“On this particular issue Jamie and I have always been in agreement,” Bud said. “They must be protected.”
“And so must Big Sister,” Red said. “This island has belonged to my family for three hundred and fifty years, Mitch. It’s our legacy. Each generation is beholden to it. We have a duty to make sure it stays ours. Niles didn’t see family tradition. All he saw were big, fat dollar signs. Lord knows what might have happened to this place ten or twenty years down the road if he were allowed to remain here. Niles was a problem that needed solving. We solved it.”
“Even though you had to kill an innocent girl to do it? You guys don’t seem too concerned about sacrificing the life of Torry Mordarski. Or about leaving her son an orphan.”
“We needed the girl,” Red explained simply. “It wouldn’t have worked otherwise.”
“I did suggest using Darleen,” Bud spoke up. “Checking her into Saybrook Point Inn. But Tuck wouldn’t implicate her-he actually loved the little cow.”
“Did he have any feelings for Torry?”
“Torry was a whore,” snapped Red.
“And you three are gutless wusses,” Mitch said, shaking his head at them. “You should have killed me when you had the chance. Not that you didn’t try, of course. On the subway tracks-am I right, Bud?”
“That was… a different matter,” Bud responded quietly.
“You didn’t drive into the city that day, did you? You rode in on the same train we did.”
“Yes,” Bud confirmed, reddening. “I sat ten rows behind you the whole way in. You two never noticed me. But I saw you. I saw how she cozied up to you. I saw how she k-kissed you in the middle of Grand Central with all of those people watching. Her body pressed against yours. Her lips… I-I lost my head on that subway platform. Utterly and completely. Loving Mandy-it’s a disease. A vile, incurable disease.”
“And yet you told Tal Bliss that Mandy was the one who pushed me. Why?”
“That was her idea,” Bud explained. “She said no one would prosecute her. They never have, never will. But with me it might be different. We had my career to think of. And my reputation.”
“You should have killed me,” Mitch repeated, glancing around at the three of them. “But the fact remains that you didn’t kill anyone. You had the Dudleys Do-Right and Do-Wrong do it for you. This time it’s different. You actually have to pull the trigger yourselves. And I don’t think you can do it. In fact, I’m prepared to bet my life you can’t.”
They all stood there in charged silence now.
“What is it you want, Mitch?” Bud asked him finally.
“What is it I want?” Mitch thought he heard a door slam somewhere in the distance. But it may just have been the wind. He couldn’t tell for certain. “I want Hollywood to make some decent, well-acted movies that are not totally devoid of intellectual ambition. I want to lose thirty pounds. I want to spend some quality time with a certain long, tall brunette. I want-”
“He means,” Red broke in impatiently, “what would it take for you to remain silent?”
“None of us are millionaires,” Bud cautioned. “And Mandy’s money is bound up in a trust. But I could arrange to transfer the deed to this house to you.”
“It belongs to Dolly,” Mitch pointed out.
“Not a problem, I assure you.”
“If it’s money you want,” added Jamie, “I could get my hands on a hundred thousand in cash by ten o’clock tomorrow. Another hundred thou by the end of the week. How does that sound?”
“Like a pay-off,” Mitch replied. “Look, guys, it’s no use. Maybe you honestly and truly think you did the right thing. And for all of the right reasons. But you didn’t. And I know it. And I’ll be damned if I’ll keep quiet about it. Because no one has the right to do what you did. No one. So I guess you’ll just have to shoot me, Red. It’s a little different than shooting a deer-you aren’t planning to eat me afterward. At least I hope you’re not. But it’s not completely different. After all, I’m just some clueless stranger who got caught in your headlights. So pull the trigger, Red. Go ahead and be done with it.”
Now the three of them exchanged a long, hard look.
“I think you’d better come with us, Mitch,” Red finally said hoarsely.
“Where to?”
“The dock.”
Mitch cocked his head at him curiously. “Why the dock?”
Bud finished his scotch and stared down into his empty glass. “You made a crucial mistake yourself, Mitch. You told us you couldn’t swim.”
