The Hot Pink Farmhouse

C HAPTER 9

“So we’re here to catch strays?” Mitch asked her, yawning, as he sat there slumped behind the wheel of his Studebaker pickup.

“In a manner of speaking,” Des responded from next to him in the darkness.

“How come we didn’t bring your have-a-heart traps and those yummy little jars of strained turkey?”

“Different kind of strays.”

“Gotcha,” Mitch said, nodding. “Okay, I’m thinking any minute now you’re going to tell me what the hell we’re doing here.”

“Here” was the parking lot of Dorset’s A amp; P, which was mostly deserted since it was presently two o’clock in the morning and they closed at eleven. The market’s interior night-lights were on, casting a faint, ghostly glow out into the lot. But it was still quite dark. And they were quite alone. The delivery van from the florist next door was parked there for the night. A couple of rusted-out beaters with FOR SALE signs in their windshields were on display-the A amp; P’s parking lot doubled as an unofficial low-end used-car emporium. And there were Des and Mitch, a thermos of coffee and a box of Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies for Mitch on the seat between them.

“We’re hanging,” she said curtly, her hands folded in her lap.

She had shown up at his cottage around midnight, taut as a tuning fork. He was asleep in bed when she got there, exhausted by his day of fact-finding but very happy to see her. And ready and willing to show her just how happy. But instead of stripping off her uniform and sliding her sleek frame under the nice warm covers with him, she’d barked, “Get dressed. And bring a warm jacket.” Sounding much more like a drill instructor than the new, babe-a-licious love of his life. “I need your truck.”

“Take the keys,” he’d offered, groaning.

“I need you. I’m about ready to chew my own hands off. And if I don’t talk to somebody, namely you, I will.”

So he got dressed while she made the coffee and they piloted his Studey over the causeway to the market and parked it there. And now they sat, growing chillier by the minute, which Mitch didn’t mind. He was amply dressed, not to mention padded. What he minded was that she wasn’t talking.

“Are we on a stakeout?” he pressed her.

“We’re doing some surveillance, cool?”

“Cool. Does this make us a crime-fighting team?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “What, like Starsky and Hatch?”

“It’s Hutch. Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Salt and Pepper, a vastly underrated-”

“Man, don’t even go there,” Des growled.

“Okay, what’s upsetting you?” he asked, munching on a cookie. “Is it Soave?” Her ex-partner was not someone Mitch had been impressed with. In truth, he thought the guy was a pinhead. And not exactly Mr. Sensitivity. Mitch had seen him smiling for the cameras on the six-o’clock news. When someone asked him why anyone would want to shoot Mary Susan Frye he’d replied, “People may have thought they knew the victim, but maybe they didn’t.” A smarmy bit of innuendo that made it sound as if Moose had been asking for what she got. Des would never have left something that tactless hanging in the wind. She would have shown more consideration.

But Des was not running the case.

“I think he’s got blinders on,” she said tightly. “He’s so in love with Jim Bolan that he’s not seeing Colin. No matter which path you take, you end up right back at that man. And now Melanie has cleared out and I’m with you-it all fits together. I just can’t figure out how.” She paused, glancing at him uncertainly. “You didn’t know he and Moose were a couple, did you?”

“No, I didn’t. And I’m positive Hangtown didn’t. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise to us.” Mitch reached for her hand and gripped it. “In case you haven’t noticed, lonely people have a way of finding each other.”

“Is that what we are?” she asked, caressing the back of his hand with her thumb. “Two lonely people?”

“Not anymore.” He leaned over and kissed her softly on the mouth. “What else can you tell me?”

“Wait, is this for your article?” she asked, her eyes narrowing at him.

“I’ll take whatever you can give me. But if this is awkward, just say no.”

“The medical examiner just confirmed that Moose had sex shortly before she was murdered. And she was not pregnant.”

“Did you think she was?”

“Not really, but she was involved with a married man. It’s something you have to consider.”

“But that would mean you think she was the intended victim, not Takai.”

“I don’t know what to think. The more I find out, the less I know.”

“How about the gun dealers-have you gotten anything from them?”

“Not yet. Not a single reported Barrett sale ties in to anyone involved in this case.” Nor had a trace on Melanie Zide’s credit cards yielded anything yet. “She hasn’t used a single card. Hasn’t stopped at an ATM. She didn’t even wait around after class to pick up her modeling fee. She just…” Des stiffened, peering through the windshield at something across the deserted parking lot.

