The Hot Pink Farmhouse

by Unknown

  Naturally, they totally freaked at the sight of her standing there in that classroom with them. And they did exactly what most frightened fifteen-year-old boys would do under the circumstances—throw the bags of potato chips in the air and run, stampeding down the corridor toward the front door. She let them go.

  With the exception of Ronnie, that is. Ronnie she grabbed and held, her hand clamped around his skinny arm as he struggled to get free, his bags of chips falling to the floor at his feet. Ronnie with his peach-fuzz goatee and his gangsta sneer. Ronnie with his red bandanna and his falling-down jeans.

  It was Ronnie who she wanted.

  The classroom they were standing in was familiar to her, Des realized. It was Moose Frye’s classroom. Ben and Ricky’s classroom, with the same tiny desks and the same uplifting motto stenciled on the wall above the blackboard: A GOOD BOOK IS A GOOD FRIEND.

  Her eyes fell on the bags of potato chips that were heaped on the floor. Thirty bags of them at least. She found it surprising and upsetting that these small-town kids knew the dirty little secret about America’s favorite snack food—it was a highly effective accelerant, pure grease, that left no telltale residue behind. Dogs that were trained to sniff out accelerants got nowhere with chips, and chemical tests turned up zilch. She thought only the pros knew this. Must be out on the Internet, she reflected unhappily. She would have to tell the arson squad.

  Now she turned her cold gaze on Ronnie, who continued to struggle feebly in her grasp. The kid was frailer than a week-old kitten. “You were going to burn down this school,” she said to him accusingly.

  “Ricky told you, didn’t he?” he demanded, his head cocked at her insolently. “I’ll kick his ass.”

  “Ricky didn’t have to tell me, you moron. I’ve been on to you garbageheads for a couple of weeks.”

  He said nothing in response, just stood there trying to strike a gangbanger pose. For such a smart kid he sure was pathetic.

  She took a gentler tone. “Do you want to try to explain this to me, Ronnie?”

  “Why should I?” he said, jabbing himself in the chest with his thumb.

  “Because I have some latitude here, that’s why. I can look upon this as some high-spirited local kids throwing a rock through a school window. Or I can see it as breaking and entering, which is a felony, coupled with attempted arson, which is major-league bad news. We’re talking serious time, Ronnie.” She paused, letting this sink in for a moment. “It’s up to me to decide which way to go, and that depends totally on how you behave over the next few minutes.”

  He reached into his jacket for a cigarette and stuck it between his teeth. “You want me to do you a solid, is that it?” he asked, fumbling for a light.

  She swatted the cigarette from his mouth, sending it flying halfway across the room. “I want you to talk to me.”

  “Well, I’m not giving up the rest of my boys,” he shot back. “You can’t make me do that.”

  “Use your head, dope! I just laid my own two eyes on them—I can make them from their school photos.” Des shook her head at him in disgust. “I’m wasting my time here. You’re just a lame-assed punk. I’m running you in.” She started for the door with Ronnie in tow.

  He panicked. “No, wait! W-we can work this out. What . . . what do you want to know?”

  “I want to know why.”

  “We thought it would be cool,” he answered simply.

  “You thought it would be cool to burn down Center School? Man, what are you on? Because I have got to get me some of that.”

  “Not a thing,” Ronnie insisted. “Never when we go out on a mission. That’s forbidden.”

  “So this is the ‘real’ you talking?”

  “Absolutely. And this is something we gave a lot of thought to, okay? We thought it would serve ’em right, okay? All they keep doing is arguing about this place. Jerking us around. Pretending they care about us when they don’t. We’re sick of being jerked around. We’re sick of them telling us they want what’s best for us. They don’t. So we thought we’d show ’em just how we feel, okay?”

  Des glanced around at the aging classroom. “You hate this place, is that it?”

  He let out a nasty laugh. “I hate everything.”

  “Then I really don’t know how to talk to you, Ronnie,” Des said regretfully. “Because if you truly believe what you’re saying then you’re coming from the same moral place as a terrorist. You’re not fit to live among other people. Come on, let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?” he wondered, wide-eyed.

