The man’s clothes closet was downstairs. Des opened the closet door, figuring now was as good a time as any to find out. A wool shirt Mitch Berger had been wearing the first day she met him was hanging from a hook. She removed it and buried her face in it, inhaling his aroma. Instantly, she felt a fluttering sensation all the way from her tummy to her toes. Followed by a sense of giddy light-headedness. Briefly, she thought she might faint.
And this was with a stuffed-up nose.
Damn, damn, damn.
She hurriedly returned the shirt to its hook and went back out to her cruiser and popped the trunk, staring down at what she’d brought with her. It lay there atop her first-aid kit, flares, blankets and other emergency gear. She hesitated a moment before she removed it. She could not believe how nervous she was. Her hands were actually shaking. She took it inside and laid it on his desk. She locked up and slid the key back under the boot scraper.
Then she knocked on the Havenhursts’ door.
It was Mandy who answered it. She had on a plum-colored Izod shirt and khaki slacks, her long blond hair pulled back in a tight, tight ponytail. In fact, everything about her seemed pulled taut. Her flesh was drawn across the bones of her face like the skin over a snare drum. The cords in her neck stood out, fists were clenched, knuckles white.
“I didn’t expect to find you here, Mrs. Havenhurst,” Des said, surprised.
“Why wouldn’t I be here?” Mandy responded sharply, her eyes icy blue pinpoints. “This is my home, Lieutenant. I live here.”
“I understood you were in New York.”
Mandy stared at her with utter contempt. “You ‘understood’ I was in New York?”
“Mr. Berger happened to mention it.”
“Is Mitch back?” she asked casually, shooting a not-so-causal look over Des’s shoulder at his house.
“No, we spoke on the phone.”
“Oh, I see. Well, I drove back late last night with Bud. We picked up my car at the station.”
“Your husband was in the city yesterday, too?”
“He was,” Mandy replied, smiling tightly. It came off more like a grimace. Actually, Mandy’s face was starting to remind Des of one of those sun-bleached animal skulls that people find out in the desert and hang as wall ornaments in their homes.
“You and Mr. Havenhurst went in together?” she persisted, wondering if this creamy, twisted blonde was ever going to invite her inside.
“No, we went in separately—our schedules didn’t quite match up.” Mandy raised her chin at Des, her nostrils flaring. “I don’t mean to be pointy, Lieutenant, but I’m not exactly accustomed to having my comings and goings put under a microscope by law enforcement officers.”
“Most impressive,” Des said, smiling at her approvingly. “I mean it—you’ve got what my friend Ms. Bella Tillis calls chutzpah. But you and I both know that you have an extensive police record, so let’s not pull each other’s curls, allright?”
“Whatever Mitch told you about last night isn’t true!” Mandy declared, her voice rising, cheeks mottling. “He got the wrong idea about me. About us. He came after me. And he wouldn’t take a firm no for an answer. And he—”
“Mr. Berger told me next to nothing,” Des said coldly. “I’d suggest you do the same, unless you’re looking to press formal charges.”
“Why, no. I was simply trying to—”
“Good. Because I am not someone who you want to be talking to about this. I am not your sister. I am not your friend. And I am for damned sure not Doctor Laura. Now is your husband in? I’d like to ask him some questions.”
Mandy finally let her inside. It was quaint and snug, with low ceilings and lots of country antique furniture. Arrangements of dried herbs were on display everywhere, just like in Country Living magazine. It reminded Des of that inn in rural Vermont she and Brandon stayed in once. All that was missing was the pervasive smell of potpourri. There was a parlor and a dining room. The airy farmhouse kitchen opened onto the back porch. Bud Havenhurst was slumped at a wicker table out there with a cup of coffee, his back to the panoramic view of Long Island Sound.
It occurred to Des that only someone who had lived on Big Sister a very long time would sit facing the house, not the water.