Mitch followed her gaze. He saw nothing out there but the darkness. “She just what?”

“Skipped town. That girl was scared.”

“Of what?”

“When we figure that out we’ll know who our shooter is.”

Mitch glanced at her curiously. “Sure you’re not upset about something else?”

“What else would there be?”

He didn’t bother to answer. He knew what else. They both knew.

She turned her steady gaze on Mitch. “What about you-pick up any news I can use?”

“Well, Takai carries a loaded gun in her purse. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t. But that’s not so unusual anymore, I’m sorry to say. Anything else?”

He filled her in on The Aerie, Bruce Leanse’s hugely ambitious dream project for Dorset. And about the man’s overheated romantic entanglement with Takai, which could torpedo both the project and his marriage. “He has every motive in the world for wanting Takai gone. And so does Babette,” Mitch said. “Although, personally, if I were in Babette’s shoes, he’s the one I’d be going after.”

“I’m down to that,” Des agreed. “And I’d aim low.” Now she leaned toward the windshield, drawing her breath in. “Lookie-lookie, I thought I saw them…”

There were five of them in all. Teenaged boys, as far as Mitch could tell. They were doing their best to avoid the floodlights as they crept their way out of the shadows from the loading zone behind the market. All of them wore dark clothing. All of them carried knapsacks. Briefly they paused, each reaching into another’s sack to remove spray can after spray can of paint. Graffiti artists-that’s what they were. Now they started their way toward the market’s enticingly huge, pristine picture windows, brandishing their weapons.

“Start your engine, Mitch,” Des said in a low voice. “Hit your lights.”

“Don’t you want to catch them in the act?”

“No, just go ahead and do it.”

“But they’ll run away.”

“I want them to. Start it now.”

He did, and at the sound of his engine kicking over they disappeared instantly back into the darkness-not scattering wildly like the cockroaches in Mitch’s New York City kitchen but in a planned fashion, each in a different direction from the others. The choreography was straight out of West Side Story.

Mitch grinned at her admiringly. “That was them, wasn’t it? That was the Mod Squad.”

“The skinny one’s named Ronnie Welmers. His kid brother called me just before I came over to your place. Told me they’d be hitting the market tonight.”

“Why would he tip you off?”

“He’s afraid. Ronnie told him they were about to pull something major.”

“Like what?”

“Like something he could go to jail for.”

“Where?”

“That part I don’t know yet,” she answered. “We’re done here if you want to head home.”

Mitch put the truck into gear and started back toward Peck Point in the darkness of the small-town night.

“Talk to me about an actress named Claire Danes,” Des spoke up.

“She got hot a few years back in My So-Called Life, a teen-angst TV series. Played a sensitive, misunderstood high school girl.”

“Has she got game?”

“She was very effective in that. Then she went on to the big screen, and the results have been decidedly mixed-Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio, followed by what is possibly the single worst film ever made, The Mod Squad-” He broke off, glancing at her in surprise. “Okay, I’ll bite-how does she connect up?”

“Ronnie’s madly in love with her. Beyond that, I have no idea. Never saw the movie.”

“It was based on the TV show from the sixties,” he said, hitting the brakes as a deer darted across the Old Shore Road ten yards in front of them. That happened a lot late at night. “She played one of three bad kids who’ve gone good as undercover cops. The series was a big success at the time. Very ‘heavy.’ And they should have left it alone, same as they should have left The Avengers alone. It stank out loud. Gone and forgotten in a week.”

“Not by everyone, apparently,” she pointed out. “Ronnie’s a serious movie buff. Knows your work well.”

“Don’t tell me he’s a fan.”

“Actually, he thinks you’re a bore. I believe his exact words were ‘officially sanctioned’ bore.”

“Sure, when I was his age I felt the same way about Pauline Kael and Vincent Canby. I didn’t realize how good they were until I grew up.”

“Wait, you grew up?” she said teasingly.

“That’s pretty standard stuff for teenaged boys. So is the graffiti thing.”

“Explain that to me, will you? Why are a bunch of middle-class white boys freakin’ like this? They live in big houses, have money in their pockets, brains, every opportunity in the world… Why?”

“They want attention.”

“From who?”

“Girls, silly. That’s why we do everything. We pound on drum kits, slam into each other on the football field, paint dirty words on public buildings-anything so that girls will notice us. It’s always about girls. And it never stops. When we get a little older we just find more permanent ways of saying Look at me. Which explains the Bruce Leanses of the world.”

