The Cold Blue Blood: A Berger and Mitry Mystery

by David Handler

After he had handed them around Jamie lit a cigarette and stretched out on the dock, watching his young lover with a mixture of affection and apprehension. “You may as well know, Mitch, that Evan and I have been spatting. He wasn’t planning to go to Seymour’s funeral. I told him it was fine by me, since I’m not planning to go. Only now he’s decided he will go, out of respect for Dolly. I think he’s being a complete hypocrite. What do you think?”

  Mostly, Mitch thought that he did not want to get caught in the middle. “How did you feel about your stepfather?” he asked Evan.

  “First of all, I didn’t consider him my stepfather,” Evan replied angrily. “Just some low-life sleaze she was living with. I honestly don’t understand why she married him.”

  “Possibly, he was exceedingly well hung,” Jamie suggested.

  “Jaymo, that’s my mother you’re talking about,” Evan said indignantly.

  “I know, but she is something of a cunning little user, our Dolly,” Jamie observed, puffing on his cigarette. “That helpless act of hers, designed to make every man she meets go four paws up. It amazes me it works. But it does work. Why, I’ll bet she’s even hit on our young friend here.”

  “Not really. All she’s done is ask me to open her pimientos for her.”

  Jamie let out a huge guffaw. “Let me guess—she was wearing something low-cut at the time. Am I right?”

  He was, but Mitch didn’t feel like touching that one in front of Evan. He sat there perched on a rock, sipping his wine and wondering if Jamie was on to something. Was Dolly a scheming manipulator? She certainly did have Bud jumping through flaming hoops for her. Maybe she had persuaded him to raid those accounts for her. Maybe that wasn’t all she’d persuaded him to do. Maybe he had killed for her.

  “So spill, you tight-lipped cipher,” Jamie commanded Mitch. “What did Lieutenant Mitry say? Whom does she suspect? Dish, damn it.”

  “Well, there’s a third victim. Same gun. Her name was Torry Mordarksi.”

  “My God,” Evan gasped.

  Mitch looked at him in surprise. “You knew her?”

  “No, no.” Evan came over with the wine and refilled their glasses. “But I do remember her murder—it was on the news a few weeks ago. She was real pretty and she had a nice little boy who she was raising by herself. I just thought it was so sad.”

  “Where did this one happen?” Jamie asked.

  “They found her body in the woods somewhere near Meriden,” Evan replied.

  Jamie stiffened. “No way. Niles bragged to me once that he had a girlfriend up in Meriden …”

  “He did?” said Evan. “You never told me that.”

  “He even went into graphic detail about how she used to suck on his dick,” Jamie went on, his voice rising angrily. “The crude, homophobic bastard wanted to know if I thought a man could ever be as good at it as a woman.” He stubbed out his cigarette, glancing at Evan. “I didn’t say anything to you about it because I thought you’d get upset.”

  “Does the lieutenant know about this?” Mitch broke in.

  “Absolutely,” Jamie replied. “I told her sergeant person, that short one with the muscles and the fuzzy lip.”

  “And … ?”

  “He didn’t react one bit. But they never do, do they?” Jamie’s eyes gleamed at Mitch intently now. “Let’s not kid each other, Mitch. Does she suspect either one of us?”

  Mitch sipped his wine uneasily. It had just occurred to him, with a sinking feeling, that he had not been very smart. Here he was, alone on this deserted island with two of the prime suspects. No one knew they were out here together. If they were to murder him and dump his body overboard into the Sound not a soul would ever know. “She knows that you disliked him. But she gave me no indication that you were at the top of her list.”

  Jamie said, “If Bud Havenhurst had one ounce of nerve he’d be her most logical suspect. Hell, he had more reason than any of us to despise Niles. But I just can’t imagine him killing anyone. He hasn’t the cojones.”

  Evan poked at the coals. Judged them ready. Put the tuna steaks on the grill, where they immediately began to sizzle. “I agree. Mandy is way more the type. Hot-blooded. High-strung. Tough as nails.”

  “Okay, what if Mandy was boinking Niles on the side,” Jamie speculated aloud. “And when she found out that he was two-timing her with Torry, she killed them both.”

