The Hot Pink Farmhouse

C HAPTER 8

“If you don’t come here with passion, then don’t come at all!” Paul Weiss barked as he paced along behind them, glancing over their shoulders at their drawing pads. They were at the easels, warming up with one-minute gesture drawings of that evening’s model. “Stroke like you mean business!”

There were ten students in Figure Drawing. Half of them were college-aged kids enrolled full-time at the Dorset Academy, supremely gifted and dedicated young artists who dressed in torn, paint-smeared clothes and sported numerous body piercings. On breaks, they clustered together over cigarettes to murmur to each other in their own language. It being an evening class, the others were part-timers. Retired blue bloods who were there for fun, middle-aged divorcees who had too much free time and money.

And then there was Des. No one else in the studio was quite like her. But she was used to this particular fact of life. She wore a black T-shirt and jeans, and kept a fresh uniform in her cruiser in case she got beeped. So far this semester, she hadn’t been.

“Leave it on the page!”

The model stood nude atop a wooden platform, bathed in the glow of a spotlight as she worked her way through a succession of quick poses. Her breasts were heavy and pendulous, her hips wide, thighs and buttocks exceedingly abundant. Rubenesque was the way to describe her. The notion that artists’ models resembled swimsuit babes was strictly a male fantasy. In fact, the Dorset Academy preferred their models on the plump side-generous curves were vastly more expressive. Furthermore, many of these overweight nude models were in fact men.

“Don’t tighten up yet! Stay loose!”

Paul always tried to loosen them up at the start with gesture drawings. Sometimes he had them draw with their wrong hand. Or even with their eyes closed. For the first hour he wanted them to open up, stroke boldly, feel the strength and movement of the pose. Only after they had moved on to longer poses would he start to get demanding about skeletal proportions, musculature and shadows-subjects about which he knew virtually everything there was to know. This stooped, slightly built man in his sixties was one of the foremost animal illustrators in America. He was exacting and tough but passionate. Des liked him quite a bit. And found herself soaking up his wisdom like a sponge.

“Draw with your whole arm!”

She drew with her whole arm, giving herself over fully to the lines and the shapes. Shutting down her intellect. Loving it. She cherished her time here in the paint-splattered studio with its huge glass skylights. It was a sanctuary. Every time she walked in here she felt privileged. And had no doubt whatsoever that she had made the right move. None.

“You’ve come with a lot of passion tonight, Desiree,” he said approvingly when he paused at her drawing pad. “Your lines are much more expressive. You’re not just pushing the lead around the page. Good, good.”

She knew why, of course. It was seeing Moose Frye dead. It was the horror. That was what got her started drawing in the first place. And although she hadn’t realized it until this very second, her need to draw had diminished since she’d parted company with Major Crimes. Now that the action had found her once again, she could feel her juices flowing, roiling, demanding.

As the model reached for the heavens with both arms raised, her face exuding unbridled sensual rapture, Des flipped to a new page and kept on stroking, well aware that this was another reason why she was bringing something extra:

Their pleasingly plump model this evening was none other than Melanie Zide.

No mistake about it-Colin Falconer’s dumpy, henna-haired secretary, a young woman who was preparing to sue the school board for sexual harassment, was a nude model after-hours at the Dorset Academy of Fine Arts. And what a model! Freed of her drab clothes and thick glasses, Melanie was a woman transformed-graceful, uninhibited and positively charged with voluptuous female sexuality.

None of which added up. And Melanie knew it. Between poses, she kept shooting uncertain, myopic glances in Des’s direction.

Every twenty minutes, the model got a rest break. When her timer went off, Melanie immediately stepped down from the platform and slipped on her robe and glasses. Most of the models brought a book to read on their breaks. Melanie buried her nose in The Journals of Sylvia Plath while the students streamed out of the studio for some fresh air. It tended to get quite warm in there with the door closed. But it had to stay closed when there was a model, just as there had to be a sign on the door that read: MODEL POSING-DO NOT ENTER.

“I almost didn’t recognize you, Melanie,” Des said to her, flexing the cramped muscles in her drawing hand. “We met in Superintendent Falconer’s office yesterday, remember?”

“You probably think me being here is really weird,” Melanie blurted out. Clearly, she’d been expecting Des to come at her.

“No weirder than me being here myself,” Des responded, smiling at her.

“It takes me to another place,” Melanie offered as explanation. “It’s very Zen, very in the moment. I enjoy expressing myself this way.”

“I hear you.”

“Besides, they pay me in cash, and I need it,” she said defensively. “Dorset’s an expensive place to live and I’ve got a mother who’s in a nursing home and a brother who can’t deal with it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Where did you learn to pose?”

“I took modern dance when I was in college.”

“It shows, girl. What school did you go to?”

“Why are you asking me so many questions?” Melanie demanded, her round face scrunching tightly.

Des backed right off, taking a long drink from her bottle of mineral water. “I’m an admirer, that’s all.”

“Look, they know all about this at school, okay? And it’s perfectly okay with them.”

“I’m sure it is.”

Now Melanie shoved her book into the pocket of her robe, peering at Des warily. “You know, don’t you. That Colin’s a cyber creep. Mrs. Leanse told you.”

“Yes, she did.”

“It was awful. The stuff he left on his screen. I mean, you would not believe the things those two men said to each other. I’m glad Colin’s on medical leave, because he is one sick individual. You work alongside someone every day, and you think you know him and then… Wow, it’s just so weird.” Melanie was starting to blither now. She seemed anxious and frazzled, as if she had a special reason to be concerned about Des. Des wondered what it was. “I work in a small-town school, you know? Nothing ever happens. And suddenly there’s this thing with Colin. And Moose Frye getting killed. And, I mean, there was even a television news crew from Hartford in the office this afternoon. That is just so weird.” Melanie paused, chewing on the inside of her mouth. “Do you think they’ll catch her killer?”

“I’m sure they will,” Des said. “They have a top man on the case.”

She had passed along to Soave the information Mitch had picked up from the Frye family. That Takai had been the one who’d informed on Jim, costing him his farm and thereby giving him a reason for wanting her dead. That Hangtown could alibi him for the time of the murder-the two of them were getting high together, which violated Jim’s parole but surely ranked as the least of his worries right now. Des couldn’t help wondering how it all hung together. Were Takai’s fears of Jim warranted? Was Hangtown lying to protect him? Had Jim been the one perched up on that granite outcropping with the Barrett? Why the Barrett? Why such devastating firepower?

Melanie’s timer went off now, ending their rest break. Des returned to her easel as the others trickled back in. As soon as Paul Weiss had shut the door behind him, Melanie discreetly disrobed and returned to the platform, where she stretched out on her side, one arm outreached, the other folded beneath her neck. Her back was arched, her chubby toes pointed. It was a languorous, provocative pose that emphasized the generous curves of her hips and buttocks.

Des was just getting her placed on the page when somebody pushed open the studio door without knocking and barged right in. It was Soave, who stood frozen there in the doorway with his eyeballs bulging. He simply could not believe that he was in a public place staring at a naked woman.

Paul Weiss immediately demanded to know what he wanted.

Des, who had left word where she’d be if Soave needed her, flung her stick down and led him out into the corridor, closing the door behind them.

“Wow, I could get into art big-time,” he said to her eagerly.

“Grow up, Rico,” she snapped. “That is so not mature.”

“What’s her name, anyway? Could I meet her?”

“What you could do is shut up. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Soave held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “My bad. Sorry.”

“Is there something wrong with your setup over at town hall?” she demanded irritably.

“No, it’s perfect. Got everything I need.”

“Then what in the hell do you want?”

“To touch base,” he explained, shrugging his muscle-bound shoulders.

“Does it have to be right this minute?”

“I’m afraid so. You don’t mind, do you?”

They went in the lounge, where Soave flopped down on one of the sofas. There were tables to eat at, vending machines filled with junk food and truly awful coffee. The walls were crowded with drawings and watercolors that students had pinned up. Most were classroom exercises, a number of them astonishingly good. A young couple was slouched on one of the other sofas, eating take-out pizza. Otherwise, Des and Soave were alone in there.

“I’ve been fighting off the media all day,” he complained wearily. “The TV people just nailed me at town hall. Wanted to know what we knew.”

“How much did you give them?” Des asked, standing before him with her arms folded. She generally didn’t care for the way Soave handled himself under the bright lights. Rather than keeping his comments terse and specific, he was prone to making vague, empty promises that made him sound like a politician who was running for something.

“I told them Jim Bolan is presently under house arrest,” he answered. “Pending the results of further investigation.”

“You gave them Jim?” she asked, aghast. It qualified as a total rush to judgment, in her opinion. It would be several days before the forensics lab would know whether the DNA from the saliva on the cigarette butt matched Jim’s blood sample. “He tested positive for gunshot residue, is that it?”

“So he wore gloves,” Soave growled at her. Translation: The residue test had turned up negative. “I still like him for it, Des. I like him large. He has motive, opportunity. He was a sniper in ’Nam. He’s done time.”

“What about Wendell Frye’s alibi?”

“It can be shaken,” Soave said confidently. “Who’s to say the old guy didn’t nod off for twenty, thirty minutes? He admits he was stoned. Maybe Jim even slipped a little something extra into his coffee. If that’s the case, we’ll find traces of it in the blood sample we took.” They’d taken it so they could test Hangtown’s DNA against the victims. “Besides which, we bagged us a pair of Jim’s boots in the mudroom, okay? The soles look like a dead-nuts match for the shoe impression we found up at the shooter’s roost. If we can make that stick, we’re in.”

