The Hot Pink Farmhouse

CHAPTER 4

It was the high schoolers in their Jeep Wranglers who were her biggest headache, Des had come to discover as she stood out there in the middle of Dorset Street with her orange reflector vest on, making her official presence felt.

They were just so jacked up on their hormonal energy and deafening suburban hip-hop that the posted speed limit of twenty-five felt like a baby’s crawl. Most of them were doing forty when they hit the high school driveway and that was simply not acceptable, because both the high school and middle school were located directly behind Center School. Dozens of school buses were pulling in and out. Soccer moms in minivans were dropping their kids off. More kids were arriving on their bikes and… well, it was a major public safety situation.

Speeding tickets? She’d tried that, but tickets didn’t mean a thing to these kids in Dorset. Their parents just paid the tickets for them, same as they paid for everything else. Out of sheer frustration, she’d resorted to this-standing in the damned street-holding some of the traffic up, waving some of it on through, trying to keep it under control and moving. Knowing full well that if the Deacon saw her out there like this he would have himself a stroke.

Christ, all I need is a pair of white gloves and a whistle.

In all honesty, becoming a resident trooper was a bigger adjustment than Des had anticipated. She hadn’t just changed jobs-she’d changed careers. She was in community relations now, not law enforcement. Her role was to be a liaison between the state police and this stable gold-coast community that was home to more millionaires per square mile than East Hampton. She handed out free trigger locks for handguns, signed off on fender benders, made sure the kids got home in one piece from their keggers on the beach. If a break-in went down, she picked up the new digital handheld radio that connected her to the Troop F barracks in Westbrook and they took over. Anything hot, Westbrook called Major Crime Squad Central District headquarters in Meriden, her old crew.

Not that she’d had a single hot call yet. In fact, the only ongoing crime problem she’d encountered was a roving late-night gang of high-spirited local boys who liked to spray-paint erect penises on store windows and proudly sign their work-they called themselves the Mod Squad. Lately, they’d also taken to stealing things out of unlocked parked cars. The town fathers were not amused, and Des was under tremendous pressure from First Selectman Paffin to nail them. She was finding leads hard to come by. It was not easy building trust when she was still finding her own way-especially in a village with such a pigment-free population. Face it, Des saw only one face of color all day long-her own in the mirror. Not that anyone had acted unfriendly toward her. It was a very polite town. They respected the uniform. They respected order. It’s just that she was different. Plus she was a young single woman. She was not going to cultivate local relationships in her off-duty hours by hanging at the barbershop or the fire house swapping fish tales. No, she had to find a new way, a way that suited her.

And fast.

On this particular morning she was presenting DARE awards to a classroom full of Center School second graders. When she was done with traffic detail she unlocked the trunk of her cruiser, stowed her reflector vest and removed one kid-sized DARE baseball jacket and five stuffed animals-the Drug Abuse Resistance Education mascot was a fuzzy lion named Darren. Then she slammed the trunk shut and started up the bluestone path to the front doors.

Center School was a beautiful old building of whitewashed brick and granite with a slate roof. There was no metal detector at its front doors. No bars on its windows, no gang markings on its walls. It was a throwback. Which, Des supposed, was why people had such strong feelings for and against it.

She went inside, her big leather belt creaking, and started down a corridor lined with class photographs and Halloween art projects. It had been a long time since she’d been inside a grammar school. It was the smells that struck her the most, those forgotten childhood smells of finger paint, glue and heavy-duty floor cleanser. The principal’s office, where she got directions to Miss Frye’s room, had a knee-high drinking fountain outside the door. It was a bright, sunny classroom filled with tiny desks for tiny, tiny people. A motto written in big blue letters stretched across the wall over the blackboard: A GOOD BOOK IS A GOOD FRIEND.

Miss Frye’s second graders were scrubbed, alert and excited, although Des couldn’t help but notice that most of them still had their jackets on. Three big windows were thrown wide open and two fans were circulating fresh, chilly morning air throughout the entire room. Miss Frye herself wore only a dowdy cardigan sweater over a blue denim jumper. She was a strongly built farm girl with muscular flanks and a gentle, natural manner with the children. Des wondered if she was one of the Fryes.

A photographer from the little shoreline weekly paper was already there, waiting to snap a picture of Des posed with the winners of the class’s DARE slogan contest. The five runners-up received Darrens. Ben Leanse, an unusually small boy with an unusually large, bulbous head, got the baseball jacket for his winning slogan: DRUGS ARE FOR SICK PEOPLE.

Miss Frye had chosen the winners. Des was merely there to make the presentation. Mostly, it was a chance for her to interact with them in a setting they were familiar with. Young children needed to find out that police officers were people they could talk to. Plus Des was exceedingly aware that these sheltered, affluent small-town kids had spent very little time around anyone of color. She wanted them to realize that she was not an alien from a galaxy far, far away.

So, after the photographer took off, she hung out, seated there on the edge of Miss Frye’s desk, twirling her big hat in her long, slender fingers.

“Boys and girls, Trooper Mitry has been kind enough to give us a few minutes of her time this morning,” Miss Frye said, as they gaped at Des from their desks. “Can anyone tell us what a resident trooper does?”

“Make busts,” the Leanse boy spoke up promptly. Poor little guy had a gurgly, adenoidal voice to go with his huge head. “Take down bad guys.”

“Ohhh, pumpkin head…” a boy in the back row gurgled mockingly, drawing snickers. And an icy look from Miss Frye. “Pumpkin head…”

“Sometimes I arrest people,” Des said. “What else do I do?”

The other kids began to jump in now: “Gunfights and-”

“Car chases!”

“Break down doors and beat people up-”

“Speeding tickets. My dad got one.”