  “But what about Weems?” Evan wondered. “Why’d she kill Tuck?”

  “He found out,” Jamie answered. “Saw her burying the body in the garden.”

  “Why bury it in the garden?” Evan persisted.

  Jamie had no answer to that one. Stymied, he turned to Mitch.

  “Clearly, whoever did it assumed that it wouldn’t be dug up,” Mitch said. “My being there was not part of the original equation. But I do have to admit that the same question has occurred to me. Why the garden? Why not dump Niles out in the Sound somewhere?”

  “Bodies have a way of washing ashore,” Jamie pointed out.

  “Okay, then why not bury him in the woods?”

  “Couldn’t take the chance of transporting him,” Jamie suggested. “He was buried in the garden because he was shot near the garden. Must be.”

  “Suggesting he was killed in Dolly’s house,” Mitch mused aloud. “Or in her barn.”

  “Or in your carriage house,” Evan added.

  Mitch fell silent. That was not a thought he wanted to dwell upon.

  “Surely the lieutenant must have someone in mind,” Jamie said to him.

  “Judging by the direction her questions were taking,” Mitch said, “it would seem that her leading candidate is Dolly.”

  “Not a chance,” Evan said. “My mother is not capable of doing that.”

  “No one is, my boy,” Jamie said darkly. “Until they do it. Me, I keep thinking about Red.”

  “What about Red?” asked Mitch.

  “He logs four flights a month, right? That means he’s gone four days a week, every week. Face it, Red’s got the perfect setup.”

  “For what?” Evan asked.

  “For a man who’s leading a double life,” Jamie answered.

  Mitch frowned at him, puzzled. “You’ve lost me. It’s not as if he has a romantic interest here—Dolly is his own sister.”

  “Oh, grow up!” Jamie shot back. “How do you think that blood of theirs got to be so blue?”

  “Jaymo, I truly don’t believe what I am hearing from you!” Evan erupted.

  “All right, we’ll forget that one,” Jamie conceded grudgingly. “But Red has been known to play the protective big brother. Could be he killed Niles for cheating on Dolly.”

  “But why kill the girl?” Mitch asked.

  Jamie considered this. “That’s a good question. I don’t know … Unless he was boinking her, too. I mean, let’s get real here—could you imagine being married to Bits?”

  “I think she’s a very nice lady.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just imagine years and years of that abundant, earthy good cheer. Imagine burying your face between those pillowy white thighs night after night—”

  “Jaymo, that’s my aunt you’re talking about!” Evan objected, poking at the tuna. “Hey, I think these are ready, guys. Let’s eat.”

  There was a red onion and mango relish for the tuna. There was black bean salad, cole slaw, cornbread. All of it courtesy of Evan. All of it delicious. They ate on paper plates with their legs dangling over the side of the dock. The sun was setting now. Overhead, the sky was streaked with red and purple. The moon was rising. There were, Mitch reflected, worse ways to spend an evening.

  “Maybe that niceness thing of Bitsy’s is all an act,” Jamie plowed on. “Maybe she’s the tramp of the century. She’s got plenty of opportunity, what with the kids out of the house and Red gone half of the time. Maybe she’s even a killer. Have you thought of that?”

  “You don’t actually believe any of that, do you?” Evan asked him. “I mean, I had no idea you felt this way
about her.”

  “I don’t,” Jamie assured him with a wave of his hand. “I’m just hypothesizing.”

  “Well, if you don’t start behaving yourself Mitch and I will leave you here. Won’t we, Mitch?”

  “We will—lashed to the light tower.”

  There were homemade brownies for dessert. Jamie disappeared below deck in search of them.

  As soon as he did, Evan quickly turned to Mitch. “Mother told me you were locked in your cellar on Monday,” he said in a low, hushed voice.

  “Most of the afternoon,” Mitch acknowledged, nodding.

  Evan glanced furtively over at the boat, then back at Mitch. “I saw someone’s car parked in Dolly’s courtyard when I pulled in that day …”

  “You mean you know who locked me in?”

  “Maybe. I thought you might want to know. Who it was, I mean.

  “You’re right. I did. I do. Who was it?”