“Not without the gun, Rico. Without the gun you’re still a dollar short.”

“We’ll find the gun,” he insisted. “You ask me, it’s still around there somewhere. Trouble is, that old man’s house has a million way creepy secret passageways. Plus he has that studio out in the barn, full of blowtorches, welders, saws-Jim could have broken the Barrett down into bits.”

“You still have to find them.” Des tapped her foot impatiently, anxious to get back to class. “Otherwise, the state’s attorney will kick it right back at you.”

“Maybe so,” admitted Soave, who didn’t seem anxious to go anywhere. Just sat there, smoothing his mustache. “I sent Tommy out for some dinner. He’s my cousin, and I love him, but I sure do wish I had a partner with a useful, functioning brain. Somebody I could riff with like you and me used to. Know what I mean?”

Perfectly. The little man wanted her help on this, but he couldn’t ask her for it without swallowing his pride. Des, for her part, had no intention of making this easy for him. She didn’t exactly want him to beg but, well-yes, she did.

“The thing is, Des, I can’t request a new partner or it’ll be a knock on me. That stuff matters-your ability to inspire loyalty from your subordinates.”

“Yes, I remember how that works,” Des snarled at him between gritted teeth.

Soave recoiled as if she’d slapped him. The man was totally taken aback by the sharpness of her tone.

Des almost felt guilty for zinging him so hard. Almost, but not quite.

Now her damned beeper went off. She went out to her cruiser to radio in, convinced that she would never be permitted to draw again. After she hung up she cleared her things out of the studio and changed into her uni in the ladies’ room. On her way out she stopped by the lounge. Soave was still flopped there on the sofa, his knees spread wide apart. He looked like a frog on steroids.

“Want some backup?” he offered rather forlornly.

“Not your kind of deal, Rico. Just routine community work.”

“Hey, I don’t mind. We could go someplace and de-freak afterward. Get us a brewski and talk.”

She paused, furrowing her brow at him. He seemed genuinely down. This was new for him. “Why don’t you go see Tammy?”

“I told you-it’s Tawny.”

“So why don’t you?”

“We don’t talk,” he complained. “Not about serious things. We’re not real close that way.”

“Well, you’ve got to work at it. Find common interests.”

“Like what?”

Des did consider telling him about that helpful new Web site: getalife. com. But she remained gracious. “Find something besides The Big Sweaty that you both like to do together.”

He thought this over carefully. “Okay, sure. But tell me one thing before you go: What’s he got that I haven’t got?”

“Who?”

“Berger,” he replied. “The Jew.”

Now it was Des who was taken aback. Although Soave had made a play for her after she and Brandon split up-he and every other so-called player on Major Crimes. Not a one got so much as a single soul kiss out of her. Just a healthy, neutered stray kitten for their trouble-Little Eva in Soave’s case, now known as Bridget. “Are you sure you want to go there?”

“I really do,” Soave insisted. “I want to take something positive from the experience. I want to know where I come up short.”

“Well, okay… Mitch Berger has brains, ethics, talent. And, let’s see, maturity, tenderness, warmth, sensitivity, taste, humor

… Oh, and he’s hung like a horse, too,” she added sweetly.

Soave looked hurt. “You can be real cruel sometimes, you know that?”

“Don’t get sensitive on me, Rico,” she shot back. “You’ll mess up your portrait, and I don’t want to have to do you all over again.”

Then she strode out of the lounge with her sketch pad and charcoals, leaving him slumped there on the sofa with his mouth open.

The call came in from a woman named Felicity Beddoe, who lived in Somerset Ridge, a new development made up of a dozen elegant McMansions that had been carved out of the forest about a mile up the Old Post Road from Uncas Lake.

Somerset Ridge was the sort of upscale cul-de-sac that Des was used to seeing in places like Fairfield and Stamford, which were within commuting range of New York. But the Internet was changing how people went about their business. More and more white-collar professionals telecommuted out of the house, and could live anywhere they wanted. They wanted to live in a place like Dorset.

There was nothing casual about Somerset Ridge. Each majestic colonial was set back from the gently curving road behind lavish new fieldstone walls, artfully positioned young dogwoods and three or more acres of Chemlawn. The dogwoods out in front of the Beddoe house, she noticed, had green WE CARE ribbons tied to them.

A long gravel driveway lined with carriage lanterns twisted its way up to a circular turnaround in front of the house, where Des parked and got out. One door in the three-car garage was open. Inside, there was a gold Lexus. She could hear the whine of a leaf blower coming from a neighbor’s place-someone trying to keep up with the fallen maple leaves. The Beddoes’s front walk was ankle-deep in them. Resisting a powerful girlish urge to go skipping through them, kicking them high in the air, Des plowed her way to the front door, which was flanked by decorative urns filled with assorted seasonal squashes and pumpkins. Most Martha Stewarty. She rang the bell.

She was invited in by a slender whippet of a career woman in her early forties. The gray flannel business suit Felicity Beddoe had on was tailored perfectly. Her ash-blond hair, which was cropped stylishly short, shimmered in the light from the entryway chandelier. Felicity was quite attractive in a toothy, Saran-Wrap-tight sort of way, although right now she seemed tremendously frazzled. “I’m so sorry to drag you away from your dinner, trooper,” she apologized, leading Des quickly in the direction of the kitchen, her low Ferragamo heels clacking on the quarry-tile floor.

“Not a problem,” said Des, following her. The living room and dining room had been furnished by an interior decorator. Everything was just so. “This is my job.”

“Still, you must have better things to do than listen to some hysterical mother rant and rave,” Felicity said, her voice soaring with strain. This woman was more than frazzled, Des realized. She was truly terrified. Trembling with fear.

She led Des into a cavernous gourmet kitchen. There was a sit-down center island topped with granite counters. A stew bubbled on the stove, and on the television The News-Hour with Jim Lehrer was busy dissecting North Korea. Felicity immediately flicked that off and turned down the stew. From a nearby room Des could hear the tentative, trembly trills of someone practicing the flute.

She removed her hat and leaned a flank against the granite counter. “Now what can I do for you, Mrs. Beddoe?”

Felicity said, “It’s just that Richard, my husband, is away on business. And this always seems to happen when he’s… And I just got home from work myself. And…”

“Where is it you work?” Des asked pleasantly, trying to slow the poor woman down. She was sooo hyper. On a good day she probably got by on two hours of sleep and 240 calories. Today was clearly not a good day.

“I’m with Pfizer,” she answered, swiping nervously at a loose strand of hair in her eyes. The pharmaceuticals giant had recently built a big research and development facility thirty miles away in Groton.

“So you’re a chemist?” Des asked, twirling her hat in her fingers.

“Who, me? God, no.” Felicity let loose a jagged, painful laugh. “I’m chief marketing weasel. Vice president of, to be exact. We haven’t been here long. Just moved here from Brussels. Richard’s an economist with the World Bank. He’s in London right now and I’m…” She trailed off, wringing her hands.

“What happened this evening, Mrs. Beddoe?”

“I had just gotten home,” she answered, her mouth tightening. “I was putting our dinner on. It’s just Phoebe and me. She’s our girl. She’s… Phoebe’s fourteen.”

Des nodded, thinking how much house this was for three people. How many empty bedrooms did they have? Three? Four? What did they do with so many empty bedrooms?

“Please believe me, trooper, I’m not looking to make trouble. But we have talked to him and talked to him and it has done no good. So I-I felt it was time to contact you. I honestly didn’t know how else to proceed. I’ve no experience in these matters. None. Zero.”

“Exactly who are we talking about here, Mrs. Beddoe?” asked Des, shoving her horn-rimmed glasses back up her nose.

“Jay Welmers,” she answered, her cheeks mottling. “Our neighbor.”

Why did the name Welmers sound familiar? Des couldn’t place it offhand. “And what is it that he’s…?”

“He’s a peeper,” Felicity blurted out. “I don’t know what else to call him-is ‘pervert’ more apt? He watches Phoebe through her bedroom window. Tonight, I-I caught him in our yard. There’s a granite ledge out behind the house. Phoebe was upstairs in her room doing her homework when she heard footsteps in the leaves back there. She called out to me. I flicked on the floodlights, thinking, hoping it might be deer. It was Jay, perched back there with a pair of binoculars. It was him. I know it was him.”

“I see,” Des said, not liking where this was going at all. “Let’s talk to Phoebe, shall we?”

Felicity called to her, and she appeared in the doorway to the study, clutching a flute in her small, soft hands. Phoebe Beddoe was no lubricious tartlet. She was a slender, serious little teenaged girl with large, moist brown eyes and smooth, shiny blond hair-the kind of hair that the sisters up in Hartford’s Frog Hollow section would kill for. She wore a baggy fleece sweater, sweatpants and fuzzy bedroom slippers. And Des had no doubt whatsoever that something had happened to her-the girl was pie-eyed with fear.

Des smiled at her reassuringly. “Nice to meet you, Phoebe. I’m Resident Trooper Mitry, and I have to ask you something a little personal about this evening, okay?”

Phoebe nodded at her, swallowing.

“Did Mr. Welmers show you anything?”

“Show me anything?” she repeated in a quavering voice.