She thought about this for a moment. “That’s totally pathetic.”

“We’re a pathetic lot, all right. Maybe now you can begin to appreciate just how fortunate you are that you found me.”

“Um, okay, I’m thinking I liked you better when your self-esteem was a couple of dozen notches lower, boyfriend.”

“You have no one to blame but yourself, Master Sergeant. I’m floating on a cloud, thanks to you.”

“Mitch, I’m floating along right next to you,” she said, suddenly serious. “And there’s nothing underneath me. If you go down, I go with you.”

He glanced over at her, startled and pleased. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, you know that?”

She said nothing in response, just swiveled her head and stared out her window. He couldn’t see her face. She didn’t want him to see her face.

It was nearly three by the time they got back to his cottage. Mitch tromped straight up to bed. Des, who was still wired, set up her easel in the living room. She had some grisly crime scene photos of Moose’s charred remains that she was anxious to depict in charcoal. It was her way of dealing.

Mitch didn’t look at the photos. He didn’t want to see them.

She was still down there working when Quirt started meowing outside the front door, shortly before dawn. She let him in, but Mitch padded downstairs anyway, yawning and blinking, to find a dozen or more haunting portraits torn from her pad and flung all over the room.

Everywhere he looked there was Moose Frye, or what was left of her.

Des’s hands and face were smeared black with charcoal, her eyes bloodshot. She was so fried that she barely seemed to notice Mitch standing there. She was still inside of it. Still bothered. In spite of all of the years he had spent as a critic, Mitch had never truly understood what artists put themselves through until he met her. He had newfound respect for people who create things, thanks to Des. She was definitely rubbing off on him. Was he rubbing off on her? He wondered.

He went in the kitchen and put coffee on and said good morning to Quirt, who was hunched over the kibble bowl with single-minded intensity. He threw on rumpled khakis and a sweatshirt and ran his fingers through his hair. He poured two cups of coffee and carried them into the living room. Handed Des one. Put a jacket around her shoulders. Took her by the hand and led her out the door, stepping over that morning’s fresh headless mouse, and on down to the beach. Des came willingly enough, and sat next to him when he patted the driftwood log where he liked to perch in the early morning with his coffee. There was a sliver of moon on this calm, frosty morning. Geese flew overhead in V-formation.

“Look, it’s just something that we have to get through.”

She gazed bleary-eyed out at the water, shivering. She seemed very far away from him at that moment. “What is?”

“You know perfectly well what.” Tonight was the Deacon’s birthday dinner. Her father and Mitch were going to set eyes on each other for the first time. “It’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine. You’re my soul mate, he’s your closest living relative. I want to meet him.”

“I’m hearing it,” she grunted. “But I’m disbelieving it.”

“Believe it. Besides, this is not a totally new experience for me. I went through this with my own folks and Maisie. They thought she was from the planet Pluto-all because her people came over on the Mayflower.”

“Now there’s an eerie coincidence for you-mine came over on a boat hundreds of years ago, too. The only difference is they were in chains at the time.”

“By the time Maisie died,” Mitch plowed on, “they’d convinced themselves that she was actually half-Jewish.”

“Then they’ll just love me. According to Bella, I’m a member of the lost tribe.”

Mitch sipped his coffee in guarded silence. “I’m not going to let you do this.”

“Do what?”

“Pick a fight with me so you’ll have to call off the dinner. That’s not going to happen.”

“Doughboy, you are impossible, you know that?! You just sit there acting nice to me when all I want to do is bite and scratch and get mean. Damn, what is wrong with you?”

“If you want to wrestle, we’ll wrestle. That’s fine by me. I not only outweigh you but I have a lower center of gravity. I’ll whup your skinny ass. I am talking pancake here-your nose down in the sand.”

“Has it ever occurred to you that we have no business being together?” she demanded. “That our lives are spiraling out of control? That we’re completely insane?”

“Sure,” he said easily.

“And…?”

“And then I do this…” He leaned over and kissed her softly on the lips. “And I know everything I need to know.”

She let out that little whimper of hers and flung her arms around him, hugging him tightly. They kissed. They kissed some more.

“How about we go back to the house and, like, I play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ for you on my Stratocaster?” he murmured in her ear.

“How about if we go back to the house and, like, you don’t?”

Des never did get any sleep that night. In fact, she barely had enough time to shower and climb into her uniform before she was due at Center School for traffic control.

