“Tell me, do your old Vassar classmates know that you’ve taken to Dumpster diving in your golden years?”
“We can get good money for them,” Maddee plowed on, undeterred. “Or at the very least take them to the Goodwill bins behind Christiansen’s Hardware. And honestly, Bertha, I do wish you’d called us about that mouse. Dex would have been only too happy to-”
“Make another sixty percent of my life’s savings disappear?” Bertha demanded, turning savage. “Once was enough, thank you.”
Maddee’s eyes widened in shock, her magenta lips drawing back in a frozen grin that reminded Des way too much of death rictus. Blinking back tears, she scampered out of there.
“There,” sniffed Bertha, “goes the cheapest damned woman I’ve ever met.”
“Maybe she just cares about the environment.”
“Like hell. Maddee Farrell’s not eco-anything. She’s simply a needy pest. Honestly, if I ever end up like her, I sincerely hope that someone will shoot me.”
“Mrs. Peck, I’m always here if you need me. But disposing of a mouse is really something you should be calling Augie about.” Meaning Augie Donatelli, the live-in caretaker.
Bertha made a face. “That beery do-nothing? I did phone his apartment. He didn’t answer. Wasn’t on the premises. Never is when I need him.”
“Did you try his cell phone? He carries it with him at all times.” Des happened to know this because the man was in the habit of speed dialing her four, five, six times a day to tell her how to do her job. Augie was a retired New York City police detective and full-time pain in the butt.
“He didn’t answer his cell phone either. He’s probably passed out drunk somewhere. I swear, when his contract comes up for renewal I’m going to make certain that the condo board cans him.” Bertha batted her big, saucer eyes at Des. “But thank you for coming, dear. You’re the one person who I know I can always count on.”
Des returned downstairs and headed out back, to the row of garages. Augie’s was the last one on the right. It was a double garage. His apartment upstairs was reached by a wooden staircase inside. Augie’s shiny red Pontiac GTO muscle car from the sixties was parked inside, along with the John Deere riding mower and Gator utility vehicle that he used if and when he felt like working. Which he actually was as Des approached. The ex-cop was firing up the Gator, his left hand wrapped around a tall can of Ballantine Ale. The man had to be good for eighteen cans a day. He kept a supply in an old refrigerator next to his workbench.
“Mr. Donatelli…?!” she called out to him over the roar of the Gator.
He shut off the engine, grinning at her wolfishly. Augie Donatelli had to be the most gleefully obnoxious sexist she’d ever met. The Notorious P.I.G. positively rolled around in the inappropriateness of his behavior. “I thought I told ya to call me Augie, sugar pie,” he sprayed at her in his juicy Brooklyn bray.
“And I thought we had an understanding.”
Augie took a swig of his ale. “We did?”
“You were going to be reachable by cell so I wouldn’t keep getting nine-one-oned by Bertha Peck. Mice are your deal, not mine.”
“Don’t know nothing about that,” he grumbled, rubbing a hand over his unshaven face. Augie was in his mid-fifties, with snaggly yellow teeth and brown eyes that were bleary and red-rimmed. His face was battered and bent-nosed. His droopy moustache, which harkened back to the Serpico Seventies, was flecked with gray. So was his black hair, which he wore unusually long. Almost to his shoulders. He wasn’t particularly tall, but his shoulders were heavy and the arms that stuck out of his too-snug black T-shirt looked powerful. He had on a pair of ragged blue jean cut-offs, white tube socks and a pair of old-school Pumas. “But, hey, I’ll get right on it,” he promised, draining his Ballantine.
“You’re too late. It’s already done.”
“So why are you busting my chops?” He fetched himself a fresh can from the refrigerator, moving with the cocky ease of a man who’d spent his entire career refusing to be intimidated by anyone.
“Bertha is talking about terminating your contract, that’s why.”
“I’m guessing you have a little something to do with that. Am I right, homegirl?”
“Wrong. That’s not how I roll. And I am not your homegirl.”
Their relationship had been antagonistic from day one. The very first words he’d said to her were, “Hey, mama, can I get some fries with that shake?” Her very first words in reply: “How would you like to spend the rest of the afternoon searching the driveway for your teeth?”
And it had gone straight downhill from there. Augie was always trying to goad her. Part of him was just kidding around. But not all of him. His eyes, when he turned serious, were cold, forbidding holes. Augie had a definite problem with the likes of Des wearing a uniform. She didn’t know if it was because of her pigment, her gender or both. Didn’t care, actually. The man was an ass.
He started up the Gator, Ballantine in hand, and eased it over to the Farrells’ garage, which was open. Big, plastic tubs full of nickel deposit bottles were stowed in there next to their long, white Cadillac. On a Ping-Pong table there were a dozen or more black plastic trash bags stuffed with old clothing. Each bag had a label on it that read something like Women’s Sweaters: Petites, Men’s Shirts: Mediums or Goodwill. A cord of seasoned firewood was stacked against the back wall.
Augie began to fill the Gator’s box-shaped cargo bed with armloads of wood. “That skinny old bitch Mrs. Farrell accosts me this morning and tells me they must have firewood on their porch right away.” He paused to belch audibly. “I say to her, ‘Lady, it’s ninety effing degrees out.’ But her husband positively swears the weather’s going to turn sharply colder next week. And she says he chills easily. Must be that blue blood of his. Me, I’m a hot-blooded Mediterranean. I never get cold. Never screw people out of their life’s savings either. If it weren’t for that bastard, I’d be out fishing right now-maybe some nice, long-legged babe rubbing suntan lotion on my back. Instead, I have to put up with them and their crap. Get this-I was out sweeping the front walk this morning, maybe seven-thirty. I come back and I find that skinny old bitch in my apartment. You’ll never guess what she was doing.”
“Rummaging through your trash?”
“Exactamundo. She ain’t all there, you ask me. And, boy, does she have her nose up in the air. Her and all of the other rich old broads in this town. You say hello to them and they act like you just took a leak on their shoes.”
“Mr. Donatelli…”
“It’s Augie.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Working. Why, what does it look like I’m doing?”
“I mean here in Dorset.”
“Oh…” His face went slack. “My missus, Gina, always wanted to retire to a cozy little New England village. All those years in Mineola she kept saving brochures, magazine articles. It was her dream. But she never got the chance. The cancer got her.”
“Is that why you retired from the NYPD?”
“That is none of your damned business.”
She’d run a computer background check on him at the Troop F barracks. Detective Lieutenant Augie Donatelli had received four commendations for valor during his career. He’d been working out of the 24^th Precinct on Manhattan’s Upper West Side last year when he chose to retire after twenty-six years on the job.
“I’m here for the both of us,” he grunted as he toted one more armload of wood to the Gator. His gait was not entirely steady. He was at least a six-pack into the Ballantine. “The job was dead to me. The city was dead to me. House was empty. So here I am, sugar pie. You got a problem with that?”
“No, Augie, I don’t.”
He got back in behind the wheel of the Gator, grinning at her. “Good, because I think I’ve got a break in our flasher case.”
Des immediately felt herself tighten up inside. “I thought we had an understanding about that, too. You’re not on the job anymore. And I don’t discuss ongoing investigations with members of the public.”