The Hot Pink Farmhouse

by Unknown

  “I’m sure they will,” Des said. “They have a top man on the case.”

  She had passed along to Soave the information Mitch had picked up from the Frye family. That Takai had been the one who’d informed on Jim, costing him his farm and thereby giving him a reason for wanting her dead. That Hangtown could alibi him for the time of the murder—the two of them were getting high together, which violated Jim’s parole but surely ranked as the least of his worries right now. Des couldn’t help wondering how it all hung together. Were Takai’s fears of Jim warranted? Was Hangtown lying to protect him? Had Jim been the one perched up on that granite outcropping with the Barrett? Why the Barrett? Why such devastating firepower?

  Melanie’s timer went off now, ending their rest break. Des returned to her easel as the others trickled back in. As soon as Paul Weiss had shut the door behind him, Melanie discreetly disrobed and returned to the platform, where she stretched out on her side, one arm outreached, the other folded beneath her neck. Her back was arched, her chubby toes pointed. It was a languorous, provocative pose that emphasized the generous curves of her hips and buttocks.

  Des was just getting her placed on the page when somebody pushed open the studio door without knocking and barged right in. It was Soave, who stood frozen there in the doorway with his eyeballs bulging. He simply could not believe that he was in a public place staring at a naked woman.

  Paul Weiss immediately demanded to know what he wanted.

  Des, who had left word where she’d be if Soave needed her, flung her stick down and led him out into the corridor, closing the door behind them.

  “Wow, I could get into art big-time,” he said to her eagerly.

  “Grow up, Rico,” she snapped. “That is so not mature.”

  “What’s her name, anyway? Could I meet her?”

  “What you could do is shut up. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  Soave held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “My bad. Sorry.”

  “Is there something wrong with your setup over at town hall?” she demanded irritably.

  “No, it’s perfect. Got everything I need.”

  “Then what in the hell do you want?”

  “To touch base,” he explained, shrugging his muscle-bound shoulders.

  “Does it have to be right this minute?”

  “I’m afraid so. You don’t mind, do you?”

  They went in the lounge, where Soave flopped down on one of the sofas. There were tables to eat at, vending machines filled with junk food and truly awful coffee. The walls were crowded with drawings and watercolors that students had pinned up. Most were classroom exercises, a number of them astonishingly good. A young couple was slouched on one of the other sofas, eating take-out pizza. Otherwise, Des and Soave were alone in there.

  “I’ve been fighting off the media all day,” he complained wearily. “The TV people just nailed me at town hall. Wanted to know what we knew.”

  “How much did you give them?” Des asked, standing before him with her arms folded. She generally didn’t care for the way Soave handled himself under the bright lights. Rather than keeping his comments terse and specific, he was prone to making vague, empty promises that made him sound like a politician who was running for something.

  “I told them Jim Bolan is presently under house arrest,” he answered. “Pending the results of further investigation.”

  “You gave them Jim?” she asked, aghast. It qualified as a total rush to judgment, in her opinion. It would be several days before the forensics lab would know whether the DNA from the saliva on the cigarette butt matched Jim’s blood sample. “He tested positive for gunshot residue, is that it?”

  “So he wore gloves,” Soave growled at her. Translation: The residue test had turned up negative. “I still like him for it, Des. I like him large. He has motive, opportunity. He was a sniper in ’Nam. He’s done time.”

  “What about Wendell Frye’s alibi?”

  “It can be shaken,” Soave said confidently. “Who’s to say the old guy didn’t nod off for twenty, thirty minutes? He admits he was stoned. Maybe Jim even slipped a little something extra into his coffee. If that’s the case, we’ll find traces of it in the blood sample we took.” They’d taken it so they could test Hangtown’s DNA against the victims. “Besides which, we bagged us a pair of Jim’s boots in the mudroom, okay? The soles look like a dead-nuts match for the shoe impression we found up at the shooter’s roost. If we can make that stick, we’re in.”

  “Not without the gun, Rico. Without the gun you’re still a dollar short.”