“You’re about to fall in, my boy,” Jamie explained. “You’re about to hit your head on a piling and drown.”
“Hell, that’ll never play. The police won’t buy that I was that reckless or stupid-storm or no storm.”
“But they will buy that you were suicidal over the death of your dear wife,” Bud said. “You told all three of us about it at great length. You’ve been despondent. Inconsolable, even. And now you shall be joining her.”
Red raised his shotgun and nudged Mitch in the chest with it. “Let’s go.”
Only they weren’t going anywhere. The doorway was blocked.
Standing there in the pouring rain was Dolly, drenched to the skin in her flimsy nightgown. Her gaze was eerily unfocused, her hair soaked and stringy, her pale bare feet covered with grass clippings and mud.
In her right hand she clutched a carving knife.
Mitch had heard a door slam, all right. It was Dolly having herself another of her episodes. Same as that night when she had shown up in his bedroom. The storm had set her off. It was the storm.
Saliva bubbled from her lips now. “The mother,” she murmured softly. “The mother is hurt.”
“The mother is okay, Peanut.” Bud started toward her-gently, so as not to startle her. He led her inside out of the rain. “The mother is okay.”
Dolly responded to the sound of Bud’s voice. She even appeared to be coming out of her trance. She blinked her eyes rapidly several times and began to look around the room in puzzlement. She was trying to grasp where she was. Trying to understand. But just when it seemed as if she were about to, Dolly’s eyes suddenly bulged in terror. And she screamed. It was a blood-curdling scream. Mitch had never heard anyone scream like that before in his life.
It was the shotgun.
It was the sight of Red standing there holding that shotgun. Except she wasn’t seeing Red’s face. She was seeing the face of Roy Weems. She was back there all over again, back to that day thirty years before when Roy had raped her at gunpoint in this very house. That day when she had shot him and Louisa. That day she remembered nothing about.
She was back there.
“No, don’t hurt me anymore!” she whimpered, her voice that of a desperate little girl. “Please don’t hurt me!”
“I’m not going to hurt you, Dolly,” Red said, straining to keep his voice calm. Pain etched his face. “No one is going to hurt you. Now please give me the knife… Just give me the knife, okay?”
No, it was not okay.
Dolly charged her brother-the carving knife raised over her head and a feral roar coming from her throat.
“No, Dolly!” he cried out. “It’s me! It’s Red!”
It was no use. She wasn’t hearing him. She wasn’t seeing him. It was Roy Weems, the trusted family caretaker, who she was seeing. It was the man who had robbed her of her innocence. And she was ready to kill him all over again.
Bud dove for her, wrestling with her, grabbing her by the wrists. The knife clattered harmlessly to the floor. Only now Dolly lunged for the shotgun, fighting Red for it. Clawing him savagely. Raking him and Bud both with her nails. Then all three of them had their hands wrapped around the gun barrel, gasping, moaning, groaning…
Until suddenly it went off with a deafening boom.
And just as suddenly everything in Mitch’s universe became tilted and strange and he didn’t seem to be standing up anymore. The floor. He was lying on the floor.
&nb
sp; And now there were rapid footsteps on the staircase and the lieutenant was standing over him, Sig-Sauer in hand.
“No, no, you’re blowing it,” Mitch scolded her. “You were supposed to stay upstairs unless the play broke down.”
“Guess what-it broke down!” she cried out. “Now let’s just hold it, people! Don’t anybody move!”
Only somebody was. Jamie was making a dash for the door. He didn’t get there-the lieutenant was quicker on her feet. She kicked one of his legs out from under him and threw him to the floor. Jamie landed with a thud and lay there. He did not get up.
Somebody else was sobbing. Dolly. It was Dolly. The others were silent.
Now Lieutenant Mitry was kneeling over Mitch. “How are you?” She seemed terribly worried about him for some reason. “Talk at me.”
How was he? He was cold. He was dizzy. Everything seemed to be swirling around him. He’d broken his wrist once when he was ten years old. Fell out of a tree in Stuyvesant Oval. That’s how he was. “I’m just great. Did we get ’em?”
