“So why don’t you just rent something?”
“I can’t. There’s nothing. And what landlord would be willing to put up with our cats?” Bella presently had nineteen boarders looking for good homes-eight in her garage, eleven in her basement.
“The cats can come live with me,” Des assured her. “And so can you. My guest bedroom is yours for as long as you like.”
“Desiree, I appreciate the offer. Truly, I do. But rooming with you is not an option. For one thing-and I can tell you this because we have no secrets from each other-I snore in the night. Late in our marriage, Morris took to sleeping in Abe’s room at the far end of the hall, with the door closed, wearing earplugs. Besides which, you’re young and gorgeous and you’re in love with a nice Jewish boy who treats you like a princess.”
“Um, okay, I think you’re confusing us with another couple.”
Bella raised an eyebrow at her impishly. “Am I? How so?”
“Well, for starters, the aforementioned L-word has not exactly arisen.”
“Well, something has,” Bella cracked. “Or should I say someone.”
“Bella, you are being bad today. Better ease off of that All-Bran.”
“My point is you don’t want some fat old broad around the house when you two want to have wild sex on the kitchen floor at one o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Okay, now I know you’re confusing us with another couple.” Des finished off her cereal, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin. “Actually, we aren’t even a couple yet, per se.”
“Tie that bull outside, as we used to say on Nostrand Avenue. Are you seeing anyone else?”
“You know I’m not.”
“Is he?”
“Not if he wants to remain among the walking and talking.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Who says there’s a problem?”
Bella didn’t respond, just stared at her intently from across the table.
Des sighed. “The problem is that I am so not in control of my emotions.”
“Congratulations. That means you’re someone who’s in love.”
“Or a candidate to be a serial killer. Bella, this is a vastly more insidious creature than I’ve ever encountered before. The man keeps doing deplorable things to me. Like when I was packing up my house last week, feeling bluer than blue, he shows up out of nowhere with a bunch of wildflowers he’d picked from his yard. You know what he said to me? He said that they reminded him of the color of my eyes in the candlelight. Shut up, that is so not fair…” Come to think of it, they had ended up on her kitchen floor that afternoon. “I mean, no one is that sweet. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Which you know it will. If he’s human. Only, he’s not human. He’s straight out of one of his horror movies-The Stepford Boyfriend. Except he doesn’t cook, unless you count that damned American chop suey of his, which I sure as hell don’t.”
Bella reached across the table and grabbed Des’s hand in her Vulcan death grip. “Listen to me, Desiree, all men are animals.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“Some are wolves. Some are asses…”
“I repeat, tell me-”
“Mitch Berger is a bunny rabbit.”
Des instantly softened, her face breaking into a silly smile. “Isn’t he? I just melt into a puddle when I’m around him.”
“Do you want to know what your problem is?”
“Aside from the fact that you’re breaking my hand?”
Bella released her. “You have no faith in happiness. People without faith are lonely, bitter people, my dear. You are not such a person. Tell me, it’s not the sex, is it?”
“No, that part is fine. More than fine. The best.”
“Speaking of which…” Bella leaned over the table toward her. “Any idea who our moaner is?”
Des glanced at her sharply. “You can hear her, too?”
“Tattela, they can hear her in Flatbush.”
“Good morning, ladies,” interjected Colin Falconer, who stood there before them with a shy smile on his long, rather pinched face. Colin wore a pair of birdwatcher’s glasses around his neck and clutched a brown-bag lunch. The innkeepers made one for him every morning. “What a pretty time of year, is it not? I thought I’d ride out to Peck Point to see the terns before school.”
“I took a nice long walk myself before breakfast,” Des responded, smiling up at him. “It was beautiful.”
Colin lingered there, his tongue flicking nervously across his thin, dry lips. “I’m guilty of having a terribly awkward question for you,” he murmured at Des.
“Go right ahead.”
“I was wondering… That is, are you hearing noises in the night?”
“Do you mean like animals?”
“Of a sort,” he said, reddening.
“You, too?” Bella exclaimed, beaming at him conspiratorially.
“I haven’t slept all week,” Colin blurted out. “It’s so unsettling. I don’t suppose it would be appropriate to have the innkeeper ask them to enjoy themselves a little less… enthusiastically.”
“It’s not as if they’re breaking any laws,” Des said, her eyes falling on that blond hunk of muscle seated by himself across the room, tearing into a plate of blueberry pancakes and sausages. She couldn’t tell if he was hearing what they were saying or not. He gave no sign of it. “I guess we’ll just have to live with it.”
“I guess we will,” Colin said ruefully before he headed out the door to fetch his bike.
It was time for Des to get moving, too. She went upstairs and stripped and jumped in the shower. She didn’t take long in the bathroom. She kept her hair short and nubby these days, and had never been into war paint. Never needed it, really. She had almond-shaped green eyes, a smooth complexion, a wraparound smile that could melt titanium.
Her charcoal-gray trousers were cut full for comfort. The contrasting stripe that ran down the outside seam was royal blue with yellow piping, same as the epaulets on her light gray shirt. Her necktie was that same shade of royal blue, her tie clasp gold, her square-toed oxfords black and gleaming. She tucked her shirt neatly into her trousers, found her horn-rimmed glasses on the dresser and wiped them clean and put them on. Then she unlocked the dresser drawer that she kept under padlock and key. Inside was her crime girl kit-her nameplate and badge, her eight-pound black leather belt complete with radio, her holstered Sig-Sauer semiautomatic weapon.
The last but by no means least thing Des put on was her great big Smokey the Bear hat. Armed, dressed and dangerous, Resident Trooper Desiree Mitry of Dorset-formerly Lieutenant Desiree Mitry of the Major Crime Squad, the highest-ranking black female homicide investigator in the entire history of the Connecticut State Police-headed out the door to perform her first official duty of the day:
Directing traffic outside of Center School.
CHAPTER 3
Hangtown led Mitch home on Dunn’s Road, which twisted its way through a cluster of old, family-run dairy farms. These were genuine working farms, complete with silos and animals and fragrant smells.
And they were an endangered species.
Even over the flatulent putt-putting of Hangtown’s vintage motorcycle Mitch could hear the big bulldozers flattening a nearby stretch of forest. And then he could see them-they were like giant, grotesque yellow insects devouring the landscape in starved bites. A tastefully lettered billboard announced that this soon-to-be ex-forest was soon-to be “Sweet Hollow Farms, a Bruce Leanse Concept for Living, featuring 23 Grand Manor homes.” Mitch had seen the glowing ad for the development in his paper’s real estate section. Each home, it promised, would enjoy its own seven-acre wooded parcel, classic architecture, handcrafted detail. Floor plans ranged in size from 5,800 to 7,600 square feet.
Prices started at $1.35 million.
As the great Wendell Frye wheeled past the workmen on his Indian Chief, cutting quite the raffish figure in his leather helmet and goggles, several of them waved and gave him appreciative thumbs-up.
In response, he treated them to a good look at his own upraised middle finger.