The Hot Pink Farmhouse

by Unknown

  “Don’t be sorry about that, Mrs. Enman. Don’t even think about it.”

  “But I have such a favor to ask. That is, if you don’t mind . . .”

  “Of course not. Anything.”

  “Will you take me with you when you go to her funeral?”

  Mitch sighed inwardly and said, “Absolutely. I’ll be happy to.”

  Dorset’s town hall was a sober two-story brick building with dignified white columns, a flagpole and a squat bronze monument out front honoring the village’s Civil War dead.

  Inside, it smelled of musty carpeting, mothballs and Ben Gay. The office of First Selectman Paffin was just inside the front door. He kept his door open at all times—if anyone had something to say to him, they could simply walk right in. One of those quaint small-town New England customs that Dorset cherished.

  Ordinarily, Mitch found town hall to be about as lively as a wax museum. Today, its corridors were buzzing. People dashing in and out of one another’s offices, gathering in doorways for urgent conversations about Moose’s death, their voices animated, eyes shiny. Today, the natural order of things had been knocked utterly off-kilter.

  The town clerk’s office, where property deeds were recorded and kept, was all the way down at the end of the hall. Connect the dots, Jim Bolan had urged Mitch. Here were the dots.

  The town clerk was a chubby, pink-cheeked grandmother named Jessie Moffit. “Do the troopers have any idea what happened yet, Mr. Berger?” she asked Mitch eagerly.

  Which Mitch thought was a bit odd, since he and Jessie had never actually met before. He drew two conclusions from this, just in case he’d harbored any doubts. One was that everyone in Dorset knew him when they saw him, and two was that the new resident trooper was wasting her hard-earned money at the Frederick House. They all knew.

  “Not yet,” Mitch replied. “But I’m sure they will.”

  The property deeds were kept in a walk-in fireproof vault that looked as if it belonged in Dodge City, stuffed full of gold. Hanging from an inside wall was a U.S. Geological Survey map of Dorset’s wetlands and estuaries. The plot plans were kept in an oversized map book. Jessie found him the map for the area of Connecticut River frontage where Hangtown lived, also the map encompassing Jim Bolan’s old farm and the proposed site for the new elementary school. The deeds were recorded and filed by an index number. To find out a property’s index number he had to look it up in the index book under the deed holder’s name. Which presented a problem since he was trying to learn the deed holder’s name.

  Not to worry, clucked Jessie, who sent him down the hall to the assessor’s office to dig up who had been paying taxes on the properties in question. After spending two hours there, combing through surveyer’s map books and grand lists, and another hour back in the vault, Mitch was able to piece together not only who owned the major parcels of undeveloped land surrounding the proposed school site but when they had taken title to them.

  Jim Bolan had not exaggerated. Huge chunks of land had changed hands in the past twenty-four months, just under three thousand acres of pasturage and forest in all—a vast amount of land for the precious Connecticut shoreline. The parcels formed a half-mile-wide ribbon between Route 156 and the river, bordered on the north by Uncas Pond and on the south by state forest. The ribbon was a continuous one, with the notable exception of Hangtown’s farm, which was situated right smack-dab in the middle and enjoyed the choicest river frontage.

  Jim Bolan’s old farm was now owned by an outfit called Great North Holdings of Toronto, Ontario. Great North also owned two other parcels, 88 acres and 232 acres apiece. Bruce Leanse owned some 400 acres in all. Twenty that he lived on. Ten that were earmarked for the new school. The rest were presently under development as housing sites. Pilgrim Properties of Boston, Massachusetts, had bought three parcels numbering 40 acres, 22 acres and 410 acres. Two more chunks of land, totaling 860 acres, were owned by Lowenthal and Partners of New York City. The remaining 600 acres belonged to Big Sky Development Corporation of Bozeman, Montana.

  A good start, Mitch reflected as he emerged, bleary-eyed, from the vault, feeling every inch like Erin Brockovich, minus the push-up bra. Now he’d have to find out who was behind all of these different companies, and what, if anything, they had in common. A journalism school buddy of his was a real estate reporter on the newspaper. In exchange for two seats to the premiere of the new Tom Cruise, she would tell Mitch how to track these people down.

