“Well, no. But she was carrying a good-sized shoulder bag.”
“Um, okay, there’s one other possibility-Bud Havenhurst.”
“What about Bud?”
“He wasn’t around today.”
“She told me she spoke to him on the phone.”
“Maybe she did, but she didn’t speak to him at his office. Or at their house. Because he wasn’t at either one of those places all day. He wasn’t in town, near as I can tell.”
“You think he might have followed me in?”
“Her, more likely-if I know men.”
“Do you?”
“I can check with the conductors on the Shoreliner tomorrow,” she said, deftly slipping his jab.
“What if he drove in?”
“Then he’s very clever,” she admitted. “Are you all right?”
“Why, don’t I sound all right?”
“No, you sound like Elmer Fudd,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Have you been to the dentist or something?”
“No, I’ve just paid a round-trip visit to Mandy’s dark side. She came on to me this evening, big time.”
“And…?” The lieutenant’s voice seemed a degree or two chillier now.
“And I told her I wasn’t interested, right?”
“How would I know? You’re the one telling the story.”
“Okay, I told her I wasn’t interested.”
“Fine. You told her you weren’t interested. And…?”
“And she tried to claw my eyes out.”
“Well, that certainly fits with the girl’s history.”
“I did find out something interesting from her, though. While she was still in full cuddle mode, I mean.” Mitch filled the lieutenant in on what Mandy had said about Bud being elsewhere, and wet, the night Tuck Weems was murdered-taking care to point out how this meant Mandy had no one to vouch for her own whereabouts either.
“Interesting,” she concluded. “Sounds like you’ve had yourself quite a day.”
Mitch allowed as how he had. And then she was yawning again. And the cats were yowling. So he said, “I’ll let you get back to sleep. Sorry I woke you. What does it say anyway?”
“What does what say?”
“The T-shirt you’re wearing.”
“Man, how do you know I’m wearing a T-shirt?”
“I just do. Why, have you got a problem with it?”
“With what, the way you keep acting like you’re up inside my head?”
“I guess this means yes.”
“No… Just trying to understand you, that’s all.”
“Well, that’s it right there, Lieutenant. I’m trying to understand you, too.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Man, that’s a riddle, not an answer!”
“I don’t know why, okay? Only that nothing in my life makes any sense right now. And it seems important to understand something. Or someone.”
She was silent a long moment. “It doesn’t say anything.”
“What doesn’t?”
“My T-shirt. It’s blank. No message. None. Good night, Mitch.” She hung up the phone before he could get out one more word.
He threw the dead bolt on his front door and climbed into bed. It wasn’t until he’d turned off his bedside lamp, punched his pillow two times and closed his eyes that he realized she’d finally stopped calling him Mr. Berger.
CHAPTER 12
DES LAY THERE STARING at the ceiling while the four Spice Girls chased each other blissfully around the bed, scampering over her, rumbling, tumbling. Their energy was boundless. So was their ability to amuse themselves. Their whole universe was right here inside this house. And, within its carpeted confines, they were totally content.
Damn, she envied them sometimes.
She had not been asleep when Mitch Berger called, even though she’d been awake nearly forty-eight hours straight and her body was exhausted. But she could not shut down her mind. It had kept right on searching and rewinding. Sorting through Big Sister’s residents, one by one. Reviewing what she knew about them. Focusing on what she didn’t know. And now she had a new fact to throw into the mix: Someone had tried to take out Mitch Berger.
Why? How did eliminating him link up to the three murders? Was Mandy responsible for it? If so, why had she let him leave her place alive tonight? How did that make any sense?
Des lay there, wondering. Same as she wondered how that man knew what she was wearing at this very moment.
Sighing, she reached for the phone again and dialed the number she knew so well. It rang twice before she heard the familiar rumbling voice at the other end.
“I need to see you,” she said, instead of hello.
“I’ll put the coffee on,” he said, instead of good-bye.
There had never been any wasted words between the two of them.
Des dressed hurriedly. Every cat in the house assumed it was happy meal fun time-if she was up, then that spelled food. Not knowing when she’d be back again, she gave in to them. Working her way from room to room, bowl to bowl, stepping her way patiently through her furry entourage. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, her mud room resident, was in particularly cheery form at two A.M.-he merely glowered at her, a low, baleful moan coming from deep down in his throat.
Des had half a mind to stuff him in a carrier and drop him on Mandy Havenhurst’s doorstep with a short, sweet message taped to his chest: “From me to you, bitch.”
She paused in her studio to examine the sketch she’d started working on before she went to bed. It was a sketch of Mitch Berger. She’d cut his grainy black-and-white photograph out of the Hartford Courant, pinned it to the easel and studied it long and hard. Then she’d drawn what she had seen. Reducing him to shadows and shapes. Abstracting him, deconstructing him, finding him. Now she unclipped the portrait and slid it into her portfolio.
