The Cold Blue Blood bam-1

by David Handler

  “I don’t have to do anything,” Mitch shot back, suddenly feeling himself getting sucked in deeper and deeper.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Bud said hastily. “Oh, beans, I don’t know what to say, Mitch. I’m completely at sea. You were my best hope.”

  Mitch sighed inwardly. I am lost in a foreign language film. I can’t figure out what is going on. I don’t understand these people. “Look, Bud,” he finally said to him. “I honestly think the truth will go down a whole lot better coming from you. But if you really want me to, I’ll tell Lieutenant Mitry for you.”

  The lawyer’s face broke into a huge grin. “Thanks, Mitch,” he exulted, pumping his hand gratefully. “You’re the real goods. A true friend. Somehow, I just knew I could count on you.”

  It was midafternoon by the time Bud maneuvered his Range Rover through the crowd of media people at Peck Point and back out onto Big Sister.

  They had played nine holes. Bud shot himself a respectable 43. Mitch holed out with a sparkling 57.

  The resident trooper’s cruiser was parked outside of Dolly’s house. Tal Bliss was helping Dolly and Bitsy unload groceries from the trunk of her old blue Mercedes.

  “Anything new, Tal?” Bud asked the big trooper as Mitch hopped out and fetched his borrowed golf bag from the back.

  Bliss shook his head. “Just making sure the girls could go about their business.”

  “We’ve been shopping,” Bitsy burbled brightly. “And it was not pleasant. Those reporter persons-they just will not take no for an answer.

  “Say, aren’t those Niles Seymour’s clubs?” Bliss asked Mitch sharply.

  “Why, yes,” Mitch replied. “Bud thought it would be okay if I used them.”

  Bliss pondered this disapprovingly, hands on hips. “Is that so?”

  “He’s absolutely right, Tal,” Bud said placatingly. “I did.”

  “It’s perfectly fine, Tal.” Dolly rested a small hand on the trooper’s sleeve. “Niles no longer has any use for them.”

  “Fair enough, Dolly,” Bliss said gently. “If you say so.”

  “How are you feeling?” Mitch asked her. Her eyes seemed a bit unfocused. He suspected she was on tranks.

  “I shall be fine, Mitch,” Dolly replied. “It was the not knowing- where Niles was, what he was doing. Now that I do know, now that I have some sense of closure, I can begin to…” She broke off, her voice choking with emotion. “I don’t need to tell you the rest, do I, Mitch? You know what it feels like to lose the one you love.”

  “Yes, I do,” Mitch said quietly, feeling the trooper’s steely eyes on him. Bliss didn’t seem to like her talking to him so intimately.

  “And I did love him,” Dolly added, her voice soaring with defiance.

  “Of course, you did,” Bitsy clucked, putting a protective arm around her.

  “Everyone assumes I didn’t,” she said bitterly. “Because they didn’t approve. They thought he wasn’t good enough for me. They thought I was a fool. But Niles Seymour talked to me. Niles Seymour listened to me. He made me feel wanted and desired.”

  Clearly, all of this was pointed directly at Bud, whose lips immediately tightened. After a brief, awkward silence, the lawyer elected to bail-got back in his Ranger Rover and eased down the driveway toward his own house.

  “Poor Tuck, though,” Dolly lamented sadly. “He knew so little joy in his life. And now…”

  Bitsy steered her inside. Bliss followed with the groceries.

  Mitch deposited the dead man’s clubs back in the barn and strolled home, where he found a hand-lettered invitation taped to his front door:

  Jamie Devers and Evan Havenhurst present

  A Supper Cruise

  A sophisticated comedy in three acts starring Mr. Mitch Berger

  Location: The B.S. pier Time: 6:00 this evening

  Boating shoes are a must

  A reply is not-you wouldn’t dare turn us down!

  Well, well. First a lunch invite from Bud. Now this. I am suddenly a very popular fellow on this island, Mitch reflected. What now? What did they want? Maybe they didn’t want anything. Maybe they were just being nice.

  There was, of course, only one way to find out.

  He cranked up the old Studey and went riding, high and bouncy, over to Old Saybrook for a pair of boating shoes at Nathan’s Country Store, a narrow, old-fashioned general store on Main Street that had worn wooden floorboards and a genuine penny candy counter. It was Barry, the bearded storekeeper, who explained to Mitch why the white-soled Topsiders were a must-ordinary shoes left stubborn black marks on the surface of the deck. This was not something that had ever occurred to Mitch, who also bought himself a pair of green rubber wading boots so he could slog farther out into the tide pools.

