The sweet golden parachute

CHAPTER 11

“Would you tell Bement for me?”

Mitch could not believe what he’d just gotten himself into. As he steered his high-riding Studey pickup toward Great White Whale Antiques up in Millington, he asked himself exactly how he’d let Justine Kershaw rope him into being the go-between with her boyfriend. In his own defense, Mitch could think of several reasons. Her book was remarkable. He wanted to see it published. And he had to find out how much of it was based in reality. All good, sound reasons for taking on such a sensitive mission. And all bull. There was only one reason Mitch was running this fool’s errand and he knew it-because Justine Kershaw was a wily, adorable little manipulator who’d maneuvered him into it.

As he rolled his way through the bare, muddy late winter countryside, Mitch found himself wondering who else she’d been moving around lately, and what sort of things she was capable of making them do.

Millington was a tiny rural hamlet in the rolling farm country about ten miles inland from Dorset. Great White Whale Antiques was housed in an old barn across the road from a family-owned garden center. One lone car with Massachusetts plates was parked out front of the shop. It was still pretty early in the year for tourists and antique hounds to be out browsing. Evan Peck, the shop’s owner, shut it down completely in January and February. Evan was one of Mitch’s neighbors out on Big Sister. He was still wintering at the family compound down in Hobe Sound. His cousin, Becca, was running things with Bement until he returned.

The shop was cluttered, its merchandise eclectic. There were colonial armoires and bedsteads alongside weathered Victorian garden ornaments. An art deco living room set was displayed right next to a slender Danish-style one. There was sterling silver and crystal, quilts, paintings. Some of the pieces were very high end. Others were borderline garage sale material, although absolutely none of it was cheap.

Becca was behind one of the glass cases showing flatware to a pair of elderly ladies. Mitch waved to her and mouthed Bement’s name. She motioned to a door marked PRIVATE. He went through it into a workshop that smelled strongly of turpentine and linseed oil. Here, he found dressers without drawers, chairs without seats, tabletops, table legs. A carpenter’s bench was laden with saws and drills and a dozen different kinds of clamps.

Bement Widdifield was taking a roaring handheld power sander to a gently aged white kitchen table, exposing an old coat of blue paint underneath, as well as some bare pine. A can of paint stripper and a scraper were at his elbow. Bement wore a protective dust mask over his mouth and nose. It was chilly there in the workshop, but he was stripped down to a frayed red pocket T-shirt and cargo pants. A fine white powder clung to his bare arms, which bulged with muscle.

When he spotted Mitch standing there he immediately turned off the noise, yanked off the mask and started toward him with a welcoming smile on his face. “You must be Mitch. Teeny called me on her break. Told me you might stop by.”

“Glad to meet you,” Mitch said, gripping Bement’s dry, strong hand.

Bement had the sort of easy physical confidence that Mitch had always admired in other men. He did not look like any effete rich kid. The day-old beard and purplish mouse under his eye gave him a rugged, scrappy air. He was not particularly tall, but he had the lean, coiled athleticism of a guy who would excel at any sport he tried. Standing there with him, Mitch felt like a different species of animal-a plodder who’d been bred for towing heavy wagons through mud.

“So this is your office?” he asked him, glancing around.

“Evan’s a much better wheeler-dealer than I am,” Bement acknowledged. “He also knows where to find stuff, so he goes on most of the buying trips. Unless he can’t get away, in which case I’ll go. But I’m much happier when I’m working with my hands. It’s good, honest work. I’m not trying to fool anyone.”

Mitch studied the farmhouse table with intense interest. He’d furnished his own cottage mostly with castoffs, and was still learning the refinishing ropes. “Will you strip this down to bare wood?”

“No, I’ll leave a lot of this paint on. People are into the ‘distressed’ look right now. Lends the piece a patina of age. A decorator like my mom will pay top dollar for a table like this, even though it’s a factory-made piece from the 1930s-not really an antique at all.”

Mitch nodded his head in agreement, even as it occurred to him that Bement was trying to fool someone. He’d just admitted so.