  He ran into Dorset’s resident trooper on his way out. She was standing in the doorway of the conference room with her hands on her narrow hips, looking tall, trim and very lovely. “What’s up, Master Sergeant?” he asked, smiling at her.

  “Setting up a command center. What are you doing here?”

  “I spoke with Lacy this morning. I’m writing a story about this.”

  Des’s green eyes widened with surprise. “About Moose?”

  “That’s right,” he affirmed, nodding.

  She motioned for Mitch to join her in her office. It wasn’t an Emergency Services facility—just a community outreach cubbyhole where she tried to make herself available to the public for an hour every day. The walls were papered with public service posters for handgun safety, spousal abuse and drug prevention. There was a desk and a phone. Otherwise, the office was impersonal and bare.

  She sat down at the desk, shaking her head at Mitch when he started to close the door behind them.

  He pushed it back open and said, “Her death is just my jumping-off point. It’s really going to be about the changing face of a small New England town. The Leanse invasion, the battle over Center School, the Colin Falconer mess. What I’m searching for is how it all fits together.”

  “So you think it does?” she asked, glancing uneasily out at the hall every time someone walked by her door. An awful lot of people did, it seemed.

  “Oh, definitely,” Mitch responded. “I don’t believe things like this happen by coincidence. That’s the hallmark of mediocre screenwriting.”

  “Um, okay, this is the part where I remind you that we’re talking about real life, not a movie.”

  “I may need to interview you. Being the resident trooper and all. Oh, and I’ve got something for you from Hang-town . . .” Mitch told her what Wendell Frye had said he and Jim were doing when the red Porsche was blown off the road. “He’s hoping you’ll know how to handle it. He seems to feel you will.”

  Des sat back in her chair, making a steeple of her long fingers. She never painted her nails. Considered nail polish a frivolous affectation. “I’ll see what I can do. That’s the best I can give you.”

  “Is Jim really a suspect?”

  “Soave likes him.”

  “Soave?” Mitch frowned. “Wasn’t he your sergeant?”

  “Man’s got his own sergeant now.”

  “Hangtown thinks he’s an oaf. Muscle-bound cretin, to be exact.”

  “He’s a competent officer,” Des insisted, refusing to badmouth Soave to an outsider even though the guy had ratted her out to further his own career. She was strangely loyal that way.

  “Do you think he’ll arrest Jim?”

  “Too soon to say. They’re still collecting crime scene evidence.” Des filled him in on what she knew about the Barrett. “They’ll run a statewide search to see if anyone around here’s got one. Hit the gun dealers and shows, one by one,” she added, looking up again at the sound of footsteps.

  These belonged to Bob Paffin, the red-nosed, snowy-haired first selectman, who stood there in her doorway with a jovial grin on his long, horsey face. “Trooper Mitry, I’m sorry to interrupt if you’re having a personal conversation—”

  “I’m not,” she said crisply. “Mr. Berger is working on a story for his New York newspaper.”

  “Sure, Miss Enman says very nice things about you,” Bob Paffin said, shaking Mitch’s hand. “Awful business, this. Can put a real stain on a place. I hope you’ll be kind to our little town in your story. You’re one of us n
ow.”

  “It’s nice of you to say so,” said Mitch, who was well aware that he would never, ever be one of them, not if he lived in Dorset for the next fifty years and served on every board and commission that existed. He was a Jew from New York and he always would be.

  “What can I do for you, Bob?” Des asked the first selectman politely.

  “I got another call from a merchant this morning about those boys,” Paffin told her. “They spray-painted more of their obscene graffiti last night.”

  “Where was it this time?” asked Des, sighing.

  “Tyler Brandt’s fish market. I can’t even begin to describe the anatomical filth they drew on that poor fellow’s window . . .” Paffin shuffled his feet uneasily. “I’d really like to assure the local merchants that you’re making some genuine progress on this. May I tell them that the Mod Squad’s days are numbered? Would that be an appropriate thing to say?”