He wore a starched white shirt, striped tie, dark slacks and even darker circles under his eyes. He seemed very tired and drawn. The smile he gave her was a weak one. “Good morning, Lieutenant,” he said, climbing politely to his feet. “Sorry if I’m not fully awake yet. We got back quite late last night. Please, sit.”
Des did so, facing the view. A couple of fishing boats were already out, and a work boat was chugging its way across the Sound toward Plum Island.
“Do you need me here, sugar?” Mandy asked him from the kitchen doorway. “I want to get some things at the market.”
“You go right ahead, hon.” He made a big fuss out of escorting his young wife out, doting on her, kissing her good-bye. He seemed excessively clingy. Des found herself wondering if this was for her benefit. She heard the little MG start up with a throaty roar and speed off in a splatter of gravel. Then Havenhurst came back and sat down and said, “Now, then, Lieutenant, how may I help you?”
“I tried to see you at your office yesterday. You weren’t in.”
“Some things came up that required my presence in New York.”
“Your wife and Mr. Berger rode into the city themselves yesterday morning.”
“That’s right. She told me she ran into him on the train. I drove in a bit later in the day.”
“Why didn’t you and she go in together?”
“It was something of a last-minute thing on my part,” he answered vaguely. “A financial matter.”
“Can anyone confirm what time you arrived?”
“The fellow at the parking garage I use, I imagine.”
Des nodded, well aware that for twenty dollars your average parking lot attendant would swear under oath that he had seen Elvis pull up in a pink Cadillac—with Marilyn Monroe seated next to him in the front seat.
He rubbed a thumb carefully along his big, thrusting chin, as if to test his morning shave. “It’s on Second Avenue and Sixty-sixth Street. And I still have the ticket stub somewhere, I think. But, frankly, I’m having trouble seeing how my visit to New York has anything to do with matters that concern you.”
“It concerns me,” Des explained, “because someone tried to shove Mr. Berger in front of a subway train yesterday morning in Times Square. He claims it happened shortly after he said good-bye to your wife.”
Now Bud Havenhurst went silent on her, his face a stone cold blank. The man conveyed nothing. It was just like sitting across the table from a lawn statue. Lawyers. They were worse than born liars, she reflected bitterly. These bastards were trained at it by high priests.
She elected to move on. “Let’s talk about your ex-wife’s missing money.”
“Mitch spoke to you about that?” Bud asked her uneasily.
“He did.”
“And you understand why I did what I did?”
“I understand bupkes,” she said sharply. “Maybe you believed you were acting in your ex-wife’s best interest. But I’m not prepared to say whether what you did was legal or ethical or proper. Or whether a Connecticut State Bar Association grievance panel will find probable cause for misconduct. Or whether a judge will suspend your license to practice law.” She paused a moment, the better to dangle her bait. “Of course, if you’re prepared to give some news I can use, then that’s another matter entirely …”
Bud Havenhurst suddenly became very interested in the view. He even got up and went over to the porch railing so he could get a better look at it. “Such as?”
“Such as it occurs to me that you are in and out of Mrs. Seymour’s house …”
He turned back to face her. “It used to be my house,” he said quietly.
“Did you write that Dear John letter?”
He shook his head emphatically. “If I had do
ne that, then I’d be Niles Seymour’s murderer. And I’m not.”
“You weren’t home in bed the night that Tuck Weems was murdered. Where were you?”
Havenhurst didn’t respond. Just went into statue mode again.
“Were you with your ex-wife? Were you sleeping with her?”
He heaved a pained sigh. “No, Dolly wouldn’t have me again in a million years,” he replied, his face expressing a curious mix of longing, frustration and hopelessness. He was an older man besotted with a volatile and promiscuous younger woman. Yet he clearly remained attached to his first wife. Maybe he just didn’t know what, or who, he wanted. Maybe he was just a fool—he was a fully grown adult male, after all. “I just looked in on her,” he explained. “To make sure she wasn’t wandering. She does, as I believe I’ve mentioned to you.”
“You didn’t mention that you were soaking wet when you got home. How did you get so wet, Mr. Havenhurst?”