  Mitch did something else while he was in Old Saybrook. He cruised out past the elegant North Cove waterfront mansions toward Fenwick, the very exclusive colony of shingled summer cottages where Katharine Hepburn was living out her last days. Here, in the shadow of the Old Saybrook lighthouse, Mitch found the Saybrook Point Inn, where Torry Mordarski had spent one night and paid cash. And where Bud Havenhurst and Red Peck had seen her and Niles Seymour breakfasting together. It was a spanking-new, ultra-posh resort hotel with docking facilities for boaters, a restaurant and a health spa. The grounds were immaculate. The brass plates on the lobby doors were polished to a sheen. A community events calendar out front notified passersby of the Lion’s Club breakfast later that week. And discreetly advertised Our famous Sunday brunch-A Shoreline Tradition. The parking lot was crowded with luxury imports and sport utility vehicles from New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. As Mitch idled there, a well-tailored executive with a briefcase came out and climbed into a fancy black Lexus. Four terribly proper old ladies emerged a moment later, somewhat tittery from a long, liquid lunch. A bellhop brought out someone’s bags, eyeballing Mitch’s dilapidated truck with snooty disapproval.

  Mitch moved on, seriously puzzled. It didn’t figure. This was no hideaway. This was no place for a middle-aged married man to stash a young babe. It was a hub of community activity. High profile. High traffic. High class. Why on earth had Seymour brought Torry here? Had the man wanted to be seen with her? Why?

  There was still no sign of Baby Spice when he got back. Her litter box had not been used. Her food did not appear to have been touched. It wasn’t until Mitch fetched a sweatshirt out of his dresser that he finally found her-curled up in there among his clean socks, fast asleep. How she got in there he could not imagine-the drawer was only open a crack. She stirred and squeaked hello at him. He picked her up and put her down on the bed. She had a good deal of light brown mixed in with the gray. And her tummy was almost completely white. Big ears, like a bat. And sharp little teeth and claws, he quickly found out.

  Mitch stretched out on the bed with her so they could get acquainted. She immediately scampered up onto his chest, exceedingly perky and playful. She pad-padded around, tumbled off, climbed back up, rolled over onto her back with her paws up, daring him to pet her soft white belly. He began wiggling his hand around under the covers. She pounced on it, yowling, and chased it around the bed. As Mitch lay there, playing with her, he began toying idly with a name. Possibly something with a Western bent to commemorate this book. He ran through his favorites. It was not very fruitful. There were no significant women characters to be had in The Magnificent Seven, for example. In fact, there was a paucity of female names, period. Until he got around to My Darling Clementine, John Ford’s 1946 epic about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. One of the best, in Mitch’s opinion. Brilliant black-and-white photography by Joseph P. MacDonald. Clementine Carter, played by Cathy Downs, was Henry Fonda’s lady love, the nurse who came out from Boston in search of her wayward fiance, Doc Holliday. Clemmie, Doc called her. Clemmie. She was curled up in the crook of Mitch’s neck now, purring like a small motorboat as he petted her. In fact, she was asleep again. She seemed to have two speeds-on and off. She seemed to
have a tranquilizing effect, too. Because Mitch soon discovered that his eyes were heavy and his limbs somewhat numb.

  Soon, the two of them were out cold together.

  There was no sign of Evan and Jamie at the dock when Mitch made his way down there in his new shoes promptly at six. After hanging around a few minutes, he moseyed up to their stone cottage next to the lighthouse. A minivan was parked outside, crammed with furniture. Evan’s Porsche was there, too. The cottage’s front door was wide open. Mitch found the two of them in the kitchen frantically flinging food and drinks into a pair of ice chests.

  “Don’t mind us, Mitch, we’re always late,” apologized Evan, who seemed terribly flustered.

  The stone cottage was very damp and cold inside. It was also very crowded with antiques. There seemed to be three too many of everything-rocking chairs, weather vanes, end tables, cupboards. Mitch found it almost impossible to fight his way through all of it.

  “We’re compulsive buyers,” Jamie explained. “When we run out of space we take things to our store and sell them.”

  “I think,” Mitch grunted, squeezing his way around a parson’s bench, “that it may be time.”

  Over the fireplace were a number of framed photos of the two of them with their late dachsund, Bobo. The dog’s collar and tags were displayed there. The dog’s bowl was displayed there. And Bobo was displayed there. On the mantel in an ornate silver urn with her name engraved on it. They’d had her cremated.

  “Give us ten more minutes,” Evan said to Mitch pleadingly. “Why don’t you check out the view from the lighthouse? The key’s just inside the front door.”

  “We have to keep it locked,” Jamie said, “or the acne-encrusted indigenous youth sneak out here at low tide and fornicate up there.”

  “Take the lantern, too,” Evan added. “The stairway’s pretty dark.”

  Mitch wrestled his way back through the clutter to the front door, where he found the key and the lantern hanging on hooks. The key popped open the padlock on the lighthouse’s massive steel door. The door’s hinges creaked ominously as he flung it open-shades of The Old Dark House with Boris Karloff. Inside, he flicked on the lantern and found himself at the base of a six-story-high corkscrew. He climbed the spiral staircase slowly and steadily, his footsteps echoing in the narrow, cylindrical tower. He was, he realized, getting more than his share of exercise on this particular day. He was panting by the time he got to the lantern room, where its twin thousand-watt lamps had once served to warn seafarers of the treacherous rocks to be found here. But the lamps and lenses and workings had been removed. Now there was only the empty glasswalled chamber, its bare cement floor littered with cigarette butts and marijuana roaches.