  Evan looked over his shoulder at the boat once more. And then, in an urgent whisper, he told Mitch who it was.

  CHAPTER 8

  DES RAISED A LONG, smooth leg out of the swirling hot water and examined her bare foot in the light of dawn, rotating her ankle slowly, splaying her toes, admiring the way the water gleamed on her pearly pink toenails. It was, in her critical judgment, a shapely, high-arched foot. A slender foot. A lovely foot.

  It was not any goddamned ski.

  She lowered her leg back down into the water, groaning. The soothing relaxation of the hot tub was just what she’d needed right about now. Her shoulders and back ached. Her sinuses were inflamed. And she was desperate for sleep—she’d worked straight on through the night. Just came on home, fed the cats and went on Dawn Patrol. Big Willie had inched another step closer to the cage. But he was still too smart for them. In fact, Des was beginning to suspect that the little man was laughing at them.

  She reached lazily for her tumbler of chilled orange juice and took a long drink, wiping the perspiration from her face with a wash cloth. “Talk to me about Berger with an E,” she murmured across the tub at Bella. “That a Jewish name?”

  “It can be,” Bella replied, swiping at the perspiration on her own round, flushed face. Actually, Bella’s face looked remarkably like a bunched fist when she didn’t have her glasses on. “Or it could be German. What’s his first name?”

  “How do you even know I’m talking about a he?”

  “If it were a she you wouldn’t be asking.”

  “You should have been a detective,” Des said, grinning at her.

  “I should have been a lot of things. But I just decided to become a fat old lady instead.”

  “The name’s Mitch. He’s a New York movie critic.”

  Bella’s eyes widened. “Do you mean Mitchell Berger?”

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  “He’s only the single most respected film critic in America, my dear. And he’s definitely one of us. He writes with so much passion, such sensitivity. In fact …” She wagged a stubby finger at Des. “Are you sure he’s not gay?”

  “He’s a widower.”

  “He’s a major catch, is what he is. Free passes to every movie in town.”

  “I don’t have time to see every movie.”

  “Well, I do. And my niece, Naomi, is always looking for something to do. She’s a research chemist at Rockefeller University. Face on her like the young Joe Torre, but a very nice girl.” Bella peered at her slyly. “So … ?”

  “So what … ?”

  “Is he good-looking?”

  “All depends on whether your idea of good-looking is the Pillsbury Dough Boy.”

  “What, he’s a shlub?”

  “If by shlub you mean a flesh prince, then the answer is yes.” Des drank some more of her juice. “Some kind of weird mental thing is happening. He seems to know what I’m thinking. Like he’s up inside my head.”

  Bella nodded sagely. “Morris could read me like a book.”

  “Brandon never knew what I was thinking.”

  “And what does that tell you, my dear?”

  Des didn’t answer. She didn’t want to go there. She’d been there.

  “Does he like cats?” Bella asked.

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that one.” She put on her glasses so she could see the clock in the kitchen. “Damn, I’ll have to get back to you, period.” She climbed out of the tub, naked and dripping.

  “Does he know you have that tattoo?”

  “He know, he knows.”

  “Does he know where you have it?”

  “Doubtless. The man knows everything else.” Des wrapped herself in her terrycloth robe and made her way upstairs to shower and dress, the four remaining Spice Girls following her every move like Velcro.

  She had no time to retreat to her studio. Not today. She took her sketch pad and charcoal with her. By 7:00 A.M. she was parked out on the bridge to Big Sister with her pad tilted against the steering wheel, stroking boldly in the hazy morning light.

  Think only of lines, not of things.

  Des was not happy. The case was growing more and more complex on her. The clock was ticking. She had zero margin for error. And she could not get her mind around this place. So she sat here, peering out at the houses and trees, at the rocks that were exposed by the low tide, trying to comprehend it with her charcoal.

  Convince yourself you are touching the object.

  There was something about these people—their shared history, their family ties, their interconnected lives—that left her profoundly baffled. There was a widow. There was her ex-husband and his new bride. There was a brother and his wife. A son and his lover. One of these people was a three-peater—someone who had coldly and carefully snuffed out an errant middle-aged husband, a young barmaid and the island’s caretaker. Which one? Who had wanted all of these folks dead? Why?

