“We just found Trooper Olsen. Soave’s phoning it in.” Des glared at Takai and said, “That man had a wife and two young children. But I don’t suppose that matters to you very much.”
“Of course it matters,” Takai said indignantly. “Do you think I’m some kind of a psychopath?”
“I really don’t know what you are, Miss Frye. I’m just here to arrest you.”
A sudden sob of relief came from Takai’s chest. “Well, thank you for that.”
“Don’t thank me,” Des snapped at her. “Whatever you do, don’t thank me.”
“You can’t have her,” Hangtown objected. “She’s mine.”
“It’s no use, Mr. Frye,” Des said, moving in still closer. “Lieutenant Tedone is right outside. And this place will be swarming with cruisers any minute. You’ll just end up getting yourself shot. Don’t do it. Let us have her.”
“Give me a reason,” Hangtown insisted. “Give me one good reason.”
Now Takai was starting to edge slowly away from the fireplace. She did have a means of escape, Mitch suddenly realized. The trapdoor. The open trapdoor on the other side of the sofa. True, she was a good ten feet from it. But if she could manage to dive through it without getting shot she might actually get away through the catacombs.
“Trooper, I’d like to call my lawyer,” she said in a soft, trembly voice, inching her way closer and closer to the trapdoor. “Before we go, if I may.”
“You just chill out, Miss Frye,” Des said, her eyes riveted on Hangtown as Takai continued to edge closer to that gaping trapdoor. “And for God’s sake, shut your pretty-girl hole, or I’ll shoot you myself… Please put it down, Hangtown,” she begged, her own gun still aimed right at him, clutched tightly in both hands. “I have great respect for you. I like you. But if you don’t put it down, I’ll have to shoot you. Don’t make me do it. Don’t make me shoot you. Please.”
“Let the law take its course,” Mitch urged him. “Think about Crazy Daisy. Think about how you and Gentle Kate felt.”
“I am being punished for my sins,” Hangtown muttered under his breath, his finger on the trigger, eyes on Takai.
“Who the hell’s Crazy Daisy?” Des demanded, her finger on the trigger.
Mitch didn’t respond. He was standing there thinking: I am not in the living room of a historic home in Dorset, Connecticut, anymore. I am in a hot, dusty saloon with a name like the Silver Dollar or Last Chance, and somebody is about to end up dead on the floor.
But who?
Hangtown said it again: “Good-bye, princess.” His finger tightening on the trigger…
“No, Father…!”
“Hangtown, don’t-!”
“Drop it! I’m warning you…!”
And an animal roar came out of the old man-
And Takai made her move-a sudden, desperate lunge for that trapdoor-
And never made it.
He blew her away. The sheer force of the Barrett’s blast flinging her hard up against the wall, her chest torn wide open. What slid ever so slowly down the wall to the floor was no longer a person, let alone a gorgeous and deeply, deeply troubled one.
Des still had her Sig-Sauer aimed right at the old man. But she hadn’t fired a shot at him. Couldn’t. She was frozen there, a stricken expression on her face.
Mitch couldn’t move a muscle either. He could barely breathe.
As for Hangtown, he calmly laid the Barrett flat on the table, went over to the butler’s tray by the desk and poured himself a brandy from a leaded glass decanter. Then he raised his glass to what had once been his younger daughter and in a deep, solemn voice said, “Good fight, good night.”
Mitch never got a chance to speak to Wendell Frye again.
The great artist had told him that when the will to live is gone, a person can go very fast. Hangtown went very fast. A massive heart attack killed him two days later. The page-one obituary in Mitch’s newspaper called him a “colossus of twentieth-century art.” Hangtown never had to stand trial for Takai’s murder. He was never even formally charged. He was already a man of leisure by then, taking his nice long dirt nap.
He didn’t even have to leave his beloved farm. He was buried there later that week among his forefathers in the family’s cemetery overlooking the river, right alongside his Gentle Kate. Moose and Takai were laid to rest there at the same time. It was a small private ceremony. Some of Moose’s schoolteacher friends were there, as were a few members of the art academy faculty. Greta Patterson was there with Colin. Jim Bolan was there. So was Takai’s ex-husband, Dirk Doughty, whose bags were in his car-he was driving home to Toledo right after the funeral. And Mitch was there. He’d brought Sheila Enman along with him, as promised.
As Mitch was driving the old lady to the ceremony, he told her about Moose’s quest to discover the secret ingredient in her chocolate chip cookies.
“If only she’d asked me,” Mrs. Enman lamented sadly. “Gracious, I would have told her.”
“Of course you would have,” Mitch agreed. “It’s the sour cream, right?”
Mrs. Enman smiled at him enigmatically, but remained silent. She would not tell him.
This was Dorset, after all.
Melanie Zide was buried later that same day in the town cemetery. No one came.
C HAPTER 14
The skeletal remains of the young sculptress known as Crazy Daisy were found in a shallow grave under a tree, a stone cairn marking the spot. Mitch had been told about the grave by Hangtown, but chose to keep the news from Des until after the funeral. Des found this both curious and upsetting. She could not believe he had kept silent. But she did not hassle Mitch about it. He had just buried his friend. He had told her when he was ready. And that would have to do for now.
Soave tried to find out who Crazy Daisy really was. A dental mold was made, a DNA sample taken, the FBI informed. Word was put out through the media. But she matched no missing person report filed in 1972, and no relatives stepped forward now to claim her. Truly, she was a lost soul, gone and forgotten. After a suitable waiting period she was reburied in the Dorset town cemetery in a proper casket set inside a sealed concrete burial vault, according to Connecticut state law. Her headstone read simply DAISY, SUMMER OF ’72.
Funeral costs were paid for by the Patterson Gallery.
Des did have to be debriefed up in Meriden about the Takai Frye shooting by a lieutenant from Internal Affairs. She told him what she’d walked in on after she and Soave found Trooper Olsen dead at the front gate: Wendell Frye pointing the loaded Barrett at his daughter, Mitch Berger standing there alongside of her, unarmed. She said that she’d ordered the old man to drop his weapon but that he’d opened fire before she could get a single shot off. She did not raise the question of whether she’d held her fire too long. The lieutenant did not raise it either. He had what he needed, including Soave’s unequivocal backing of her actions. Besides which, Wendell Frye was dead anyway. Case closed.
After the debriefing, she ran into Soave on his way into the old headmaster’s house, the red brick mansion with the slate mansard roof that was home to the Central District’s Major Crime Squad.
Soave grinned at the sight of her and said, “How did it go in there?”
“It went. Thanks for watching my back.”
“Hey, that’s what teammates do,” he answered emphatically.
They lingered there in the parking lot for a moment, the barking of German shepherds serving as steady background noise. The state police’s K-9 training center was located there on the secluded hilltop campus, as was the world-renowned Forensic Science lab.
“Where’s little Tommy?” she asked.
Soave made a face. “I got him transferred to arson. My brother said I should have spoken up sooner. I put in for somebody smart. Maybe I’ll get lucky this time, huh?”
“You never know. Maybe you’ll even get a woman.”
He leaned against his cruiser, smoothing his see-through mustache. “Des, I think maybe I’ve got a better handle on you now than I did before. What do you think?”