  “We’ll find the gun,” he insisted. “You ask me, it’s still around there somewhere. Trouble is, that old man’s house has a million way creepy secret passageways. Plus he has that studio out in the barn, full of blowtorches, welders, saws—Jim could have broken the Barrett down into bits.”

  “You still have to find them.” Des tapped her foot impatiently, anxious to get back to class. “Otherwise, the state’s attorney will kick it right back at you.”

  “Maybe so,” admitted Soave, who didn’t seem anxious to go anywhere. Just sat there, smoothing his mustache. “I sent Tommy out for some dinner. He’s my cousin, and I love him, but I sure do wish I had a partner with a useful, functioning brain. Somebody I could riff with like you and me used to. Know what I mean?”

  Perfectly. The little man wanted her help on this, but he couldn’t ask her for it without swallowing his pride. Des, for her part, had no intention of making this easy for him. She didn’t exactly want him to beg but, well—yes, she did.

  “The thing is, Des, I can’t request a new partner or it’ll be a knock on me. That stuff matters—your ability to inspire loyalty from your subordinates.”

  “Yes, I remember how that works,” Des snarled at him between gritted teeth.

  Soave recoiled as if she’d slapped him. The man was totally taken aback by the sharpness of her tone.

  Des almost felt guilty for zinging him so hard. Almost, but not quite.

  Now her damned beeper went off. She went out to her cruiser to radio in, convinced that she would never be permitted to draw again. After she hung up she cleared her things out of the studio and changed into her uni in the ladies’ room. On her way out she stopped by the lounge. Soave was still flopped there on the sofa, his knees spread wide apart. He looked like a frog on steroids.

  “Want some backup?” he offered rather forlornly.

  “Not your kind of deal, Rico. Just routine community work.”

  “Hey, I don’t mind. We could go someplace and de-freak afterward. Get us a brewski and talk.”

  She paused, furrowing her brow at him. He seemed genuinely down. This was new for him. “Why don’t you go see Tammy?”

  “I told you—it’s Tawny.”

  “So why don’t you?”

  “We don’t talk,” he complained. “Not about serious things. We’re not real close that way.”

  “Well, you’ve got to work at it. Find common interests.”

  “Like what?”

  Des did consider telling him about that helpful new Web site: getalife.com. But she remained gracious. “Find something besides The Big Sweaty that you both like to do together.”

  He thought this over carefully. “Okay, sure. But tell me one thing before you go: What’s he got that I haven’t got?”

  “Who?”

  “Berger,” he replied. “The Jew.”

  Now it was Des who was taken aback. Although Soave had made a play for her after she and Brandon split up—he and every other so-called player on Major Crimes. Not a one got so much as a single soul kiss out of her. Just a healthy, neutered stray kitten for their trouble—Little Eva in Soave’s case, now known as Bridget. “Are you sure you want to go there?”

  “I really do,” Soave insisted. “I want to take something positive from the experience. I want to know where I come up short.”

  “Well, okay . . . Mitch Berger has brains, ethics, talent. And, let’s see, mat
urity, tenderness, warmth, sensitivity, taste, humor . . . Oh, and he’s hung like a horse, too,” she added sweetly.

  Soave looked hurt. “You can be real cruel sometimes, you know that?”

  “Don’t get sensitive on me, Rico,” she shot back. “You’ll mess up your portrait, and I don’t want to have to do you all over again.”

  Then she strode out of the lounge with her sketch pad and charcoals, leaving him slumped there on the sofa with his mouth open.

  The call came in from a woman named Felicity Beddoe, who lived in Somerset Ridge, a new development made up of a dozen elegant McMansions that had been carved out of the forest about a mile up the Old Post Road from Uncas Lake.

  Somerset Ridge was the sort of upscale cul-de-sac that Des was used to seeing in places like Fairfield and Stamford, which were within commuting range of New York. But the Internet was changing how people went about their business. More and more white-collar professionals telecommuted out of the house, and could live anywhere they wanted. They wanted to live in a place like Dorset.

