by Unknown
She found a middle-aged man busily blowing the leaves from his circular turnaround toward a swale at the base of the trees edging the property. His leaf blower was a hi-tech backpack unit that resembled a personal jet pack. He worked intently, wearing protective goggles over his eyes and earmuffs against the horrible racket he was producing.
The rottweiler that was chained to a post on the front porch started barking furiously at Des as she approached. None of which the man heard. She had to tap him on the arm to get his attention.
His gaze immediately hardened at the sight of her uniform. He shut down the unit and stripped off his earmuffs. “What is that woman complaining about now?” Jay Welmers demanded, instantly on the offensive. “Is it the noise? Is little Phoebe trying to practice her flute? I swear, some people you can’t please . . . Shut up, Dino!” he hollered at the barking dog.
The dog did not stop barking.
“Can we go inside, Mr. Welmers? We need to talk about a certain matter.”
“I can’t believe she called you. I’m just trying to spruce things up.”
“I understand, sir. Can we go inside?”
He grabbed hold of the dog so Des could get in the front door without having her ankle torn off. A bag of golf clubs was propped against the entry-hall closet door. Otherwise, the huge house was bare to the point of vacant. There was no furniture in the living room. No pictures on the wall. Not even any curtains.
Jay Welmers was in his fifties. He was a big man, at least six feet three, with a flabby gut and a red, choleric face. His wavy rust-colored hair was streaked with white. His eyes were blue, his hands freckly. He wore a yellow crew-neck sweater and a pair of those wool tartan plaid slacks that no black man on the face of the earth would ever be caught wearing. Jay looked as if he was fresh off the eighteenth hole at the country club. Or make that the nineteenth hole—he reeked of alcohol.
He led her back toward the den, their footsteps echoing in the empty house. There was a set of cheap plastic patio furniture in there, and a big-screen TV inside a home entertainment unit. Nothing else. Two boys were sprawled out on the rug, watching a movie.
One boy Des recognized right off. It was Ricky, the little no-necked bully with the black eye. The one who’d asked her if she was a nigger.
The other one was about fifteen, with a long, wiry build. His peach-fuzz goatee and furry, overgrown burr cut gave him the look of a wolf cub. This would be brother Ronnie, the garbagehead Moose Frye had told her about. Ronnie Welmers dressed in thug chic: baggy prison jeans that were falling off him, sleeveless black T-shirt, red bandanna knotted around his throat, Timberland work boots. He was trying to look like a gangbanger, but sprawled here on the floor of his Dorset McMansion, he looked about as street as Britney Spears.
Des smiled at the younger boy and said, “Nice to see you again, Ricky.”
Ricky mumbled something in response that sounded vaguely like hello.
“How you know my boy, trooper?” Jay Welmers asked her.
“I was at his school for a presentation,” Des replied, noting that big brother’s eyes never left the television. Ronnie would not make eye contact with her. “Sorry to hear about your teacher, Ricky. She seemed like a nice lady.” To Jay she said, “Your neighbor, Felicity Beddoe, reported a prowler in her yard this evening. I wondered if you saw or heard anything.”
Jay considered his reply for a long moment, his red face revealing nothing. “Do you boys want to excuse us?”
“But, Dad, this is the best part,” protested Ricky.
“What are you guys watching?” Des asked him.
“It’s called Westworld,” Ricky answered. Ronnie still wasn’t giving up anything. “Yul Brynner plays a really cool robot.”
“You can watch it later,” Jay said brusquely. “Go take Dino for a walk.”
Ronnie flicked off the TV, sighing, and the two of them shuffled slowly out of the room. A moment later she heard eruptions of boyish laughter.
“I was just going to fix myself a Scotch and soda,” Jay said. “Can I offer you anything? Coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
He went into the kitchen for a moment, returned with his drink and sat in one of his patio chairs, his movements measured and careful. He’d already had him a few, and was trying not to show it.
“What is it that you do for a living, Mr. Welmers?”
“I’m a financial planner.”