“Actually, I’m still pretty new to furniture. I know boats way better. Did donkey work down at the boatyard every summer when I was a kid.”

“Justine told me you two would like to buy a boat and sail away together.”

“All we have to do is win the lottery.”

“Actually, it may not have to come to that. Can we sit somewhere and talk?”

A hooded gray sweatshirt was draped over the back of a chair. Bement flung it on over his head and started toward the back door, pausing at a work sink to wash the white sanding powder from his hands. Next to the sink sat a table with an electric coffeemaker on it. He poured some coffee into a Styrofoam cup and dumped sugar and creamer in it. Mitch did the same. Then they went out the door to a weedy, muddy area behind the barn that served as a boneyard for rusted-out patio furniture and garden gates. Becca’s Honda Civic was parked back there next to a pickup that Mitch assumed was Bement’s.

A wooden picnic table sat invitingly in the winter sunshine. They flopped down there, the rays feeling nice and warm on Mitch’s shoulders. The land out behind the barn fell off sharply into a deep, tree-shaded gorge. The stream down there was still frozen. Bement pulled a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes from his sweatshirt pocket and lit one, eyeing Mitch guardedly. The more Mitch studied him, the more aware he became of the intensity that lurked beneath Bement’s apparent physical ease.

“You hear about our latest local crime news?” he asked Mitch, dragging on his cigarette.

Mitch nodded. Des had called to tell him. She always called him when something broke. He liked it that she did. “I tried to talk to Pete just yesterday at the Soup Kitchen. The guy ran from me in sheer terror.”

“When I was in high school he used to sit out on the town green every afternoon,” Bement recalled. “The Kershaw brothers would throw rocks at him on their way home from school. I had to tell them to cut it out.”

“Sounds like you’ve been messing with those two for years.”

“To know them is to mess with them.”

“I guess the poor guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure, man.”

“What do you mean by that, Bement?”

“I mean he wasn’t necessarily killed because of what he saw.”

“Well, why else would he?…”

“I can’t say anything more because I’m not supposed to know.” Bement gulped his coffee, staring across the table at him. “Did you ever hide behind the sofa when you were a little kid? Overhear what the grown-ups were saying to each other when they thought you’d gone to bed?”

“Sure, but all they were ever talking about was my Aunt Esther’s gall bladder. I never heard any good stuff.”

“Well, I did. In my family we had lots of secrets. But I don’t talk about them. Besides, that’s not why you’re here. You’ve read Teeny’s book, or as much of it as you could stand, and you don’t know how to tell her it stinks. You’re afraid you’ll hurt her feelings. Am I right?”

“Not even close. You haven’t read it yourself?”

“She won’t let me near the thing. Keeps saying it’s private, like a diary. Which is fine. I can respect that.” Bement cocked his head at Mitch curiously. “So why are you here?”

“To tell you I think it will be published to great success.”

Bement drew his breath in, flabbergasted. “You’re… kidding me, right?”

“I’m absolutely not kidding you.”

Bement sat there in stunned silence, absently massaging the skinned, swollen knuckles of his right hand. “Collided with Don-nie’s face yesterday,” he explained, flexing the hand. “A guy’s cheekbone is a hell of a lot sturdier than your fist is. They never mention that in the old westerns, do they?”

“The sound effects are usually wrong, too. It should be a dull thud, not a smack.” Mitch sipped his coffee, studying Bement. “Do you have any idea what her book is about?”

“I really don’t, Mitch. Teeny never works on it when we’re together. Don’t ask me why.”

“I’m going to tell you why, actually. And you’d better brace yourself, because this may be a bit hard to take. It’s about a smalltown New England teenaged girl who is brutally raped by her two older brothers, who then turn her out. First she takes on half the boys in town, then their fathers.”

Bement pulled on the last of his Lucky and flicked the butt off into the weeds, his face revealing nothing. Until suddenly he lunged across the table and grabbed Mitch by the front of his jacket. “Are you trying to say my girlfriend was the town bang?”

“This is a very good question you ask,” Mitch responded hoarsely. “Want to let go of me?”