  Des narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m working on it.”

  “I’m sure you are,” he said soothingly. “No criticism intended. Everyone is thrilled with the job you’re doing. But it would go a long, long way toward cementing folks’ comfort level with you if you were able to bring these boys to heel—and soon.”

  “I am well aware of that,” Des said, raising her voice slightly. Des did not like to be pressured. Mitch had learned this about her. “And I am working on it.”

  “Good, good. Well . . . keep it up.” And with that, Dorset’s first selectman skedaddled back down the hall to his own office.

  The two of them sat there in tight silence for a moment. More than anything, Mitch wanted to take her hand and squeeze it, to touch her, feel her. But she had an iron-clad rule against Public Displays of Affection. “You’re having a real problem with Moose’s murder, aren’t you?” he asked her. “Sitting on the sidelines is not exactly your style.”

  “That’s something I’ll just have to work through,” she conceded, looking through her eyelashes at him. “How about you? Not like you to seek out a story this raw, is it? I know you wrote about your landlady, but that was different. That happened to you. This didn’t.”

  “Yes, it did,” Mitch countered. “That’s what it means to live here—if something happens to one person, it happens to you. You’re involved, whether you want to be or not. I learned a very valuable lesson today, Des.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “When you live in Dorset, everything is personal.”

  • • •

  Someone was waiting for Mitch at the security gate that blocked public access out to Big Sister Island.

  That someone was Takai Frye, who was standing there next to Moose’s old Land Rover trying in vain to buzz his house. A brisk, chilly wind was blowing off the Sound, and Takai wore nothing more than a green silk dress and teetery high-heeled sandals. No jacket or sweater. Not so much as a stitch under her dress, either. Her nipples, hardened by the cold, poked indecently right on through the flimsy silk.

  “I was j-just t-trying to buzz you,” she said to him, her teeth chattering.

  “Where’s your jacket?” Mitch asked, remembering the beautiful shearling she’d had on yesterday.

  “I left it somewhere,” she answered vaguely, shivering. “You’re p-probably wondering what I-I’m doing here.”

  “You mean, aside from freezing to death?”

  “I’m afraid to be at home, Mitch. Out here, it’s safe.”

  “Aren’t the police watching your house?”

  She nodded. “But they can’t watch the woods. Or all of father’s secret goddamned passageways. C-can we talk?”

  “Absolutely. Hop in.”

  Takai grabbed her suede shoulder bag from the front seat of the Land Rover and got in the truck with him. He drove across the causeway and led her inside the cottage. She stood in the center of the living room, gazing somewhat dumbly out at his view. He went and got a pair of heavy wool socks as well as a fisherman’s knit sweater that Des was known to borrow from time to time. He brought these to her and lifted her bag off her shoulder so she could throw the sweater on over her head.

  Her bag was surprisingly heavy, and it landed with a metallic thunk when Mitch set it down on the table. He drew back from it, frowning.

  Takai showed him what was inside. It was a gun. A small, trim Smith & Wesson model called a Ladysmith.

  “Is that thing loaded?” he asked her, gulping. He was not comfortable around guns. Guns went off.

  “Always,” she said determinedly. “In my job, I sometimes have to be alone in some pretty isolated houses with some pretty strange characters.”

  “By characters you mean men.”

  “And they get ideas.”

  “And you discourage them.”

  “No one is going to hurt me.” Takai sat now in his one good chair, kicked off her sandals and crossed her bare legs so she could put on Mitch’s heavy wool socks, thereby affording him a fine view. Her legs were exceptionally long and shapely and smooth. “Not that I’ve ever had to use it, mind you.”

  “Do you know how to?”

  “What’s to know? You point and click, just like Ameritrade.”

  “Are you hungry? Can I get you anything to eat?”

  “Not for me, thanks.”

  Mitch put coffee on and rummaged around in the fridge for his pot of leftover American chop suey, wondering what it was that she wanted from him. Takai Frye was someone who would always want something. He grabbed a fork and returned to the living room, shoveling hungrily from the pot. “I didn’t have any lunch,” he explained between mouthfuls. “Plus I eat when I’m nervous, which accounts for my appearance.”