“I should buy him something today for his birthday, right?” Mitch said as she hurriedly dumped a bag of dried black-eyed peas into a pot of water to soak.

“No, don’t. He doesn’t like gifts. That’s why I make him dinner.”

“Well, can I at least get a bottle of wine?”

“The Deacon never touches it.”

“Beer?”

“Don’t bother,” she said, kissing him good-bye. “I’ll get it.”

After she had sped away in her cruiser Mitch parked himself in front of his computer and logged on to that morning’s New York tabloids. Moose Frye’s murder had gone directly to page one. LOVE CRAZY, screamed the Post’s banner headline. OH, TEACHER, cried the News. Mitch was not surprised. She was a nice-looking small-town New England schoolteacher. She was the daughter of one of America’s greatest living artists. And she’d been having a wild, clandestine affair with the married school superintendent-a man who was presently on medical leave because he’d recently tried to kill himself. Such juicy details were bound to surface quickly. It was impossible to keep them under wraps.

Yes, it was page one, all right. And the editor of the Sunday magazine had already e-mailed Mitch twice that morning to put his pedal to the metal and go.

So Mitch went.

Not that it was exactly easy to get in. A dozen news vans were crammed this way and that at the entrance to Lord Cove’s Lane, where a stone-faced young trooper had set up a barricade to keep the press out. Mitch had to convince him to radio the trooper stationed inside the house, who had to check with Hangtown before Mitch could pass on through.

Hangtown was at work in the barn with Jim. A radio was blasting old Johnny Cash, and the woodstove was lit against the morning chill. Sam, the German shepherd, was curled up right next to it with one eye closed and the other on Jim’s baby-sitter, who was parked on an old car seat with a copy of Hemmings Motor News.

The old artist had on a pair of glasses with magnifying lenses that made him look like Dr. Cyclops. He was drawing intently at his workbench, a foam-wrapped pencil clutched in his arthritic hand, an open bottle of Old Overholt rye whiskey within arm’s length. He barely seemed to notice Mitch’s arrival.

Jim was on his knees assembling an ungainly eight-foot-high stand made of one-inch copper tubing. It had four legs and looked something like a hat rack with elbow joints. Lengths of tubing and rolls of copper flashing were heaped around him everywhere on the dirt floor. Most of the flashing was aged and paint-splattered.

“What is this thing?” asked Mitch, crouching next to Jim.

“The inner workings, son,” Jim replied, flipping on a pair of safety goggles. “Hold her steady for a sec, will you…?” Jim reached for a portable oxyacetylene torch and ignited it. “We use a copper-compound braising rod. She melts at about two thousand degrees. You don’t want your copper to get much hotter than that or it will burn.” Almost immediately Mitch began to smell the smoldering phosphorous and copper compound as Jim started to weld the pieces of the four-legged creature together. “She may look a little unstable right now, but you got to remember that she’ll be standing in a twenty-gallon tank of water. You won’t see these here feet at all. Or the submersible pump, which’ll push the water through that center pipe all the way to the top. It dribbles back down, then gets recirculated.”

“Okay, so this will be a fountain, right?”

“You’re looking inside the beast, son.”

“And what will the beast look like?”

“You’ll have to ask the mad doctor there. Me, I’m just Igor.”

Hangtown was still at his workbench, padded pencil in hand. What he was drawing resembled an elongated ziggurat of cubes and rectangles heaped one atop the other. “Made one of these back when I had to quit smoking, Big Mitch,” he mentioned to him, pausing to light a Lucky. He did not say hello. He acted as if Mitch had been around the house all morning. “Helped keep my mind off of things.”

“But you didn’t quit smoking.”

“That part didn’t work out,” Hangtown admitted freely. “But the fountain was a major success. Really quite hypnotic, if I do say so myself.”

Sam sat up suddenly now, a low growl coming from his throat. A moment later Mitch heard what the dog had heard-cars making their way up the gravel drive toward them. They pulled up right outside the barn with a splatter of gravel. Mitch heard voices and car doors slamming. Jim’s baby-sitter got up and tromped over toward the barn door to see what was going on.

In barged Soave and his sergeant, Tommy Salcineto, followed by Des. She looked very ill at ease. She would not make eye contact with Mitch.

“Good morning, trooper,” Hangtown called to her, pointedly snubbing Soave. The muscle-bound little lieutenant instantly bristled. “When may I have my girl back? When may I bury her?”

