MITCH KNEW THE STORM was going to be a genuinely nasty one when he got a good look at those gray clouds as he drove back over the causeway in his pickup.
They were converging upon each other from opposite ends of the sky like two big, hulking fighters in a ring. Mitch had never seen cloud formations do that before in his entire life. Thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. The air was heavy and charged with electricity. The wind was gusting. And the surf was so angry that cold salt spray was carrying right up and over the causeway.
He found Clemmie burrowed under his bed covers with her ears pinned back. Cats did not like wind. Or thunder. Cats were not stupid.
Mitch immediately closed all of his windows and filled every pot and pail he owned with water from the tap. He poured oil in his hurricane lamp and put fresh batteries in his flashlight, fetched two big armloads of firewood from the woodpile in the barn, brought his garden chairs inside. It was, he felt, very important for him to behave as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
Even though everything was. Mitch Berger was not an old hand at derring-do. At least, not when he himself was playing a featured role in the adventure. And had no idea how it would play out. Or if he would prove to be its hero or its victim. In truth, he was petrified. But he had not wanted the lieutenant to know this.
It was very important that she not know this.
By now the sky was turning black and fat raindrops were beginning to fall. Thunder shook the entire island. Lightning crackled. And then, with sudden ferocity, the heavens opened up and hail stones the size of pea gravel began pelting his roof.
The electricity went out with a pop right after that, plunging him into the dark of night even though it was only late afternoon.
The phone went out, too.
The hail quickly turned into a hard, driving rain. Mitch made a fire against the damp and curled up in his living room chair to read Manny Farber by the light of his hurricane lamp. He could not concentrate. The words were nothing more than meaningless squiggles on the page. He flung the book aside, lit a burner and made coffee. He drank a cup. He listened to the storm rage outside, the wind gusting so hard that Mitch wondered if it would tear the roof right off of his house. He heard a tree come down somewhere very close by. It was a frightening sound-like someone ripping a piece of canvas cloth-followed a second later by a heavy thud that shook the ground the way a wrecking ball did when it slammed into the side of a brick building. He thought about seeking safety down below in his crawl space, but decided he’d rather be blown all the way to Oz than go back down in that horrible place.
He waited. Inevitably, he got hungry. He heated up the remains of a batch of American chop suey and ate it right out of the pot with a serving spoon. Eight o‘clock came, nine o’clock came. The rain came, harder and harder. So hard that it began to stream in under the front door, sparkling and golden in the lantern light. He fetched a mop to soak it up. Then he realized it was leaking in around his living room windows as well. He put a couple of old bath towels down under them to contain it and knelt there with the lantern, checking the floorboards for moisture. It didn’t appear to be streaming any farther into the room. Not yet anyway. Satisfied, Mitch stood back up and let out a sudden and wholly involuntary gasp of shock.
He was face to face with them.
Three figures clad in foul-weather gear stood right there on the other side of the window in the pouring rain, staring in at him. Their features were slightly distorted by the beads of water on the glass, but Mitch had no trouble making out who they were.
It was Bud Havenhurst, Red Peck and Jamie Devers who stood out there. He had not heard their footsteps on the gravel path. Not with all of that rain and wind.
Briefly, Mitch felt as if he’d been bolted to the floor. Here is what he was thinking: My God, it actually worked. He hadn’t expected it to. Not really. Sure, it had worked in that Joan Crawford movie. But that was not real life. And he really did know the difference, whether the lieutenant believed him or not. This was real life-staring at him through the window. And Mitch’s first reaction was total panic. He was not sure if he could actually pull this off. He was smart enough, but did he have the nerve?
He honestly didn’t know. But after that first jolt of shock had passed, an inner resolve did begin to kick in. Determination coursed through his veins. He felt steady. He felt strong. It wasn’t on the level of, say, Popeye after the sailor man had gulped down a can of spinach. But he’d take it. Mitch took a deep breath, strode to the door and flung it open, holding it against the wind with all of his weight.
“Hey, boy!” Bud called to him from out of the stormy darkness.
“Hey back at you!” Mitch exclaimed, a big smile on his face. “Don’t you guys know enough to come in out of the rain?”