“My daddy’s pickup truck got broken into,” an angelic little blond girl spoke up. “The Mod Squad stole his nail gun and spray-painted a great big wienie on his windshield.” This drew more snickers. “You gonna catch ’em?”

“We’re working on that real hard,” Des replied, pushing her horn-rimmed glasses up her nose. “Do you know what else I do? I help people. That’s my job. So if anyone ever has a problem, don’t be afraid to call me, okay?”

“You ever kill anyone?” the Leanse boy piped up.

“Ohh, pumpkin head…”

“Ricky, stop that!” Miss Frye said sharply.

“I never have, no,” Des responded, shifting so she could get herself a good look at the taunter in the back row. Ricky was a classic schoolyard-bully type-a fat, no-necked kid with a flattop crew cut and outthrust jaw. Also one helluva black eye. The last kid he’d tangled with had clearly gotten the best of him. “Most of us never have to fire our guns. It’s not like on television.”

“How come a lady is a policeman?” asked the angelic blond girl.

“Well, I was a lieutenant in the Army, first. After the cold war ended I decided to join the state police, just like my father.” The Deacon was deputy superintendent, the second-highest-ranking man in the entire state. And the highest-ranked black man in Connecticut history. “How about you, Ricky?” she asked, making eye contact with him. “Anything you’d like to ask me?”

“Yeah,” he said, his brow furrowing. “Are you a nigger?”

Miss Frye let out a gasp of pure horror. “Ricky Welmers, you just earned yourself another trip to the principal’s office!”

“Wait, it’s okay,” Des interjected.

“It is not okay!” she said firmly. “We have a zero-tolerance policy toward such language.”

Ricky just sat there smirking. He wanted attention, and he was getting it.

“Ricky, what’s the worst thing anyone’s ever called you?” Des asked, strolling down the aisle toward him.

He stuck his chin out at her in defiant silence.

“C’mon, you can tell us,” Des prodded him. “What was it-Fatso, Lardo, Piggy, Miss Piggy…?” This drew snickers from the other kids, which Ricky did not like. “Words hurt, Ricky. If you hurt someone, they’re liable to hurt you back. Is that what you want?”

“I can take it,” he snarled at her.

“And if the other guy’s got a gun? Then what do you do?”

Ricky stared up her, his eyes cold with hate. It wasn’t racially specific, she felt. It was authority in general he was angry at. She wondered why.

Now the classroom door opened and a high school girl came in to tell Des she was needed in the superintendent’s office.

Something in the girl’s voice caused Miss Frye to say, “I’ll show Trooper Mitry the way, Ashley. Will you please stay here with the class until I return?”

They started down the school hallway together, moving briskly. Des, who had learned never to waste an opportunity, immediately went to work: “Ever think about adopting a kitten for your classroom, Miss Frye? It makes a wonderful science project.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. I’ve got several students with allergies.”

“How about you yourself?” Des pressed her. When it came to placing a healthy neutered kitten she was ruthless. “Do you have a cat?”

“We have a dog.”

“They get along fine. Don’t believe the cartoons. I’ve got some Polaroids right here if you’d care to-”

“No, don’t!” Miss Frye pleaded. “Don’t show them to me. I’m a terrible soft touch.”

“Oh, good, we’ll get along just fine.” Des smiled at her as they strode down the corridor, the teacher matching her stride for stride, which most women couldn’t do. “Do you always keep the windows in your room open?”

“I do,” she responded. “We’ve got a mold problem in the ductwork, and the old wiring is inadequate for air conditioners. They were supposed to upgrade it over the summer, but if they end up tearing the school down, then that would just be a waste of money-and so they did nothing.”

“It’s a sweet old school,” Des said. “Seems a shame to level it.”

“I couldn’t agree more. It has its problems, but nothing that can’t be fixed. Superintendent Falconer has tried to tell Mrs. Leanse-she’s our school board president.”

“Ben’s mother?”

“That’s right. But you know it’s very hard to argue with a parent who feels his or her child’s health is endangered. They want to do the best they can for their children. They’ve spent hundreds of hours working the phones, licking envelopes, packing the school board meetings. They even raised twenty-five thousand dollars of private funds to produce a ten-minute video that went out to every voter in town. All I keep thinking is, if you really care that much about the school, twenty-five thousand would buy us a lot of plumbing repairs. Or computers. Or a security system. Besides, the reality is that it’s not the size of the building that matters. It’s the size of the class and the caliber of the teacher and…” She glanced at Des apologetically. “I’ll shut up now. You asked me a perfectly innocent question about mold and you’re getting an entire lecture.”

“I’m getting insight. I need that.”

They pushed open the double doors at the end of the hall and started out onto the playground behind the school. The superintendent’s office was in the middle school, a twenty-year-old flat-roofed brick building that was located across an expanse of blacktop.

“You handled the children very well,” Miss Frye said, leading Des past the swings and monkey bars.

“I was thinking I could have been a little less confrontational with Ricky.”

“Not at all. You were straight with him. He needs to be talked to that way. They all do. I’m sorry about his language. His older brother, Ronnie, was a handful, too. He’s over at the high school now. Ronnie was just incredibly disruptive. Him they put on Ritalin, and he did better, but the mother was around then. Jay’s raising the boys alone now, and he has his own problems. It’s a real shame, because they’re both very bright. Ronnie’s probably the brightest student in our entire system. His IQ tested exceptionally high. But he’s bored and he’s angry, so he self-medicates.”

“He’s a garbagehead?”

“They caught him inhaling a computer keyboard cleaner out behind the Science Building last year.”

“What was it, Duster Two?”

“That’s it. He and two other boys. All three of them were suspended.”

“Is there a lot of huffing in this town?”

“You wouldn’t think so, but Dorset isn’t Oz.”

“Even Oz wasn’t Oz,” Des pointed out as they passed through the door into the middle school. “What happened to Ricky’s eye?”