“I don’t have a date yet, Mr. Frye,” Des answered, pawing at the ground with her brogan. “They can’t release her until they’ve run all of the tests they need to run. I’m sorry.”

Hangtown reached for his bottle of rye whiskey and took a swig, swiping at his bearded mouth with the back of his hand. “Then why have you come?”

“Because the DNA on the cigarette butt we found up on the rocks matches Jim Bolan’s blood sample,” Soave said, turning a cold-eyed gaze on Jim. “Same goes for the shooter’s shoe print. It’s a dead-on match for your work boots, Bolan.”

Jim sat back on his heels, a sick expression on his face. “I’ve hiked around up there a million times with Sam,” he said dejectedly. “Sometimes, I have me a smoke. That’s all there is to it. I didn’t do it, man. You’re making a mistake.”

“What does all of this mean?” Hangtown asked.

“It means they need a bad guy and I’m it,” Jim growled, flinging his safety goggles away in disgust.

“It means,” Soave said forcefully, “that we’ll have to bring him in for formal questioning.”

“For how long? When will he be back?”

“I can’t answer that, Mr. Frye,” Soave said. “That’s entirely up to him.”

“Well, does he need a lawyer?” Hangtown demanded, his frustration mounting. “Are you arresting him?”

“We’re taking him in for questioning, Mr. Frye. He’ll be detained at the Major Crime Squad’s Central District headquarters in Meriden, okay?”

“No, it is not okay!” the old man thundered. “You can’t take Jim away from me! I need Jim!”

“Sir, I’m afraid I have no choice,” Soave insisted.

Another car pulled up outside now. Mitch heard high heels clacking hurriedly on gravel-it was Takai, wearing a gray flannel business suit and looking quite rattled. “I-I came just as soon as Trooper Mitry phoned me, Father,” she said, rushing across the barn toward him. “I am so sorry. Are you all right?”

“You get away from me!” Hangtown snarled at her. He was in no mood for her even in the best of times, and these were not the best of times.

Takai backed slowly away from him, stung, her eyes shining. The old man might just as well have cuffed her across the face with his hand. Mitch felt very bad for Takai Frye at that moment.

“Not to worry, Big Jim,” Hangtown said to his friend with forced good cheer. “We’ll have you home in no time.”

“C’mon, Bolan, let’s move out,” Tommy Salcineto ordered him gruffly.

Jim started out the door, head hung in defeat, his babysitter on his heels. Soave followed, with Des bringing up the rear.

Mitch stopped her and said, “Do you think he did it?”

“It’s possible,” she answered quietly.

“Then again, this could all be for the benefit of those news vans out there, right?”

“Please don’t ask me anything more, Mitch,” Des pleaded. “I’m strictly a community liaison officer.” She bit down on her lower lip, sighing. “Look, I’ll see you tonight, okay?” And then she left with the others.

“Takai, do something for me, will you?” Hangtown said to her as they drove off.

“Anything, Father,” she replied, brightening considerably. The woman was so starved for his love, so eager to be called upon that Mitch found it pathetic. “Just tell me what you want.”

“Call Greta. Have her line up a top criminal lawyer for Jim. Money’s no object.”

Takai’s eyes widened. “But he murdered Moose! How can you even think of helping him?”

“Because he didn’t do it. Jim’s my friend. He would never do anything to hurt me.”

“Father, the state police have evidence!”

“The state police have nothing,” he said with total certainty. “Now will you call her or won’t you?”

“Of course I will. Whatever you want.” Now Takai started for the door, motioning for Mitch to join her. He walked her out to the Land Rover, where she shook her head at him in weary resignation, “My God, he’s totally deluding himself.”

“It’s pretty hard to believe that a friend could do something like that.”

“Well, at least it’s over,” she said, yanking open a creaky door.

“Do you really think so?” Mitch asked her.

Takai raised an eyebrow at him curiously. “Don’t you?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

“Here, I have something for you…” She reached across the seat, offering him a prized view of her behind, and pulled out the sweater he’d lent her, neatly folded. “I wore it to bed last night. I hope you don’t mind.”

It smelled strongly of her perfume, so strongly that he suddenly felt a bit dizzy. “Why… did you do that?”

“It made me feel all safe and snuggly,” she replied, her eyes glittering at him seductively. “I even dreamed about you. I can’t tell you what the dream was, though. I’ll have to know you a lot better before I do that.” And with that she climbed into her dead sister’s Land Rover, started it up and sped off, waving at him over her shoulder.