“Trooper, is this absolutely necessary?” Felicity cut in.

“I have to know what I’m dealing with, Mrs. Beddoe,” Des explained. “Otherwise, I can’t help you. And I want to help you. You’re old enough to understand what I’m talking about, aren’t you, Phoebe?”

The girl hesitated, then gave a short nod. “I guess.”

“Well, did he?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied, ducking her head. “No.”

“Okay, thank you,” Des said. “That’s all I needed to know.”

“Phoebe, will you please excuse us now?”

The girl darted back into the study, her slippered feet barely making a sound.

Felicity yanked a half-empty bottle of Sancerre out of the refrigerator and filled a goblet. She took a sip, her hand shaking. “I’m sorry, that… was not something I was emotionally prepared for.”

“Why did you call me, Mrs. Beddoe?” Des asked, watching her closely.

“Because I want something to be done about that man.”

“You’ve had trouble with Mr. Welmers before, I take it.”

Reluctantly, she nodded. “He always waits until Richard is out of town. And then he starts in again-watching Phoebe, saying things to her in the driveway.”

“What kind of things?”

“Things that he’d like to do to her,” Felcity said angrily. “She’s just a child. It’s obscene. He’s obscene. And those two boys of his are absolute monsters!”

Of course. Now Des knew why the name sounded familiar. “Have you told your husband what goes on when he’s away?”

Felicity’s eyes widened. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

She didn’t respond, aside from a brief shake of her head.

“Are he and Jay friends?”

“Not at all. That man’s been nothing but hostile toward us both since the day we moved in.”

“Does Richard keep a handgun in the home?”

“Yes.”

“You’re afraid he might try to use it on him, is that it?”

“Yes,” she said once again, fainter this time.

“If that’s the case, why don’t you let me hold on to it for a while?”

“I can’t go behind Richard’s back that way. He would take it as a lack of trust on my part.”

“I understand,” said Des. “Look, I’ll go have a talk with Mr. Welmers, okay? See if we can’t smooth this out. We’re all reasonable people here, right?”

“Right,” Felicity said, lunging for her wine. “Absolutely. But please don’t…”

“Don’t what, Mrs. Beddoe?”

“I just…” Her face tightened into a mask of fear. “Never mind. Thank you.”

Des showed herself out and went next door on foot, the whine of the leaf blower growing steadily louder as she made her way up Jay Welmers’s lantern-lined driveway. His own dogwoods, she noticed, were tied with red SAVE OUR SCHOOL ribbons. And his expanse of floodlit lawn had been blown completely free of leaves. It looked as spotless as a freshly vacuumed living room rug. Des had never quite understood the leaf-blower compulsion. It was one of those Man versus Nature hang-ups that baffled her. Plus the sound of the damned thing bore in at the base of her skull like an ice pick.

She found a middle-aged man busily blowing the leaves from his circular turnaround toward a swale at the base of the trees edging the property. His leaf blower was a hi-tech backpack unit that resembled a personal jet pack. He worked intently, wearing protective goggles over his eyes and earmuffs against the horrible racket he was producing.

The rottweiler that was chained to a post on the front porch started barking furiously at Des as she approached. None of which the man heard. She had to tap him on the arm to get his attention.

His gaze immediately hardened at the sight of her uniform. He shut down the unit and stripped off his earmuffs. “What is that woman complaining about now?” Jay Welmers demanded, instantly on the offensive. “Is it the noise? Is little Phoebe trying to practice her flute? I swear, some people you can’t please… Shut up, Dino!” he hollered at the barking dog.

The dog did not stop barking.

“Can we go inside, Mr. Welmers? We need to talk about a certain matter.”

“I can’t believe she called you. I’m just trying to spruce things up.”

“I understand, sir. Can we go inside?”

He grabbed hold of the dog so Des could get in the front door without having her ankle torn off. A bag of golf clubs was propped against the entry-hall closet door. Otherwise, the huge house was bare to the point of vacant. There was no furniture in the living room. No pictures on the wall. Not even any curtains.

Jay Welmers was in his fifties. He was a big man, at least six feet three, with a flabby gut and a red, choleric face. His wavy rust-colored hair was streaked with white. His eyes were blue, his hands freckly. He wore a yellow crew-neck sweater and a pair of those wool tartan plaid slacks that no black man on the face of the earth would ever be caught wearing. Jay looked as if he was fresh off the eighteenth hole at the country club. Or make that the nineteenth hole-he reeked of alcohol.

He led her back toward the den, their footsteps echoing in the empty house. There was a set of cheap plastic patio furniture in there, and a big-screen TV inside a home entertainment unit. Nothing else. Two boys were sprawled out on the rug, watching a movie.

One boy Des recognized right off. It was Ricky, the little no-necked bully with the black eye. The one who’d asked her if she was a nigger.

The other one was about fifteen, with a long, wiry build. His peach-fuzz goatee and furry, overgrown burr cut gave him the look of a wolf cub. This would be brother Ronnie, the garbagehead Moose Frye had told her about. Ronnie Welmers dressed in thug chic: baggy prison jeans that were falling off him, sleeveless black T-shirt, red bandanna knotted around his throat, Timberland work boots. He was trying to look like a gangbanger, but sprawled here on the floor of his Dorset McMansion, he looked about as street as Britney Spears.

Des smiled at the younger boy and said, “Nice to see you again, Ricky.”

Ricky mumbled something in response that sounded vaguely like hello.

“How you know my boy, trooper?” Jay Welmers asked her.

“I was at his school for a presentation,” Des replied, noting that big brother’s eyes never left the television. Ronnie would not make eye contact with her. “Sorry to hear about your teacher, Ricky. She seemed like a nice lady.” To Jay she said, “Your neighbor, Felicity Beddoe, reported a prowler in her yard this evening. I wondered if you saw or heard anything.”

Jay considered his reply for a long moment, his red face revealing nothing. “Do you boys want to excuse us?”

“But, Dad, this is the best part,” protested Ricky.

“What are you guys watching?” Des asked him.

“It’s called Westworld,” Ricky answered. Ronnie still wasn’t giving up anything. “Yul Brynner plays a really cool robot.”

“You can watch it later,” Jay said brusquely. “Go take Dino for a walk.”

Ronnie flicked off the TV, sighing, and the two of them shuffled slowly out of the room. A moment later she heard eruptions of boyish laughter.

“I was just going to fix myself a Scotch and soda,” Jay said. “Can I offer you anything? Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

He went into the kitchen for a moment, returned with his drink and sat in one of his patio chairs, his movements measured and careful. He’d already had him a few, and was trying not to show it.

“What is it that you do for a living, Mr. Welmers?”

“I’m a financial planner.”

“Is that right? I’m in the market for one of those-who are you with?”

“I was with Fleet Bank for twenty-two years,” he answered. “Got downsized right out the door last year. So I’ve set up on my own. Much better that way, really. Don’t have to worry about corporate politics anymore. I can focus on what I do best, which is helping people plan for the future. It does come, you know…” He took a business card out of his wallet and offered it to her.

“Great. Thank you.” She pocketed it, glancing around at the decor, or total lack thereof. “Are you refurnishing?”

Jay let out a short laugh. “I guess you could call it that. My wife took the furniture when she left me-the furniture and everything else, except our two boys.” He sipped his drink, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. It was too small for him. “Exactly what did Felicity tell you?”

“That she saw you over there, Mr. Welmers.”

“I was looking for one of my golf balls a little while ago,” he conceded, very casually. “Ricky knocked it into their yard. He fancies himself a golfer now.”

“You were looking for your golf ball,” Des said back to him.

“That’s right.”

“In the dark?”

“There’s no law against that, is there?”

“Not at all. But there is a law against peeping through bedroom windows. And making verbal suggestions to a fourteen-year-old girl her in her driveway.”

“Felicity said that?” Jay Welmers shook his big red head at her disgustedly. “Nothing like that has ever happened, believe me.”

“You’re saying Mrs. Beddoe is mistaken?”

“I’m saying she’s new in town and she’s frightened to death of everybody. Especially when her husband’s away. And that girl of hers, that Phoebe, is so terrified of men she runs away screaming if I so much as say hello. That’s how we are in Dorset-friendly. We say, ‘Good morning, don’t you look pretty today?’ I’ve lived here my entire life, trooper, so maybe I haven’t heard the news… Is that a crime now?”

“No, of course not.”

“And is it sane behavior to call the police if a neighbor sets foot on your property?”

“She seemed like a pretty decent lady to me.”

“She’s a hostile, uptight bitch,” Jay snarled. “And you know how teenaged girls are.”

“No, how are they?”

“They overdramatize,” he said, peering over his glass at Des. The color had risen in his face. He looked as if he had a real temper. “She’s just looking for attention, that’s all.”

Des raised her chin at him. “And what are you looking for, Mr. Welmers?”

“Believe me,” he said in a low voice, “I’m not casting around for trouble.”

“I’m sure you’re not,” Des said soothingly. “But could you do me a huge favor? Next time you need to go over there looking for your golf ball, could you call her up first and tell her you’re coming? Because she is new here. And she’s ill at ease. Maybe she’s overreacting. Hey, maybe there’s no maybe about it.” Des flashed a smile at him. “But it seems like an easy enough thing to do if it would smooth things over. Mr. Welmers, you seem like a good neighbor to me-a responsible homeowner, a father. I don’t want to have to come back here. It’s within your power to make sure that I don’t. The ball’s in your court. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“Of course I do,” he responded coldly. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Good. Then I won’t take any more of your time.”