“Is that right? I’m in the market for one of those—who are you with?”
“I was with Fleet Bank for twenty-two years,” he answered. “Got downsized right out the door last year. So I’ve set up on my own. Much better that way, really. Don’t have to worry about corporate politics anymore. I can focus on what I do best, which is helping people plan for the future. It does come, you know . . .” He took a business card out of his wallet and offered it to her.
“Great. Thank you.” She pocketed it, glancing around at the decor, or total lack thereof. “Are you refurnishing?”
Jay let out a short laugh. “I guess you could call it that. My wife took the furniture when she left me—the furniture and everything else, except our two boys.” He sipped his drink, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. It was too small for him. “Exactly what did Felicity tell you?”
“That she saw you over there, Mr. Welmers.”
“I was looking for one of my golf balls a little while ago,” he conceded, very casually. “Ricky knocked it into their yard. He fancies himself a golfer now.”
“You were looking for your golf ball,” Des said back to him.
“That’s right.”
“In the dark?”
“There’s no law against that, is there?”
“Not at all. But there is a law against peeping through bedroom windows. And making verbal suggestions to a fourteen-year-old girl her in her driveway.”
“Felicity said that?” Jay Welmers shook his big red head at her disgustedly. “Nothing like that has ever happened, believe me.”
“You’re saying Mrs. Beddoe is mistaken?”
“I’m saying she’s new in town and she’s frightened to death of everybody. Especially when her husband’s away. And that girl of hers, that Phoebe, is so terrified of men she runs away screaming if I so much as say hello. That’s how we are in Dorset—friendly. We say, ‘Good morning, don’t you look pretty today?’ I’ve lived here my entire life, trooper, so maybe I haven’t heard the news . . . Is that a crime now?”
“No, of course not.”
“And is it sane behavior to call the police if a neighbor sets foot on your property?”
“She seemed like a pretty decent lady to me.”
“She’s a hostile, uptight bitch,” Jay snarled. “And you know how teenaged girls are.”
“No, how are they?”
“They overdramatize,” he said, peering over his glass at Des. The color had risen in his face. He looked as if he had a real temper. “She’s just looking for attention, that’s all.”
Des raised her chin at him. “And what are you looking for, Mr. Welmers?”
“Believe me,” he said in a low voice, “I’m not casting around for trouble.”
“I’m sure you’re not,” Des said soothingly. “But could you do me a huge favor? Next time you need to go over there looking for your golf ball, could you call her up first and tell her you’re coming? Because she is new here. And she’s ill at ease. Maybe she’s overreacting. Hey, maybe there’s no maybe about it.” Des flashed a smile at him. “But it seems like an easy enough thing to do if it would smooth things over. Mr. Welmers, you seem like a good neighbor to me—a responsible homeowner, a father. I don’t want to have to come back here. It’s within your power to make sure that I don’t. The ball’s in your court. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“Of course I do,” he responded coldly. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Good. Then I won’t take any more of your time.”
As Jay led her out, Des asked him ab
out Ricky’s black eye.
He waved a freckled hand in disgust. “He got in another fight at school. He’s a got a mouth on him, that one. Inherited it from his mother.”
“I see,” Des said, leaving it there even though she was positive the man was lying to her. About Ricky’s eye. About Phoebe Beddoe. About it all. Trouble was, she had nothing to go on. Just her instincts, which were telling her loud and clear that Jay Welmers was a bum. She could smell it all over him. Same way she could smell that Felicity Beddoe was no hostile bitch and her daughter was not delusional. But she had to play this call straight down the middle. No taking sides. She’d done all she could for now.
She crossed the lawn back to the Beddoes’s house in the darkness, hearing footsteps crashing through the fallen leaves, playful barking, youthful laughter. The Welmers boys and Dino.
Felicity answered her doorbell at once.
Des filled her in on her conversation with Jay Welmers. “He says he’s not looking for trouble, Mrs. Beddoe.”
“And what do you say?” Felicity asked, her eyes searching Des’s face.
