“How long had this been going on?”
He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Three, four months.”
“Her not coming home last night,” Des said. “Did it occur to you that-?”
“That she was with him? Sure it did. Except that she never, ever did that to me before. She never just disappeared for a whole night. I mean, she didn’t want me to know about it, okay? Me or anyone else. Dorset’s a small town. Everyone knows you. If you’re sneaking around in this place, you have to be incredibly careful.” Will reached for his half-empty coffee cup. “One other thought did cross my mind,” he admitted, sipping from it. “I thought maybe… that she’d run off with him. Left me for good. Our bank has one of those automated eight-hundred numbers you can call day or night to find out your current balance. I called it to see if she’d withdrawn anything from our joint checking account.”
“Had she?”
“No.”
“You say you kept a joint checking account. Who paid the monthly bills?”
“Me, usually.”
“So you would typically see her credit card statements?”
“I guess,” he replied, frowning. “Why?”
“Will, Donna paid for the bungalow at the Yankee Doodle with her Visa card. Is this something that would have caught your eye when you sat down to pay the bills?”
“Most likely. I mean, yeah. Definitely.”
“What would you have thought when you saw it?”
“Well, I know what sort of a reputation the place has, if that’s what you’re asking me.”
“Maybe she was planning to intercept next month’s statement and pay it herself. Does that seem reasonable?”
“Des, why does any of this matter?”
“Because her behavior last night wasn’t typical, that’s why. Like you said, she’d been so careful to hide this affair from you, and yetshe showed up at the Yankee Doodle at ten o’clock. She had to know she’d get home late enough to set off alarm bells with you. Now, why did she do that? And why didn’t she pay cash?”
“Maybe she was out of cash,” he replied helplessly. “Maybe she was feeling horny and reckless. Who knows, she may have been drunk as a skunk.”
“Did she have a problem with alcohol?”
“No! I’m just trying to…” Will broke off into heavy silence. “I honestly don’t know what she was doing there at that hour, okay?”
“Okay, Will,” Des said gently.
She heard the rumble of an engine outside now and went to the window. Mitch’s old plum-colored pickup truck was bouncing its way up the dirt drive. She went out onto the sagging porch to greet him, her gallant, uncombed love, her pudgy white knight in his frayed oxford button-down and shlumpy khaki shorts.
“How is he?” he asked, giving her a quick bear hug.
“Not so good.”
“God, I am hating this,” he murmured glumly. Then he took a deep breath and went charging in the front door with a smile forced onto his face, Des on his heel. “Whoa, it’s like a meat locker in here, Will,” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands together. “Your place is just as bad as mine. Zero insulation, am I right?”
Will scarcely seemed to notice Mitch. Just sat slumped there on the loveseat, lost in his grief.
Mitch clomped over to the stove to warm his hands, glancing at his friend uncertainly. “I’m really sorry about Donna.”
The mention of her name seemed to rouse Will. “Thanks, man,” he said hoarsely. “How… was the beach this morning?”
“I didn’t walk,” Mitch replied.
“Yeah, me neither.” Will ran a hand over his face, his eyes filling with tears. “I don’t think I’m going to make it, Mitch. I really don’t.”
Mitch came over and put his hand on Will’s shoulder. “That’s exactly how I felt when I lost Maisie. I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, Will, but you’re going to make it. It’ll get a little better every day, I promise you.”
“I can’t even see tomorrow,” Will confessed. “All I can see is that I’m all alone. Donna was my everything… my best friend. My soul mate. My partner.”
Mitch drew back from him, startled.
Des couldn’t imagine why. Perhaps he had once said those very words himself about Maisie. “I’ll be heading out now, Will,” she spoke up.
Will nodded absently, saying nothing to her.
She motioned for Mitch to join her out on the porch.
He did, closing the door softly behind him. “Whew, this is not going to be a lot of fun.”
“Not even close,” she said, putting her big hat back squarely on her head. “Just wanted to let you know I’m heading up to Boston now.”