Then she grabbed her keys and jumped in her slicktop, steering it down Hemlock Hollow in the silent darkness to Amity Road, which took her to the Wilbur Cross Parkway. She headed in the direction of New Britain, the home of Stanley Tools and the Pontiac Trans Am capital of Southern New England. Des didn’t know if there was any connection between these two facts. Probably. There were a few overnight truckers out on the road, flying. Her presence there slowed them right on down, since absolutely nobody in the state of Connecticut drove an unmarked Ford Crown Victoria sedan except for a trooper. When somebody spotted her, they eased right off the gas. If she slowed to 30 in a 65 mph zone, they would, too. No one dared pass her. No one.
Kensington, her destination, was a working-class suburb of the Hardware City. The small, neat house was located in a neighborhood of small, neat houses belonging to school teachers, nurses, postal workers and other hardworking people.
Strivers Row, Brandon used to call it mockingly.
Des knew it simply as the place where she had been raised.
The porch light was on. And Buck Mitry was seated at the kitchen table in his flannel bathrobe, patiently drinking his coffee. He was good for ten or twelve cups a day. Used to be a heavy smoker as well, but gave that up as a twenty-fifth anniversary present to Des’s mother, who had then proceeded to leave him for her high school sweetheart, an Allstate claims adjustor down in Augusta, Georgia. “I am reborn,” she had told Des at the wedding. “I have rediscovered laughter and joy.” Buck remained behind in the house alone-like father, like daughter. He was a big, rangy man with a furrowed brow, graying hair and wire-rimmed glasses. His hands were immense and blunt-fingered. He had been a fine athlete as a young man, even played first base in the Cleveland Indians organization for two years out of high school until he met Des’s mother and decided to get serious. He took the state police exam in 1968, when they happened to be looking for a few good, black troopers. He had risen slowly but steadily through the ranks. And now, at age fifty-six, he was the deputy superintendent-the highest-ranking black man in the history of the state. He got there by being honest, steady and careful. He got
there by getting along. No flash, no dash. Buck Mitry believed in proper procedure. He believed in saying please and thank you. He believed in shined shoes, muted ties and dignified charcoal-gray suits. He owned eight such suits, all identical. Always, he had been guarded with his emotions. Des, who was his only child, had never once seen her father lose control of his temper. To the best of her knowledge, no one else had either.
That was why they called him the Deacon.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said to him, hands on her hips, “but isn’t that the same robe I gave you for Christmas back when I was twelve?”
“Quality never wears out,” he said, smiling at her faintly. “You got a cold?”
“Allergy.”
“Sounds like a cold.”
“It’s an allergy.”
She kissed him on the forehead and poured herself some coffee and sat down opposite him, hearing steady, determined crunching noises coming from the direction of the back door. Cagney and Lacey, the two stray cats Des had talked him into adopting, were nose down in their kibble bowls. They, too, thought it was time for breakfast.
“Why’d you go and do that to your hair?” he asked, eyeing her dreadlocks critically. “What is it, some kind of a statement?”
“No statement. It’s just hair.”
“Doesn’t look professional,” he grumbled at her. “And the powers that be think you’ve become a Rastafarian.”
“They are seriously behind the times.”
“They are in charge.”
“It’s just hair,” Des repeated, louder this time.
“So why don’t you wear it normal?”
“This is normal, Daddy. The Anita Hill look was chemicals. And when my head looked like the business end of a felt-tip marking pen, that was chemicals, too. Now I look like me. And it’s my head, thank you, so let’s just drop the subject, okay?”
They dropped it, Des gazing across the table at him in anxious silence. The two of them were not especially close. No one ever got close to the Deacon, not even Des’s mother. If she had she wouldn’t have fled elsewhere in search of joy.
“If this about Captain Polito I can’t help you, Desiree,” he spoke up. “Polito runs his own squad his own way. And if he wants to bring in further supervisory manpower, that’s his business.”
“That’s not why I needed to see you,” she said quietly.
He sat back in his chair, big hands folded before him on the table, waiting for her to continue.
She took a sip of her coffee, followed by a deep breath. “I want to see Crowther.”
His eyes widened at the mention of the one man, the only man in the Connecticut State Police who outranked him-Superintendent John Crowther. “What about?”
“Some unanswered questions from his past.”
“Which unanswered questions, girl?” he asked sternly. “And don’t you be giving me any double-talk. I want it straight up. I want it specific.”
“The Weems murder-suicide on Big Sister Island thirty years ago. Crowther was the investigating officer.”