She wasn’t listening to him. She was too busy yelling into her cell phone. “I don’t care if it’s raining. I need an ambulance now.” Mitch couldn’t make out the rest of what she was saying. Something to do with a bleeder.
There was blood. He was lying in a pool of his own blood. He’d been shot, he suddenly realized. Now she was tying a belt around his leg with all her might. He could see the cords in her neck stand out.
“Damn, how did I let you talk me into this?” she fumed at him.
“Simple. If they got away with it you’d never be able to live with yourself.”
“I still might not. And who the hell’s this long, tall brunette you were going on about?”
“Gwyneth. She’s really a bottle blonde.”
The lieutenant showed him her dimples. “That a fact? I had no idea.”
“Stick with me. You’ll learn all kinds of amazing, trivial things.” Mitch felt himself getting even dizzier. He was starting to think he might even pass out. “Lieutenant, I’ve discovered something truly shocking about myself.”
“Which is what?”
“I’m really, really good at this.”
“Uh-hunh.”
“No, I mean it. I was calm. I was cool. I was, dare I say it, macho.”
“You just keep telling yourself that, macho man. It’ll dull the pain.”
“Will you take care of Clemmie for me?”
“Not a problem. Anything else?”
“Tapioca.”
Her face was very close to his now. “You said what?”
“I want a large bowl of warm tapioca. Tell Sheila Enman, will you?”
The lieutenant’s features were starting to get fuzzy. And then Mitch couldn’t make out her face anymore. It was Maisie’s face he was seeing now. His beloved Maisie. She was right there next to him, reaching out to him, beckoning him to join her. Smiling, Mitch held his hand out to her. She gripped it, her hand warm and strong, just as he remembered it.
Together, the two of them went far, far away.
Mitch woke up in a hospital bed with an immense bandage wrapped around his leg and a pair of Hideki Irabu’s used sweat socks stuffed in his mouth. It was daylight. The sun was shining. And he was not alone.
“Welcome to Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in historic New London, Connecticut,” Lieutenant Mitry said to him briskly. She was seated at the foot of his bed, dressed in a crisp white shirt and gray flannel slacks. The woman looked bright and efficient and way more alert than Mitch felt. “You’ve been out for something like sixteen hours. The bullet hit an artery so you lost a lot of blood. Straight up, another fifteen minutes and you might not have made it. But you’re okay. No broken bones. You took it in the meatiest part of your thigh. Lot of meat there. Whole lot of meat there. In fact, the doctor said-”
“Okay, you’ve made your point about the meat, Desiree,” interjected the lady seated next to her. She was a roundish little old lady in a faded sweatshirt that was emblazoned with the bygone slogan: E.R.A.-Y.E.S. There seemed to be a great deal of cat hair on this sweatshirt.
“Who are you?” Mitch croaked at her. There was nothing in his mouth after all. He was simply thirsty. He had never been so thirsty.
“Give it up for my girl Bella Tillis,” said the lieutenant.
“I am a huge fan of your work, Mr. Berger,” Bella exclaimed. “Although I must tell you I still disagree strongly with your negative assessment of The Truman Show. I felt that its message about the pernicious pervasiveness of modern media far outweighed the inherent plot weaknesses.”
Mitch groaned inwardly. I am not in any hospital in New London. I have died and gone to film critics’ hell. “Bella, we’ve met before, haven’t we?” he asked, peering at her.
Bella stuck her lower lip out at him. “I don’t believe so, no.”
“You ever live in Stuyvesant Town?”
“No, never.”
“Wait, I know-you were my Uncle Sid’s first wife, am I right?”
“No, dear, you’re not.”
“We’re related,” Mitch insisted. “I’m positive we’re related.”
“Can I get you anything?” Lieutenant Mitry asked him.
“Water, please.”
There was a carafe on the credenza next to his bed. She got up and poured some. Mitch could feel his pulse quicken as she stood there close to him. His gaze held hers when she handed him the styrofoam cup, her own eyes growing large and shiny behind her horn-rimmed glasses.