  “You don’t ask the questions. I do.”

  She ushered him outside through the front door and flashed her light three times at Mitch. Their go-ahead signal. His job now was to repair the window and clean up the broken glass—with luck, the school would know nothing about this in the morning. Her job was to lead Ronnie Welmers to her cruiser, which she’d parked in the lot behind town hall.

  She put him in the front seat and got in next to him behind the wheel. “Okay, it’s time to deal,” she said, looking him right in the eye. “For starters, the Mod Squad is history. I know who you are and where you live. Anything happens again—graffiti, antics, anything—all five of you go directly to jail. And I am so not goofing, understand?”

  He nodded, swallowing. “What else do you want?” he asked, his reedy voice soaring an octave.

  She started up her cruiser, pulled out of the parking lot and headed north on Dorset Street in the 2-A.M. stillness. “I want you to be a man instead of a punk. I want you to be responsible.”

  “For what?” he asked, watching the road carefully, desperate to know where she was taking him.

  “For your little brother. And those ladies next door. They’ve got themselves a problem. And I’m going to tell you straight up what it is—your dad, in case you didn’t know it.”

  “I know it,” Ronnie said quietly.

  “What’s his story, anyway?”

  “He’s a dead man walking. His business is in the toilet. He’s bitter, broke, horny. Plus he’s a total ass.” Ronnie sneaked a hopeful look at her. “Word, did you break his nose?”

  “Why, what did he say?”

  “That he got hit in the nose with a golf club, by accident.”

  “Works for me,” she said, straight-faced.

  “You have it wrong, you know. He’s not hot for Phoebe. He’s hot for Mrs. Beddoe.”

  Des glanced over at him in surprise. “How do you know that?”

  “Phoebe told me.”

  “You two are friends?

  “Kind of.”

  “Why did your dad give Ricky that black eye?”

  “Because Ricky talked back to him.”

  “Ricky told me you gave it to him.”

  “No way. I love the little turd. All we’ve got is each other. He’s just afraid the law will come down on Dad and we’ll end up in some foster home.”

  She thought this over as she steered her cruiser up the Old Post Road in the darkness. “You like Phoebe a lot, don’t you?”

  “I mean, yeah . . .” he answered uncomfortably. “But they’re grooming her for the big leagues. She’ll go off to Yale, marry a lawyer.”

  “You could do that. Go to Yale, be a lawyer.”

  “I’m not that smart.”

  “Word, I used to be married to a Yale Law School graduate—they aren’t that smart.” She glanced across the seat at him. He looked incredibly young, riding there next to her. They always looked younger when they were in custody. And smaller. “From now on, Phoebe’s family to you. If I get one more phone call from that mother of hers, I’m busting you for tonight’s antics, understand?”

  “Does this mean you’re not busting me now?”

  “Depends. Do you realize the enormity of what you almost did?”

  “Why are you asking me that?” asked Ronnie, frowning.

  “Because if you don’t, then I’ll have to run you over to the Troop F Barracks in Westbrook, where they’ll lock yo
u up in a cell for the night with the rest of the trash. Man, are they going to love that smooth white flesh of yours. In the morning you’ll be arraigned at New London Superior Court on—”

  “I understand,” Ronnie said urgently.

  “What do you understand?”

  “What I almost did tonight. How heavy it would have been.”

  “If your father steps out of line again, I want to hear from you. He lays a hand on you or your brother, he gets busy with the Beddoe ladies, you pick up the phone and you call me.”

  “You want me to rat out my own father to the police?”

  “Not to the police, to me.”

  “God, this is too freakin’ weird.”

  “Life is freakin’ weird. Get used to it.” Des came to a stop by the stone pillars at the foot of Somerset Ridge. “Up to you, big man. Either we deal or we head for Westbrook. What’s it to be?”

  “I’ll call you,” he said hoarsely.

  “Smart move,” she said, easing down the road toward his house. “I knew you had it in you.”