As Jay led her out, Des asked him about Ricky’s black eye.

He waved a freckled hand in disgust. “He got in another fight at school. He’s a got a mouth on him, that one. Inherited it from his mother.”

“I see,” Des said, leaving it there even though she was positive the man was lying to her. About Ricky’s eye. About Phoebe Beddoe. About it all. Trouble was, she had nothing to go on. Just her instincts, which were telling her loud and clear that Jay Welmers was a bum. She could smell it all over him. Same way she could smell that Felicity Beddoe was no hostile bitch and her daughter was not delusional. But she had to play this call straight down the middle. No taking sides. She’d done all she could for now.

She crossed the lawn back to the Beddoes’s house in the darkness, hearing footsteps crashing through the fallen leaves, playful barking, youthful laughter. The Welmers boys and Dino.

Felicity answered her doorbell at once.

Des filled her in on her conversation with Jay Welmers. “He says he’s not looking for trouble, Mrs. Beddoe.”

“And what do you say?” Felicity asked, her eyes searching Des’s face.

“I say that he’s been put on notice. If anything else happens, there are avenues you can pursue. This is not a free country. Not if grown men are acting inappropriately toward young girls.”

“Do you mean some form of restraining order?”

“My hope is that it won’t come to that,” Des said carefully, not wanting to throw fuel on the fire. “For now, I want you to call me if there’s anything else I can do. Just pick up the phone, day or night. That’s why I am here.”

“Thank you, trooper. You’ve been very understanding.”

Des tipped her hat and strode back to her cruiser-only to discover that her windshield had been liberally smeared with mud. Absolute monsters, Felicity Beddoe had called those boys. Shaking her head, Des got some paper towels out of her trunk and started to wipe it off. It was only when she got a good, strong whiff of it that she realized it wasn’t mud.

It was fresh dog poop.

Seething, she uncoiled the Beddoes’s garden hose and washed her windshield off with their power sprayer. If Felicity wondered what she was doing out there, she didn’t ask. There was a work sink in the garage, where Des was able to wash up. As she was drying off her hands on a fresh paper towel she heard a faint crunching of leaves nearby. They had a small enclosure attached to the garage for their trash cans. Someone was crouched behind it, watching her. Des sidled over and stuffed her used paper towels in one of the cans.

Then swiftly grabbed little Ricky Welmers by the scruff of the neck and yanked him to his feet. “Got something you want to tell me, Ricky?” she demanded angrily.

“N-no…!” he cried out, bug-eyed with fear. “N-nothing, I swear!”

“You’re a real comedian, aren’t you? Had yourself a good laugh.”

“No way!”

“How would you like me to run you in for defacing public property? You could spend the night at the youth detention lockup in New London with the gangbangers and drug addicts. Would you think that’s funny, too?”

“M-my brother made me do it. Please don’t… Please!”

Des stood there a moment, scowling at him and thinking: Here is the job. This is where it officially starts. She released her hold on Ricky, softening. “You know I’m on your side, don’t you?”

He peered up at her, tugging at the neck of his T-shirt. “How so?”

“I kept you out of the principal’s office yesterday, didn’t I?”

“So what?”

“I’m not running you in for trashing my ride, am I?”

“Not yet…”

“Right,” she affirmed, nodding. “Because I’m your friend. Now it’s your turn to show me the love. That’s how it works with friends.”

“Like what?” he demanded suspiciously.

“Take a spin with me in my cruiser.”

His jut-jawed young face lit up. “Really?!”

“Did you eat dinner yet?”

“We were maybe going to order a pizza.”

“Well, I have to get me some dinner, and I hate to eat alone. Sound okay?”

“Okay!” he replied eagerly.

Des got her briefcase out of the front seat and dug around in it for a Citizen Ride Along release form. She filled in Ricky’s name and address. “This is a permission slip. Have your dad sign this and we’ll hit the road.”

Ricky went dashing off through the trees to his house, form in hand. While she waited for him to return she spotted Ronnie watching her from under the trees, the lit end of his cigarette growing brighter as he pulled on it.

“Why don’t you ease up on him, Ronnie? He’s just a little kid.”

“I don’t know what you mean, lady.” Ronnie still had a reedy, adolescent voice. He sounded like a boy, not a man.

“Sure you do. You put him up to trashing my ride, didn’t you?”

“He told you that?” Now Ronnie stepped out of the shadows into the floodlights, his smoke stuck between his teeth. His hands were buried deep in the pockets of an oversized silver-colored ski parka. His red bandanna was tied over his head. Dressed that way on the wrong block in Hartford, he’d be shot on sight.

“He didn’t have to tell me. I’ve got two eyes of my own.”

Ronnie stood there hipshot, his head cocked at her defiantly, body language straight out of a rap video. Des remembered Moose Frye saying that he was probably the brightest kid in the entire school system. “My old man cheesed off Mrs. Beddoe again, didn’t he?” he demanded.

“He’ll have to be the one to tell you about that.”

“They want the new school, he doesn’t. I heard him arguing with them about it in the driveway the other day.” Ronnie took one last pull on his cigarette and flicked it off toward the Beddoes’s gravel turnaround, where it continued to burn among the fallen leaves. He smirked at her, daring her to give him a fire safety lecture. She kept silent. She was more interested in keeping him talking. “The old people are always arguing,” he went on. “But they never do anything. They’re, like, total lying hypocrites. Like with the new school-they say they want it because they care about us. But that’s bullshit. They just want another trophy to feed their egos. It’s all about trophies. We’re trophies. If we do well, it makes them look good.”

“Your dad wants to save Center School, doesn’t he?”

“Only because he’s afraid his taxes will go up. If his career wasn’t in the toilet he’d be flying a green ribbon, too. Anything to make himself look good.”

“Maybe he wants you to do well because he wants good things for you. Maybe he loves you. Ever think of that?”

“You know dick about it, lady,” Ronnie shot back, sneering.

She nodded her head slowly. She’d had feral strays living out of Dumpsters who were exactly like this one. Always, their first impulse was to rake you across the face. “Understand you’re a major film freak.”

“So what?” he demanded.

“I’m friends with a film critic who lives here in Dorset. He works for one of the New York papers.”

“Mitchell Berger, sure,” he said. “Me and my friends read his reviews out loud and laugh at them.”

“He loves to talk about movies. Sometimes I can hardly shut him up. Maybe you’d like to meet him sometime.”

“What for? He’s an officially sanctioned bore.”

Not only bright but a smarty-pants, too. An off-putting combination, to be sure. The question was: Did it add up to the Mod Squad?

Ricky came scampering back through the trees now, signed form in hand. She started to invite Ronnie to join them, but the older boy had already vanished into the darkness without a sound.

It was as if he’d never been there at all.

Ricky hopped in next to her in the front seat. She adjusted his seat belt for him while his eyes took in her crime girl stuff, especially her new three-thousand-dollar digital handheld radio on the seat between them. It was something to behold. Looked as if it belonged on the space shuttle.

She circled back down the driveway and headed down the cul-de-sac toward the Old Post Road, Ricky riding with his jaw stuck out and his beefy arms crossed. His feet swung back and forth in the air, heels striking the seat again and again.

She took him to McGee’s Diner, a shabby and much-beloved local greasy spoon down on the Shore Road. During the summer McGee’s had been packed with sunburned, boisterous beachgoers who stopped there to munch on lobster rolls and gaze out the windows at the sun setting beyond the Big Sister lighthouse. Tonight, the parking lot was deserted except for a landscaper’s pickup truck and an ancient Peugeot wagon. Some of this was attributable to the time of year, but much of it had to do with the red SAVE OUR SCHOOL colors Dick McGee was proudly flying out front for all to see. Most of Dorset’s business owners had stayed neutral, not wanting to lose precious customers. Not so Dick, and he was feeling it-the WE CARE crowd were definitely boycotting him.

Inside, not a newcomer was to be found. Just an old geezer having pie and coffee in a booth and a pair of twentyish swamp Yankees hunched over bowls of chili at the counter. They hunched even lower when they caught sight of Des in her uni. An older-than-oldies radio station was playing Perry Como out in the kitchen. Dick McGee clung stubbornly to the prehistoric when it came to music.

She and Ricky slid into one of the booths and Sandy, Dick’s waitress, came sauntering over. Sandy was about forty, stubby, and frizzy-haired. Highly sour, but a ripe prospect if ever Des had seen one. She’d been working on her for the past couple of weeks.

“Hey, Sandy, have you talked to your boyfriend about adopting one of my kittens?” she asked her warmly.

“Not possible,” Sandy answered. “Chuckie hates cats. If I take her, he’ll never spend a single night at my place.”

“So you can stay at his place.”

“No, I can’t. His place is a dump.”

“Girl, you folks need a cat. Your lives aren’t complete yet.”

“You going to order anything, or or are you just going to tell me how to live?”

Des ordered them hamburgers, spiral fries and chocolate shakes, and Sandy headed off to the kitchen, grumbling under her breath.

“Talk to me about your brother,” Des said to Ricky. “He give you that eye?”

Ricky frowned at her. “Why you asking me that?”

“Because if he did, that’s one thing. But if your dad did, then it’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because your dad’s supposed to know better, that’s why.”

