The Blood Red Indian Summer (3 page)

Justy’s gaze followed hers. “I hate that I can see that stupid thing from here. And you should
hear
it. First time he took her out I thought a jumbo jet was about to crash into our house.”

He turned his back on the view and sat down at a teak table by the pool. Des and Bob joined him there.

“What can I do for you gentlemen?” Des asked, setting her big hat on the table before her.

Bob cleared his throat and said, “Have you met this fellow yet?”

“Tyrone Grantham? No, I haven’t.”

“We were thinking you might want to drop by and introduce yourself.”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“To welcome him to Dorset, of course.”

“I’m the resident Connecticut State Trooper here, Bob. If you want the Welcome Wagon give Eve Todd a call. She does a very nice job.”

Justy heaved an exasperated sigh. “Oh, for crissakes, can we just talk plain?”

“Fine by me,” Des said.

“I have had nothing but trouble with this
individual
since he bought the place. The man does whatever he wants and nobody dares say no. He lengthened that dock of his without town approval. That penitentiary-style fence he’s put in between us is two feet taller than the building code allows.
And
it’s topped with razor wire, which isn’t allowed either. A twenty-foot stretch of the darned thing is at least eighteen inches over my property line. Plus the cheese heads who installed it mutilated a half-dozen of my trees. Why, I must be spending half of my time every day over at Town Hall filing one official complaint after another. Meanwhile, I’ve got the paparazzi and who knows what other human filth camped outside of my house twenty-four hours a day.”

“You have my sympathy, Mr. Bond.”

“I don’t want your sympathy. I want you to
do
something.”

“I don’t see a role for me here,” Des told him. “You do have a traffic situation, but I just saw two troopers out there trying to help out. I don’t know what else can be done. We can’t strong-arm the media. All we can do is keep the road clear and try to move the gawkers along. My advice is to be patient. They’ll move on to another story in a few days and your life will return to normal.”

“My
life
will never be normal as long as that man is living next door,” Justy said tightly. “I should
not
have to put up with this. I have rights, too.”

“Of course you do,” Bob assured him. “That’s why we thought you might have a talk with the gentleman, Des.”

“A talk about what, Bob?”

Justy glared across the table at her. “Are you purposely playing dumb?”

“I’m not ‘playing’ at anything. I’m the resident trooper. If Mr. Grantham phones 911 and requests my presence I’ll oblige him. If he breaks the law I’ll—”

“He’s broken several laws. I can give you a list as long as my arm.”

“You’re talking about possible building code violations, Mr. Bond. Those aren’t criminal matters.”

The two men exchanged an uneasy look before Bob said, “Des, I want to assure you that what I’m about to say is in no way racially motivated…”

“No, of course not,” Des managed to say, her face revealing nothing.

“But we have … concerns about the criminal element Mr. Grantham has been known to associate with. We want to make sure he behaves himself.”

“And he has,” Des said. “Tyrone Grantham is not wanted in connection with any crime. He’s a high-profile sports celebrity, period.”

“What about his posse or crew or whatever it’s called?”

“I believe it’s called his wife and family,” she replied crisply. “What about them, Bob?”

“Well, one worries about gang-related activity.”

“Like one of those drive-by shootings,” Justy said, nodding his head. “Bonita hasn’t been able to sleep a wink since they moved in next door. She just wanders around the house all night, scared out of her wits.”

“I’m unaware of any such gang-related activity,” Des said, hearing the crunch of gravel out front as a car pulled in and parked. A car door slammed shut and footsteps started toward them on the bluestone path.

The footsteps belonged to Bonita, who was just back from an early morning tennis game at the country club. Or so her sleeveless white polo shirt and trim little white tennis shorts suggested. Bonita was thirty-six trying real hard to look twenty-six. Her day-glo tangerine lip gloss and nail polish were a bit too young for her. So was the matching tangerine scrunchie that held her shiny blond ponytail in place. Bonita was tall and slim with nice tanned legs and a perky little ass. Good, high cheekbones, a kitteny little nose, playful blue eyes—a vanilla princess through and through. Just the sort of pampered blond bitch whom Des had resented her entire life. But Dorset’s many vanilla princesses were not all the same flavor, she’d discovered. Some were actually very nice people. Others were even nastier than she’d ever imagined.