  “Damn,” Ronnie Welmers marveled, shaking his head. “You’re not very nice, are you?”

  “That’s where you are way wrong,” Des said, flashing a smile at him. “Remember this day, sweetness. Remember it often. Because I am the nicest person you will ever meet.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Des was out there enforcing the seventy-five-foot limit when Mitch pulled into the firehouse parking lot. The polling place was mobbed. Voters lined up out the door all the way to Dorset Street. Dozens of vocal demonstrators crowded the curb with save our school and WE CARE signs. It seemed as if every registered voter in town had shown up to weigh in on the future of Center School. And, quite possibly, the future of Dorset itself.

  Mitch tried to wangle a smile out of Des as he eased on past her into a parking space, but the resident trooper had her game face on. All he got was a curt nod.

  “Quite a lovely girl, isn’t she?” Sheila Enman spoke up from the seat next to him, her eyes twinkling at Mitch.

  “Yes, she is, Mrs. Enman,” he said, watching Des in his rearview mirror as First Selectman Paffin approached her with his hand stuck out and a broad grin on his face.

  “One helluva caboose on her, too,” the old lady observed, craning her neck for a better look. “Me, I never looked like that in trousers.”

  The polls closed at eight o’clock. The tally, which was posted on the town’s Web site later that evening, was surprisingly lopsided. The thirty-four-million-dollar school bond proposal failed by a no vote of 3,874 to 2,175. The Center School would be spared.

  Mitch was positively elated. He liked Dorset just the way it was.

  One of the reasons the no vote was so resounding was Wendell Frye’s generous bequest to the town. In the fine print of his amended will Hangtown had pledged one-half million dollars to Center School for the construction of a world-class art studio complex for Dorset’s young people. The money was not transferable to a new school facility—if the town tore down Center School, the bequest would be voided.

  Even in death, the old master’s voice was heard. And heeded.

  The day after the election Bob Paffin officially said, “Thanks, but no thanks” to the parcel of land on Route 156 that Bruce Leanse had wanted to donate for a new school. The first selectman also announced that he would be forming a committee comprised of town committee leaders and school board members to find out exactly how much it would cost to renovate and enlarge Center School. Chairing the committee would be Colin Falconer, who would be restored to his post as Dorset’s superintendent of schools after completing a two-week medical leave. Colin was officially reprimanded for engaging in a “pattern” of inappropriate relationships, but the town leaders could not bring themselves to fire their troubled school superintendent.

  The likelihood of a huge, expensive lawsuit if they did may have had something to do with their decision, though they denied this vehemently.

  By chatting up the locals at the market and the hardware store, Mitch gathered that the prevailing feeling around town was that Babette Leanse had overreached—in her zeal to build the new school she had behaved in a reckless, irresponsible manner that was most definitely not Dorset. They were also convinced that her husband had known all about her unsavory scheme to oust Colin, in spite of her insistence that she had purposely kept him in the dark about it. The Leanses simply could not persuade a single soul in Dorset to believe that they did anything without joint, careful calculation. No one believed them. No one.

  Meanwhile, the word around town hall was that any future development proposal that Bruce Leanse brought before the planning, zoning or wetlands commission would be viewed most unfavorably. In short, the Brat was toast in Dorset, Connecticut. The Aerie, his self-proclaimed revolution in continuous living, would have to be built somewhere else. And it would be built, because people like Bruce Leanse didn’t quit. They kept right on going.

  In fact, he was already gone. When Mitch phoned him for a quote he got a phone machine message that said to try his New York office instead. Intrigued, Mitch drove up to the Leanses’ hilltop house and discovered they had cleared out. The house was vacant. And Ben was no longer enrolled at Center School—he’d been transferred out.

  Mitch spent almost all of his time in the days following Hangtown’s death trying to pull all of the pieces of his magazine article together. The Sunday magazine’s editor, who was labeling it “A Grisly Tale of one Famous Family’s Mutual Assured Destruction” wanted it as fast as Mitch could deliver it.