The little boy fell silent. “Ronnie gets nasty when he drinks.”

“Does he drink a lot?”

“Ronnie does everything a lot.”

“He smokes, too, I noticed. Does he ever smoke unfiltered cigarettes?”

“You mean like Joe Camels? Sure.”

“How about Luckies? Does he smoke those?”

“Ronnie smokes whatever. He doesn’t care.”

“Does he smoke dope?”

Ricky started to squirm in his seat. “Do I have to answer that?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

Sandy returned with their food. Ricky dumped a half bottle of ketchup on his fries and attacked them first. He ate like a starved animal.

“Okay, now you can ask me something,” Des offered, biting into her burger.

“I can?”

“You bet. That’s how it works with friends.”

“Um, you got a boyfriend?”

“Yes, I do.”

“He a black man or a white man?”

She took a sip of her milk shake, staring over her glass at him. “He’s white.”

“How come?”

“You don’t choose the people who you get involved with. It’s not like you order them out of a catalog or something. Stuff just… it happens.”

Ricky nodded, frowning. “Do you suck on his dick?”

“Boy, what is wrong with you?” Des erupted angrily. “Here I am, sitting down with you, treating you like a person, and you talk trash at me like I’m some gutter whore! Why are you disrespecting me this way, huh? Answer me!”

Ricky didn’t answer. Just sat there with his eyes downcast, greasy hands in his lap.

“You don’t belong with people,” she huffed at him. “You should be in a cage. Feed you peanuts, hose you down once a day. Have you got anything to say to me?”

“I-I’m sorry,” he murmured, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“And you’ve got the table manners of a coyote-use your napkin! Sit up straight! Where’s your mother anyway?”

He wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, “She lives in Pennsylvania somewhere.”

“Do you miss her?”

“She’s been gone since I was a baby. I don’t know her at all, except from pictures.”

Des popped a spiral fry in her mouth, mulling this over. Jay Welmers had definitely tried to spin it that she’d left him very recently, thereby explaining the lack of furniture. Clearly, the man was in deep financial trouble, his spanking-new McMansion merely a shell. How long did he have before he’d lose it? “What about Ronnie? Does he miss your mom?”

“He doesn’t say much about her. Dad gets pissed off if we mention her.”

“Does your dad have a girlfriend?”

Ricky shook his head.

“How about Ronnie?”

“He’s in love with Claire Danes,” he answered, snickering. “The movie star.”

“Who does he hang with?”

“Lots of people.”

“Boys mostly?”

Rocky chomped on his burger, nodding.

“What about Phoebe Beddoe? Does he ever hang with her?”

“Nah, she’s real stuck-up. Won’t have anything to do with him.”

“Why did Ronnie do that to your eye?”

Ricky dropped his gaze, his eyes avoiding hers. “I wanted to hang with him and his friends. He didn’t want me to. So he punked me.”

“Hang with them where?”

“Antics,” he answered, shrugging. “Y’know, stuff they do for fun. This can be a real boring place. There’s not a whole lot going on.”

“Hmm… I may have to start keeping a closer eye on Ronnie and his boys.”

“No, you can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“Because he’ll know I told you something and then he’ll…”

“He’ll what, Ricky?”

Ricky stuck his jaw out. “Nothing. I ain’t no snitch.”

“I’m going to tell you something straight up. Strictly because you and I are friends, okay?”

He looked at her guardedly. “Okay…”

“I think Ronnie might be getting into something that he’ll be real sorry about when he’s old enough to know better.”

“You don’t have to worry about Ronnie-he’s way smart.”

“I know he is. I’m just trying to help. That’s my job.”

“I thought your job was to bust people.”

“That’s only when I fail. I’m just like a fireman, okay? Sure, I know how to put out fires. But what I really want to do is prevent those fires from ever getting lit. Understand what I’m saying?”

He shook his head at her. “You’re still the law.”

“I’m somebody who you can talk to about things,” Des persisted, handing him one of her cards. “You have a problem, call me anytime, twenty-four seven.”

He pocketed it without comment. “My dad gave me money for dinner.”

“Your money’s no good here. When I ask a man to dinner, I pick up the tab.” After she’d paid it and said good night to Sandy, they headed back outside together. “Yeah, I think I’d better go have myself a talk with Ronnie.”

“No, don’t!” Ricky pleaded. “He’ll pound me.”

It was a crisp, starlit evening. Des stood there by her cruiser, inhaling the fresh sea air and waiting the little tough guy out.

“What if I tell you a secret?” he finally offered. “Will you stay away from him then?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Something he told me. But you have to promise not to tell anyone else.”

“I can’t do that, Ricky. I’d be lying to you if I said I could. What I can do is promise not to tell anyone where I heard it. And I’ll do my best to keep Ronnie’s name free of it. But I have to know what it is.”

Ricky thought this over carefully as they got back in the car. Then he took a deep breath and told her Ronnie’s secret.

Town hall was buzzing that evening. Lights blazing all over the building. The WE CARE leaders were holding a strategy session in the upstairs meeting room. The Planning Commission was having its monthly meeting in the main conference room. And the Major Crimes Squad was working the Moose Frye murder in the spare conference room.

Soave had not been happy when Des phoned him with her news. He wanted to see her right away. Tommy was out following up on it when she got there.

He was alone in the makeshift office, sipping take-out coffee and fuming. “I thought you weren’t going to butt into my case, Des.”

“Don’t be a chump, Rico,” she responded coolly. “I came into information pertinent to your investigation and I reported it directly to you. If I were trying to butt in, I would have run with it on my own.”

“Okay, that’s true,” he admitted grudgingly. “But, damn it, I’ve already got Jim Bolan all sewn up.”

“Maybe so. Then again, maybe you ought to be keeping your mind open.”

“Stop lecturing me, will ya?”

“I can’t help it. I changed your diapers-once a mother, always a mother.”

Tommy came walking in now with Dirk Doughty in tow. Ben Leanse’s baseball tutor seemed composed and calm.

“Thanks for coming by, Mr. Doughty,” Soave said to him.

“Not a problem. Your sergeant said it was important.”

Bringing Dirk to town hall had been Des’s idea, actually. Soave had been all for bracing him in the lounge of the Frederick House. But people would talk about it, and she didn’t feel that would be fair to him. In a place like Dorset, it was important to tread lightly on someone’s reputation.

Dirk was wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. On his head was a bright-blue DOUGHTY’S ALL-STARS baseball cap. He turned a wooden desk chair around backward and sat, his big arms folded imposingly before him. Dirk still possessed the effortless physical confidence of a professional athlete. It was the kind of animal self-assurance that Soave sought to achieve with all his weight lifting. And failed at.

“I’ll get right to the point, Mr. Doughty,” he began, pacing back and forth in front of him. Tommy remained in the doorway, watching impassively. “We came into some information this evening from a local individual who likes to scope out the Frederick House’s parking lot in the middle of the night. If any of the guests leave their cars unlocked, he takes whatever he can find.”

“I haven’t had anything stolen, Lieutenant,” Dirk said.

“This individual spotted Takai Frye’s red Porsche parked halfway down the block from the inn late last night,” Soave went on. “What’s more, Trooper Mitry claims she’s been hearing a couple going at it up on the third floor in the wee hours. According to the inn’s registry, Mr. Doughty, your room is on the third floor.”

Dirk looked at Des curiously. “You figured that was me?”

She didn’t respond. It was Rico’s interrogation.

Dirk took a stick of sugarless gum out of the back pocket of his jeans, slowly unwrapped it and popped it in his mouth. “I only wish it was,” he said, his jaw muscles going to work on it. “I’ve been hearing them myself, and they sound like they’re having themselves one hell of a time. But I’m a married man, Lieutenant. My wife Laurie is in Toledo-”

“And you’re here,” Soave said roughly. “Cards on the table, Mr. Doughty-were you seeing Moose Frye romantically?”

“No, I was not,” he answered forthrightly. “And that’s the truth.”

“What about her sister, Takai? Are you mixed up with her?”

“Not hardly.” Dirk’s weathered face tightened. “Not anymore.”

Soave frowned at him. “Are you telling me you used to be?”

Dirk let out a laugh. “I used to be married to her. Takai was my first wife.”

Des drew her breath in, stunned. Wheels within wheels-that was life in Dorset. How long would she have to live in this place before she’d comprehend its tricky little ins and outs? Ten years, twenty years, ever?

“I’m talking ancient history here,” Dirk added as explanation. “We were just kids. I was twenty. She was barely out of high school. Mind you, Moose was the one who I dated when we were growing up, not Takai. Moose was my high school sweetheart, I guess you could say.”

“Well, was she or wasn’t she?” Soave asked him irritably.

“We were friends,” he answered carefully. “Good, close friends. But we didn’t… she wasn’t ready for anything more than that.”

“And Takai was?”

“Takai was a runway model in New York when she was sixteen. That girl slept with whoever she wanted. Not that she ever wanted Dirk Doughty, star of the Dorset High Fighting Pilgrims. Not until I was a bonus baby with money in my pocket. Suddenly, I intrigued her. So she decided to steal me away from her big sister. That’s the kind of person she is. And I let her steal me away. That’s the kind of person I was. Not that I was very proud of myself. But, believe me, it’s hard to be a healthy young male and have a gorgeous creature like that coming after you.” Dirk trailed off into regretful silence, his jaw working on the gum. “Moose never forgave me. I couldn’t blame her. I treated her badly, and I was never man enough to apologize to her. I wish I had, because now I’ll never get the chance.”