“Hi, darling.” Bonita gave Justy a big, smoochy kiss, mussing his carefully coiffed hair. “Greetings, Bob. Hey, Trooper Des,” she added coolly.

Des said hey back—with equal coolness. She’d had to pull Bonita over on Route 156 last year for exceeding the posted speed limit by more than twenty mph—and driving on the wrong side of the road. She’d flunked her Breathalyzer test and had not been particularly gracious. In fact, she’d called Des a “hostile twat.”

“How was tennis?” Justy asked her, smoothing his hair back down.

“
Really
hard.” Bonita’s mouth got all pouty. “And my little pink toes are
so
hot.” She sat on the edge of the pool, took off her sneakers and anklets and dipped those little pink toes in the water, sighing contentedly as she paddled her smooth bare legs back and forth.

Bob Paffin couldn’t take his eyes off her legs. The old goat was practically drooling. Justy, Des noticed, paid her no attention whatsoever.

Des also noticed that Bonita had a nasty scalp wound on the back of her head. “What did you do to your head?”

“Cracked it on the kitchen counter,” Bonita answered lightly. “I was looking for a muffin pan in the cupboard down below. That’ll teach me to cook. What are you three up to?”

“Talking about our new neighbor,” Justy replied.

Bonita rolled her eyes. “Are you still obsessing about him? Let it go.”

“Your husband was just telling me you’re so upset that you can’t sleep.”

“I’m fine,” Bonita assured her. “We’re fine.”

“We’re not fine.” Justy narrowed his gaze at Des. “What’s more, I resent your cavalier attitude toward this crisis.”

“There
is
no crisis, Mr. Bond. But you’ve asked me to weigh in so I’m going to. If you’re so worried about Tyrone Grantham being a good neighbor then why don’t you act like one yourself? Stroll on over there to welcome him to the community. Bring his new bride some flowers. Maybe a lucky horseshoe to hang over the front door. I understand that’s a quaint tradition here in Dorset. Seriously, have you done
anything
other than holler bloody murder about him over at Town Hall? How about you, Bob? Have you rung his bell and introduced yourself?” On their stony silence Des shook her head and said, “We had a word for men like you when I was growing up—wusses.”

“God, am I loving this or what?” Bonita whooped.

“Shut your mouth!” Justy snarled at his young wife.

Des parked her big hat on her head and said, “If you folks will excuse me, I’ll be going.”

June Bond came shambling across the lawn toward them now in his swim trunks, all sun-browned and sweaty. June was lean and broad-shouldered. His jaw was strong, his smile genuine. “Good to see you, Des,” he said warmly.

“Back at you, June,” Des responded.

Bonita eyed him rather humidly from the edge of the pool, her blue eyes roaming over his tanned, muscular frame. June’s own eyes carefully avoided hers. Des would have sworn they had something going on if she hadn’t seen for herself how much June and Callie adored each other.

If Justy was aware of anything he wasn’t letting on. He was too busy showing who was in charge. “June, what in the hell are you still doing here? You should have been on the showroom floor a half hour ago.”

“Just have to jump in the shower, boss. I’ll be there in a flash.”

“See that you are. Or go find yourself another job. In this family we
work
for a living, hear me?”

June’s mouth tightened. “Yes, sir.” He started toward the house at a brisker pace.

“Why are you so rough on him?” Bonita asked.

“I treat him like any other employee. I expect him to move merchandise.”

Des tipped her hat and said, “Have a good day, folks.”

“Des, what if you were to pay Mr. Grantham a simple courtesy call?” Bob thumbed his receding chin thoughtfully. “You know, just to see if there’s any way you can be of service to him regarding the gawkers and so forth.”

“The man’s not stupid, Bob. He’ll see right through that.”

“What if he does? I should think he’d be flattered. I know I’d be. Would you do that for us, Des? Ask him if there’s any way you can help out? And while you’re at it, just, well, see if you can persuade him to accommodate his new neighbors a bit more?”

“The answer is still no, Bob.”

“It would be in your best interest, you know.”

“
My
best interest? How so?”