“So…?”
“So the bodies were found by a seventeen-year-old girl named Dolly Peck who had recently been forcibly raped by the male victim. So this girl’s grandfather happened to be a U.S. senator. So this girl now goes by the name Dolly Seymour and is smack dab in the middle of three more murders that practically have me chewing my own foot off. She’s the linchpin, Daddy, then and now. I’ve been looking through Crowther’s official bio. The man’s career just took off after the Weems case. He went from sergeant to captain in the blink of an eye. I am talking zooom. And it so happens that his report is full of holes. So is Dolly Seymour’s memory-she claims to remember nothing of what happened that day. I have to find out what he left out.”
He got up and refilled his cup, his face stony. “You want to rattle the man’s cage, is that it?”
“Absolutely not. I could care less about the politics. All I care about is this investigation. Here and now. What’s happening now isn’t adding up. If I can find out what really went down thirty years ago, maybe it will.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I am under the gun. I need results. I can’t help it if the trail leads me to him, can I?”
He considered this for a long moment before he said, “Have you gone through Polito on this?”
She ducked her head, her mouth tightening.
“Uh-hunh,” he grunted. “Because he’d tell you to drop it. And that’s exactly what I’m telling you to do. Don’t go there. You don’t accuse the superintendent of falsifying a report and concealing information. You’d be committing political suicide.”
“I told you, this isn’t about politics.”
“Girl, everything is about politics,” he said, shaking his head at her. “That is the reality of the situation. And if you don’t accept it you will get ground into dust. Crowther is one tough SOB. You do not want to go one-on-one with him. What do you think is going to happen-you’ll twitch your fine tail at him and the man will spill something he’s been holding onto since Richard Nixon was in the White House?”
Des could feel her face burning now. She said nothing.
“Do you honestly think he’s going to jeopardize his whole career to help you put away a rich white woman he didn’t put away thirty years ago? Not a chance. All that’ll happen is you will make yourself one powerful enemy. Probably end up back in uni, staked out at a speed trap outside of Killingley. Is that what you want? Explain yourself, girl. What is going on here?”
Des got up and went over to the sink, aware of his eyes on her. Clearly, he was baffled by her. She had never given him much reason to be. She had always been the good daughter. Good grades. Good manners. Never got into drugs. Never brought home a thug. Hell, her idea of running away from home was going to West Point. She’d taken the right job. Married the right man-or so they’d all believed. Never once had she been the wild child. Never once had she rebelled.
And now, standing here in this small, spotless kitchen of this small, spotless house, Des suddenly felt herself suffocating. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be crying out for spontaneity, for life. “I don’t know what’s going on here,” she replied softly.
“Well, Desiree, you’d better figure it out. And soon. Because there is zero room for doubt in our business.” He watched her intently over his coffee cup. “Tell me, what’s his name?”
“Whose name?”
“This man who has thrown you for a loop.”
“No man has thrown me anywhere,” she shot back, bristling. “Why do you immediately assume it’s a man? Why can’t it just be me?”
“Little late for us to be having this conversation, isn’t it?”
“Are you talking about late in the evening or late in life?”
“Like I said,” he responded, “it’s late.”
She rinsed out her cup and sat back down at the table across from him. “So what do I do now?”
“Your job.”
“You just told me that the one man who might be able to help me is off limits.”
“That’s your job,” he affirmed. “To get results, no matter what. If it were a smooth, easy ride, nothing but cherry pie, they wouldn’t be paying you. You’d be paying them. That’s the truth, girl. That’s the real world.” He trailed off a moment, his broad chest rising and falling. “Deal with it. Or find yourself a new world to live in.”
The Havenhursts, Bud and Mandy, lived in a doll-sized version of the big summer cottage where Redfield and Bitsy Peck lived. The shutters and front door of the little house were painted colonial blue. The window boxes were bursting with pansies. Two cars were parked out front in the gravel drive, a Range Rover and an old MG convertible.
One tabloid news crew was parked at the entrance to the bridge. Otherwise, all was quiet.
No Studebaker pickup was parked outside of Mitch Berger’s carriage house. Des pulled up in her slicktop and got out, buttoning her blazer. The stiff morn
ing breeze out on Big Sister was distinctly chilly.
She used his spare key to check up on Baby Spice, a.k.a. Clementine. This time Des found her upstairs in Mitch’s half-open T-shirt drawer, fast asleep. The little vixen barely stirred at the sound of Des cooing at her. Doubtless she had spent the wee hours exploring her new universe. She still had plenty of food and water. Her litter box had been used. Des cleaned it out, yawning hugely. What she really felt like doing was shucking her clothes and jumping into that nice warm bed.
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?”
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