“I walked on the beach.”
“In the middle of a violent rainstorm?”
“I like to walk in the rain. I find it therapeutic.”
“Are you in need of therapy?”
“Everyone is in need of therapy.”
And these were supposed to be the happy people. Had their own damned island. If they weren’t happy, who was? “Did anyone see you?” she asked.
“No, of course not.”
Just as no one could recall seeing his son, Evan, and Jamie Devers docked out on Little Sister Island having themselves a bonfire. She had checked with the Coast Guard. She had checked with the boatyards. Nothing. Everywhere she turned it came up nothing.
Havenhurst abruptly glanced at his watch. “I really have to be getting to my law office, Lieutenant. A number of my later appointments got pushed up to this morning because of Niles Seymour’s funeral this afternoon. Are we done?”
“Not a problem,” Des said agreeably. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from your appointments. The big wheel of justice must keep on turning.” She climbed to her feet and treated him to her maximum-wattage smile. “But, counselor, I would not be saying we’re done.”
CHAPTER 13
“HONEY, I’M HOME!” MITCH called out as he came charging in the door.
And bright-eyed little Clemmie was right there, slipping and sliding her way across the wooden floor to greet him. She seemed kind of clumsy for a cat, in his opinion. In fact, she was so adept at tripping over her own feet that Mitch was starting to think she might have a future as a starting wide receiver for the New York Giants. He picked her up. Petted her. Told her how much he’d missed her, managing to discover yet again just how sharp her young teeth were.
He could not believe how happy he was to be back. To smell the sea air. To be in his little house on Big Sister Island. He could not believe it.
The lieutenant had been there some time earlier that morning. Mitch knew this because Clemmie’s litter box was clean. Also because the lieutenant had left a highly prized possession of her own behind on his desk.
Her portfolio.
She had set it there without fanfare. No note. No fuss. Just wham, here it is. This, Mitch concluded, was the woman’s style.
Inside, he found two dozen charcoal drawings that had been torn out of a sketch pad and loosely gathered. Mitch was not sure what to expect. The only time he’d observed her at work she’d been parked out on the bridge sketching what he’d assumed to be a landscape. He didn’t know what her art would be about. Had no idea what it would show him.
What it showed him was pure horror.
Faces that were smashed and contorted and frozen. Innocent lives that had been destroyed by violence and hate and the evil that men and women do to each other. What it showed him, one drawing after another, was the soul of an artist. Lieutenant Mitry was trying to cleanse herself of the destruction she saw in her daily life. To capture it. To understand it. And she had—her drawings jumped right off the page. They were breathtaking in their visceral impact. They were positively haunting. Leafing through them, Mitch was reminded of the tabloid crime photographs of Weegie. But there was more to the lieutenant’s drawings than that. Within them, Mitch found both the noirish foreboding of Edward Hopper and the violent spiritual anguish of Edvard Munch, the great Norwegian impressionist who gave the world The Scream. Within them, he found a vision that was uniquely her own.
Dead people. She drew nothing but dead people. All except for the last one Mitch came to. This one was a portrait of a living man whose face was a wretched mask of pain, his eyes hollow and etched with sorrow. As Mitch stared at it, he realized with a shudder that it was a portrait of himself.
He immediately gathered her drawings back up, jumped in his pickup and headed for Dorset’s graceful, tree-lined historic district. Several cruisers, marked and unmarked, were parked out in front of the white, wood-framed town hall. Also a television news crew van. Mitch left the portfolio on the seat of his truck and went inside, where he was nearly bowled over by the smell of musty old carpeting. The office of the first selectman, the village’s equivalent of a mayor, was just inside the front door. His desk was positioned out in the middle of the room and his door was open. A quaint old Yankee custom—anyone who wanted to speak his or her mind just had to walk in, sit down and start talking. Right now, that anyone was a freshly minted J-school grad who looked remarkably like an eleven-year-old child wearing Lesley Stahl’s clothing and hair. A cameraman was stationed in the doorway, capturing their conversation on video, the lights from his camera bathing the office in artificial brightness. The first selectman, a wheezy white-haired man with an extremely red nose, looked very unhappy.