“He gets in a lot of fights.”

“This I can well imagine. Are you sure it didn’t happen in the home?”

Miss Frye puffed out her cheeks. “Trooper, I’m not sure of anything.”

When they arrived at Superintendent Falconer’s outer office, Des encountered a harried, frantic secretary and a short, big-chested woman with bushy hair who was about to explode.

“Okay, what seems to be the problem?” Des asked them calmly.

“The problem is that I have been waiting out here like a piece of garbage for thirty minutes!” the short woman retorted angrily. “The superintendent is supposed to meet with me. Colin is in there. I saw him go in there. I have never encountered such rudeness, such-such-”

“Trooper Mitry, this is Babette Leanse, president of our school board,” Miss Frye said quietly.

“You must be Ben’s mom,” Des said, smiling at her.

“I have an appointment!” she blustered, unswerving in her rage. She was an intensely focused, hard-charging little human blowtorch in a cashmere cardigan sweater and finely tailored wool slacks. Des made her for about forty. Her shock of black hair was streaked with silver. “That man knows I’m out here!”

“I see,” Des said patiently. “And the problem is…?”

“I’ve buzzed him repeatedly,” spoke up Colin’s frazzled secretary, whose desk nameplate identified her as Melanie Zide. She was a dumpy, moon-faced young woman with a pug nose, limp henna hair, eyes that looked sneaky behind clunky black-framed glasses. “I called out his name. I knocked. H-He just won’t answer. And his door is locked from the inside and I don’t have a key. I’ve got the custodian searching for one, but…”

Des jiggled the knob. It was locked all right. “Is there a window in there?”

“There is,” Melanie said, chewing nervously on the inside of her mouth. “But it has security bars over it. And his venetian blinds are closed. You can’t see anything.”

Des tried rapping on the door. “Superintendent Falconer!? Colin!?” Then she put a shoulder to it. It didn’t give. The frame was solid. There was a transom over it, of frosted glass. She pulled a sturdy chair over in front of the door and climbed up on it, placing her at eye level with the transom. She tried to pry it open with her pocket knife, only it was latched shut from the inside. She pursed her lips, frowning. “You’re sure he’s in there?”

“Positive,” said Babette Leanse.

“For at least a half hour,” Melanie added, her voice strained.

Des asked the others to get away from the door and used the butt end of her Sig on the frosted glass, smashing a jagged hole that she could see through.

What she saw was Colin Falconer slumped face-down at his desk, unconscious. On the desk, next to his left hand, there was an empty prescription pill bottle.

“Call nine-one-one,” she ordered Melanie Zide sharply. “Tell them we need EMS now. We’ve got a possible overdose.”

Miss Frye let out a gasp as Melanie lunged for the phone.

Babette Leanse just stood there with her mouth open, speechless.

The custodian still could not find a key to the superintendent’s door. Des asked him for a pry bar instead. He returned with a foot-long crowbar that she applied to the lock while he threw his weight against the door. The frame gave with a sharp crack and they went in, the broken transom glass crunching underfoot.

Colin was breathing. His respiration was shallow, his pulse rapid, skin pale and cool. “He’s in shock,” Des said, checking the pill bottle. It was diazepam, the generic name for Valium. The bottle, if full, would have held fifty tablets, ten milligrams each. “We’ll need blankets.”

The custodian ran to get some from the nurse’s office.

“Colin, you fool,” Miss Frye said from the doorway, her voice heavy with sadness. “You stupid, stupid fool.”

The ambulance got there in less than five minutes, pulling right up onto the playground next to the building, its siren silent so as not to alarm the children. Margie and Mary Jewett, who headed Dorset’s volunteer ambulance corps, were no-nonsense sisters in their late fifties. Des had already encountered them at a couple of fender benders and found them to be well-trained and unflappable.

Margie checked Colin Falconer’s blood pressure while Mary hooked him up to a cardiac monitor, the two of them barking shorthand at each other. They did the Roto-Rooter thing on his stomach, then gave him oxygen and administered two hundred milliliters of saline solution through a large-bore intravenous catheter while they continued to monitor his vital signs. He was now semiconscious, murmuring incoherently under his breath.

“He’s still a bit shocky,” Margie told Des. “But he’s healthy and strong and it’s pretty hard to kill yourself on Valium.”

“Unless you’re blind drunk to boot,” Mary added.

When they had him stabilized Margie wheeled in the stretcher and they loaded him onto it. “Let’s move!” she called out.

“Moving!” Mary affirmed.

And they hustled Colin Falconer out the door and off to the Middlesex Clinic in Essex, leaving Des to notify his next of kin.

“I guess that would be his wife, Greta,” Melanie Zide spoke up. “She should be at the gallery by now.”

Des thanked Melanie for the information, and Miss Frye for her help. The young teacher smiled at her tightly before she returned to her classroom, leaving Des with Babette Leanse. And the distinct impression that Dorset’s school superintendent had tried to take his own life rather than face this woman.

“Mrs. Leanse, exactly what was this meeting between you two about?”

“Trooper, this is hardly the time to discuss it,” Babette answered sharply, managing to look down her nose at Des even though Des towered over her by perhaps a foot. This was a woman who was trying very hard to command respect. If there was one thing Des had learned at West Point, it was this: The ones who had to work at it were seldom the ones who received it.

“So when would be a good time?” Des asked her, as Melanie watched the two of them intently from behind her desk.

“I suppose you could swing by my house this afternoon,” Babette allowed. “But I don’t understand why you’re pressing me on this.”

“Because my job is to see that things like this don’t happen. That’s rule number one in the resident trooper’s unofficial handbook.”

“And is there a rule number two?” Babette demanded.

