It was Soave. “I was just going to call you when I spotted your car in the lot. Find anything interesting?”
“Didn’t find anything, period. And you can let go of my arm now.” He released his grip on her and she stepped back into her shoes, bending over to tie them. “Why were you going to call me?”
“I got an ID on Cutter from the Internet service. Man, they do not make it easy. I’ve been jumping through flaming hoops for like the last two hours.” He grinned at her. He was pumped. “Take a drive with me, Des.”
“Where to, wow man?”
The Leanses. They took Soave’s slicktop, Des riding shotgun.
“Your father hates me,” Soave said to her as he drove. “Treats me like I’m some kind of a total yutz.”
“Rico, he treats everyone that way.”
Soave glanced across the seat at her. “Even you?”
“Especially me. He demands best effort, and he accepts nothing less. Why do you think I gave you such a hard time when we partnered up? Because I’ve been getting hammered by that man since I was four years old.”
“Are you just saying this to make me feel better? Because I have to tell you something-it’s working.”
“Rico, it’s the real deal.”
He furrowed his brow thoughtfully now. “Tawny thinks that you and me never got along because deep down inside I feel threatened by you.”
“Smart girl, that Tawny. She’s wasting a fine brain, sitting there all day in a beauty parlor with an emery board in her hand.” Des paused, raising her chin at him. “Do you two talk about me a lot?”
“You’ve been on my mind a lot lately, Des,” he confessed, suddenly sounding like a painfully earnest adolescent. “Some of the things you said to me about my future. I guess I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately…”
“Careful, that can become habit-forming. Before you know it, you’ll be doing it every day.”
“You’re never going to let me back up, are you?” he demanded, flaring. “There’s no second chances in this perfect world you and your father live in, is that how it goes?”
“I don’t live in that world anymore. I dropped out, remember?”
“Like hell you did. You’re still the same ball-buster you always were.”
Des smiled at him sweetly. “You really do miss me, don’t you?”
“Aw, shut up.”
All lit up at night, the Leanses’s post-modern mountaintop home reminded Des of the Mount Rushmore house in that superb Hitchcock movie Mitch had shown her, North by Northwest. This was a brand-new phenomenon, it dawned on her. She never, ever used to compare real life to movies, not until she met that man. Mitch was rubbing off on her. Was she rubbing off on him? She doubted it.
“This house looks like a damned space station,” Soave observed, gaping at it through his windshield.
“Just don’t tell him you find the architecture interesting, or he’ll bite your head clean off.”
“Yo, I wasn’t going to.”
They got out and rang the bell to the big oak front door. It was the little pumpkin head, Ben, who answered.
“Good to see you again, Ben,” Des said to him pleasantly. “Give it up for Lieutenant Tedone. Ben here was our DARE essay winner.”
“No way!” Soave exclaimed, sticking out a hand. “Glad to know you, Ben.”
“Glad to know you, too, sir,” the boy responded in that gurgly voice of his. “My dad’s on the phone in the den-whoa, what a surprise. My mom’s down in the gym. Come on in.”
The Leanses’ living room was a cube-shaped lookout of stone and glass. The living room floor was polished concrete, as was the stairway that led down the hill to the rest of the house. There were no rugs. No adornments anywhere. Only bare walls and windows and clean surfaces. What furniture there was-a grouping of low leather banquettes, a table and chairs of polished blond wood-was spare to the point of sterile. It struck Des as something out of an architectural magazine, not a real place where real people lived.
“Ricky Welmers was bragging that he took a ride in your cruiser,” little Ben said to her as he ushered them in, their footsteps resounding on the polished floor like rim shots on a snare drum. “Is that for real?”
“It is.”
“How come you gave him a ride?”
“He needed one. I’ll be happy to give you one, too. Anytime you want.”
“She’ll even handcuff you,” Soave confided.
“Really!?”
Des heard a set of footsteps coming briskly up the stairs now and Bruce Leanse charged into the room with a broad, manly smile on his face. “Trooper Mitry,” he said brightly, showing her thirty or more of his perfect white teeth. “Really good to see you again. And, hey, you must be Lieutenant Tedone. Welcome to my home-both of you.” Bruce was dressed casually in a gray turtleneck sweater and jeans, and he was working the chummy thing hard. Too hard. Underneath, he seemed edgy and preoccupied. “How may I help you?”
“The lieutenant and I just came from your boat…” Des responded.
“Please don’t tell me somebody broke in. That can’t be. This is Dorset.”
“No, nothing like that, Mr. Leanse,” Soave spoke up. “We wanted to talk to you is all. We tried you there first, but nobody was around.”
“Because he’s been working there much too late these past few weeks,” Babette Leanse said pointedly as she came padding up the stairs to join them, perspiring freely from her workout. She had on a blue leotard and sneakers. A towel was around her neck, and her bushy hair was gathered up in a rubber band atop her head. “I insisted he stay home with his family this evening.”
Des nodded, wondering if Attila the Hen was hip to his thing with Takai. Sounded like it. “The lieutenant and I would like to have a talk with you both.”
“This sounds serious,” Babette said, managing once again, somehow, to look down her nose at Des-who still could not figure out how the woman managed to perform such a physical impossibility. “Do we need a lawyer present?”
“Entirely up to you,” Soave answered grimly.
Babette’s mouth tightened. “Ben, would you please excuse us?”
“No way!” Ben exclaimed. “This is just starting to get good!”
“Ben…”
Glumly, the little boy headed downstairs.
Babette waited until he was gone before she turned to Des with a defiant expression on her face. “Well, do you recommend we phone our lawyer or not?”
“That’s your decision,” Des replied, offering nothing.
The Leanses exchanged a hopelessly bewildered look before Bruce shrugged his shoulders and said, “Come on, let’s sit in the kitchen.”
Their gleaming gourmet kitchen was down one flight of stairs from the living room. It was vast. It was to die for. Commercial Jenn-Air range with built-in grill and two ovens. Sub-zero refrigerator and freezer. Copper pots and pans galore. A center island with stools where the four of them sat. In comparison, Des realized, her own beautiful new kitchen would look like something belonging inside a trailer park in Homestead, Florida. But that was okay by her. Because she would never want to trade places with Babette Leanse.
Not now. Not ever.
“You made a play and you lost, Mrs. Leanse,” Soave began, his voice chilly and authoritative. He played the blustering intimidator well. He loved to stick it to people. Especially rich people. “Your days as head of the Dorset school board are over. You are toast. That’s a given. But if you’re straight with us, we may be able to keep you out of jail.”
Babette’s eyes widened with alarm. “Jail?”
“Whoa, time-out here,” Bruce broke in, staggered. “What are you talking about?”
“Melanie Zide is dead,” Soave fired back. “Maybe you heard the news.”
Babette sat there limply, the color draining from her face. “Dead?” Evidently, she hadn’t.