Des cleared her throat. “Lieutenant, if I may…?”

“Yeah, go ahead,” he growled, smoothing his see-through mustache.

She remained seated. She’d never been a pacer. “It was Moose Frye who recommended you to the Leanses for tutoring Ben. Did you know that?”

Dirk’s eyes widened with surprise. “No, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t see her when you got back to town?”

Dirk shook his head. “Babette just said she got my name from a-a friend.” He broke off, swallowing. He seemed genuinely moved. “Thank you for telling me that. It’s nice to know.”

“How would you describe your relationship with Takai these days?”

“That’s easy,” he replied. “We don’t have one.”

Nonetheless, someone might have thought they did-seen her car parked near the inn, figured she was visiting Dirk and went after her in a jealous rage, taking out Moose by mistake. It certainly played. And Takai certainly had a way of stirring men up. “You mentioned an ex-wife when we spoke yesterday,” she went on. “You said she cleaned you out of your signing bonus when you divorced. That was Takai?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you share that with me?”

“I don’t air my dirty laundry.”

“What happened to your marriage?”

“The accident happened,” he said quietly. “She was behind the wheel when I blew out my elbow. We were coming home from a New Year’s Eve party here in town. It was a cold, cold night. There was ice on the road, and she was driving too fast. She always drove too fast. Flipped us into a ditch up on Route 156. She didn’t have a scratch on her. I needed two operations to put my elbow back together. She got tired of me sitting around the house with my arm in a sling. We lasted eighteen months.”

“Sounds to me like she ruined your career,” Soave spoke up pointedly.

“I might have been a star if it hadn’t been for that,” Dirk admitted. “Then again, I might not have. I don’t let myself go there. Nothing good comes from that woulda-coulda stuff. Pain is mandatory. Suffering is optional. You have to move on. Takai sure did. Soon as she realized I wasn’t going to make it to the show, I was of zero use to her. I soon discovered she was no longer being faithful to me. Had herself a string of men, some of them married men. And we were history.”

“And it’s been eating away at your guts for years, hasn’t it?” demanded Soave, moving in on him. “She ruined your baseball career, slept around on you, made a fool out of you…”

Dirk refused to be baited. “Look, man, I know where you’re trying to go with this. But I didn’t try to kill her. And that’s the truth.”

Des said, “Dirk, you told me that being back here was giving you a chance to catch up with some old friends. Who did you mean exactly?”

“Well, Timmy Keefe,” Dirk responded, as Soave resumed pacing. “He was my best friend growing up. We’re like brothers. And his wife, Debbie, is my cousin. She’s the only real family I have left around here. I’ve been up to their place for dinner a few times since I’ve been here. Timmy and me took out his Boston Whaler Sunday. He’s got a few lobster pots. We cleaned them out. Had ourselves one mean feast when we got home.”

“Tim’s been fixing up my house,” Des said.

“Yeah, he told me. You’ll be real pleased with how it turns out. Timmy never cuts corners. He may take a little longer than some of the others, but it’ll be worth it.”

“I’m sure it will.” Des knew no such thing, although she sure did know about the taking longer part.

“He’s been trying to get me to come in with him for years,” Dirk said. “Buying places and fixing them up together. Plenty of money to be made, if you’re good with a hammer and have some capital. Laurie and me have talked about it, too. But her family’s in Toledo. She’s got a real support network there. And a good job with a regional bank. Still, I’m not getting any younger,” he added wistfully. “And I’m away from home an awful lot. That gets old fast.”

“Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts at five-twenty this morning?” Soave asked him.

Dirk shook his head. “I was asleep in bed-alone. I don’t fool around on Laurie. I had me a lot of seasons on the circuit. And a whole lot of girls. But I made a promise to myself that when I settled down with the right one I’d give all of that up. I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in four years either. A lot of peace of mind comes with that. I sleep soundly at night.”

“Yet you don’t wear a wedding ring,” Des observed, her eyes falling on his meaty ex-catcher’s hands. “Why is that?”

Dirk’s face broke into a broad grin. “Can’t grip a bat-especially an aluminum one.” He reached inside the collar of his sweatshirt and pulled out the gold chain he wore around his neck. His wedding ring was suspended from it. “I keep it right here.”

“Let’s talk about Bruce Leanse,” she suggested, shifting gears on him.

Dirk immediately chilled. “What about him?”

“You gave him a decidedly nasty look when I was there yesterday. What was that about?”

“I’d rather not say,” he replied, lowering his eyes.

“We have zero time for crap, Doughty,” Soave said harshly, his chest puffing out. “Give it up right now or you’re on your way to Meriden for formal questioning.”

Dirk remained stubbornly silent.

“Does it have anything to do with him and Takai being romantically involved?” Des asked him.

Dirk drew back, narrowing his eyes at her. “No way to keep a secret in Dorset, is there?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” she responded. “Moose sure managed.”

“Takai’s up to her old tricks,” he disclosed reluctantly. “I don’t like it. Don’t like to see her messing up another marriage. Ben’s a nice, nice boy. And Babette’s one tough lady, but she’s a good mom and she genuinely cares about that lying bastard. Those two deserve better than what he and Takai are doing to them.”

Soave moved in on Dirk again. “You didn’t try to rescue that family, did you?”

“I didn’t shoot anyone,” Dirk said patiently.

“Any chance that Bruce was seeing both sisters?” Soave pressed.

“Moose was no home-wrecker.”

“And yet, she was visiting someone on the third floor of the Frederick House just prior to her death, correct?”

Dirk shrugged his broad shoulders. “Certainly sounds that way.”

“And you’re trying to tell us it wasn’t you?”

Dirk looked Soave right in the eye, his gaze steady and unwavering. “I am.”

“Do you actually expect us to believe you?”

“I do,” Dirk said, refusing to be shaken from his story.

Des found herself believing him. Even though it absolutely did not add up. Not at all. Because, damn it, they’d checked the inn’s registry. And they knew who else besides Dirk had been staying up on the third floor. And if it wasn’t Dirk who Moose was mixed up with, then, well, this case was getting more whacked by the minute.

In fact, it made absolutely no sense at all.

“Yo, this is just like old times,” Soave remarked as Des steered her cruiser down the Old Shore Road toward Smith Neck Cove. He rode shotgun. Tommy was running Dirk back to the inn. “You and me going out on a call together, huh?”

“Don’t let Tommy hear you say that. He’ll think you miss me.”

“I do miss you, Des. Geez, I thought I made that awful clear

…” Now the man sounded hurt. He was still pouting over her stinging rebuke in the art academy lounge. “We worked good together. Our minds meshed. Plus you notice things quicker than I do.”

“Only because I’m a woman.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Women listen. Men are too busy strutting around, trying to impress people.”

“I miss working with you, Des.”

“Rico, you’re a day late and a dollar short,” she said to him coldly.

He fell into troubled silence for a moment. “The thing is, I had my whole future to think of.”

“Yeah, you made that pretty clear at the time.”

“No, you don’t understand! Hear me out, will ya? I was under a ton of pressure from up above to stick with my boys.” He was referring to the Brass City crew-his brother, his uncle, the whole lot of them. “They watch out for me, Des. I need that. I need them. I’m nowhere on my own. And you…”

“I was a lone wolf. Say no more.”

“If I had it to do all over again, I would have protected you better. I owed you that. I realize it now.”

Des kept her eyes on the road. “We all do what we have to do,” she said grudgingly.

“I realize that, too. But tell me this-why do I still feel so lousy about it?”

“You’re picking at your own scabs, Rico. I can’t help you.”

He peered at her intently from across the seat. “You’re a hard woman, Des.”

“I have to be. If you want soft, call Tammy.”

“It’s Tawny!”

Along with her family’s thriving art gallery, Greta Patterson had inherited a sprawling Cape Cod-style cottage out at the end of Smith Neck Cove. Its half-mile-long private driveway was flanked by vineyards. Going into the entry hall, where Greta greeted them, was practically like walking in the front door of an art museum. Paintings lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Landscapes, mostly, many of them by Wendell Frye’s father and grandfather. One of Hangtown’s own sculptures was featured prominently in the entryway, a tower comprised of old beauty-salon hair dryers, toasters, television sets and the front end of a 1957 T-Bird.

Greta’s wide-bodied frame was covered in a caftan of purple silk lined with gold brocade. She wore a pair of black velvet lounging slippers on her feet and an extremely guarded expression on her square, blotchy face. Her mouth was freshly painted a garish red. In one hand she was clutching a long-stemmed goblet of red wine. She was drinking alone-her husband was nowhere to be seen. “May I offer you folks a taste of mine own merlot?” she asked them.

“You folks produce your own wine here?” Soave asked her, awestruck, after they’d politely declined her offer.

“Well, I’m getting there,” she replied huskily. “The vines are starting to yield grapes of genuine depth and subtlety.” She held her goblet up to the light, the better to admire its color. “There’s a cooperative winery in operation in Stonington that I belong to, although I am by no means a winemaker myself. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“Nothing to it,” Soave said, grinning at her. “You just got to be Italian-my grandfather used to make it in his bathtub.”

Des, for her part, was thinking about how many times Greta had used the word I instead of we.