“Oh, absolutely,” Des said, smiling at her broadly. “Rule number two is to make absolutely sure that they don’t ever happen again.”

The Patterson Gallery was located right down Dorset Street from the old Gill House, home to the Dorset Academy of Fine Arts. The gallery was in a bright-yellow converted barn that had previously been a grain-and-feed store. The gnarly oak tree out front had a red ribbon tied around it, indicating where Colin Falconer’s wife stood on the school-bond issue. Whatever was wrong between the two of them, Des reflected, it wasn’t local politics.

Inside, Des found a clean, brightly lit space with sparkling white walls and polished fir floors. A fire crackled in the fireplace. Downstairs, the gallery featured an array of luminous early-twentieth-century landscape paintings from noteworthy shoreline impressionists such as Childe Hassam, Henry Ward Ranger, Carleton Wiggins and Elbert Frye, Wendell’s grandfather. Prices ranged anywhere between one and five times what Des took home in a year. On the second floor Greta Patterson offered more modestly priced works by contemporary artists, many of them recent graduates of the Dorset Academy. She served on its board, as had her father and grandfather, who had operated the Patterson Gallery before her.

A discreet sign on the wall behind her massive oak partner’s desk noted that the Patterson Gallery was the exclusive agent and legal representative of Wendell Frye, although there was no evidence of the great man’s work to be found anywhere-no catalogs, no photographs. It was very low-key, considering the amount of hype that generally went on in the art world.

Greta was talking on the phone, but she quickly got off, bustled to her feet and offered Des a seat in one of the cozy armchairs set before the fire. Des declined an offer of coffee and sat, trying not to stare at the woman. Greta Patterson was a good deal older than she’d been expecting. At least sixty, possibly sixty-five. Plenty old enough to be Colin’s mother. She was a wide-bodied, square-faced woman with close-cropped silver hair and a red blotchy complexion that suggested many years of serious drinking. She wore a hand-knit cream-colored vest over a burgundy silk blouse, roomy wool slacks and a good deal of bright-red lipstick, some of which was stuck to her front teeth.

“I know why you’re here, trooper,” Greta said to her in a booming, forthright voice. “Colin’s already phoned me from the ambulance. He’s assured me he’s fine, totally fine.” She did not seem the least bit fazed by her husband’s suicide attempt. Or even surprised. “We’ve been living apart lately, as I’m sure you must know, but I’ll bring him home just as soon as the clinic releases him.” Greta settled in the other armchair, clutching a Dorset Academy coffee mug tightly in her blunt-fingered hands. “Naturally, I’ll try to see that he behaves himself in the future. But I can’t guarantee anything.”

“Has this happened before?” Des asked, crossing her long legs.

Greta let out a guffaw. “What is this, his fifth try? Sixth? I’ve lost count. Colin is a deeply, deeply unhappy man. He’s been undergoing treatment for depression for a number of years, and lately-” She broke off, weighing just exactly how forthcoming she wished to be. “Let’s just say he wanted to work things out on his own. A lot of men undergo a change when they hit forty. I’ve seen it with countless artists-even the real swashbucklers. Their self-assurance is suddenly overtaken by doubt, anxiety, even panic. Some rush right out and nail the first female who’s willing. Some buy themselves a convertible. And some, like Colin, fall into a deep, deep funk. Call it hormones. Call it male menopause. Call it whatever you want. But it’s real. And for Colin, who was a brooder to begin with, it’s been pure hell.” Greta took a sip of her coffee and stared fretfully into the fire. “Up until now, we’ve managed to keep it between us. But now I suppose the poor boy will have to take a medical leave.”

“Babette Leanse was waiting outside his office to see him,” Des said. “Could this particular suicide try be related to that?”

“I have no doubt that it is,” Greta answered emphatically. “Babette has been making his life pure hell ever since this mold issue came up at Center School. Attila the Hen, he’s taken to calling her. Babette’s a driven, determined woman, and God help anyone who gets in her way. Sadly, that anyone has been Colin.” Greta shifted her bulk in her chair, sighing regretfully. “Dorset used to be a special place. Everyone got along with everyone else. There was an aura of true contentment-artists made it their home. Now we’re living in a war zone. Sometimes the war is fought over whether to put in a sewer system. Sometimes it’s about condos. And sometimes it’s about building a new school. But it’s always the same war. And it’s always the same outcome-the future always wins. I know that as well as I know the difference between the genuine artist and the fraud. But I don’t have to like it.”

A piece of wood collapsed in the fireplace, setting off a shower of sparks.

Greta stared at it in heavy, angry silence for a moment. “Besides, this one leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Our school board president, a woman who has turned that new school into a holy crusade, happens to be married to a real estate developer who happens to be building new houses all over town. Please! She’s his puppet, and little Brucie is busy pulling the strings and lining his own pockets. But don’t get me started on them.” Greta got up and put a fresh log on the fire, then stood there warming her broad backside as it crackled. “I honestly will try to get Colin to come home. But he’s a very stubborn boy.”

That was the second time she’d called him a boy, Des noticed.

“I’m sorry that the children had to be exposed to this. They must have found it alarming.”

“It was handled very quietly,” Des said. “Just Mrs. Leanse, his secretary and the custodian were there. And one teacher, Miss Frye.”

Greta’s face lit up. “Moose is Wendell’s oldest girl. Isn’t she wonderful?”

“I liked her quite a bit.”

“Very fine girl,” Greta said, nodding. “Considerate, kind. Steady as a rock. His other daughter, Takai, has that realty office right across the street from me.” Des noticed that Greta did not say that Takai was a fine girl. What she did say was: “Takai was the first realtor in Dorset to hire fluffers.”

“Hire what?”