“May we?” pleaded Jamie. “It’s really wet out here.”
“Of course.” Mitch stepped aside to let them in.
“We were just checking up on Dolly’s tree,” Red Peck said stolidly as the three of them came tromping inside in their rain boots, the water pouring from them. All three wore shiny yellow rubberized jackets and pants. Bud was clutching a long black Mag-Lite flashlight. “It was that old oak out by the driveway,” Red added, shrugging off his rain hood. His hair underneath was plastered flat but dry.
“I heard it come down,” Mitch said, his heart racing. “Sounded pretty bad.”
“One big limb broke off,” Bud said. “But she was lucky-it landed in the driveway instead of on the house. We’ll have to take a chain saw to it in the morning, assuming it ever stops raining.”
“That’s a mighty bold assumption, pilgrim,” Jamie cracked with an impish twinkle in his eye. “We saw your lantern light, Mitch. Just wanted to make sure you were okay. See if you needed anything.”
So they were going to play games. Fine.
“I’m hanging in,” he said, shoving the door shut. “Nice of you to check, though. Can I offer you a scotch for your trouble?”
“You can,” said Jamie, rubbing his hands together with eager anticipation.
The other two nodded in agreement.
Mitch fetched four glasses from the kitchen, struggling to keep his calm. He’d positioned his bottle of single malt on a bookcase over by his desk. This gave him an opportunity to do what he had to do-flick on his microcassette recorder-while he was busy pouring. Then he brought them their drinks, the scotch glowing like honey in the lamplight.
Bud and Jamie had removed their slickers and stood over by the fire in their rubberized overalls, looking very much like commercial fishermen unwinding after a long day out on the Sound.
Red had unbuttoned his own slicker to reveal the Browning twelve-gauge that he’d been concealing underneath it. He did not raise the shotgun at Mitch. He held it like a safety-conscious hunter would hold it, with the barrel pointed down at the floor.
“What are you planning to shoot with that, Red?” Mitch asked as he handed him his glass.
“Mitch, that all depends on you,” Red responded in a quiet voice.
His three visitors stood there in ominous silence now, gazing cold-eyed at Mitch as the wind howled and the rain tore at his little house. They were no longer the Fab Five. They were the Three Amigos-an aging child star who dealt in antiques, an attorney who dealt in estates and a short-legged airline pilot who had never shot anything more predatory than Bambi. Tuck Weems and Tal Bliss had been the trigger men. With them out of the picture, these three were on unfamiliar turf. And quaking in their boots.
Or so Mitch desperately hoped and prayed.
Bud slid a hand in his pocket and fished out the note Mitch had left for each of them. “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded, looking down his long, narrow nose at Mitch.
“It means just what it says,” Mitch replied, pleased by how normal his own voice sounded. “It means that I’m on to you.”
Jamie took a swallow of his scotch. “About what, Mitch?”
“All of it, Jaymo,” Mitch said. “How you banded together to get rid of Niles. How Tuck seduced Torry. Why you had her check into the Saybrook Point Inn. Why Tal Bliss killed himself.” Mitch paused to take in their reactions. Beads of perspiration were forming on Bud’s forehead. Jamie’s breathing had become shallow and uneven. Of the three, Red seemed the coolest and most in control. This was not good, since it was he who was holding the Browning. “Naturally, I intend to go to the law. Only there’s a few things I still don’t understand. For starters, why did you bury Niles out here on Big Sister?”
“Don’t tell him a thing!” Red barked at the others. “Not one word.”
“I don’t see any upside in that, Red,” Bud countered. “It’s not as if he’s going to get that chance to go to the law.”
“Agreed,” Jamie said heavily.
They intended to kill him. Right here. Right now. Mitch swallowed, his eyes falling on the shotgun. Red still had it pointed down at the floor.
“It had to do with the tides, Mitch,” Bud said. “If it had been high tide, we would have taken his body away by boat and buried him under the rocks out on Little Sister. Unfortunately, it was low tide that afternoon. The channel from our dock is narrow. It’s not uncommon for one of us to run aground. We couldn’t afford to take that chance. Not with Niles’s body onboard. Therefore, burying him here was our safest option.”