  See the subject, not the paper.

  She had found Niles Seymour’s Jeep Grand Cherokee in the long-term parking lot at Bradley International Airport up in Windsor Locks. The lot’s automated check-in ticket was dated April 18—one day after Bud Havenhurst and Red Peck reported seeing him at the Saybrook Point Inn with Torry. And the same day Torry’s body had been found. There were no latent prints on the ticket. Crime scene technicians were still scouring the car itself. According to United Airlines, Seymour had purchased two tickets to St. Croix for the eighteenth—one in his name, the other in the name Angela Becker. He had bought them a week earlier by calling the airline’s 800 number. He had used a Visa card jointly held with his wife.

  The tickets were never used.

  No latent prints had been found on the Dear John letter he had left Dolly. No trace of the letter had been found on the hard drive of their computer or on their floppy disks. The type-face, a twelve-point Helvetica, did match one generated by their machine. And a sample printout was a perfect match. The letter was, they believed, generated in the Seymours’ study. Numerous sets of fingerprints were found on the computer. These were presently being compared to the dead man’s.

  Des expected she would soon find it necessary to take fingerprint samples from each of the islanders.

  She had spent a good deal of the night in Meriden down in the dimly lit basement of the old dormitory next door to the headmaster’s house. There were cells down there where the bad boys had once been incarcerated—and tortured if one believed the legends. Which Des most certainly did. Central District’s records were stored there now. After pawing through them for several hours, she had found the yellowing thirty-year-old state police report on the Roy and Louisa Weems murder-suicide. The case had been handled with extreme care. The island was an enclave of privilege and respectability. Dolly Peck was an ambassador’s daughter. The matter of her sexual assault was on a separate page stamped confidential. A medical examination confirmed what Bud Havenhurst had told her—she had indeed been forcibly raped.

  Witnesses had been questioned. One was a witness Des was surprised to find listed there. She ha
d been startled to discover the name of the investigating officer as well. And not at all pleased.

  None of this confidential material had appeared in either the Hartford Courant or New York Times.

  She had found their coverage on microfilm at the Dorset Library, a small but growing village institution that had one foot planted firmly in the past and the other dipped tentatively into the future. There was an old building, a charming Victorian with panelled walls, a fireplace and comfy overstuffed armchairs. There was a new building with computer stations and low-slung blond wood counters and recessed lighting. The two buildings flowed into each other but did not exactly interact. It was, Des reflected, very much like Dorset itself.

  The newspaper accounts were factual, proper and respectful. They gave no hint of any sexual assault. Or even any possible involvement by young Dolly Peck. There was no insinuation, no innuendo, no speculating by unnamed sources close to the investigation. Times had changed, Des realized. Inquiring minds were much dirtier now, the public way more cynical. They expected the dirty details. And they got them.

  So what were the dirty details?

  She had almost no time left to find out. The heavy leaning had already begun—thanks to that little weasel Soave, who had gone running directly to big brother Angelo with Jamie Devers’s disclosure that Niles Seymour had a girlfriend in Meriden. Soave had not told Des, which would have enabled her to find out twelve hours sooner than she had that the two cases connected. No, Soave had withheld his vital nugget, forcing Des to wait until the trace came through on the slug. She was absolutely furious with him. Especially for the way he responded when she confronted him about it at their makeshift command center in Dorset’s town hall: He just smirked. And lied to her face. “Jeez, loot,” he said. “I thought you knew.” Like hell. Naturally, big brother Angelo had told his good buddy, Captain Polito, that the Mitry girl was way behind the curve on the Niles Seymour investigation. As a consequence, Captain Polito had called her into his office to notify her that he was bringing in additional manpower starting tomorrow. Strictly in an advisory capacity, he assured her. Choosing his words very carefully, for fear of stepping on any powerful toes. He did not bother to mention that said additional manpower was another lieutenant who happened to be one of his hand-picked Waterbury boys. What he did say was this was not about rank or egos. “We are all on the same side, Lieutenant,” was how he put it. “We are all trying to catch the bad guys.”