“They’re like set decorators,” she explained dryly. “They dress up the houses to make them look like they’re straight out of House Beautiful, thereby jacking up the selling price. They truck in family heirlooms, antique furniture, dishes, silver. Totally faux, but that’s Takai. With her, it’s always about making a style statement. She was a runway model in New York when she was still in her teens. And, to this day she remains totally image-oriented. Which I guess is her way of rebelling against her father. Wendell, you see, has a visceral loathing for anything that he perceives as manipulative or fake-such as, say, the entire concept of business. Not that I’m complaining, mind you,” Greta pointed out quickly. “It’s a great, great privilege to be his dealer. Ordinarily, an artist of his stature would be represented by a big outfit in New York, not a funky local gallery such as mine. But Wendell’s magnificently quirky that way. The Pattersons were good enough for his grandfather and his father and that was all he needed to know. And this way more of the money stays right here in Dorset to nourish local artists. Thanks to Wendell, I’m able to provide scholarships to the academy, student loans, rent money, even money for canvases and paints.” Greta smiled at her, her eyes glittering. “Tell me, trooper, are you a fan of his work?”

“I’m a tremendous fan,” Des said. “But please don’t ask me to explain why, because I don’t believe I can.”

“You’re not alone, my dear,” Greta said reassuringly. “The closest anyone’s ever come to describing a Frye statue was a French critic in the early seventies who wrote that it was like a mirror into one’s soul-when you try to understand it, you end up trying to understand yourself. Hell, I’ve known the man for the better part of fifty years, and I’ve never really known him at all. You just missed him, actually. He left not five minutes before you got here, full of my good Irish whiskey. Stopped by to discuss a legal matter-doesn’t call, just shows up. That’s Wendell. Mostly, I’m his gatekeeper. If someone wishes to commission him, they go through me. And either he says yes or no-usually no, because he won’t take money from any corporation or individual whose ethical standards he doesn’t approve of. He can really be quite maddening sometimes. The Museum of Modern Art approached us a few months back about marketing a line of candlesticks and jewelry made from his designs. The museums do a huge business nowadays through their gift shops and catalogs. It’s really quite lucrative.”

“He said no?”

Greta nodded. “Not only won’t he be a party to hawking knickknacks, as he calls them, but he insisted that I rewrite his will so that no one can ever license his name for the sale of anything. That man simply does not care about making money. He owns no stocks or bonds. All of his wealth is in his farm and his art. That’s how he wants it. So that’s how it is.”

Des nodded, wondering just how frustrated Greta Patterson was by a client who chose to leave so much money on the table. If she weren’t frustrated, she wouldn’t have brought it up. That was one of the most important things Des had learned about interviewing people: What they talk about can often be more revealing than the words they say.

“The Pattersons believe in artists,” Greta explained. “And we always have. When I was young I honestly thought I wanted to get away from this. I studied law at Duke. But before I went in with a firm I put in a year in London at Christie’s, another two years in New York, and before I knew it I was right back here working in the family business. I suppose, deep down, I always knew that I would be. I’ve run it on my own since my dad died.” She narrowed her eyes at Des appraisingly. “I understand you’re quite the artist yourself, my dear. Don’t look so surprised. Talent can’t hide. Especially in Dorset. I’d love to see your portfolio of murder victims. Perhaps we can do something with them, you and I.”

Des swallowed, taken aback. “I’m really not ready to show them yet.”

“Now you’re being unduly modest,” Greta scolded her. “You’re a beautiful, take-charge woman of color. Your art is highly political. Wake up and smell the turpentine fumes, my dear. Your timing could not be better.”

“But I don’t even know how to paint yet,” pointed out Des, who wasn’t expecting such interest so soon even in her wildest dreams. “I’m still learning.”

“Picasso was still learning until the day he died,” Greta scoffed. “That doesn’t mean you can’t find a home for your work. Besides, raw immediacy can be very, very commercially viable. Especially coming from someone like yourself. Do you understand what I mean?”

Des understood perfectly. Greta was saying that because she was a woman of color, people’s expectations would be considerably reduced

… Step right up, folks, and see the barefoot colored girl. She draws!!!… Des sat there in silence for a moment, seething. Not that she was a stranger to this kind of prejudice. She’d lived with it her whole life. Had she honestly thought the art world would be any different? Of course not. That would have been deluding herself. “I still need a lot of work,” she finally said in a muted voice.

“Good, I admire that. But please keep me in mind. I can get you wonderful critical attention in New York and Boston. Possibly even turn Oprah’s head. Trust me on this,” Greta said, eyeing her up and down. “You are very promotable.”

Something about the way the older woman’s eyes were gleaming at her now was giving Des a prickling sensation on the back of her neck. Or was that just her imagination? Greta Patterson was a married woman, after all. Albeit to a man at least twenty years her junior. What kind of a marriage did she and Colin have? Des didn’t know. All she knew was that when you really got to know the private lives of people, especially the wealthy upstanding bluebloods in Dorset, one truth always won out:

No one was who they appeared to be. Everyone was hiding something.

So what was Greta Patterson hiding?

The Leanses lived on a twenty-acre mountaintop high above Lord’s Cove from which they could see all the way down the Connecticut River to Long Island Sound. In days of yore, a fortified castle would have been built there.

Bruce and Babette Leanse had erected a post-modern jumble of cubes, rhomboids and scalene triangles that seemed to be tumbling right down the hillside, rather like a large child’s toy made of rough-cut timbers, granite and glass. Gazing at it through her windshield in the late-afternoon sunlight, Des initially thought that it was a total folly. But the more she looked, the more she liked its spareness, and the way it didn’t impose itself on the mountain so much as become a part of it.

She left her cruiser in the driveway next to a Chevy Blazer with Ohio plates. It was a vehicle she recognized. She’d seen it in the parking lot of the inn for a number of days. She rang the front bell.