“Not until you tell me what you’re getting at.” Bement’s eyes were narrow slits.

“Let go of the material, Bement.”

Bement abruptly released him and sat back on his bench, a blue vein throbbing in his forehead.

Mitch straightened the collar of his jacket. “Freak out much?”

He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair and reached for his coffee, his hands shaking. “I just love her so damned much that I lose it sometimes. I apologize, man. Really, I do.”

“No harm, no foul.”

“I couldn’t stay away from her, you know,” he confessed miserably. “I was out there in Palo Alto, starting my senior year at Stanford, and I was a total nut job. I can’t make it when we’re not together. I begged her to join me out there, but she wouldn’t. I guess she’s more attached to this place than she lets on. That’s why I dropped out. She’s why. I had to be with her. It was like she controlled me.” Bement shook his head slowly. “Whatever love is, it’s sure not about being smart. Me getting my degree from Stanford? That would have been smart.”

“You’re not enjoying what you’re doing?”

“No, I am. And the two of us are real happy together. But my mom’s pissed at me all of the time. Hell, the whole town’s pissed at me. They watched me grow up. They act like I’ve let them down.”

“You can still get your degree, Bement. Plenty of colleges around here would take you.”

“I don’t see the point anymore.” Bement gazed across the gorge at the bare winter hills beyond. “I don’t even know who I am.”

“Again, that’s why they invented college.”

“What are you, a campus recruiter?”

“You just don’t strike me as the kind of guy to sail off and hide from the world, that’s all. I happen to know a little about hiding. I spent twenty years in darkened movie theaters doing just that.”

“And what are you doing now, exactly?”

“Trying to understand people, I guess. We’re a lot more screwed up than I ever realized.”

Bement let out a short laugh. “Now you’re talking about my parents. My dad’s totally lost. Which for me is way weird, because your dad’s the one who’s supposed to have the road map, you know? They’ve always had to work at their marriage, but he doesn’t even want to try anymore. My mom’s freaking, as you can imagine. And totally pretending that she’s not. It’s just a huge mess. My dad’s a good guy, too. I love him to death. Hell, I love both of them.” Bement drained the last of his coffee, glancing at Mitch coolly. “You wanted to tell me about Teeny’s book. Is there more?”

“There is. And I mean to be as tactful as I can, but it’s still going to come out blunt. Justine won’t tell me whether it’s a true story or not. Frankly, it’s so detailed and explicit that I find it hard to believe it’s not at least partly based on personal experience.”

Bement’s nostrils flared slightly. “Mitch, who my girlfriend may have banged is not my idea of a legitimate topic of conversation between us, okay? I barely know you. And even if we were blood brothers, I still don’t know if it’s any of your damned business.”

“I don’t disagree.”

“Then why are you sweating me?”

“Because once this book is published it’ll become everyone’s business. If there’s one thing I do understand, it’s the media, and I’m telling you right now that Justine is about to get one hell of a lot of attention. And so are you.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because you’re the man she’s seeing. Total strangers will want to know everything about you. You’d better prepare yourself, Bement, because if you can’t handle it, then your life will become a special kind of hell.”

“I didn’t ask for any of this,” he pointed out hotly.

“I know that. But I’m here to tell you that it’s what you’re looking at.”

Bement Widdifield stared at Mitch long and hard. Not so much with anger now. He had a solemn look on his handsome face. “Fine, if it’s an answer you want then I’ll give you one. But I won’t discuss this with you or anyone else ever again. This is it. Teeny was never raped by her brothers. She never did their friends. She never did their fathers. None of those things ever happened to her.”

“How do you know this, Bement?”

“I know it, okay?”

“Not okay. How?”

“Because we’ve been going together a lot longer than most people know. Since we were in high school. We had to sneak around so our parents wouldn’t find out. Teeny was seventeen the first time we slept together. That was the night of our senior prom and I… I was her very first. She was a virgin, okay? Teeny was still a virgin.” Bement crumpled his Styrofoam cup angrily in his fist. “Now do you believe me?”