The Cold Blue Blood (17 page)

Fact number one was that she suddenly seemed to be running his life.

Fact number two was that she was good-looking. She was very good-looking. Her skin was smooth and glowing. Her smile, when she flashed it, did warm, strange things to the lower half of his body. And her figure was positively breathtaking. She was a big woman, at least six feet tall, but lithe and loose-limbed and light on her feet. She also happened to possess one of the top half-dozen cabooses he had ever laid eyes on, right up there with Cyd Charisse, Sheree North and Emily Rosenzweig, the girl who had sat in front of him in tenth-grade Biology at Stuyvesant High. Not that the lieutenant was showing it off. Her clothes were downright mannish. She wore no jewelry either. There was no wedding ring.

She was gazing intently at his right bicep now. It was a warm day and Mitch was wearing the complimentary red T-shirt that had been included in the press kit for
Amityville: The Evil Escapes
. “What does that mean?” she asked, referring to his
Rocky Dies Yellow
tattoo.

“It’s the headline from
Angels with Dirty Faces
.” On her blank look he added, “I guess you’re not into old movies. It’s one of the best films Cagney ever made for Warner Brothers. A true classic. It’s got Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Pat O’Brien, the Dead End Kids. Direction by Michael Curtiz … What does yours say?”

“My what?”

“Your tattoo.”

“What makes you think I have one?” she demanded.

Mitch shrugged his shoulders.

“It says
The Answer,”
she responded grudgingly.

“Are you?”

“On my good days.”

“And where do you have it?”

“Somewhere you’ll never, ever see it,” she said, sneezing.

Mitch shook his head at her. “I told you you’d catch a cold.”

“I don’t get colds,” she objected, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. “It’s mold spores. I’m allergic to them.”

“Then we’d better get out of here—this house is mold city.” Mitch flicked off his amp stack and started for the door. “Let’s get you some fresh air.”

“Mr. Berger, I do happen to be here on official business.”

“Uh-huh. Like Baby Spice is official business. C’mon, let’s walk.”

She wavered there uncertainly, her feet set wide apart. Clearly, she was ill at ease on Big Sister.

“Look, I’ll make this easy for you,” he said. “I am taking a walk. If you want to ask me any questions, then I suggest you walk with me. Do you need to use the bathroom before we go?”

“I’m fine, Mr. Berger,” she said curtly.

“I wish you’d call me Mitch. How about Kleenex? Can I get you some more Kleenex?”

“Let’s walk,” she snapped irritably.

They walked, taking one of the narrow paths lined with beach roses down to the beach. It was a bright, beautiful day. The salt air was clean and fresh. Gulls and cormorants soared overhead. But the tide was in and there was almost no dry sand to walk on. Mitch paused to pull off his chunky Mephistos and his sweat socks. Reluctantly, she did the same with her polished black brogans and gray cashmere dress socks. She had, without question, the longest, narrowest feet Mitch had ever seen.

“My God, what size shoe do you wear?”

“Twelve and a half double-A,” she replied, frowning. “Why are you asking?”

“Has anyone ever told you that your feet bear a striking resemblance to a pair of skis?”

“Um, okay, anyone ever tell you that yours look just like piglets?” she shot back. “Fat and pink and hairless?”

“Hold on,” Mitch cautioned. “I think there was a racial subtext to that remark.”

“There was not,” she insisted, nostrils flaring.

“Was.”

“Man, do you ever stop flapping your gums?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. When I’m working I have to be silent for hours and hours at a time.”

She glanced at him, nodding. “Okay, sure. And then as soon as the lights come up the gas just billows right on out of you. Consider me schooled. Next time I question you, Mr. Berger, it’s going to be in the dark.”

“That’s fine by me, just as long as you bring the popcorn. Extra butter, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind one bit,” she said, flashing her smile at him. “I’m not the one who has to look at you with your shirt off.”

They walked, her dreadlocks swinging, her stride uncommonly long. His own was plodding and rather heavy. He had to work to keep up with her.

“You ever date a woman named Torry Mordarski?” she asked him.

“I don’t think so—the name doesn’t ring a bell. How long ago are we talking about?”

“In the past few months.”

“Oh, then it’s definitely no. Why, who is she?”