“You going to talk to Abby?”
“Yeah.”
“Give her my regards. And, hey, if you go through Cambridge on your way back, stop at East Coast Grill and pick up a large quantity of their eastern North Carolina shredded pork, okay? We can have it for dinner when you get home. Trust me, it’s outstanding.”
She cocked her head at him curiously. “Man, how can you think about barbecue at a time like this?”
“I’m not like you. Food is all I think about when I’m upset, remember?”
“That’s not something I forget, believe me.”
“East Coast Grill,” he repeated. “It’s on Cambridge Street, just off of Prospect. Anyone will be able to give you directions. And, please, whatever you do, don’t take that damned Ninety-five the whole way up. Get off at exit seventy-four, take Three-ninety-five through Norwich and then change to the-”
“Mitch, I know how to get to Boston from here.”
“Promise me you won’t take Ninety-five,” he said urgently.
“Why is my route so damned important?”
“Because there’s a fatality on that highway at least three times a week and I love you and I don’t want to lose you.”
She utterly melted. Never had a man made her go gooey the way this one did. She leaned over and kissed him softly on the cheek. “Okay, I promise.”
“I don’t get it, Des,” he said, shaking his head in bewilderment. “Why would someone want to kill Donna? What the hell’s going on here?”
“Boyfriend,” she sighed, “I wish I knew.”
As Des steered her cruiser back down Route 156 she gave Yolie a heads-up on her cell phone about Donna’s so-called catering gig and her black leather date book. Des also fed her the name of the Durslags’ late-shift man, Rich Graybill. Yolie agreed that he was definitely someone worth talking to. She said she’d also hook up with his girlfriend, Kimberly Fiore, to see if Kimberly backed up what time Rich got home.
Before Des got onto the highway for Boston she pulled in at the Acar’s minimart and got out to fill up her gas tank.
Nuri came out at once to do it for her, dressed in his customary white shirt and slacks. “Good morning to you, Trooper,” he said politely. His eyes were not nearly so polite. Once again, they were working their way over and around every single inch of her body. “Shall I fill it up?”
“Yes, please,” she responded, shuddering slightly. She felt positively creeped by this man. She spotted Nema inside through their sparkling new front window and waved to her. Nema waved back, smiling broadly. “Have you had any further problems, Mr. Acar?”
“Not a one, as I anticipated,” he replied, starting in on her windshield with a soapy squeegee. “Everyone has been most supportive. Most particularly my fellow members of the Dorset Merchants Association, who have agreed to offer a cash reward of one thousand dollars to anyone who can provide useful information regarding the identity of these vandals.”
Des leaned against the side of the cruiser with her arms crossed. “You folks had your monthly meeting last night, am I right?”
“That is correct,” he said, clearing the soap from the window withcareful, precise movements. “At the Clam House. The surf-and-turf combo is particularly delicious, in my opinion.”
“Did you happen to see Donna Durslag there?”<
br />
“I sat right next to her,” he said easily. No hesitation or tinge of color to his cheeks, no nervous glance over his shoulder at his wife. “Very nice lady, Mrs. Durslag. So full of personality. Jolly is an appropriate word for her, is it not?”
“So she seemed in good spirits to you?”
“She did. Very upbeat and pleasant.”
“What did you two talk about?”
“Nothing very specific. Local business concerns. Tourism and so forth.”
“Do you remember what she had on?”
Now Nuri Acar glanced at her curiously, aware that her interest in Donna was more than casual. “A white dress, I believe. It was not anything fancy.”
“Like a peasant dress?”
“If you wish.”
“Did she happen to say anything about where she was going afterward?”
“I don’t believe so, no.” Nuri dumped the squeegee back in its soapy tub and returned to the gas pump nozzle, gripping it tightly as he finished filling her tank. “Why do you wish to know so much about Mrs. Durslag?”
“What did you do after the meeting broke up, Mr. Acar?”
“I came back here to help Nema. We stay open until ten.”
“What time did you get here?”