She led them into the living room, where there were more paintings, a well-stocked bar, a roaring fire. Also a gold-inlaid Browning twelve-gauge shotgun in an ornate glass case. Des’s eyes fell right on that.

So did Soave’s. “Who’s the shooter?” he asked Greta.

“I am. Colin hates guns.”

“You hunt?”

“No, never. I shoot for sport. Targets…”

“Ever fire a Barrett fifty-caliber?”

“That’s not sport. That’s a weapon of mass destruction.”

“How is Colin feeling?” Des asked her.

“Defiant, that’s how,” Greta replied. “He is not going to be railroaded out of his job by that woman. I say this not only as his wife but as his attorney-Colin Falconer is Dorset’s superintendent of schools and he intends to remain so.”

“May we speak with him?”

Greta padded over to the fireplace and poked at the fire. “What’s this all about? You were maddeningly vague on the phone.”

“We need to speak with him, ma’am,” Soave said, his voice firm.

“Well, he’s having a lie-down. Poor thing’s exhausted. But I’ll see if-” She broke off, glancing up at the doorway.

Colin stood there in a red silk dressing gown, looking pale and unsteady. There were purple smudges under his eyes, and his hair was disheveled.

“There’s my boy now,” Greta spoke up with motherly good cheer. “How are you, darling?”

“I feel… like I’m dreaming,” Colin replied in a hollow, shaky voice. “I keep thinking I’ll… wake up and everything will be

…” He let out a sudden strangled sob and slumped into an armchair, his head in his hands.

Soave shuffled his feet uncomfortably. He did not deal well with emotionally overwrought men. This one also happened to be married to a woman who was easily twenty years his senior. Ozzie and Harriet they were not.

“We’re sorry to bother you right now, Colin,” Des said. “But there are some questions we absolutely must ask you.”

“Oh, God…” Colin moaned, his long bare legs stretched out before him. He had the skinniest, whitest legs Des had ever seen. She doubted that they had ever been exposed to sunlight. “I’m so confused.”

“We’re all confused,” Greta said to him gently. “The whole damned world is full of confused people.”

“We’re only concerned with the ones who kill other people,” Soave said.

“Of course,” Colin said. “A-and you have a job to do. I understand.”

Greta said, “I want you officers to understand that I am acting here as my husband’s attorney. If I feel any of your questions are inappropriate, I will step in… How about a brandy, darling? It might put some color back in your cheeks.”

She poured Colin a generous slug from a decanter and brought it to him. He drank it down in one gulp, making a face at the taste. Clearly, he was no drinker.

Des and Soave took seats on the sofa. Greta sat in the armchair next to Colin’s, watching him protectively.

“Colin, how long were you and Moose Frye lovers?” Des asked.

Colin immediately glanced over at his wife, whose face registered no surprise. Either Greta knew all about them or she was a very good actress.

“It’s… out in the open then?” he asked Des uncertainly.

“We know it was you who she was visiting every night on the third floor of the Frederick House,” Soave said.

“We’d been together for several months.” Colin’s eyes drifted over toward the fire. “I’ve just lost someone who was very dear to me, you see. Mary Susan was my everything. And she always will be.”

Again, Greta didn’t react-no outward emotional response at all to her husband’s declaration of undying love for another woman. A very cool customer, Des observed, turning her attention back to Colin. “At breakfast yesterday you complained to me about all the noise ‘they’ were making up there. How come?”

“I was afraid you thought it might be me,” he answered guiltily. “I was just trying to be discreet.”

“Not to mention clever,” Des pointed out.

“We had to keep it a secret,” Colin explained. “I’m a married man. She was an employee of the school district. The board couldn’t find out. An ‘inappropriate’ relationship such as ours could have cost us our jobs.”

“Not that it should,” Greta spoke up angrily in his defense. “Colin and I had separated, Moose was single. Why can’t two adults have a consensual sexual relationship anymore? What country are we living in?”

“She called me a madman last night,” Colin said suddenly. “She was so worried about me.”

“Because you’d swallowed the Valium?” Des asked him.

He ducked his head, nodding. “My life’s totally out of control. I couldn’t take it anymore. And by ending it all-this was something I could control.” He smiled at Des faintly. “Strangely enough, after you rescued me I felt much better. I seem to be more in control of my emotional responses ever since I swallowed those pills. Greta wanted me to spend last night here…”

“But he refused,” Greta spoke up.

“I needed to be with Mary Susan.”

“What did you two talk about last night?” Soave asked him.

“Sheryl Crow,” Colin answered tonelessly.

Soave frowned. “The singer? What for?”

Colin fell back weakly against the seat cushion. “We talked about what we always talked about-ending it.”

“And what did you decide?”

“Not a thing. Except that we couldn’t live without each other.”

“And she left your room at approximately five A.M.?”

“Yes, that’s right. I dozed for a while, then showered and dressed and went down to breakfast. That’s when I first heard the news about Takai’s Porsche. But it wasn’t until I dropped by my office to clear out some personal effects that I found out Mary Susan h-hadn’t come to work.”

“You knew about their affair?” Soave asked Greta.

She reached for her wine, gripping the glass tightly. “I did.”

“How did that go down with you?”

“It hurt,” Greta replied, her eyes glittering at Soave. “I am a human being, after all. But I’m also an adult. I accepted it.”

Des said, “Colin, I understand Babette Leanse has an issue with you involving another of your romances.”

“I would hardly call that a romance,” Colin said, shifting uneasily.

“Okay, what would you call it?”

“Sick, filthy porn,” he said bitterly. “Vile, sadomasochistic perversion. It was…” Colin halted a moment to grab hold of himself. “It was curiosity more than anything else, at first. Someone to talk to. Then it became much, much more intense than that. In fact, there was such a ferocity to my relationship with Mary Susan that I began to fear I was using her to push away my growing feelings for my cyber partner.”

“I realize I’m being personal here,” Des said, “but would you characterize yourself as bisexual?”

Colin glanced over at Greta, who gave him a slight nod. “My wife and I have not had a conventional marriage by most people’s standards. Both in terms of our respective ages and our… inclinations. We have each gone our separate ways from time to time. Wherever those ways took us.”

So maybe it hadn’t been her imagination, Des realized. Maybe Greta had been coming on to her yesterday at the gallery. “What can you tell us about your cyber partner, Colin?”

“Why is that important?” Greta demanded, padding over to the bar to pour herself more wine.

“Because we say it is,” Soave said. “Let us do our job, okay, counselor?”

“It’s okay, I don’t mind. His online name is Cutter,” Colin revealed, and proceeded to provide them with the name of the Internet service he’d met him on. It was a brand-name-commercial provider, one of those that allow members to employ a half dozen or more different online identities.

“And his real name?” Des asked him.

“We’ve never exchanged names,” Colin said. “I know him only as Cutter.”

“The two of you have never met face-to-face?”

“That’s correct, trooper.”

“Time-out here,” Soave broke in. “Are you telling us you’re sexually involved with some guy, and it may cost you your job, and you have no idea who the hell he is?”

“I never wanted to know,” Colin explained, coloring slightly. “The not-knowing part is what makes it so liberating. You’re totally free to be yourself.”

“Exactly what has he told you about himself?” Des asked.

Colin shrugged his bony shoulders, sniffling. “He’s a long-haul trucker. Owns his own rig. Spends a lot of time on the road alone.”

“And how did you two hook up?”

“We met in a gay men’s chat group. One thing led to another.”

“Which one of you initiated it?”

“We both wanted it to happen. Each of us felt something was missing from our lives…” Colin trailed off into troubled silence. “We haven’t communicated since Attila the Hen found out about us. I haven’t dared.”

“You used the word ‘ferocity’ to describe your relationship with the victim,” Soave said to him. “Had things changed between you two in recent days?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Colin replied.

“Was she putting any pressure on you? Making any demands?”

Colin shook his head at Soave, bewildered. “Such as…?”

“Did you get her pregnant?” Soave wanted to know. “And don’t lie to me-the medical examiner will know the truth soon enough.”

“I wasn’t going to lie to you,” Colin said indignantly. “And I resent your supposition that I would.”

“As do I, Lieutenant,” Greta said to him coldly from the fireplace, where she was poking at the logs. “Colin is being candid and cooperative. You have no cause to speak to him that way.”

“You haven’t answered my question,” Soave persisted, undeterred.

“Mary Susan said nothing to me about any pregnancy,” Colin answered. “If she had, I would have been thrilled. Children are my life. I love children. I loved her, can’t you understand that?”

“Had you two discussed marriage?” Des asked him.

Colin glanced furtively at his wife. “It was something we’d talked about.”

“And…?”

“That was never going to happen,” Greta responded, with an edge of authority to her voice. “I will not be alone. Not now. Not after so many years.” She sat back down and took a sip of her wine, smacking her bright-red lips. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you officers are missing the big picture here when it comes to Colin.”

“Which is what?” Soave wondered.

“That there is a calculated, willful effort by this school board president to oust him from his job,” Greta replied. “It all comes down to this damned pissing match over Center School.”

“We can renovate it for one-third the cost of a new school,” Colin explained. “I have a good, sound plan.”

“But Babette and her little hand-picked followers on the board won’t hear of it,” Greta said, her voice rising. “They need their new school. Hell, they’ve practically turned it into a holy crusade. And when they couldn’t win Colin over to their side, Babette got down and dirty. This whole ugly business about Melanie suing the school district-that has Babette’s fingerprints all over it.”