“What’s up with that Band-Aid on your arm?” he asked her after a long drink. “Were you wounded?”
“No, no. Just donated some blood, that’s all.”
“That was nice of you.”
“Well, you needed it.”
“You mean you donated your blood to me?”
“What I said, wow man.”
“You mean your blood is coursing through my veins at this very moment?”
The lieutenant cocked her head at him curiously. “Why are you making such a big deal about it?”
“Because it means we’re members of the same tribe now.”
“Get out of here-that’s kid stuff.”
“It most certainly is not. It’s a time-honored truism that dates all the way back to Broken Arrow.”
“Man, if you’re about to start in on old movies again I am way out of here.”
Now he became aware that someone else was standing in the doorway.
“You’re awake,” this someone said.
Mitch’s jaw dropped. “Lacy, what on earth are you doing here?”
His editor stiffened. “I am deeply offended by your overt display of astonishment. I can nurture. I can donate blood… Well, I can nurture. Besides, the press corps is mobbing the parking lot outside and I need your article.”
“I’ll get right on it, boss. Have you folks…?”
“Oh, we’ve met,” Lacy responded tartly. “We’ve bonded. We’ve swapped secrets. We’ve arranged for me to pick up two neutered male tabbies on my way home to the city.” She broke off, her lips pulling back from her teeth in a pained grin. “Mrs. Tillis has even been kind enough to share her thoughts with me on the overall decline of our arts coverage.”
“I especially hate that dance critic,” Bella sniffed. “So smug.”
“How did it go with your people?” Mitch asked the lieutenant.
“It went,” she answered curtly. “I told them I was there because I’d brought a stray kitten by for you. And I happened to be upstairs with her when the three perps showed. And that turning on the tape recorder was your idea.”
“All of which is technically true,” Mitch pointed out. Of course, it was also true that he’d sneaked her out there in his truck and that she’d been hiding upstairs, waiting for them to show their hand. “Did they buy it?”
“They did and they didn’t.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning my case is still under review. And I’m still on
administrative leave.”
“I’m really sorry, Lieutenant. This is all my fault.”
She shook her head at him. “Don’t even go there. I had a choice to make and I made it. No regrets. But I can tell you this much-if you hadn’t pulled through I would be roadkill.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t be doing so hot, either. How’s Dolly?”
“Not great,” the lieutenant replied grimly. “She’d always blocked it out. What happened that day, I mean. Now that the truth’s come flooding in, she’s gone into a severe depression. Her doctor believes she’ll be able to deal with it in time. But for now she’s downstairs in the psychiatric ward-under a suicide watch.”
“Poor Dolly,” Mitch said heavily. “Will she be charged in those murders?”
“There’s no great desire on the part of the district prosecutor to proceed on that.”
“How about the Three Amigos?”
She brightened considerably. “They were arraigned this morning in New London Superior Court. They’re being charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Plus the attempted murder of yourself-times two on Bud Havenhurt’s part. They’re being held without bail.”
“Well, this is good news.”
“It gets even better-Jamie Devers has already confessed. Man’s trying to cut a deal for himself. And we found strands of Torry Mordarski’s hair in Bud’s Range Rover.”
“Excellent.”
“Indeed,” she agreed. “Although it’s kind of quiet out on that island. The only two people left are Bitsy Peck and Evan Havenhurst.”
“What happened to Mandy?”
“She hightailed it for New York.” The lieutenant’s voice dripped with scorn. She did not have much use for Mandy Havenhurst. “She’s in seclusion, quote-unquote.”
“Shall I arrange to have a reporter and photographer tail the little bitch around the clock?” Lacy asked her sweetly.
“Girl, you and I are going to be friends,” Lieutenant Mitry said, smiling at her. “Oh, hey, I almost forgot…” She reached for a covered Tupperware bowl and presented it to him. “Here’s your tapioca. Mrs. Enman was only too pleased.”
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