“Trooper, glad you could make it!” exclaimed Bruce Leanse as he came charging out the door with his hand stuck out, all five feet six of him. “I’ve really been wanting to meet you. Babette’s still on the phone with the school board’s attorney about Colin. Poor guy.”

He closed the heavy oak door behind him and walked Des around the house and then across a meadow of knee-high wildflowers and native grasses. The sun was low, the trees casting long shadows across the meadow. Overhead, there were thin wisps of white clouds. A turkey vulture wafted on an air current, searching for prey.

“I’m hearing such good things about you from everyone,” Bruce said, glancing at her as they walked. He had a faint, knowing smile on his lips that Des didn’t care for. It bordered on a smirk. “In a lot of ways, I feel we’re so alike.”

“Really? How so?” asked Des, who could not summon up one single thing they had in common.

“I’m an outsider, too,” he responded earnestly. “And I feel like I’m constantly being watched and judged by the entrenched old guard, same as you are. Me, I wouldn’t have it any other way. How about you?”

“Me, I can’t have it any other way,” Des responded coolly.

He let out a delighted whoop of laughter. “Well said.”

Bruce Leanse may have been short but he was movie-star handsome, and he knew it. He had sparkling blue eyes, a rock-solid jaw, long, thin nose and lots of white teeth. His hair, which was flecked with gray, was short and spiky. He carried himself erect, the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled back to reveal powerful, hairy forearms. He wore a fisherman’s vest over his flannel shirt, jeans and work boots. Des had read a lot about him over the years. His life was one long-running tabloid story. He was a billionaire’s son, a Rhodes scholar out of Princeton whose prowess on the downhill ski slopes had landed him a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. He was also someone who was not above crowing about his latest conquest. That was why the tabloids had taken to calling him the Brat. By the time he took control of the family real estate empire, he had climbed Everest, sailed solo around the world, hosted his own daredevil show on MTV, launched a magazine, a restaurant and a brewery, run for mayor of New York and dated a string of towering, glamorous supermodels. Lately, his private life had quieted down. And now here he was in Dorset.

Across the meadow, beyond a stand of cedars, Des could hear an occasional metallic plink, followed by shouts of husky male encouragement. “This is a very interesting place you have here,” she observed, as they made their way past a wall of solar panels.

“God, don’t let Babette hear you say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because she designed it, and in the world of architecture interesting is synonymous with bad. People call something interesting when they truly hate it.”

“Well, I meant that I liked it.”

“Thank you,” he said, gratefully lapping up her praise. He struck her as rather needy. People who craved attention generally were. “We wanted it to blend in with the landscape, unlike those gargantuan trophy palaces that everyone else seems to want these days.”

“But you do build those, too, don’t you?”

“That doesn’t mean I like them,” Bruce said defensively. “I’m in business. If you don’t give people what they want, then you don’t stay in business. This is a universal truth,” he pointed out, as if this were a pearl of wisdom she might wish to jot down in her diary. “If someone is sinking two million into a house, then they want what they want, not what you think they should want. We wanted to be as green as humanly possible. We use less than a third of the energy of a normal house here. We installed geothermal heating and cooling, solar panels, waterless composting toilets. The lumber is native or reprocessed. I try to be eco-friendly, believe me. I’m someone who’s active in the Sierra Club. And if you ask me, the suburb is the worst thing that happened to this country in the twentieth century. That probably sounds odd to you coming from a developer, but I believe it.”

Des said nothing to that. The man was carrying on both sides of the argument all by himself. Hell, it was an argument with himself.

“But I also think it’s foolhardy to believe that the future can be stopped,” he went on as they made their way across the meadow, the pings growing steadily louder. “There are twice as many people living in the U.S. right now as there were when the baby boomers were born. We have to put them somewhere, don’t we? Unlike a lot of people, I don’t believe in standing on the sidelines complaining. Wherever we’ve worked-Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Boston-we’ve devised revolutionary, low-impact development for the future. I believe in the future. I believe in cities that live in harmony with mass transit. And I believe in villages. That’s why we’ve put down roots in Dorset. What we have here is a rare and endangered thing-a genuine community. And we have to fight to hold on to that.”

Des nodded, thinking just how baffled the old-timers must be by this high-profile human dynamo with his deep pockets and his bulldozers.

“You’re probably thinking that I’m nothing more than a kinder, gentler asshole. But I believe in what we’re doing. I’m excited. Is there anything wrong with that?”

Des shrugged her shoulders, wondering why Bruce Leanse felt he needed to justify himself to her. Was he just naturally defensive about his chosen, politically incorrect career? Or was this an advanced case of Soul Man Syndrome-a liberal who was desperate for a black person’s approval?

“Do you rock-climb, trooper?”

“Uh, no, I never have.”

“Oh, you’ve absolutely got to. It’s outrageous. A total high. Greatest physical rush there is.” Bruce paused, grinning at her wolfishly. “Aside from you-know-what…”

Ah, so that was it-the Brat wanted him some of her form.

“Tell you what-I’ll take you out some Saturday morning and we’ll-”

“I’m afraid my sked’s pretty crowded right now.”

“Sure, sure. How about a run? Do you run? God, you must. Nobody’s got a butt like yours without doing roadwork.”

Des came to a stop and said, “Okay, I have to tell you that I’m not real comfortable with the direction this conversation is taking, Mr. Leanse.”

“I’m just looking for a workout partner,” he gulped, retreating hastily. “That’s all I meant. I’m not looking for trouble. Really, I’m not.”

“Good. Neither am I.”