  Mitch was still pounding furiously away at it when Jim Bolan came bouncing across the causeway one blustery afternoon in his rusty old pickup, Sam the German shepherd riding next to him in the cab. Stashed in the back of the truck, under a tarp, was the completed copper tower.

  “He wanted you to have this thing, son,” Jim informed him, dragging deeply on a Lucky Strike. “It ain’t in his will or nothing, but he told me so right to my face. Day before he died.” Jim dropped the tailgate and carefully lifted out the six-foot-tall copper fountain. “He was real emphatic about it, on account of you helped him make it and all. Even made sure he signed it—etched it right there in acid, see?”

  Mitch stared at the great man’s signature, nodding dumbly. He could not speak.

  “I guess I don’t have to tell you it’s kind of valuable,” Jim mentioned. “Last piece he ever did. Miz Patterson can sell it for you if you ever—”

  “Never,” Mitch said hoarsely. “I’d never sell it.”

  “Up to you, son,” Jim said easily. “It’s yours. Want to crank her up?”

  They filled the twenty-gallon copper holding tank in Mitch’s bathtub and set it in the center of the living room. The copper tower stood smack in the center of the tank, stabilized by the weight of the water. A submersible pump went right into the tank. Jim connected it to the tower’s skeleton of copper tubing with a short length of plastic hose. As soon as Mitch plugged it in he could hear the pump burp and gurgle. Within a few seconds it had pushed the water all the way up to the top of the tower. Then, slowly, it trickled down through the hundreds of nooks and crannies in between the copper boxes as it made its way back down into the tank to be recirculated again and again.

  Mitch stood there watching and listening, transfixed. So did Jim. There was something positively hypnotic about Hangtown’s copper tower. Something timeless and magical. Mitch couldn’t put his finger on what it was exactly. Maybe there were no words to describe it, he reflected, because it touched him in a way that had nothing whatsoever to do with the intellectual side of his brain. He only knew that he was in the presence of great art.

  “What will you do with yourself now?” he asked Jim as the two of them stood gazing at it reverently.

  “Same as before,” Jim answered. “Take care of the place. Watch his back. He wrote it into his will—I’m live-in caretaker for the rest of my natural days, if that’s what I want. And I guess it is. Right now, I’m helpin
g Miz Patterson catalog all of the pieces he never disposed of.”

  “If there’s anything I can do, just yell,” Mitch offered. “And if you ever feel like stopping by some night to watch Celebrity Deathmatch, my door’s open.”

  “Likewise, son,” Jim said warmly, clapping Mitch on the back. “I haven’t got me no cable TV, but you want to come by for a beer, you don’t need to call. It’s just me, Sam and Elrod the pig now.”

  “Well, at least you won’t be alone,” Mitch said, smiling at him.

  Jim’s lined, leathery face fell. “No, I won’t be alone. There’s plenty of ghosts there on that farm. Too damned many ghosts, you ask me.”

  “I think we should make a special pact in honor of Hang-town,” Mitch said as they lolled there together in the sparkling new bathtub, sipping ice-cold Moët & Chandon.

  Des had moved into her new house that morning. The place still smelled of fresh paint, but it was extraordinarily bright and airy and clean. Awesome view of the lake, too.

  “Pact?” Des’s eyes were shut, her ankles resting lazily on Mitch’s shoulders. She seemed a bit more at ease now that she had her own digs for herself. And those eight furry boarders of hers were in her own garage instead of Bella’s. It had bothered her, not being settled. “What kind of a pact?”

  “I think we really should try to grow one day younger every day for the rest of our lives. What do you think of that?”

  “I think,” she replied, “that it sounds like a plan.”

  “More potato chips?” Mitch reached for the jumbo bag on the edge of the tub.

  “Man, how can you keep eating those things?”

  “What else am I going to do with them?” he asked, shoving several into his mouth. “Besides, I never got paid in one-hundred-percent grease before. I could get used to this.”

  “Well, don’t,” she sniffed. “Or I’ll have to put you on a diet of carrot sticks and five-K runs.”