  There was nothing casual about Somerset Ridge. Each majestic colonial was set back from the gently curving road behind lavish new fieldstone walls, artfully positioned young dogwoods and three or more acres of Chemlawn. The dogwoods out in front of the Beddoe house, she noticed, had green WE CARE ribbons tied to them.

  A long gravel driveway lined with carriage lanterns twisted its way up to a circular turnaround in front of the house, where Des parked and got out. One door in the three-car garage was open. Inside, there was a gold Lexus. She could hear the whine of a leaf blower coming from a neighbor’s place—someone trying to keep up with the fallen maple leaves. The Beddoes’s front walk was ankle-deep in them. Resisting a powerful girlish urge to go skipping through them, kicking them high in the air, Des plowed her way to the front door, which was flanked by decorative urns filled with assorted seasonal squashes and pumpkins. Most Martha Stewarty. She rang the bell.

  She was invited in by a slender whippet of a career woman in her early forties. The gray flannel business suit Felicity Beddoe had on was tailored perfectly. Her ash-blond hair, which was cropped stylishly short, shimmered in the light from the entryway chandelier. Felicity was quite attractive in a toothy, Saran-Wrap-tight sort of way, although right now she seemed tremendously frazzled. “I’m so sorry to drag you away from your dinner, trooper,” she apologized, leading Des quickly in the direction of the kitchen, her low Ferragamo heels clacking on the quarry-tile floor.

  “Not a problem,” said Des, following her. The living room and dining room had been furnished by an interior decorator. Everything was just so. “This is my job.”

  “Still, you must have better things to do than listen to some hysterical mother rant and rave,” Felicity said, her voice soaring with strain. This woman was more than frazzled, Des realized. She was truly terrified. Trembling with fear.

  She led Des into a cavernous gourmet kitchen. There was a sit-down center island topped with granite counters. A stew bubbled on the stove, and on the television The News-Hour with Jim Lehrer was busy dissecting North Korea. Felicity immediately flicked that off and turned down the stew. From a nearby room Des could hear the tentative, trembly trills of someone practicing the flute.

  She removed her hat and leaned a flank against the granite counter. “Now what can I do for you, Mrs. Beddoe?”

  Felicity said, “It’s just that Richard, my husband, is away on business. And this always seems to happen when he’s . . . And I just got home from work myself. And . . .”

  “Where is it you work?” Des asked pleasantly, trying to slow the poor woman down. She was sooo hyper. On a good day she probably got by on two hours of sleep and 240 calories. Today was clearly not a good day.

  “I’m with Pfizer,” she answered, swiping nervously at a loose strand of hair in her eyes. The pharmaceuticals giant had recently built a big research and development facility thirty miles away in Groton.

  “So you’re a chemist?” Des asked, twirling her hat in her fingers.

  “Who, me? God, no.” Felicity let loose a jagged, painful laugh. “I’m chief marketing weasel. Vice president of, to be exact. We haven’t been here long. Just moved here from Brussels. Richard’s an economist with the World Bank. He’s in London right now and I’m . . .” She trailed off, wringing her hands.

  “What happened this evening, Mrs. Beddoe?”

  “I had just gotten home,” she answered, her mouth tightening. “I was putting our dinner on. It’s just Phoebe and me. She’s our girl. She’s . . . Phoebe’s fourteen.”

  Des nodded, thinking how much house this was for three people. How many empty bedrooms did they have? Three? Four? What did they do with so many empty bedrooms?

  “Please believe me, trooper, I’m not looking to make trouble. But we have talked to him and talked to him and it has done no good. So I-I felt it was time to contact you. I honestly didn’t know how else to proceed. I’ve no experience in these matters. None. Zero.”

  “Exactly who are we talking about here, Mrs. Beddoe?” asked Des, shoving her horn-rimmed glasses back up her nose.

  “Jay Welmers,” she answered, her cheeks mottling. “Our neighbor.”

  Why did the name Welmers sound familiar? Des couldn’t place it offhand. “And what is it that he’s . . .?”