  And there was the view. What a view it was. A true 360-degree panorama. Mitch stood there, awestruck, drinking it all in. He could see so far up and down the coastline that he could actually make out its shape as it appeared in maps. In front of him, he could practically reach right out and touch Fisher’s Island. Behind him, he could see all the way up the Connecticut River to the old cast-iron bridge at East Haddam. Below him, Big Sister was no more than a lush green meatball in the middle of the sea, a narrow wooden lifeline connecting it to the Point.

  Two tiny figures in matching yellow windbreakers were standing at the dock waving their arms up and down at him in some secret semaphore code known only to them. Smiling, Mitch headed back down the corkscrew and joined them, full of appreciative noises.

  Their boat was called Bucky’s Revenge. It was a low-slung J-24 racing boat. It had a cabin down below with a galley and space for four people to sleep. Jamie and Evan were in the process of stowing the ice chests down there.

  “I’d better warn you,” Mitch cautioned them. “I am the ultimate landlubber.”

  “You are not alone, Mitch,” Jamie assured him. “Evan sails the whole boat by himself. All I do is pretend to steer.”

  Evan was presently unwrapping the sail bags. First, the bright blue canvas bag around the mainsail, then the green one around the jib.

  “Here, put this on,” Jamie said, tossing Mitch an orange life jacket. He wriggled into one himself and yanked on the outboard motor starter. When it was putt-putting convincingly he said, “Okay, we can cast off now.”

  “You want me to untie that rope?” asked Mitch.

  “Please,” said Evan as he stowed the sail bags down below. “And it’s not a rope, it’s a line.”

  “Ignore him when he gets nautical, Mitch,” Jamie advised drily. “I do.”

  The line was wrapped around a cleat that was bolted to the dock. Mitch unwound it and jumped back onboard Bucky’s Revenge and they pulled slowly away, bobbing along on the blue water like a rubber duck. It was quite calm, and there was very little breeze.

  Evan raised the mainsail while Jamie manned the tiller, edging them away from the mouth of the river eastward in the direction of Long Island’s Orient Point. Mitch huddled in his life jacket watching Evan, who was totally in his element on a sailboat, quick and nimble as a cat. Tying this line. Untying that line. Darting here, darting there. Never wasting a motion. Never losing his balance. It was a pleasure to watch him. There weren’t many other boats out now, just a couple of late-afternoon fishermen. As they moved farther out into the Sound, the water grew choppier and the air began to freshen. Soon, the breeze was downright stiff. The sails began to billow and flap. Evan signaled to Jamie to kill the engine. Jamie did. And they were sailing now, scooting right along in glorious, windborne silence, the J-24 trim and swift and sure.

  A serene glow came over Jamie’s face as he hunched there in his life jacket, hand on the tiller. “This is the best time to come out,” he said. “You almost always get a breeze.”

  “I guess I can see why you left Los Angeles.”

  “I never left, Mitch. My body is here, but my mind is still there. And it always will be.” Jamie had brought along a boombox. He reached down and flicked it on. Now they were cutting through the water to the sounds of “I’m a Believer,” by The Monkees.

  “Jaymo, do we have to listen to your oldies crap?” Evan objected.

  “That’s the best thing about crap, my young friend. It never goes out of style.” To Mitch, Jamie said, “Did you know that they went with Mickey Dolenz over me at the very last minute?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “It’s the absolute truth. I had the part. They told me I had it-for twenty-four blissful hours I was actually a Monkee. And then, just like that, I wasn’t. They wanted a new face, was what my agent said. God, I was bitter. It is not easy to be told you’re an old face when you still can’t buy a drink or vote. I was washed up at twenty, Mitch. When I didn’t get The Monkees-that’s when I knew.” He let out a heavy sigh. “That’s also when I started getting heavily into drugs.”

  They seemed to be slowing a little now. Evan took over the tiller from Jamie, but to no avail. “The wind’s shifting,” Evan said. “Let’s come about.” He immediately started busying himself with the lines.

  “What do I do?” Mitch asked.

  “You duck,” Jamie ordered sharply.

  Mitch did-just as the boom swung directly over his head.

  Soon, they were zipping through the water again.

  They were approaching a tiny speck of an island-not much more than a heap of rocks with a light tower on it. Cormorants perched on the tower. There was a crude dock. Jamie steered them directly for it, nudging the sailboat up gently next to the piling. Evan hopped out and tied them to it. Mitch hopped out as well, grateful to have something firm under his feet again.

  “Do they mind people docking out here?” he asked Evan.

  “Does who mind, Mitch?”

  “Whoever owns it.”

  “I own it,” Evan said modestly. “This is Little Sister. It became mine when I turned twenty-one.” He glanced around at it a moment, hands on his slim hips. “We camp out here fairly often. Sleep under the stars. It’s just incredibly peaceful. I’d love to build a cabin
out here someday.”

  They had brought a portable barbeque to grill on. Evan got busy lighting the coals while Jamie uncorked a cold bottle of Sancerre and poured three glasses.

  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.”