“Da Beast is never afraid. Next season I’ll be a stronger, more dependable leader.” He studied her from across the coffee table. The piano that someone was playing fell silent. There was only the gentle gurgle of the shark tank now. “So why are you here?”
“To inform you that you’ve got some rich neighbors who are used to getting their way.”
He let out a laugh. “Hey, I know that. Justy Bond, right? I haven’t met him. Only know him from the pissed-off letters and phone messages he keeps leaving me. But it would appear he has himself a problem with a brother taking up residence next door. I pay him no mind. I’m not looking for trouble. Or attention. That’s why I said no to the reality show they wanted me to film.”
“We had two offers,” Rondell put in proudly. “Firm offers.”
“That whole media circus out front is Plotka’s doing, not mine. I’m strictly looking for peace and quiet, like I said. No muss, no fuss. And for damned sure no parties.”
“That’s probably a wise thing,” Des said.
“You telling us we can’t have a few friends over?” Clarence demanded.
“I’m not ‘telling’ you anything. Just advising you to be smart. Otherwise, I can guarantee you that we’ll have a situation. You know how to reach me if there’s trouble. How do I reach you?”
“I’ll give you our unlisted number.” Rondell reached for a notepad and pen on the coffee table and wrote it down for her.
Tyrone shook his shaved head. “These folks out here are terrified of me. I’m their worst nightmare. Your worst nightmare, too, right, girl?”
Des shoved her heavy horn-rims up her nose. “I don’t think I understand.”
“Sure you do. You’re one of those nice, polite girls. Did your homework every night. Stayed away from bad boys like me. Where’d you go to college?”
“West Point.”
He raised his eyebrows, impressed. “You saw action?”
“I saw action.”
“The real kind, too. Not a game like I play, hunh?”
“It was no game,” Des said, hearing footsteps approach them on the hardwood floor.
Rondell’s face lit up. “Resident Trooper Mitry, this is Jamella’s sister Kinitra.”
“Hey,” Kinitra said shyly. She was seventeen, maybe eighteen, and real cute in a baby-faced, dimply sort of way. Big, doe eyes. A soft young mouth. Actually, her face looked soft all over, as if it were constructed out of marshmallows. Kinitra wore her orange-streaked hair in a short, punky updo. She was petite, no more than five-feet-four, but she had a lovely, curvy figure. The brightly patterned top and shorts she had on were of the same patchwork design as her older sister’s shift.
“You ain’t heard singing until you’ve heard this little girl,” Clarence informed Des.
Rondell continued to glow in the girl’s presence. It was plain to Des that little brother was ga-ga over little sister. Des wondered if it was mutual.
“She’s not just a sister with a set of pipes,” Tyrone pointed out. “She hears a song one time and she can sit down at the piano and play the whole thing by ear. Been that way since she was, what, ten?”
“Younger. Five, six years old.” Jamella smiled at her. “My baby girl’s a prodigy.”
“Stop it,” Kinitra demurred as she sat down next to her. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“Don’t be bashful,” Tyrone said to her. “Be proud. Trooper Mitry, this little girl is going to be the next Rihanna. Except with class and decency. No photos of her naked titties on the web. And no thug’s ever beating the crap out of her. We’re taking our time and doing it proper. She’s only eighteen. A fresh young sister from Houston. But she is going to be huge. Tell her, little brother.”
Rondell nodded his head enthusiastically. “She has an incredibly diverse repertoire-hip-hop, jazz, blues, folk. What’s critical now is how we fuse all of those flavors together. We intend to craft her sound before we present her to a label so as to retain full creative control.”
“And her career will be a family enterprise all the way,” Tyrone explained. “I have the resources to launch her. She’s why I installed a recording studio in the west wing. Cee knows everything there is to know about sound mixing. Rondell will manage the business end. And Jamella is choreographing her whole image-her dance moves, what she wears.”
“I’m designing a clothing line for her,” Jamella said. “Similar to what we have on now. I made these. They’re inspired by our mother’s Bahamian ancestry. Mama passed two years ago. It’ll be our way of honoring her.”
“I like the look,” Des said admiringly.