The breeze coming off of the river was getting chillier. The weatherman had predicted the first frost of the season that night. Des resumed walking, shivering slightly. Beyond the cedars there was a mown stretch of lawn where a baseball diamond had been marked off, complete with bases, a pitcher’s mound and a batting cage. On the mound a pitching machine was disgorging fastballs. And at the plate, little Ben Leanse, her DARE essay winner, was flailing away at them with an aluminum bat that seemed as big as he was. With the oversized batting helmet that was planted on his huge head, the little fellow looked like one of those bobble-headed dolls they sold at ballparks.

A muscular, sunburned man in a short-sleeved polo shirt stood behind the cage with his big arms crossed watching him swing… Ping… As Ben feebly fouled off one pitch… Ping… As he popped up another behind first base, barely getting around on it.

… Ping… Des recognized this man at once-it was her third-floor mattress king from the Frederick House. A video camera was set up next to him on a tripod, filming the boy.

“Step into it, Big Ben!” he called out encouragingly. “Atta boy! Good job!”

“We’ve hired a batting tutor to help Ben up his game a notch,” Bruce explained. “He’s desperate to make the Little League team next spring.” Bruce clapped his hands together and called out, “Way to go, guy!”

“I stink, Dad,” Ben gurgled at him glumly. He had on a fleece jersey with the words DOUGHTY’S ALL-STARS emblazoned across his chest. “I totally suck.”

“No way-you’re making real progress.” Bruce seemed ill at ease around his boy, his manner forced. “Am I right, Dirk?”

At first, Dirk had nothing but a cold glare for Bruce Leanse. Des immediately wondered what that was about. Then Dirk ran a big hand over his weathered face and said, “We’re doing real good. Just got to strengthen those wrists of yours over the winter, Big Ben. Right now, they’re like cooked spaghetti.”

“Okay, Coach,” the little boy responded solemnly.

“I’ll go see if I can hurry Babette along,” Bruce said to Des. Clearly, the Brat was not anxious to stick around. In fact, he couldn’t hurry back to the house fast enough.

Des stayed put. “Nice to see you again, Ben,” she said to him warmly.

“Hello, trooper. Coach Doughty, this is Trooper Mitry.”

“Make it Dirk,” he said to her. “Pleased to meet you. Let’s take some more cuts, Ben.”

Des joined him behind the cage as the boy flailed away at more mechanical pitches… Plink… Des guessed that Dirk was in his early thirties. He was a solid six feet tall with broad, hulking shoulders and a massive chest. He held himself with the physical ease of an athlete in prime condition… Plink… Still, she noticed, his eyes had a defeated, beaten-down cast to them.

“We’re both at the Frederick House, if I’m not mistaken,” she said to him.

“That’s right.” His eyes stayed on the boy at the plate. “The Leanses have been nice enough to put me up there while I’m working with Ben. I’m all over the Northeast right now. Just spent two weeks in Nashua, New Hampshire. Soon as it turns a little colder, I’ll follow the sun down to Florida for the baseball camps… Move those hips, Big Ben! Pull ’em through the strike zone!… Actually, I grew up around here. I’m headquartered in Toledo, Ohio now. Married a Toledo girl.” And yet, he wore no wedding ring. Some people didn’t like to wear rings. Still, it made her wonder. “Ever been there?”

“No, I haven’t,” she said.

“It’s not a bad place. Not as nice as Dorset, but not bad. And, hey, I’m still getting paid to do what I love.”

“Dirk played in the show!” Ben exclaimed proudly.

“I’m impressed,” Des said.

Dirk grimaced slightly. “All I had was a cup of coffee with the Detroit Tigers. But around here, that makes me a hometown hero… Less top hand, Ben!… I still hold all the hitting records at Dorset High and American Legion Post 103. Fun to be back, actually. It gives me a chance to catch up with old friends.”

And possibly hump one of them night after night, Des reflected. It sounded as if Dirk was on the road a lot. If there was one thing she’d learned from her experience with Brandon, it was this: Men who spend a lot of time away from home do not wish to be home.

“The Tigers paid me a seven-figure signing bonus right out of high school,” Dirk recalled in a tight, controlled voice. “I was going to be their catcher of the future. I was the complete package. I could hit for average. Hit for power. Had a gun for an arm. Ran the hundred in ten flat.”… Plink… “Well, the bonus disappeared right away-my first wife cleaned me out but good.”

“And the dream?” Des asked. “What happened to the dream?”

He showed her the two ugly surgical scars on the inside of his right elbow. “My first winter home from rookie ball I was in a car that hit a patch of black ice and rolled into a ditch. Couldn’t throw a baseball for two years. And that was just the beginning. I had two procedures on my right knee, another on my left. Spent half of my career on the disabled list and the other half on the waiver wire.”

… Plink…“I also had me a bit of a nightlife problem. No longer. I’ve been clean and sober for four years… Good one, Ben! Now you’re in the zone!” He fell silent, breathing slowly in and out. “I finished up with a hundred twenty-seven Major League at bats, trooper. My lifetime average is two forty-four, with four dingers. You can look it up. I also played two seasons in Japan for the Yokohama Bay Stars before the Tigers took me back and shipped me down to Toledo. Spent three more seasons there until they released me. That’s when I knew it was over. Knew it in my heart. But what the hell, I chased the dream for twelve years. And now I’m actually doing some good. I had a high school girl down in Vero Beach last winter who was real close to getting herself a college softball scholarship. Working with me for two weeks put her over the top. That’s a satisfying feeling, helping a kid who can’t afford college earn herself a four-year ride.”

Maybe so, Des reflected, but clearly he felt cheated by what had happened to him. It wasn’t in the words he spoke. Dirk Doughty was saying all of the right things. It was in the way he bit off his words. It was in those defeated eyes of his.

“Mostly, I get kids like Ben,” he confessed. “Their parents are looking for an esteem booster. What the hell, I don’t mind. It’s what I know… Okay, Ben! Let’s call it a day!”