Lieutenant Mitry’s temporary command center was located down the hall in the conference room. Here Mitch found a hive of activity. Four uniformed troopers talking on telephones, two more pecking away at computers. Files and evidence reports were stacked everywhere. Lieutenant Mitry was locked in grim conversation with her short, muscular sergeant. It was he who noticed Mitch first.
“Help you?” he grunted, eyeballing Mitch’s fat lip with chilly suspicion.
“I’ll take this,” she broke in quickly, crossing the room toward Mitch. “What have you got for me?”
“Something out in my truck that you left behind.”
Her gaze narrowed, her almond-shaped eyes studying his anxiously. “I’ll be back in a sec, Rico,” she said.
They went out the door together.
“Quite some number Mandy did on your lip,” she observed, as they strolled out into the sunshine, the midday sun glinting off her freshly oiled dreadlocks. “You look like you were in a head-on collision.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Lieutenant—I was.”
“Funny, she didn’t have a scratch on her.”
“That’s because I’m a gentleman.”
“That’s not what she said.”
Mitch frowned. “Why, what did she say?”
“Bud Havenhurst was in the city yesterday, too,” the lieutenant mentioned, sidestepping him.
“I thought he hated the city.”
“He may hate it, but he was there.”
“Interesting. Find out anything else?”
“The forensic entomologist discovered no insect life on Niles Seymour’s remains that’s inconsistent with the life found on Big Sister.”
“Meaning he was killed on the island?”
“Meaning there’s nothing to indicate he wasn’t,” she replied. “Toxicology turned up a little something on Tuck Weems—the man was flying high when he died.”
“Marijuana?”
“And booze. Blood alcohol level of point two-six percent—more than twice the legal limit. I’m doubting he could have driven his truck down to the beach in that condition.”
“What does that suggest to you?”
“That he split a fifth of Jack D on the beach with his killer before he got himself done.”
“In the pouring rain?”
“Okay, in the front seat.”
&n
bsp; “Did you find a bottle anywhere?”
“Nope.”
Now Mitch opened the door of his truck and removed her portfolio and handed it to her. “I’m sorry, but it is my duty to inform you that you’re a fraud.”
“Just exactly what do you mean by that?” she demanded.
“I mean you’re an artist, not a cop.”
She leaned her long frame against the truck and sighed, hugging the folio to her chest. “Please don’t be doing a number on my head right now, okay?”
“I’m totally serious. You should be doing this full time. You have to. Your technique needs refining, and you need to start thinking about color, although there’s a lot to be said for how the black and white captures the immediacy of a news photo. But just think of what’s in store for you. Look at Munch’s career. He got into nature painting, etching, printmaking, lithography … He also had a nervous breakdown in 1908 but, hey, that was him. Besides, he was Norwegian. The point is, you have a gift.”
“How do you know?” she asked, squinting at him uncertainly.
“I just do. But if you don’t believe me, let’s march on down the street to the Art Academy. They’ve got world-renowned artists teaching classes there. Classes you should be taking. We’ll show your portfolio to them. Come on,” he said, grabbing her by the wrist.
“Let go of me, Mitch.”
“They’ll tell you the same thing. I’m positive.”
“And I said let go!” she cried, wrenching her hand free of his. “I really don’t like people tugging at me.”
“Well, you’d better get used to it, because I come from a long line of great American tuggers. And I would kill to have one tenth of your talent. Christ, don’t you realize just how gifted you are?”
She stood there in wary silence, her eyes probing his. At that moment, she reminded Mitch of a big cat that suddenly found itself on unfamiliar turf—feet wide apart, hackles raised, ready to run Or to strike. Depending on what happened next.
The Cold Blue Blood: A Berger and Mitry Mystery Page 22