Jamella arched an eyebrow at her. “Do you really?”
“Absolutely. I’d wear it. It’s not as if I always go around in a uniform.”
“I’d like to see you in a bikini,” Clarence said.
“Oh, shut up, Cee,” Jamella snapped.
“Put on her demo for the trooper to hear,” Tyrone told him. “That old Joan Baez song. The one Bob Dylan wrote.”
“Do you have to?” Kinitra protested.
“Get used to it, girl,” Tyrone said to her. “People all around the world are going to be listening to you soon.”
Clarence reached for a remote control device on the coffee table and powered up the house’s sound system. Des heard a bluesy piano with a bit of a hip-hop beat. And then she heard Kinitra singing “Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word,” the folk hit from the sixties that had showcased Baez’s amazing vocal range. Kinitra’s own range was equally astonishing. The girl could soar way up there into Minnie Riperton territory. And she didn’t just have range. Her voice was so angelic, so achingly beautiful that the hairs on the back of Des’s neck stood up.
When the song was over Clarence flicked the system off, smiling hugely. They were all smiling. It was something magical. This bashful young girl who couldn’t take her big brown eyes off the floor had it.
“She’s the real thing, am I right?” Tyrone asked Des.
“Yes, you are.”
“Hell, yes.” He squeezed his wife’s hand and said, “How do you feel, baby? Can I get you some orange juice?”
“That sounds good.”
“I’m on it. You just hang right here with your girl. Come on, trooper. I’ll show you around.”
Tyrone led Des back toward the entry hall, Clarence and Rondell tagging along. He had a bodybuilder’s rolling gait, arms out wide to his sides. And he limped slightly on his surgically repaired knees.
“Do they give you trouble?” she asked him.
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“No pain, no gain?”
“No pain, no pay. Our bedrooms are up those stairs right there. Except for Cee’s. He’s down there in the east wing. This here’s our home theater,” he pointed out as they passed a plush screening room. Next door to it was the recording studio. The piano was in there. “And this here’s my game room.” He paused so Des could check it out. The game room had a pool table, poker table and a half-dozen old-school arcade games. His many trophies and awards were crowded into a floor-to-ceiling glass case that filled an entire wall. “That there’s Rondell’s office,” he said, continuing down the hallway past a closed door. “And this here’s my weight room.” Training center was more like it. Not just free weights but Nautilus machines, treadmills, stair climbers and exercise bikes. “I work out here every day with Cee. He used to start at small forward for Clemson until his scholarship was revoked due to an unfortunate misunderstanding.”
Clarence’s jaw muscles tightened but, for once, he had nothing to say-joking or otherwise. Des made a mental note to run a criminal background check on him as soon as she got near a computer.
“I’m taking it easy right now. Giving my body a chance to repair itself. Two hours of lifting in the morning. Two hours of cardio after lunch.”
“That’s your idea of easy?” Des asked.
“The game doesn’t get any easier after you turn thirty. I’ve been watching my carb intake, too. Ea
ting a lot of chicken and fish. Kitchen’s down this way.”
It was a commercial-sized kitchen with a six-burner Viking range, two ovens and the biggest refrigerator Des had seen in anyone’s home in her life. It was very sunny in the kitchen. A set of French doors opened out onto the patio, swimming pool and pool house. Des could also see the dock where his cigarette boat, Da Beast, was tied up.
A mountainous gray-haired woman was putting groceries away in the walk-in pantry. She wore a lavender fleece sweat suit, sneakers and somewhere between six and eight chins.
Tyrone smiled at her. “Hey, Moms. You made it back from the store.”
“That I did, praise the Lord,” she replied, wheezing slightly. She needed to lose at least seventy-five pounds. Take off a hundred and she’d still qualify as meaty.
“This here’s Trooper Mitry. Came to say hello.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Grantham.”
“It’s Chantal, honey,” she said to Des warmly. Chantal Grantham had attracted a great deal of attention after her son was selected in the first round of the NFL draft. The lady was a recovering crack whore who had totally neglected her two young boys until she found God and fought her way back from the gates of hell. “Skinny thing, ain’t she?”