“I say that he’s been put on notice. If anything else happens, there are avenues you can pursue. This is not a free country. Not if grown men are acting inappropriately toward young girls.”
“Do you mean some form of restraining order?”
“My hope is that it won’t come to that,” Des said carefully, not wanting to throw fuel on the fire. “For now, I want you to call me if there’s anything else I can do. Just pick up the phone, day or night. That’s why I am here.”
“Thank you, trooper. You’ve been very understanding.”
Des tipped her hat and strode back to her cruiser—only to discover that her windshield had been liberally smeared with mud. Absolute monsters, Felicity Beddoe had called those boys. Shaking her head, Des got some paper towels out of her trunk and started to wipe it off. It was only when she got a good, strong whiff of it that she realized it wasn’t mud.
It was fresh dog poop.
Seething, she uncoiled the Beddoes’s garden hose and washed her windshield off with their power sprayer. If Felicity wondered what she was doing out there, she didn’t ask. There was a work sink in the garage, where Des was able to wash up. As she was drying off her hands on a fresh paper towel she heard a faint crunching of leaves nearby. They had a small enclosure attached to the garage for their trash cans. Someone was crouched behind it, watching her. Des sidled over and stuffed her used paper towels in one of the cans.
Then swiftly grabbed little Ricky Welmers by the scruff of the neck and yanked him to his feet. “Got something you want to tell me, Ricky?” she demanded angrily.
“N-no . . .!” he cried out, bug-eyed with fear. “N-nothing, I swear!”
“You’re a real comedian, aren’t you? Had yourself a good laugh.”
“No way!”
“How would you like me to run you in for defacing public property? You could spend the night at the youth detention lockup in New London with the gangbangers and drug addicts. Would you think that’s funny, too?”
“M-my brother made me do it. Please don’t . . . Please!”
Des stood there a moment, scowling at him and thinking: Here is the job. This is where it officially starts. She released her hold on Ricky, softening. “You know I’m on your side, don’t you?”
He peered up at her, tugging at the neck of his T-shirt. “How so?”
“I kept you out of the principal’s office yesterday, didn’t I?”
“So what?”
“I’m not running you in for trashing my ride, am I?”
“Not yet . . .”
“Right,” she affirmed, nodding. “Because I’m your friend. Now it’s your turn to show me the love. That’s how it works with friends.”
“Like what?” he demanded suspiciously.
“Take a spin with me in my cruiser.”
His jut-jawed young face lit up. “Really?!”
“Did you eat dinner yet?”
“We were maybe going to order a pizza.”
“Well, I have to get me some dinner, and I hate to eat alone. Sound okay?”
“Okay!” he replied eagerly.
Des got her briefcase out of the front seat and dug around in it for a Citizen Ride Along release form. She filled in Ricky’s name and address. “This is a permission slip. Have your dad sign this and we’ll hit the road.”
Ricky went dashing off through the trees to his house, form in hand. While she waited for him to return she spotted Ronnie watching her from under the trees, the lit end of his cigarette growing brighter as he pulled on it.
“Why don’t you ease up on him, Ronnie? He’s just a little kid.”
“I don’t know what you mean, lady.” Ronnie still had a reedy, adolescent voice. He sounded like a boy, not a man.
“Sure you do. You put him up to trashing my ride, didn’t you?”
“He told you that?” Now Ronnie stepped out of the shadows into the floodlights, his smoke stuck between his teeth. His hands were buried deep in the pockets of an oversized silver-colored ski parka. His red bandanna was tied over his head. Dressed that way on the wrong block in Hartford, he’d be shot on sight.
“He didn’t have to tell me. I’ve got two eyes of my own.”
Ronnie stood there hipshot, his head cocked at her defiantly, body language straight out of a rap video. Des remembered Moose Frye saying that he was probably the brightest kid in the entire school system. “My old man cheesed off Mrs. Beddoe again, didn’t he?” he demanded.
“He’ll have to be the one to tell you about that.”