“Right, Coach!” The boy promptly laid down his bat and got busy gathering up the balls he’d popped feebly around the diamond, stretching out the belly of his fleece jersey to form a crude sack for them.

“Some of these yuppie parents can really get in my face,” Dirk said, watching him. “They put so much pressure on their kids to succeed that they turn something that’s supposed to be fun into something utterly joyless.”

“Are the Leanses like that?”

Dirk considered this a moment. “Actually, I have to hand it to them-they’re okay. Plenty involved in their own lives. And Ben’s a real nice kid. Super-bright. He’ll end up being a brilliant scientist or something.”

Babette came tromping briskly across the grass toward them now, clutching a cell phone tightly in one hand. “Trooper Mitry, so sorry to keep you waiting. How is our ballplayer doing, Dirk?”

“Doing good,” Dirk responded pleasantly as Ben dumped a shirtload of baseballs into a duffel bag. “C’mon, guy, let’s hit the kitchen for a protein shake.” They headed off toward the house together, Dirk placing a big arm protectively around the boy’s narrow shoulders.

Babette watched them go. There was a fixed brightness to her eyes, an intense sureness that Des found alarming. “We don’t harbor any illusions about Ben’s athletic ability,” she said. “We know he’ll never be another Mike McGuire.”

“I think you mean Mark McGuire,” Des said, observing once again just how imposing this woman seemed in spite of her height. Attila the Hen indeed.

“But he needs to be good at something so he’ll be able to play with the other boys,” she went on. “His teacher, Miss Frye, is in complete accord. It was she who recommended Dirk. There’s a bench out on the rocks overlooking the river. Shall we sit there?”

The bench was sheltered by a rustic gazebo of rough, bark-covered posts and beams. They strolled across the field to it and sat, Babette pulling the shawl collar of her sweater up tighter around her neck. The breeze was really picking up. A sailboat was making impressive speed as it knifed its way toward the old iron bridge up at East Haddam.

“Needless to say,” Babette commented, “the athletic facilities at Center School are as deplorable as everything else is. My God, every time I walk in that place and see those kids wearing their coats in class, I want to cry. This is Connecticut, not Kosovo! My friends in the city keep asking me why we don’t just pull Ben out of there and put him in a private school.”

“And how do you answer them?”

“I believe in our public schools,” she replied firmly. “If people like us abandon them we will create a society of haves and have-nots. That’s just not acceptable. But neither is Center School-over the summer, a state building inspector found over two hundred safety-and fire-code violations. I know the old guard in town thinks it can be fixed. Well, it can’t. I’m telling you it can’t, okay? I’m an architect. I know buildings.”

Des nodded, well aware that this was the lady bragging on herself some. Because if architects really did know buildings, then there would be no need for engineers.

“Plus we need more classrooms,” she went on. “There are new homes going up all over town. More people. People with kids. Where are we going to put them? We must build this new school.”

“The support of the school superintendent wouldn’t hurt, I imagine.”

Babette shifted uncomfortably on the bench, her face tightening. “Look, I am very sorry about what happened this morning. I don’t enjoy seeing anyone suffering. But this is simply another illustration of why it’s time for Colin to go.” She hesitated, her tongue flicking across her lower lip. “As to why I was there to see him… It’s an extremely delicate matter. I can only share this with you in the strictest professional confidence. Because if word were to leak out

…”

“It won’t,” Des promised her. “At least, not from me it won’t.”

Babette took a deep breath, as if to gather herself. “An allegation of gross personal misconduct has been leveled against Colin. I was there to urge him, for everyone’s sake, to offer to resign quietly, thereby avoiding a public airing before the entire school board of his… behavior.”

“Exactly what kind of misconduct are we talking about?”

“It seems he was using his office computer to conduct an online affair.”

“Cyber romance is pretty common these days, isn’t it?”

“It was a homosexual romance, trooper,” she said tightly. “Male-on-male sadomasochism, as I understand it. Very explicit. Very pornographic. And he left it there on his screen while he was away from his desk. Melanie Zide, his secretary, happened upon it during the normal course of her duties. She has informed the school board that she was made to feel very uncomfortable.”

“Sounds like she’s hired herself a lawyer.”

“That she has,” Babette affirmed unhappily. “He’s informed us that she intends to file sexual harassment charges against the Dorset school district unless we remove him. Our own lawyer says she’s well within her rights-by leaving that material on his screen Colin created a hostile work environment. If we don’t remove him we will be condoning inappropriate sexual conduct by a school official. That girl will nail us but good unless we take action. Even if Colin gets the boot she still may have grounds for a financial settlement.” Again, Babette Leanse took a deep breath. “Obviously, you can see why we wish to handle this quietly.”

“I absolutely can,” Des said, her mind racing. Greta Patterson had called this school-bond squabble a war. And she’d said something else: “God help anyone who gets in Babette Leanse’s way.” Colin Falconer had done just that, and now he looked to be a battlefield casualty. Was all of this just his own stupid fault? Or was there something vastly more wicked going on here? “And I appreciate you filling me in. I like to know what’s happening.”

“A real mess is what’s happening,” Babette said sharply. “And I really, really don’t appreciate getting caught in the middle of it. But, damn it, how can we let a man who’s incapable of managing himself be responsible for the well-being of our children? The short answer is we can’t. Colin’s behavior is absolutely shameful. Intolerable. He must resign. I can’t imagine he’d choose to fight us-it would end up in the newspapers that way, and that would not be in anyone’s best interest. Trooper, I hope and pray he will go quietly. Because if he doesn’t, if he decides to stand and fight, well…” Babette Leanse trailed off, shaking her head.

“Well what, Mrs. Leanse?”

“It will tear Dorset into little pieces,” she warned in a voice that was frighteningly cold and quiet. “And no one, but no one, will ever be able to put them back together again.”