“Was
is the operative verb tense. She was a single mother in Meriden. We found her murdered in the woods up there six weeks ago.”

“And …?”

“And the thirty-eight slug that killed her matches up exactly with the slugs we took out of Niles Seymour and Tuck Weems.”

He glanced at her in surprise. “That wasn’t on the news this morning.”

“We don’t tell them everything. Same way you didn’t tell me everything.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you didn’t mention Mrs. Seymour’s episodes in the night,” the lieutenant said with flinty disapproval.

“I felt it was the family’s job to tell you. Besides, I promised Bud I’d keep it to myself.”

“And you’re a man who can keep a secret.”

“I guess. Never gave it much thought—I don’t get asked very often.”

They plowed their way past the lighthouse in the direction of Big Sister’s private dock. Jamie and Evan were working on their sailboat. Bud was working on his boat as well. Mitch supposed that this was what you did when you had a boat—you worked on it. Especially when you couldn’t leave the island without being assaulted by the media. Mitch waved to them. All three of them waved back, watching him with frank curiosity as he strode past with the lieutenant.

Overhead, a news chopper hovered, filming the island for the evening news. Mitch was beginning to get an idea what it must be like to be a Kennedy.

“So the same person who killed Niles Seymour and Tuck Weems also killed this Torry Mordarski woman?”

“Same
weapon
. Not necessarily the same person.”

“But probably, right?”

“Most likely.”

“Have you found the weapon?”

“Not yet. We did find one freshly dug hole in the woods near Mrs. Seymour’s house, but all we unearthed was—”

“A dead fox.”

She nodded, peering at him.

“I buried it for Dolly the other day.” Mitch furrowed his brow, confused. “Well, I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“How Torry Mordarski and the two dead men connect up.”

The lieutenant explained it to him. She told him that Torry had been seeing an older man named Stan, an elusive figure who had covered his tracks carefully and was the prime suspect in Torry’s murder. She told him that the description of Stan fit Niles Seymour to a tee—although a coworker who had once caught a glimpse of Stan failed to recognize Seymour from his photo. She told him that Torry Mordarski matched the description of the young woman Bud Havenhurst and Red Peck had seen with Niles Seymour at the Saybrook Point Inn the day before he disappeared. All except for the hair color—Torry had been a blonde, not a redhead. The inn had no record of Niles Seymour or Torry Mordarski having been registered there the night of April 17. But they did have a record of one Angela Becker of Lansing, Michigan, having registered there. She had paid cash for the room, so there was no credit card trail to follow. However, since it was standard hotel policy to photocopy the driver’s license of any guest who chose to pay with cash, the inn did have that on file. And Angela Becker’s driver’s license was a fake. In fact, Angela Becker was a fake. There was no such person living at any such address in Lansing, Michigan. Angela Becker’s age, height, weight and hair color—red—matched the woman who Bud Havenhurst and Red Peck had seen with Seymour. And the photocopy of her driver’s license picture bore a fuzzy resemblance to Torry.

“So you think this Angela Becker person was actually Torry?”

“I do.”

“Why use a fake ID?”

“Not so unusual. Seymour was a married man. They worry about leaving paper trails behind for divorce lawyers to find.”

“I see,” Mitch said thoughtfully. “So if Torry Mordarski was the woman who they saw with Seymour, then that means Seymour was her elusive boyfriend, Stan. And someone got jealous and killed both of them. And then turned around and killed Tuck Weems when Seymour’s body was found. Which makes no sense to me at all. Not unless …” Mitch paused, nodding his head at her. “Okay, now I know where you’re going with this.”

Lieutenant Mitry raised an eyebrow at him. “Where is that?”

“You’re thinking Dolly is the killer. She found out that her husband was having an affair with this young babe up in Meriden. So she lured Torry into the woods and shot her. Then she came home and shot Seymour. Tuck Weems, her loyal family caretaker, helped her bury him. Maybe he even got her the gun, too. Then she wrote the Dear John letter she claimed Seymour left her. Everything would have been fine if I hadn’t dug up the body … Do you know yet how long it was down there?”

“Preliminary reports from the coroner and forensic entomologist estimate four to six weeks. It plays,” she concurred. “Go on.”

“Okay, so now she was afraid Weems might talk. Or maybe he threatened to blackmail her. So she met him out at the beach and killed him to cover her tracks. He
was
killed there, wasn’t he?”