“I think she’s cute,” said Clarence. “We’ll have to get her out on Da Beast. ”
Tyrone nodded in agreement. “You like boats, Trooper Mitry? I took Moms out one time but she won’t go again.”
“ Never again,” Chantal said emphatically. “You bounced me up and down so hard I swear I lacerated a kidney.”
“Well, I ain’t going out either if Rondell’s behind the wheel again.” Clarence mimicked a bug-eyed Rondell gripping a steering wheel tightly in the ten until two position, swiveling sharply left, right, left, whipping his hands back and forth spasmodically. “He almost flipped us, I swear.”
“I was merely familiarizing myself with the boat’s handling capabilities,” little Rondell said defensively.
“You was merely freaking out!” Clarence laughed.
Des heard footsteps on the stairs that were next to the kitchen door. A barefoot girl in her late teens or early twenties came tromping down. She was a heavy, homely girl. Moon-faced, pimply and dull-eyed.
“This here’s Monique,” Chantal informed Des. “Daughter of a dear friend of mine who passed last year. I look out for her now. Monique’s not well suited to being on her own.” She tapped her own forehead to indicate that Monique was intellectually challenged. “But she’s a good girl. Helps me around the house. Keeps me company. It works out well for both of us.” Chantal smiled at her. “Monique, what were you doing up in your room?”
“Nuthin’ much, Chantal.”
“We need to finish stocking that pantry, hon.”
“Yes, Chantal.”
Clarence stepped in front of the girl and began to tickle her playfully. “ Hey, Monique.”
She giggled. “ Hey, Cee.”
“Leave her alone, Cee,” Chantal ordered him.
“I’m just funning with her.” Clarence tickled the girl some more. “She don’t mind, do you, Monique?”
Des heard a strange noise next to her. Turned to discover it was the sound of Tyrone Grantham breathing in and out very hard and very fast. A vein was throbbing in his forehead. “Don’t you disrespect my mother!” he roared at Clarence, his eyes bulging with fury. “Don’t ever do that!”
In all of her years of law enforcement Des had never seen a man flare so hot so fast.
Clarence backed down at once, cowed by fear. “I-I didn’t mean nothing, cuz. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me! Apologize to Moms!”
“Sure, sure…” Clarence moistened his lips with his tongue. “Sorry, Moms.”
“It’s okay, Clarence,” she assured him.
And with that Tyrone relaxed instantly. Seemingly, the man was an emotional roller coaster. His gaze fell on Des now. He seemed to be measuring her. “You have family?”
“I’m an only child. My mom lives in Georgia. My dad’s with me right now. He just had some surgery.”
He processed her answer carefully, nodding his shaved head. “You’re taking care of him?”
“Just until he gets back on his feet.”
“That says a lot about you. Your folks must be real proud of you.”
“I’m proud of both of my sons,” Chantal pointed out. “They’ve come so far. You got yourself a man, Trooper Mitry?”
“Of course she does, Moms. She goes with that movie critic’s on the TV all of the time. Jewish guy with those funny eyebrows.”
“Wait, she who?” Clarence was aghast. “Why you want to be doing that for when there’s a fine available brother right here?”
Tyrone let out a laugh. “Give it up, Cee. She’s too smart for you.”
The patio door opened now and a middle-aged black man stood there gaping at Des in horror. Or, more specifically, at her uniform. He was quick to recover, grinning as he strolled on in. But he was too late. Des already smelled yard on him.
“Trooper Mitry, this here’s my father-in-law, Calvin Jameson,” Tyrone said. “He came up from Houston as soon as Jamella got pregnant. Lived with us in Glen Cove over the summer. Now he’s staying out in the pool house.”
“Pleased to meet you, miss,” said Calvin, who was in his late forties or early fifties. Hard to tell exactly because he dyed his hair an inky black. And wore a half-jar of pomade in it. He was a bit of a peacock. The sports shirt and slacks he had on were loud and louder. His cowboy boots were snakeskin. He was not very tall. And he was for sure not very fit. His gut hung way out over the waistband. He fetched himself a can of Bud from the fridge, popped it open and took a long drink, smacking his lips. “You get my smokes, Chantal?”