“They want the new school, he doesn’t. I heard him arguing with them about it in the driveway the other day.” Ronnie took one last pull on his cigarette and flicked it off toward the Beddoes’s gravel turnaround, where it continued to burn among the fallen leaves. He smirked at her, daring her to give him a fire safety lecture. She kept silent. She was more interested in keeping him talking. “The old people are always arguing,” he went on. “But they never do anything. They’re, like, total lying hypocrites. Like with the new school—they say they want it because they care about us. But that’s bullshit. They just want another trophy to feed their egos. It’s all about trophies. We’re trophies. If we do well, it makes them look good.”
“Your dad wants to save Center School, doesn’t he?”
“Only because he’s afraid his taxes will go up. If his career wasn’t in the toilet he’d be flying a green ribbon, too. Anything to make himself look good.”
“Maybe he wants you to do well because he wants good things for you. Maybe he loves you. Ever think of that?”
“You know dick about it, lady,” Ronnie shot back, sneering.
She nodded her head slowly. She’d had feral strays living out of Dumpsters who were exactly like this one. Always, their first impulse was to rake you across the face. “Understand you’re a major film freak.”
“So what?” he demanded.
“I’m friends with a film critic who lives here in Dorset. He works for one of the New York papers.”
“Mitchell Berger, sure,” he said. “Me and my friends read his reviews out loud and laugh at them.”
“He loves to talk about movies. Sometimes I can hardly shut him up. Maybe you’d like to meet him sometime.”
“What for? He’s an officially sanctioned bore.”
Not only bright but a smarty-pants, too. An off-putting combination, to be sure. The question was: Did it add up to the Mod Squad?
Ricky came scampering back through the trees now, signed form in hand. She started to invite Ronnie to join them, but the older boy had already vanished into the darkness without a sound.
It was as if he’d never been there at all.
Ricky hopped in next to her in the front seat. She adjusted his seat belt for him while his eyes took in her crime girl stuff, especially her new three-thousand-dollar digital handheld radio on the seat between them. It was something to be
hold. Looked as if it belonged on the space shuttle.
She circled back down the driveway and headed down the cul-de-sac toward the Old Post Road, Ricky riding with his jaw stuck out and his beefy arms crossed. His feet swung back and forth in the air, heels striking the seat again and again.
She took him to McGee’s Diner, a shabby and much-beloved local greasy spoon down on the Shore Road. During the summer McGee’s had been packed with sunburned, boisterous beachgoers who stopped there to munch on lobster rolls and gaze out the windows at the sun setting beyond the Big Sister lighthouse. Tonight, the parking lot was deserted except for a landscaper’s pickup truck and an ancient Peugeot wagon. Some of this was attributable to the time of year, but much of it had to do with the red SAVE OUR SCHOOL colors Dick McGee was proudly flying out front for all to see. Most of Dorset’s business owners had stayed neutral, not wanting to lose precious customers. Not so Dick, and he was feeling it—the WE CARE crowd were definitely boycotting him.
Inside, not a newcomer was to be found. Just an old geezer having pie and coffee in a booth and a pair of twentyish swamp Yankees hunched over bowls of chili at the counter. They hunched even lower when they caught sight of Des in her uni. An older-than-oldies radio station was playing Perry Como out in the kitchen. Dick McGee clung stubbornly to the prehistoric when it came to music.
She and Ricky slid into one of the booths and Sandy, Dick’s waitress, came sauntering over. Sandy was about forty, stubby, and frizzy-haired. Highly sour, but a ripe prospect if ever Des had seen one. She’d been working on her for the past couple of weeks.
“Hey, Sandy, have you talked to your boyfriend about adopting one of my kittens?” she asked her warmly.
“Not possible,” Sandy answered. “Chuckie hates cats. If I take her, he’ll never spend a single night at my place.”
“So you can stay at his place.”
“No, I can’t. His place is a dump.”
“Girl, you folks need a cat. Your lives aren’t complete yet.”