  She watched him hoover down his cold concoction, frowning prettily. “I’m making you nervous?”

  “I would think that you make just about everyone nervous.”

  “Now I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.”

  “I’m not trying to insult you, believe me.”

  Takai got up out of the chair, all woolly and warm, and padded over toward the windows. “This is a darling cottage. I can see why you’d never want to leave. And the views. God, if a developer ever got his hands on this island . . .”

  Mitch took some kindling out of Hangtown’s old copper bucket and started building a fire in the fireplace. “That can’t happen. It’s been declared a historic landmark, thanks to the lighthouse.”

  “How did you manage to get title to it?”

  “Friend of the family.”

  “It helps to have friends.”

  “It sure does.”

  “I admire you, Mitch,” Takai said suddenly, smiling at him. “You don’t lead a conventional life. I’ve tried to do that, too, in my own way. I never wanted to be ordinary like . . . like Moose was. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a teacher. I just . . . I don’t ever want to be average.”

  “You’re not,” Mitch said, watching her carefully. She seemed to be starting the slow, painful process of dealing with her sister’s death. He laid a couple of logs in and lit a match. The fire caught right away, snapping and crackling and lighting up the room with its golden glow. “How do you take your coffee?”

  “Black.”

  He went in the kitchen and filled two cups, dumping a generous slug of chocolate milk into his. Takai was back in the chair when he returned with them. She took a grateful sip and set hers down on his coffee table, which he’d made by bolting a storm window onto an old rowboat. Clemmie moseyed over for a sniff, thought about testing out Takai’s lap, but opted for the kibble bowl instead.

  Takai watched the cat disappear into the kitchen. “I don’t have any friends. All I had was Moose. And now she’s gone and I—” She broke off, her voice choking with emotion. “Whoever did that to her was after me, Mitch. It’s my fault!”

  “You didn’t pull the trigger. You’re not responsible for what someone else did.”

  “Yes, I am,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.

  Mitch stared at
the fire in silence for a moment, wondering once again why she was here. “Any idea who it was?”

  “God, take your pick,” she answered bitterly. “Everyone in Dorset despises me. I’m an aggressive, independent woman. I know what I want and I go after it. They don’t like that. They don’t like it at all.”

  She wasn’t totally off-base, Mitch considered, remembering the old Bette Davis adage about Hollywood: If a man puts his foot down they call him a strong-willed professional who cares. If a woman does it, they call her a bitch.

  “But there is one person in particular . . .” Takai admitted, reaching for her coffee. “I did something a while back that I’m not very proud of, Mitch. I told the state police that Jim Bolan was growing marijuana on his farm. I did it anonymously. Called them from a pay phone. But ever since it happened, well, Jim’s convinced I’m the one who did it.”

  “Why did you?”

  Takai shrugged her narrow shoulders inside the chunky sweater. “I knew someone who wanted the property, and I delivered it. Strictly business.”

  “Was that someone Bruce Leanse?”

  She didn’t respond, just sipped her coffee, clutching the mug tightly in both hands.

  Mitch watched her, the purpose of her visit clear to him now. “You want me to pass this information on to the resident trooper, is that it?”

  “I’m afraid, Mitch!” she cried out. “What if he was trying to pay me back? What if he comes after me again?”

  “It wasn’t Jim,” Mitch assured her. “Your father told me that the two of them were getting high together when it happened.”

  “Father’s lying,” Takai said with sudden savagery.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Jim’s his hands, that’s why. If they put him away, Father won’t be able to work. And that’s all that matters to him. When it comes to people, forget it. He is beyond cruel. He drove my poor mother to a nervous breakdown with his abusiveness. And when he drank he used to beat her up. She was a sweet, gentle soul. A great beauty. And she ended up all alone out in California, working as a cashier in a Rexall drugstore in Laguna Beach. He wouldn’t give her one cent. What little money she had she got from me. I even had to pay for her funeral.”