  “He’s a peeper,” Felicity blurted out. “I don’t know what else to call him—is ‘pervert’ more apt? He watches Phoebe through her bedroom window. Tonight, I-I caught him in our yard. There’s a granite ledge out behind the house. Phoebe was upstairs in her room doing her homework when she heard footsteps in the leaves back there. She called out to me. I flicked on the floodlights, thinking, hoping it might be deer. It was Jay, perched back there with a pair of binoculars. It was him. I know it was him.”

  “I see,” Des said, not liking where this was going at all. “Let’s talk to Phoebe, shall we?”

  Felicity called to her, and she appeared in the doorway to the study, clutching a flute in her small, soft hands. Phoebe Beddoe was no lubricious tartlet. She was a slender, serious little teenaged girl with large, moist brown eyes and smooth, shiny blond hair—the kind of hair that the sisters up in Hartford’s Frog Hollow section would kill for. She wore a baggy fleece sweater, sweatpants and fuzzy bedroom slippers. And Des had no doubt whatsoever that something had happened to her—the girl was pie-eyed with fear.

  Des smiled at her reassuringly. “Nice to meet you, Phoebe. I’m Resident Trooper Mitry, and I have to ask you something a little personal about this evening, okay?”

  Phoebe nodded at her, swallowing.

  “Did Mr. Welmers show you anything?”

  “Show me anything?” she repeated in a quavering voice.

  “Trooper, is this absolutely necessary?” Felicity cut in.

  “I have to know what I’m dealing with, Mrs. Beddoe,” Des explained. “Otherwise, I can’t help you. And I want to help you. You’re old enough to understand what I’m talking about, aren’t you, Phoebe?”

  The girl hesitated, then gave a short nod. “I guess.”

  “Well, did he?”

  “I don’t think so,” she replied, ducking her head. “No.”

  “Okay, thank you,” Des said. “That’s all I needed to know.”

  “Phoebe, will you please excuse us now?”

  The girl darted back into the study, her slippered feet barely making a sound.

  Felicity yanked a half-empty bottle of Sancerre out of the refrigerator and filled a goblet. She took a sip, her hand shaking. “I’m sorry, that . . . was not something I was emotionally prepared for.”

  “Why did you call me, Mrs. Beddoe?” Des asked, watching her closely.

  “Because I want something to be done about that man.”

  “You’ve had trouble with Mr. Welmers before, I take it.”

  Reluctantly, she nodded. “He always waits until Richard is out of town. And then he starts in again—watching Phoebe, saying things to her in the dri
veway.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Things that he’d like to do to her,” Felcity said angrily. “She’s just a child. It’s obscene. He’s obscene. And those two boys of his are absolute monsters!”

  Of course. Now Des knew why the name sounded familiar. “Have you told your husband what goes on when he’s away?”

  Felicity’s eyes widened. “Absolutely not.”

  “Why not?”

  She didn’t respond, aside from a brief shake of her head.

  “Are he and Jay friends?”

  “Not at all. That man’s been nothing but hostile toward us both since the day we moved in.”

  “Does Richard keep a handgun in the home?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re afraid he might try to use it on him, is that it?”

  “Yes,” she said once again, fainter this time.

  “If that’s the case, why don’t you let me hold on to it for a while?”

  “I can’t go behind Richard’s back that way. He would take it as a lack of trust on my part.”

  “I understand,” said Des. “Look, I’ll go have a talk with Mr. Welmers, okay? See if we can’t smooth this out. We’re all reasonable people here, right?”

  “Right,” Felicity said, lunging for her wine. “Absolutely. But please don’t . . .”

  “Don’t what, Mrs. Beddoe?”

  “I just. . .” Her face tightened into a mask of fear. “Never mind. Thank you.”

  Des showed herself out and went next door on foot, the whine of the leaf blower growing steadily louder as she made her way up Jay Welmers’s lantern-lined driveway. His own dogwoods, she noticed, were tied with red SAVE OUR SCHOOL ribbons. And his expanse of floodlit lawn had been blown completely free of leaves. It looked as spotless as a freshly vacuumed living room rug. Des had never quite understood the leaf-blower compulsion. It was one of those Man versus Nature hang-ups that baffled her. Plus the sound of the damned thing bore in at the base of her skull like an ice pick.