“Perhaps nine-fifteen,” he said, as the nozzle clunked to a halt. Her tank was full. “That will be twenty-two dollars even, please.”
“You came straight here?” she asked, handing him her credit card.
Nuri took it from her, scowling. “What is the point of this, young lady?”
“Mr. Acar, if you have anything at all to tell me, it’ll go down a whole lot better if you do it before rather than after.”
“After what, may I ask?”
“After I say out loud that Donna Durslag was murdered last night.”
Nuri’s eyes widened. “My goodness gracious. By who?”
“By her boyfriend,” Des replied, raising her chin at him. “Whoever he is.”
“I was not involved with that woman,” he shot back. “And I resent your insinuation.”
“I insinuated nothing. You asked me a question, I answered it.”
“How dare you doubt my veracity?” he demanded, highly indignant. Or staging one hell of an imitation, especially for someone who was so overtly smarmy. “I am a respectable businessman. A married man. How dare you?”
“I simply have a job to do, Mr. Acar.”
“Then you have a filthy, horrible job. A proper young lady would not hold such a job. She would not.” Glowering, he turned on his heel and sped inside to run her credit card. Service without a smile.
Des got back in her cruiser and waited calmly for him to return.
When he did, he refused to make eye contact with her. She was too far beneath him.
“I carry a pooper-scooper, Mr. Acar,” she explained as she signed the credit card slip. “I’m the girl who cleans up after the other human beings. You’re right-sometimes it’s not a very nice job. We’re not a very nice animal. In fact we’re the cruelest, most thoughtless animal on the planet. I try not to let it get to me, but, wow, some mornings it just turns me all upside down.” She tore off her copy and handed his back to him, treating him to her biggest smile. “You have yourself a good one, okay?”
Abby Kaminsky lived plenty large when she was on tour.
The best-selling children’s author had herself a condo-sized suite on the ninth floor of the highly choice Four Seasons Hotel on Boylston Street, complete with a drop-dead view of the lush green Public Garden, the Common, and Beacon Hill. It was a bright, crisp New England afternoon, the sky a deep blue, the clouds puffy and white. Off in the distance, the Charles River shimmered in the sunlight.
“It’s like I told you on the phone,” Abby chattered gaily as she showed Des in. “I am insanely busy today. I can only give you a few minutes. I have two bookstore appearances, a radio call-in show, and then I’m talking fish with the Zoom kids.” Jeff Wachtell’s estranged wife was a bustling, impeccably groomed little thing with a frosted head of architecturally designed, stay-put hair that made her seem a bit taller than she really was, which was barely five feet tall. “A stylist will be here in twenty minutes to make me gorgeous. It’s just a really tight, tight day.”
“Understood,” Des said. “I appreciate you squeezing me in.”
There was a fruit basket and a bouquet of flowers in the living room. There was a portable wardrobe rack full of Armani linen suits and silk blouses. There was a life-sized cardboard cutout of Abby clutching her new Carleton Carp book under a balloon caption that read: Go Fish!
And there was a goateed no-neck seated on the sofa, drinking a diet soda and staring at a rerun of Baywatch on the television.
“This is my escort,” Abby said. “Frankie, say hello to Resident Trooper Mitry. She’s come here all the way from Dorset, Connecticut.”
Frankie gave Des a brief nod, barely bothering to look her way. He was too busy maintaining his cultivated air of bad-assdom.
One whiff and Des could smell yard all over him. “Glad to know you, Frankie,” she said pleasantly. “Your last name is?…”
He glowered in silence for a long moment before he said, “Ramistella.”
“You work out of New York?”
“Bay Ridge.”
“What’s your address?”
He gave it to her, peering up at Des now with eyes that were heavy lidded and immensely hostile. “Why so many questions?”
“Behave, Frankie,” Abby ordered him. “She’s just doing her job. You need to leave us alone now, okay? Go take a walk or something. And have the car ready for me downstairs at two sharp.”
He got up very deliberately, turned off the TV, and started for the door.