Mitch watched her disappear around the bend, wondering what kind of game she was playing with him. And why she was playing it.

The barn seemed empty and silent now. Hangtown had shut off the radio and was slumped at the workbench smoking a big, loosely rolled joint. “They won’t let me be, Big Mitch,” he grumbled, running a misshapen hand through his mane of white hair. “They never have. They never will. To hell with all of ’em.” He took a long toke on the joint and held it out to Mitch, who shook his head. “Life ain’t for sissies, that’s for damned sure. Just gets harder and harder-until one day you can’t take it anymore. That’s when you know it’s time for your nice long dirt nap.”

“Hangtown, if there’s anything I can do…”

He immediately brightened. “As it happens, there is. You’ll have to be my hands today. There’s no one else. So grab yourself a pair of tin snips. Now’s when the fun starts.”

Mitch stared at him with his mouth open. Hangtown’s mind had already gotten past what had just happened-compartmentalized it and shut it away so that he could focus completely on his work. Mitch had never before witnessed such intense willpower.

“You will work with me, won’t you?” Hangtown pleaded.

“Of course I will. But I’m still writing that article-okay if I turn on my tape recorder while we work?”

Hangtown shrugged and said, “If it makes you happy.”

Mitch set it on the workbench, grateful that he’d brought along extra microcassettes, while Hangtown got busy showing him what he needed from him.

What he needed, first, was for Mitch to take the snips to those sheets of copper flashing and make him dozens and dozens of rectangles in an array of sizes ranging from as small as six by eighteen inches to as large as four times that. Next, Mitch had to turn those measured rectangles into a vast assortment of copper boxes by folding them around different blocks of wood and pounding them into shape with a rubber mallet. Once the boxes were completed, Hangtown could arrange them one atop the other around the pipe skeleton that Jim had been making and-again, with Mitch’s assistance-weld them together to form his tower.

It was slow, painstaking physical work-donkey work. Mitch had always heard that copper was soft, and maybe it was as metals go. But this was nothing like trying to cut and fold paper. The flashing was stiff and resistant and its fresh-cut edges were razor-sharp. If he hadn’t put on a pair of Jim’s work gloves his hands would have been cut to shreds. Still, it was work that the old master couldn’t do anymore, and Mitch could, so he dived in, inspired by the heady realization that he was actually in Wendell Frye’s studio helping the great artist create a work of art. This was something he would be able to tell his grandchildren about someday: I once built a fountain with Wendell Frye.

“What will you write, Big Mitch?” Hangtown asked as he fiddled with his plans at the workbench, deciding which blocks went where.

“I don’t know yet,” Mitch replied, grunting from his exertions. “I’ll write the truth, as I see it.”

“I was with him. I was with Jim when Moose died.”

“There’s no chance you might have drifted off for a few minutes?”

“Even if I had, it’s a good fifteen-twenty-minute walk to those rocks from the house, and the same back. Plus he had to wait there for her, unless he knew exactly when she was coming home. Then he had to hide the gun when he was done with it-which they have not found…” Hangtown fell silent a moment, absorbed by his work. “Maybe I closed my eyes for a second. But I wasn’t asleep in front of that fire for no forty-five minutes. I know that. And I ain’t senile. And that so-called evidence of theirs means nothing-not if Jim has himself a good lawyer.”

Mitch agreed. It wouldn’t hold up for a second in court. Soave had to know that. So why had he taken Jim away? Did he think he might be able to squeeze a confession out of Jim once he had him in custody? “Jim did have a good reason for wanting to kill Takai,” he pointed out.

“Plenty good,” Hangtown admitted. “Only, why would he go to such elaborate lengths to do her in? Why not just go upstairs to her bedroom and slash the greedy bitch’s throat while she sleeps? Think about that. It makes no sense.”

The old man had a valid point, Mitch acknowledged, as he finished cutting out one of the pieces with the tin snips. Already his fingers were starting to ache, and he still had hours of work ahead of him.

Hangtown’s bomber had gone out in the ashtray at his elbow. He relit it and toked on it, coughing. It was a phlegmy, rumbling cough that sounded not at all healthy. Actually, the more Mitch looked at Wendell Frye, the more he realized that the artist did not look good. His cheeks seemed more hollow than they had two days ago, and his complexion was positively gray.

