“I wanted you to know, Mitch, just how great I think it is to have some new blood out here,” the lawyer said as he mixed his drink. He sounded very edgy. And he was gripping the glass so tightly Mitch thought it might shatter in his hand. “I hope you didn’t think I was being rude to you the day you came to my office. I’m just very protective of Dolly. We all are. Niles Seymour put her through hell.” He handed Mitch his refilled glass, peering at him carefully. “Fine girl, Mandy, don’t you think?”
“She seems very nice.”
“I’m a lucky man,” Bud acknowledged, beaming. “There are some mornings when I wake up… Hey, boy, I can’t believe how happy I am.”
Mitch heard jovial voices coming from the entry hall now. Young Evan had arrived with his companion, Jamie. Evan was in his mid-twenties, tall and slender and tanned, with wavy black hair and Dolly’s delicate features and blue eyes. He wore a gauzy shirt unbuttoned to his stomach, jeans and leather sandals. Jamie was about fifty, trimly built and fashionably turned out in a blue blazer, yellow Sea Island cotton shirt and white slacks. Mitch was positive he looked familiar, but he couldn’t place him.
“So you’re the heavy metal metal guitarist,” Jamie exclaimed, pumping Mitch’s hand.
“Blues, actually. Just loud. I guess I’ll have to amp down.”
“Not on our account,” Evan assured him.
Jamie nodded in agreement. “‘To each his own, said the old woman as she French-kissed the cow.’ An old expression of my dear mom’s, slightly embellished by myself. Welcome to B.S., Mitch. I’m a huge fan of your work. For one thing, you actually know what you’re talking about-which is shockingly unusual. And you are not personal or mean. So many critics these days just want to land a zinger. They don’t realize how much words can hurt.”
“Sure they do,” Mitch countered. “That’s why they do it.”
“You’ll have to come see our lighthouse,” said Evan. “It’s way cool. Second tallest on the Southern New England Coast. The Block Island Lighthouse is taller by ten feet.”
“I’d love to. Is it used for anything anymore?”
“Absolutely,” Jamie replied cheerfully. “It’s a great place to get high.”
Now it clicked-it was the drug reference that did it. “I just realized something,” Mitch said. “You’re Jamie Devers.”
“It’s true,” Jamie confessed, smiling. “I was.”
Better known to the world as Bucky Stevens, the resident little cute kid on Just Blame Bucky, which ranked as one of the classic fifties family sitcoms, right up there with Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show. In his heyday, Jamie Devers had been one of the biggest stars on television, a round-faced little munchkin with freckles and a cowlick and an amusingly adenoidal way of saying, “I didn’t dood it.” But, as so often happened, he outgrew his cuteness. And the show got cancelled. Jamie Devers grew a beard and got mixed up with the Peter Fonda-Dennis Hopper Hollywood drug scene of the late sixties. Got himself busted several times. Then disappeared from public view altogether. Until he’d surfaced a few years back with a highly controversial tell-all memoir, which alleged that during his prepubescent heyday he had regularly been sexually abused by a secret gay fraternity of male studio executives, agents and actors. His scathing memoir, entitled I Dood It, also claimed that the actress who’d played Bucky’s television mom had carried on a long, secret love affair with a black L.A. Dodgers outfielder. The book had become a huge bestseller and thrust Jamie back in the limelight for a brief time. Now he was out here, living on Big Sister with Evan Havenhurst and dealing in antiques. He seemed at peace. He was certainly fit and cheerful.
“Do you sail?” he asked Mitch.
“No, I’m a city kid, through and through. I can’t even swim.”
“Not a problem-that’s why they have life preservers. I can’t swim either. Child stars can’t do anything. Hell, I didn’t learn how to tie my own shoelaces until I was…” Jamie paused, glancing down at own his feet. “Actually, I still don’t know how to.” He let out a huge guffaw. “You’ll have to come out for a sail sometime with us, Mitch. You’ll enjoy it. And I promise you we’ll even wear clothes.”
This comment did not go over well with Bud, who immediately stalked off, red-faced.
Evan let out a pained sigh. “Jaymo, why must you rub his nose in it?”
“Sorry, Ev,” said Jamie, patting his hand. “The Bud man’s just such a prig I can’t help myself.”
Evan went to fetch them drinks, leaving Mitch with the one-time star.
“Still doing any acting, Jamie?”
“Boyfriend, I never was an actor,” he replied, with no trace of bitterness. “Being a child star means being you. When you get to be older, and you find out they now expect you to play a role, you discover you never really learned how. And you have no real life experiences to draw upon, since you’ve had no real life.” Evan returned now with glasses of wine for each of them. Jamie thanked him and turned back to Mitch. “In answer to your next question: No, I never watch the reruns. It was all a lie. Bogus people living in a bogus world. In fact, we don’t even own a TV That’s all behind me now. So is Tinsel Town. Beverly Hills is the only ghetto in America where the rats don’t live in the walls. Being here, I have achieved peace for the first time in my life.” He glanced fondly at his handsome young companion. “Poor Evan still has the bug, I’m afraid. That’s how we met-he was in an acting class that I was teaching in New York. I’ve been doing my best to talk him out of it. That’s absolutely the only thing Bud and I see eye to eye on.”
Evan had brought hors d’?uvres that needed heating. He excused himself to go take care of them. Mitch and Jamie drifted into the study, where Bud and Red sat talking. The subject was Niles Seymour and what a bastard he was.
“It wasn’t enough that he broke Dolly’s heart,” Red was saying, his voice a low murmur. “He had to leave her high and dry, too. That’s the detestable part.”
“Unforgivable,” agreed Jamie, sipping his wine.
“He cleaned out their joint checking and savings accounts,” Bud explained to Mitch. “He even liquidated their stock portfolio. Well over a hundred thousand dollars altogether. And he used their joint Visa card to buy two airplane tickets to St. Croix-before Dolly could get around to freezing it.”
Mitch nodded, wondering why they were suddenly being so open with him.
“Has he filed for the divorce yet?” Jamie asked Bud.
“No, but she will,” Bud replied. “On the grounds of desertion.”
“I call it outright theft,” Red fumed. “He should be in jail. The man is a no-good con artist.”
“I wouldn’t call him no good,” Jamie said. “I’d call him damned good. He’s handsome. He’s charming. And he’s as persuasive as hell. Convinced Dolly to put his name on everything, didn’t he?”
“We can’t touch him, Red,” Bud admitted glumly. “Niles had a legal right to that money.”
“But the money in those accounts was hers,” Red said insistently. He had grown considerably more loquacious with a couple of stiff drinks in him. And, like Bud, he was very protective of Dolly. “Those investments were hers. They do not belong to Niles Seymour and that… that… bimbo.”
“Who is the other woman?” Mitch asked.
“We don’t know,” Bud answered, reaching for his scotch. “Some little redhead he knew in Atlantic City before he met Dolly, apparently. All we can say for certain is that one day she showed up at the Saybrook Point Inn and the next day Niles, his car and every penny Dolly had to her name were gone.”
“We spotted them together,” Red mentioned. “Bud and I. We’d docked at the inn after a sail for a bite of brunch. And there they were having a cozy breakfast together in the dining room. She was exactly what you’d expect from Niles-young and sleazy. A thorough tramp.”
“Dolly found a Dear John letter on the kitchen table the next morning,” Bud added. “Bastard didn’t even have the nerve to face her. Just cleared out.”