“Oh, hey, cookie?” Abby called after him. “Take my cutout, will you?”
Grimacing with disdain, Frankie carried the cardboard Abby out of the room under his arm, shutting the door softly behind him.
“Can I get you anything from the minibar, Trooper?” Abby asked her. “Water, juice?”
“I’m all set, thanks.”
Abby sat on the sofa and kicked off her little pumps, one stocking leg folded under her, a box of Cocoa Pebbles kids’ cereal cradled in her lap. She reached inside for a handful and munched on it. “Want some? What am I saying? Of course you don’t. Pebbles are my own thing,” she explained merrily. “Can’t help myself. Now what can I do for you?”
Des took off her hat and sat in an armchair across the coffee table from her. “You can tell me where you’ve been the past couple of nights.”
“Sure, I can do that,” Abby said easily, chomping on her cereal. “Only let me ask you something first-why do you want to know this?”
“Because we’re trying to ascertain the whereabouts of anyone and everyone who was involved with Tito Molina.”
“Oh, sure, I get it,” she said, nodding her head of hair. “You found out that I had a little, a-a thing with Tito. Did Chrissie tell you? No, wait, it was your boyfriend, wasn’t it? It was Mitch.”
Des didn’t bother to answer her.
“It’s okay, Crissie’s told me all about Mitch and you. And now that I’ve met you both I must say you are the last two people in the world I’d guess would ever end up in the feathers together. I mean, talk about an odd couple. You’re black, he’s Jewish. He’s a critic, you’re a cop. You’re skinny, he’s… not.” Abby wagged a manicured finger at Des, her big blue eyes gleaming. “You know, you two would make a terrific pair of fish.”
Des let out a laugh. “I’ll make sure to pass that one along to him.”
“No, no, I’m serious. I’ve been wanting to get more racial for sometime. The inner city kids need role models. And you’re so tall and gorgeous and self-assured. Seriously, I am adoring this. May I use you?”
“I can’t imagine anything more flattering-just as long as you don’t name me something like Hallie Butts.”
“Cookie, I am stealing that!” Abby squealed with d
elight. “You are so lucky, you know that? Mitch is one you’ll never, ever have to worry about. Trust me, I personally road tested him.”
“Road tested him?”
“I came on to him like gangbusters yesterday,” she confided, girl to girl. “Did everything but dive under the table and go for his zipper with my teeth. See, when I’m tour I can get a little, you know, horny. But I could not generate so much as a mild whiff of interest out of him. That one is a keeper, believe me.”
“Oh, I believe you,” Des said, wondering what America’s parents would think if they found out that their kids’ favorite author was a little bit nutty and a whole lot slutty. “So about your activities these past couple of nights…”
“Okay, sure.” Abby folded her little hands in her lap and took a deep breath, collecting herself. “I got home to New York from my tour the day Tito died. I was on the six p.m. flight from Los Angeles.” She gave Des the name of the airline and what time it had left L.A.
“Was Frankie with you?”
“He sure was. I can’t travel alone anymore. Too many kids want to talk to me and touch me. Puh-leeze…” Abby shivered, fanning herself with fluttering fingers. “A limo met us at the airport to bring me home. Frankie helped me shlep all of my stuff upstairs-I had to take a ton of clothes.”
“Where do you live?”
She gave Des her address on Riverside Drive. It was a doorman building on the corner of West Ninety-first Street.
“What time did you get settled in?”
“Maybe eight.”
“Did Frankie stick around?”
“No, he took the limo on home.”
“And how did you spend your evening?”
Abby got up suddenly and padded over to the window in her stocking feet, silent as a kitten on the plush carpet. “I realize this is going to sound terrible, but I can’t lie to you because I happen to be the soul of honesty-except for when I’m not. You do believe me, don’t you?”
“I really couldn’t say. So far, you’ve told me jack.”
“You’re absolutely right,” Abby admitted, letting out a nervous laugh. “The truth is, I was in Dorset. I-I’ve been in Dorset a lot lately.”
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