“Maybe… maybe this is my own sins catching up with me,” he said to Mitch, wheezing. “Someone getting even for the evil I’ve done.”

Mitch sat back on his haunches, peering at Hangtown curiously. “Like who? For what?”

“There’s a reason why I live like this, Big Mitch,” he said, his breathing growing more erratic. “Cut off from people. I’m hiding, don’t you understand?”

“I’m afraid not,” Mitch said. “But I’d like to.”

Hangtown paused for a swig of rye, struggling to compose himself. “I took my fists to Takai’s mother, Kiki, when I drank. Couldn’t help it. I was so angry in those days. I married her too soon, you see. Wasn’t ready. Was still grieving over Moose’s mother, Gentle Kate. But I didn’t know that then. How could I? Kate… Kate was the great love of my life. Big, strapping girl like Moose. Died when Moose was barely three. In 1972, it was.”

Mitch went back to working the copper, wondering why Wendell Frye seemed to have such a sudden, powerful need to confess his sins. What was weighing on the old man’s conscience?

“That was our summer of sunshine, Big Mitch,” he recalled. “We had artists staying out in the cottages then. Some stayed for weeks on end, working the farm for their keep. We had picnics every afternoon in the meadows. We drank our wine and smoked our dope and screwed our blessed brains out. I was a lion in those days, with a huge appetite for the young lovelies. Kate was a good, loving woman. But I was bad to her. Because I wanted them all-every single one of those tender young barefoot girls. And I had ’em all.” Hangtown heaved a huge, pained sigh. “Selfish and cruel, I was. Thinking only of my own pleasures. Had me a Volkswagon bus in those days. I’d meet ’em at the academy, take ’em down to the beach in my bus-no conscience, no shame, no regrets. Not a one… Until one hot morning in August, middle of a heat wave it was, a slender little sculptress with shining black hair down to her bottom came drifting through. Crazy Daisy, we called her. I never even knew her real name, and that’s the truth. She’d hitchhiked all the way from Winnipeg just to be here. She was a homeless waif, no family. Barely sixteen. But a tremendous talent, very gifted. And the prettiest little thing you ever saw in a pair of tight bell-bottoms, my friend.” Hangtown fumbled for his Luckies and lit one, his hands trembling now. “Late one night Daisy asked me to pose for her. I obliged. It was a warm, humid night. Not a leaf was stirring. Naturally, I was nude. Naturally, we were soon in each others arms, right here in this barn, on a paint-splattered drop cloth, the sweat pouring off of us. And I roared like a lion. And then

… then I heard another roar coming from that doorway right over there,” he recalled, shuddering violently. “It was Gentle Kate. She had herself a temper, my Kate. You did not want to make her mad…”

“What happened here that night, Hangtown?” asked Mitch, his voice nearly a whisper.

“Moose had awakened in the night. Couldn’t sleep. It was the heat. Kate gave her a cool sponge bath and got her back to bed. And then she came looking for me out here-thought I might want something to eat or drink. She found Crazy Daisy and me together in each other’s arms on the drop cloth, humping away… Kate let out a roar and grabbed the nearest thing she could find-a mallet-and she hurled it right at me. I-I ducked. Crazy Daisy didn’t. It hit her right between the eyes. Killed her dead on the spot.”

Mitch had stopped working now. He was just sitting there, transfixed, his recorder taping the old man’s every word.

“I murdered that girl!” Hangtown cried out, his voice choking with emotion. “Kate threw the mallet, but it was my doing. My pants I couldn’t keep on. My marriage I was trashing. A-and there’s more. Believe me, it gets even worse…”

“Hangtown, are you sure you want to tell me all of this? I’m here as a member of the press, remember?”

“There’s no point in holding back anymore,” he answered despondently. “Not with my Moose gone. What does it matter? What does any of it matter? Don’t you see, my life is over now!” He broke off, his barrel chest heaving. Tears were beginning to stream down his deeply lined face. “We… rolled her up in the drop cloth with her knapsack and the few pieces of clothing she had. Dug a hole up on the hill and buried her up there. No one else was staying here that weekend. It was just Daisy and us. I erected a cairn to mark the spot. It’s still there, not far from where they found the shotgun shell, in fact. It looks like something I did for a kick. But that’s Crazy Daisy’s marker… When folks asked us where she’d gone to, we told them she’d hitched a ride out of town early one morning, heading for New York. She’d been hoping to make her way down to Morocco on a freighter. She’d told a lot of people that. So no one doubted our story. And no one ever came looking for her. She had no one. And nothing-no driver’s license, no credit cards, no permanent address. She was just a drifter passing through. A lot of people passed through in those days. Not so many anymore. The world is not as kindly a place now.” Hangtown hung his head for a moment, his breathing ragged. It had to be Mitch’s imagination, but he could have sworn that Wendell Frye was actually growing older by the minute. “Within a couple of weeks she was forgotten by everyone,” he added hoarsely, stubbing out his cigarette. “Everyone except Gentle Kate and me.”