“I believe she’s put Melanie up to it,” Colin said. “Because if Melanie truly did have a problem with my behavior, she would have told me. Okay, so it was inappropriate for me to use my office computer. An error in judgment on my part. I concede that. But do you actually throw a person away for that?”

“The real error you made,” Greta spoke angrily, “was giving Babette something she could use against you.”

“What do you think the school board will do about you?” Des asked Colin.

“I am under a doctor’s care,” he replied softly, wringing his pale hands in his lap. “When the doctor feels I’m ready, I’ll return to work. It is my hope that they’ll let me.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we intend to sue them for violating Colin’s civil rights,” Greta said. “His doctor will certify that Colin is suffering from clinical depression, which happens to qualify as a disability, thereby entitling him to legal protection from just exactly this type of callous, discriminatory firing. Trust me, the board will not want to open up this can of worms-not unless they’re prepared to face a drawn-out court battle and a multimillion-dollar settlement. But if that’s how they choose to proceed, so be it. We will make them very, very sorry.”

Des looked at Colin and said, “Is that what you want?”

The superintendent let out a long, pained sigh. “I want my life back. I love those kids.”

“And they love you,” Greta said. “And they don’t need any new thirty-four-million-dollar school.”

Soave studied Greta in thoughtful silence for a moment, smoothing his see-through mustache. “Your husband claims he was alone in his room at the Frederick House after the victim left. Where were you at the time of the murder?”

Des glanced over at him, smiling faintly. His mind was working the same way as hers. She’d trained him well.

“I was here,” Greta answered. “Asleep in bed.”

“Alone?” Soave asked.

“Quite alone,” Greta said, nodding her silver head. “There’s not a big market out there for sixty-three-year-old bull dykes who look like they just rolled in from the Roller Derby circuit.”

“Please don’t talk about yourself that way,” Colin objected.

“Tell us a little more about Melanie Zide,” Soave went on. “What’s her situation? What’s she like?”

“You’ve seen her,” Des mentioned to him.

“I have?” Soave looked at her blankly. “When?”

“Tonight. She was the model at the art academy.”

Soave’s eyes widened in surprise. “Time-out here… Are you telling me that a woman who poses buck-naked in front of total strangers is suing the school district because this guy left some dirty words on his computer screen?”

“That’s exactly what we’re telling you,” Greta said.

“Yo, this is totally wiggy,” said Soave, scratching his head. “What the hell kind of a place is this anyway?”

“A quaint little village that positively oozes with historic New Englandy charm,” Greta responded dryly. “Me, I call it home.”

Melanie Zide lived on Griswold Avenue, a dimly lit deadend street of bungalows near Uncas Lake. Des had walked by it several times on her way up to her new place from the inn. Some of the little bungalows were well-tended and freshly painted, their lawns mowed and raked. Others showed signs of serious, long-term neglect-knee-high weeds out front, broken windowpanes, peeling paint. Melanie’s place was one of these.

Her lights were on inside the house, though no car was parked in her short gravel driveway. There was no garage. Des pulled her cruiser into the driveway and they got out, Soave waiting by the car. She climbed the two steps to the broad, sagging front porch, where an old sprung sofa sat on concrete blocks, and tapped on the door. There was no sound of footsteps inside. No response at all. Just a dog barking down the street somewhere.

Soave automatically went around to the back, just like when they’d worked together. He returned in a moment, shaking his head. “Don’t see anybody in there.”

Across the street, a man came out onto his own sagging porch to watch them. Des noticed him standing there under his porch light, arms folded before his chest. He was still standing there as she and Soave started back toward her ride.

“Be right back, Rico.” She moseyed on over there and tipped her hat at him. “Good evening, sir. I’m Resident Trooper Mitry.”

He was a big, suety man in his forties with thinning black hair, a slovenly beard and the sly, crafty eyes of a man who thought he was smart even if no one else did. He wore a blaze orange hunter’s vest over a frayed white T-shirt, jeans and work boots. What she noticed most about him was the message he had tattooed on his knuckles, one letter to a knuckle. On his right hand the tattoos spelled out J-E-S-U-S, on his left hand S-A-V-E-S. Behind him, through his open front door, she could see a living room cluttered with dirty dishes, pizza boxes and beer cans. On a card table in the middle of the room sat a personal computer, its screen illuminated. There was a stack of printouts next to it.

“We just wanted to ask your neighbor some questions,” Des explained. “Your name is…?”

“Gilliam,” he answered, sullen and suspicious. Des wondered if it was her uniform or her pigment. Both, possibly. “Chuckie Gilliam.”

“Hey, you wouldn’t be Sandy’s Chuckie, would you?” Des asked brightly.

“Yeah, I am. And, lady, I don’t want no cat.”

“Are you sure? I’ve got Polaroids. Want to see Polaroids?”

“No!”

“Okay, we’ll come back to that… Chuckie, have you seen Melanie this evening?”

“I saw her go out maybe six o’clock,” he said. “Come home about nine.”

Des nodded. This would square with Melanie’s modeling gig. “Did she stay home long?”

“Left again right away, then came back again a while later.”

“How much later?”

“Lady, I dunno,” he said, his voice a low growl.

“Could you take a guess, please? It’s important.”

“Half hour. Maybe an hour. She popped her trunk, loaded some stuff into her car. She was in a real hurry.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Suitcases. She made a couple of trips in and out, then she split.”

“What does she drive?”

“A Dodge Neon, blue. Is Melanie in some kind of trouble?”

“She have any men in her life?” Des asked, wondering if Chuckie was one of them. Or perhaps wanted to be. He kept mighty close tabs on her.

“I haven’t noticed nobody. It’s been pretty quiet over there lately. Her brother used to be around, but he split.”

“When was this?”

“Last year. Her mother used to live there, too. Old lady was gonzo in the head. Alzheimer’s. Every once in a while she’d fall. I’d help Melanie hoist her back into bed. But Mrs. Zide’s not around no more. Melanie put her in a nursing home.”

“Any idea where that would be?”

“Norwich, maybe.”

Des glanced inside again at the computer on the card table. “What do you do for a living, Chuckie?”

“Why do you need to know?” he demanded.

“It’s just for my paperwork. I have to fill in those dumb blanks.”

“I’m a carpenter here in town.”

“Is that right? Who are you working for?”

“I’m between jobs right now.”

That was saying something, the way new houses were going up around Dorset. The contractors were so starved for manpower, they’d take anyone who knew which end of a nail gun to use. This had to be one real-live nowhere man, Des reflected. Poor Sandy would be so much better off with a nice pair of cats. “You and Sandy don’t live together, am I right?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I’m just wondering if you live here by yourself,” said Des, who was also wondering if Chuckie Gilliam had a sheet. He smelled like he did.

“I’m here by myself,” he said grudgingly. “Anything wrong with that?”

“No, not at all. Some of the smartest people I know live alone, myself included.” She thanked him for his help and crossed the street to fill in Soave.

“It’s unlocked,” he mentioned idly, as the two of them stood leaning against her cruiser. “Her back door. If we want to go in and take a look.”

“Do we?”

Soave shifted his bulky shoulders. “What do you say?”

“I say that it’s your case, wow man.”

“Let’s go for it,” he declared, heading around back once again.

He let Des in through the front door. Melanie’s living room was small and it was dingy. There was a moth-eaten purple love seat and a harvest-gold Naugahyde lounge chair that had been patched together with silver duct tape. Both pieces looked as if they had come from the dump.

The wall phone in the kitchen was off the hook, the receiver dangling in mid-air. Des immediately felt a small uptick in her pulse.

There were two bedrooms. In the smaller one there was an old iron bed, stripped down to its stained mattress. There was no dresser in there. No other furniture, period. The narrow closet was empty except for a few wire hangers.

There was a double bed in the other room. Its covers were rumpled, the linen gray and sour-smelling. Everything in this closet was gone, too, including the hangers. All that remained was an unsigned nude drawing of Melanie thumb-tacked to the inside of the closet door. The proportions were way off, Des observed critically. Melanie’s torso was too long, her calves too short. Clearly the work of an unaccomplished art student.

Soave knelt and looked under the bed. Nothing. He pulled open the dresser drawers. Empty. So were the drawers of the cheap pine student’s desk set before the bedroom window.

Same story in the bathroom-the medicine chest had been cleaned out.

All Melanie had left behind were a few clean dishes in the kitchen cupboards. And some food in the refrigerator. Not much-a half-eaten take-out pizza, a plastic liter bottle of Diet Coke, a quart of low-fat milk. There was a pull-down hatchway ladder in the kitchen ceiling that led up to the attic. Soave gave it a pull. Des handed him her flashlight. He went up and poked his head around. Nothing.

There was nothing in the shallow crawl space under the house either.

Des stood there looking around at the vacated house and remembering the anxiousness in Melanie’s voice when they’d talked that evening in the studio. Melanie had seemed frightened. Of whom? Of what? Was it about Babette Leanse’s case against Colin? Had Melanie been coerced into fingering her boss? Had she been bought? Or did she know something about Moose’s murder? Did the two cases connect up with each other? If so, how? Why had Melanie been in such a huge hurry to clear out of town? What was she so afraid of? What did she know?

Des didn’t know. Didn’t know a damned thing.

Except that Melanie Zide, the one person who might be able to help them make some sense of this whole mess, was way gone.