“But why did you kill him so close to home?”
“Name a better place,” Bud answered. “It’s totally private out here. No witnesses. The women were gone for the afternoon.”
“We met up with him in the barn,” Jamie recalled. “That’s where it happened.”
“Niles was utterly flabbergasted,” Bud jeered. “The bastard couldn’t believe it. He thought we were joking.”
Mitch took a gulp of his scotch, his hand wrapped tightly around the glass. “Who pulled the trigger?”
“Tuck Weems,” Jamie replied. “He shot the girl, too.”
Red was still not saying anything. Just standing there in front of the fire with the shotgun. Outside, the wind howled and the rain still poured down.
“It was stupid of him to use the same gun,” said Mitch. “That was the one crucial mistake you made.”
“Agreed,” Bud acknowledged miserably. “But only with the benefit of hindsight. At the time, we had no reason to believe that anyone would ever find Niles’s body.”
“And Tuck seemed to know what he was doing,” Jamie added defensively. “He ran the early stages, really. All the rest of us did was loan him our cars for his assignations with that girl.”
“Torry,” said Mitch. “Her name was Torry.”
“Tuck didn’t want to leave a recognizable trail behind,” Bud explained.
“And why did you shoot him?”
“Tuck’s conscience started gnawing at him,” spoke up Red, who’d finally decided there was no point in staying silent. Mitch couldn’t decide whether this was a good sign or a bad sign. He suspected it wasn’t good. “Something to do with him becoming a father for the first time at age fifty. Poor guy thought he’d seen God or something.” Red puffed out his cheeks in disgust. “Suddenly, he wanted to set things right-marry Darleen, become a decent family man.”
“He threatened to go to the police,” Bud said. “And take the rest of us down with him.”
Red nodded. “Not an acceptable option. So Tal Bliss took care of him. Which upset Tal greatly.”
“Plotting to kill Niles Seymour didn’t?”
“Niles was a cancer,” Bud said with savage certainty. “Taking care of him was necessary.”
“Just as keeping Dolly’s thirty-year-old secret was necessary?”
Bud took a sip of his scotch, eyeing Mitch over the rim of his glass. “So you know about that, do you? Lieutenant Mitry was getting very close to the truth. That’s what Tal told me over the phone right before he shot himself. He was afraid that after all of these years poor Dolly would be branded a murderer.”
“Well, she did kill them,” Mitch pointed out.
“That man raped her,” Bud argued, his voice choking with emotion. “She was a virgin and he took that from her! No court of law would have convicted her. But the trial-my God, it would have destroyed her. And she didn’t deserve that. She deserved better. She still does. There are very few truly special people on this earth, Mitch. Dolly is one of them.”
“And so is Evan,” Jamie added fondly. “Like mother, like son. They’re too gentle, too good for this world, Mitch. People like Dolly and Evan can’t make it in life on their own. They need protecting.”
“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.
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.”
“You remembered!”
“Damned straight I remembered. A man’s last request matters. Although I can’t imagine why you’d want to eat this stuff. Looks like a bunch of eyeballs floating around in custard, if you ask me.”
“Who asked you?” Mitch demanded. “Besides, what do you know about food?”
“You are so right, Mr. Berger,” Bella agreed, shaking a stubby index finger at him. “This girl does not eat. If I didn’t watch her dietary intake like a hawk she would simply waste away.”
The lieutenant let out a pained sigh. “Okay, now I am definitely out of here.”
“You are not,” Bella huffed at her. “You will stay here and you will feed this poor man. He needs to get his strength back.” She began rifling through the credenza. “Do you suppose there’s such a thing as a spoon around this place?”
Lacy said she would try to find one. Or maybe it was the lieutenant who said this. Mitch wasn’t sure. He was slipping away again. He was tired. He was so tired that everything was starting to get fuzzy again.
But he didn’t join Maisie this time. Maisie wasn’t there anymore. She was gone-gone for good. Mitch felt certain of it. She had given him one precious parting gift before she went away. She gave him the Fibonacci Series. And for this Mitch would always be grateful. Because from now on, whenever he thought of his beloved wife, Mitch would be able to smile.
And maybe, someday soon, he might even be able to laugh again.