“Whose idea was it to keep it from the police-yours or Kate’s?”

“Mine, of course,” he answered bitterly. “All mine. Because the guilt was all mine. My selfishness cost that poor girl her life. Yet Gentle Kate was her killer-or so the law would say. She was the mother of my child. I loved her. How could I make her pay for my sins? The answer is, I couldn’t. So we buried Crazy Daisy and we tried to move on. Except she couldn’t. The guilt weighed on her, heavier and heavier. She couldn’t sleep. Barely touched her food. Big Mitch, that strong healthy woman just wasted away right before my eyes. Within a few weeks she was merely a shell of herself. I kept telling her: ‘Yes, what we did was horrible. But you have to get on with your life. You have Moose to think of.’ But it was too much for her. Four months later, she was dead. It’s truly amazing just how quickly we can go when our will to live is g-gone.” He let out a wrenching, painful sob. By the woodstove, Sam stirred slightly, but drifted back to sleep. “And I killed her, my friend. Just as surely as if I’d taken a knife and buried it in her chest. I killed her and I left poor Moose motherless.” He paused now, swiping at his tears with the back of his gnarled hand. “Kiki tried to be a mother to her but those two never did hit it off.”

“Where did you meet Kiki?”

“At Greta’s gallery. By then, three years had gone by. All I’d done was work. I buried myself in it. Kiki had come up from New York for my new show. I was instantly smitten. She was gorgeous, very elegant and sophisticated. I married her and brought her home, but Moose was already a confirmed tomboy by then, and she had no use for this perfumed New Yorker in high heels. After we had Takai, I tried to change my wicked ways. No more artists in residence. No more picnics. No more tender lovelies. I even sold my VW bus. I tried, Mitch. God, how I tried. But all that did was bring out my anger, which I took out on poor Kiki until she could stand no more. Eventually, she left me.”

“Takai holds you responsible for her suicide.”

“I’m guilty,” he conceded. “I killed them both-first Kate, then Kiki. And now… now I’ve killed Moose, too.”

“What do you mean? How did you kill her?”

“This is a burial ground,” the old man said in a hollow, faraway voice. “A curse hangs over this entire place. And over me. That’s why I can’t have people around. I’m not fit to be around them. So I smoke my smoke and drink my drink. I work and I work. But I never forget. Not ever.” He turned his intense blue-eyed gaze on Mitch. “That is my curse, don’t you see?”

“What did you mean when you said you killed Moose, too?”

“No, you don’t see,” growled Hangtown, ignoring Mitch’s question once again. Barely hearing him at all. “You’re too young. Your comprehension is limited by what you can understand. The real truth is what lies just beyond-it’s what you can’t grasp.”

Mitch stared at the great artist, perplexed. “Hangtown, who else knows about Crazy Daisy?”

“Jim does. I told Jim because he could understand what it means-he doesn’t belong around people either. Not since ’Nam. I’ve never told Greta. Never told the girls. My God, I couldn’t tell Moose. That would have destroyed her love for me.”

Still, Mitch found himself wondering: What if. What if Moose had found out? What if Jim told her? Could this have had something to do with her death?

Mitch’s eyes fell on the little tape machine that was recording every word of Hangtown’s gut-wrenching confession. He’d held this in for thirty years. Now the whole world was going to know. “Why are you telling me this?” he finally asked him. “Why now?”

“Because it’s all over,” the old man answered tonelessly.

“What is?”

Hangtown sat there slumped at the workbench, looking mournful and defeated. The spark of life seemed to have gone right out of him.

“Hangtown, who killed Moose?”

No answer.

Mitch tried it again, louder. “Hangtown, who killed Moose?!”

At last the old master shook himself and gazed down at Mitch. He seemed very distant from him now. He seemed to be somewhere else entirely. “Don’t you get it, Big Mitch? The past did.”