for a washcloth and mopped at his face with it. “While we’re on the subject of a man messing up his life-would you bust a small farmer for growing pot on his land?”
“I have to,” she responded. “It’s against the law.”
“Even if he wasn’t selling it?”
“And I’m supposed to care because…?”
“He was giving it away for free to cancer patients.”
“It’s still against the law.”
“His name is Jim Bolan. He thinks a developer wanted his land and used the law to pry it away from him.”
“Which developer?”
“Bruce Leanse.”
Des fell silent, her body tensing slightly next to his in the water. “That man sure does think a lot of himself.”
“He’s what is known as a pub slut.”
“Promoting himself is part of his business, isn’t it?”
“Nope. It violates one of Hopalong Cassidy’s most important rules in his Ten-Point Creed for American Boys and Girls: Don’t boast or be a show-off.”
Des smiled at him, the mega-wattage smile that did strange, wonderful things to the lower half of his body. “Will you kindly explain something to me…?”
“You’re wondering how you ended up with someone like me.”
“How did you know that?”
“Dunno. I just did.”
“Well, how did I…?”
“You got lucky, that’s all. Don’t question it. Just be thankful. I know I am.” He sat up in the tub and kissed her gently. “Guess who else I met today,” he said, his face very close to hers.
“I can’t imagine,” she said softly, gazing deep into his eyes. “Howdy Doody? The Lone Ranger? Lassie?”
A loud buzzing noise interrupted them. Someone was at the security gate that closed off Big Sister’s causeway to the public. It took a key to raise it. Either a key or someone to buzz you in.
“Now who would that be?” Mitch threw on his robe and padded wetly to the kitchen window for a look. Across the water he could make out a single headlight at the gate, and faintly hear the phlegmy putt-putt-putt of a vintage engine. He immediately hit the buzzer, raising the security gate, and dashed to his closet for some clothes.
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