“Because if there’s an incident of some kind, God forbid, it will reflect very poorly on your management skills. Your troop commander will take note of that when it comes time for your performance review. Especially because I’m quite certain he’ll be made aware of it.” Bob Paffin showed Des those yellow teeth of his again. At that moment he reminded her very much of a cornered Norway rat she’d had to shoot one night in the Frog Hollow projects. “Do we understand each other?”

C
HAPTER
2

T
HE TRAFFIC WAS BACKED
up all the way to Old Shore Road. A state trooper was trying to move people along. Whatever. Mitch waited there patiently in his bulbous kidney-colored 1956 Studebaker pickup. He was delivering cartons of nonperishables from the Food Pantry to the Joshua sisters, who lived in the waterfront estate just this side of the Grantham place, and he was in no hurry. Quite honestly, Mitch saw very little point in ever being in a hurry. It was the single most important life lesson that Mitch Berger, a child of the streets of Manhattan, had learned since he’d taken up residence in his antique caretaker’s cottage out on Big Sister Island.

He reached for an Entennman’s powdered donut, munching on it contentedly. Until a few months ago, Mitch had been the lead film critic of the most prestigious newspaper in New York City—as well as the buffed, primped on-air reviewer for its parent empire’s cable news channel. But he’d said good-bye to all of that. These days, he was perfectly happy to write two essays a week for the e-zine that Lacy Nickerson, his former editor at the newspaper, had launched. Right now he was putting together his annual Halloween Scare-a-palooza, which was something that he, his readers and Netflix had all come to look forward to. Mitch always tried to avoid the obvious candidates like
Psycho
or
The Shining
. He’d choose fright films that were a bit more obscure, offbeat or just plain bizarre. And he’d come up with some good ones so far, like
The Maze
with Richard Carlson and Hillary Brooke, a 1953 William Cameron Menzies 3D non-classic that had a real jolter of an ending (spoiler alert: You won’t feel like eating frog legs for a really long time). And 1980’s
Can’t Stop The Music
, starring The Village People, Valerie Perrine and Olympic gold-medalist Bruce Jenner, which had to be the most outright terrifying Hollywood movie ever made.

Mitch helped himself to another donut, pleased by how relaxed he felt even though The Big Event was a mere day away. True, his forehead was breaking out for the first time in fourteen years. True, he’d just inhaled his fifth donut since he left the house. But, hey, it wasn’t every day that his parents flew up from their retirement village in Vero Beach to meet the new woman in his life.
And
her father.

I love Des. I love my parents. Why am I freaking out?

Chet and Ruth Berger were terrific people who had devoted thirty-four years of their lives to giving inner-city schoolkids a chance. His dad taught Algebra at Boys and Girls High in Brooklyn. His mom served as school librarian at the Eleanor Roosevelt Middle School in Washington Heights. They raised Mitch in a two-bedroom rent-stabilized apartment in Stuyvesant Town. Scrimped and saved so he could attend Columbia. Took their pensions when they were sixty-two, and were now enjoying the Florida retirement they so richly deserved. In fact, this would be the first time they’d been back to New York in over a year. They were staying in Mitch’s apartment on West 102 Street for a couple of days and coming out to Dorset tomorrow. He’d booked them a nice room at the Frederick House Inn.

I love my Des. I love my parents. Why am I freaking out?

It wasn’t as if they didn’t know she was a Connecticut state trooper who knew at least eighteen different ways to kill a man with her bare hands. Or that she wasn’t Jewish. Mitch’s beloved wife, Maisie, who’d died of ovarian cancer, hadn’t been Jewish either. But, well, she
had
been white. And there was no way tomorrow night’s real-life version of
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?
wasn’t going to be tense.

Not that Chet and Ruth had flown north solely to meet Des. They also had a couple of “appointments” to take care of in the city. “Appointments” that they’d been stubbornly tight-lipped about when Mitch tried to press for details over the phone. As in, perhaps one of them was in town to see a specialist regarding a grapefruit-sized tumor. Then again, perhaps Mitch was just a bit spooked. After losing Maisie he had every reason to be. Not to mention what Des had just gone through with the Deacon. One day, he was fine. The next day he was on the operating table having quadruple-bypass surgery. That was how these things happened when they happened.
Bam
. You never saw them coming.