“Get your own damned smokes,” she responded, her face tightening.
“Chantal, why you all of the time got to be busting on me?”
“Because you’re no good freeloading trash. Don’t do nothing all day but sit around drinking beer and watching porn.”
Calvin shook his head at her. “Can’t we just get along?”
“I don’t get along with punks.”
“I’m no punk. I’m a grown man with two grown daughters.”
“You’re still a punk.” Chantal turned her attention back to Des. “I hope you’ll watch out for my Tyrone. The people don’t like him, you know.”
“Which people?” Des asked her.
“I worry about him day and night. Pray to the good Lord that no harm will come to him.”
Des glanced at Tyrone. “Have there been any incidents or threats I should know about?”
“Not a thing,” Rondell interjected. “We’re fine.”
“Moms is just being Moms,” Tyrone agreed. “Pay no attention.”
“No, pay attention! I ain’t no crazy person. I know what I know.” Chantal reached over and clutched Des by the wrist. She had a powerful grip. “I have nightmares every night. Keep dreaming that something awful’s about to happen.”
“Lighten up, Moms,” Tyrone said. “You’re freaking everybody out.”
“Do you keep any weapons in your home?” Des asked him.
“I have a Glock 19 for my personal protection. It’s the preferred pistol of the NYPD. I’ve got a permit for it.”
“In Connecticut?”
His face dropped. “New York. Why, is that a problem?”
“Now that you’ve established your residency here you’ll want to swing by Dorset Town Hall and apply for a local pistol permit. Once you get that you can apply for one from the state-if you want to be in complete compliance, I mean.”
“Oh, he does,” Rondell assured her. “Absolutely.”
“Are there any other weapons around?”
“No, ma’am,” said Clarence, who would not go down in history as one of the world’s great liars.
Chantal still had not let go of Des’s wrist. Des’s fingers were getting numb. “ Promise me you’ll
watch out for my boy!”
“There won’t be any trouble, Mrs. Grantham. Not if I have anything to say about it.” Des smiled at her reassuringly. “And it just so happens that I do.”
CHAPTER 4
Bond’s Auto Mall, the state’s highest volume General Motors dealership-“ Just ask Justy! ”-was a mammoth cluster of airplane hangar-sized showrooms surrounded by acres and acres of sleek, shiny new cars and trucks. Mitch felt like a member of the Joad family when he pulled in there in his old Studey. Everywhere he looked rows of digital-age rides were gleaming in the Indian Summer sun. American rides, Japanese, German, Swedish-you could find pretty much anything at Bond’s Auto Mall.
Except for customers. Mitch didn’t see a living soul anywhere.
His cell phone rang as he was parking.
“Hey, hey, Boo Boo!” a familiar voice hollered in his ear. “I tried you at home. You weren’t there.”
“Yeah, I’m out running errands, Pop. What’s going on?”
“Wanted to let you know we’re all set to head out there tomorrow. I’m picking up our rental car this afternoon.”
“Why don’t you just take the train out? I can pick you up at the station and drive you to your bed and breakfast.”
“Nah, we like to come and go as we please. Do you mind if we get an early start in the morning? I’d like to beat the traffic.”
“Not a problem. I’m always up early.” Mitch reached across the seat for the open bag of Utz potato chips and stuffed a generous handful in his mouth. “How did your appointments go?”
“My what?”
“You said you had appointments.”
His father fell silent. Which was not like him. “We can talk about it when we get there. We… have a lot to talk about.”
“Sure thing, Pop,” Mitch responded, feeling his chest tighten as he hung up. Grapefruit-sized tumor. There was now zero doubt in his mind that he’d be hearing those words tomorrow. The only question was which one of them had it.
He calmed himself, or tried, and went looking for June Bond. Tried two different showrooms but couldn’t locate anyone. Not only were there no customers but every salesman’s cubicle was empty, too. Mitch was beginning to think he’d wandered into an old episode of The Twilight Zone when he finally spotted a young janitor vacuuming the office rugs in the third showroom he tried. As Mitch approached him he realized that the young janitor was June.
The Blood Red Indian Summer bam-8 Page 5