“He was. And his truck was parked nearby.”

“Then it all fits together neat as can be. All except for one thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“Do you honestly think that nice lady killed three people?”

“I don’t think anything, Mr. Berger. I’m strictly trying to get at the truth.”

“But she gave me permission to dig there!” Mitch argued heatedly. “No
way
she’d do that if she knew the body was there.”

“Maybe she didn’t know,” the lieutenant countered calmly. “Maybe Weems didn’t tell her where he buried it.”

“But she left his prescription medicines right out there in the open in her bathroom. If she
had
killed him, if she
had
wanted it to look like he ran away with another woman, wouldn’t she have destroyed them?”

“I would have,” she conceded. “But that’s just me.”

“Besides, if Dolly did kill him, then where’s all of that money of hers he supposedly absconded with? The man’s not gone. The money is. Who took it? Where is it?”

“We don’t know that yet. We’re still following that particular trail.”

“But she’d still have it, wouldn’t she?” Mitch persisted. “If she were the killer then she wouldn’t be broke, would she? She wouldn’t have needed to rent the carriage house out to me, would she?”

“Those are good questions. I can’t answer them.”

They strode in silence for a moment, Mitch’s chest beginning to heave, his brow streaming perspiration. This woman did not believe in a leisurely stroll. A power walk was more like it.

“What else have you found out?” he asked her, puffing. “That you haven’t given to the media yet, I mean.”

“Mandy Havenhurst has had herself some brushes with the law. It’s on the record. Press will be onto it by tomorrow.”

“What kind of brushes?” Mitch asked curiously.

“Got busted in an upscale St. Louis suburb in 1994 for attempting to murder her live-in boyfriend. Poured kerosene over him while he was asleep and set him on fire.”

“Jesus!”

“Jealous rage, apparently. He suffered extensive second-degree burns, but refused to press charges. Her father paid him off. She cleared out of St. Louis fast and resurfaced in Martha’s Vineyard. Where, in 1996, she rammed her new boyfriend’s Jeep through the sliding-glass doors of his cottage and pinned him and the woman she’d caught him with up against a wall. Same story—no one pressed charges. It would seem,” the lieutenant concluded, “that she doesn’t like it when her man strays on her.”

“I wonder how she feels about Bud being so attentive toward Dolly,” Mitch said, remembering his 3:00 A.M. confrontation with the lawyer in Dolly’s kitchen. “That can’t make her happy.”

“Wouldn’t think so.”

“That’s very interesting,” Mitch said, gasping for breath. Lieutenant Mitry wasn’t even breaking a sweat. “Anything else?”

“We’re beginning to construct a profile of Niles Seymour. And it’s not ultra-flattering. He was your classic career low-life. Always skating right on the edge of the law—selling time-shares in half-built retirement villages, stocks over the phone to unwitting widows. Real boiler-room stuff.”

“Makes you wonder why Dolly fell for him.”

“She was alone and vulnerable. Easy prey for a man who she’d ordinarily know was bad news.”

“This sounds like the voice of personal experience.”

“Well, it’s not,” she snapped, abruptly closing that avenue of conversation.

Nonetheless, Mitch found himself wondering why Lt. Desiree Mitry was speaking with him so candidly. Was this some form of cop game she was playing on him? Was she trying to entrap him into incriminating himself? Was he a prime suspect in her eyes? It hadn’t occurred to him that he might be. But he could imagine no other reason why she was talking with him this way. “Am I on your radar, Lieutenant?”

“My radar?”

“Do I need to start looking for a lawyer?”

“No, I wouldn’t think so.”

“That’s good, because I happen to hate lawyers. They have no moral compass, no sense of personal responsibility, no conscience, no—”

“Before you go any further I should tell you that I used to be married to one.”

“Well, then I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, am I?”

She glanced at him in astonishment. “No, you aren’t,” she said softly.

So her husband had thrown her over for another woman, Mitch surmised. Briefly, they fell silent, Mitch convinced that he was going to suffer a massive heart attack if he tried to keep pace with this tireless gazelle any longer. He pulled up and flopped down on a beached driftwood log, wheezing. “Are you ever going to tell me what I told you?” he asked, squinting up at her.