Thwacketa-thwacketa-thwacketa…
It was the end of a hot mess of a day and Des was making a quick pit stop at her stuffy little cubbyhole in Dorset’s Town Hall, a stately, white-columned edifice which smelled year round of mothballs, musty carpeting and Bengay. She had a mail slot there. Folks could leave her messages, tips, leads. Or slide notes under her door. Lately, she’d been swinging by a couple of times a day just in case someone had. Hoping for a break in this case. And really hoping to avoid a certain someone.
Thwacketa-thwacketa-thwatcketa…
The air-conditioner in her window was over twenty years old. All it did, besides make a racket, was wheeze gusts of warm, stale air. This was the downside of quaint-it generally meant cramped work spaces, outmoded wiring and mold. Hell, her heavy horn-rimmed glasses were fogging up. Des removed them, squinting at the newly printed fall school bus schedules that she’d found in her mail slot. Dorset’s elementary, middle and high school were all grouped together in the Historic District. Mornings were always chaotic. A ton of busses and rushed parents pulling in and out at once. For the first week or so, Dorset’s resident state trooper had to stand out there in the middle of Dorset Street directing traffic. It was a far cry from Des Mitry’s heyday as a homicide lieutenant on the Major Crime Squad. One of only three in the entire state who were women. And the only one who was black. And the daughter of Deputy Superintendent Buck Mitry-the Deacon-who was the highest-ranking officer of color in the history of the Connecticut State Police. But, hey, she was totally fine with her new station in life. Just wasn’t ready for fall yet. Today sure hadn’t felt like fall. It had topped out at a sweltering ninety-four degrees. But Labor Day was less than ten days away. Teachers would be showing up for faculty orientation on Monday morning. The calendar didn’t lie.
Thwacketa-thwacketa-thwacketa…
Des slid the schedules into her briefcase, allowing herself a weary sigh. It had been a brutal three weeks. Working seven days a week around the clock. She needed a blow. A nice long, lazy weekend. But she wasn’t going to get one. Not until she nailed him.
The Dorset Flasher had exposed himself to seven elderly women in the Historic District over the previous two weekends. All of them wealthy, well-connected widows. He’d struck on Saturday and Sunday nights between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. That first weekend, he’d rung their doorbells. When they answered there he was-in all of his glory. After word of his exploits got around, not one dowager in Dorset would answer her doorbell after dark. So the sick bastard had taken to waving his thing at them through their windows or sliding-glass doors. Des didn’t have a very solid description of him. Frightened, indignant old ladies didn’t make the greatest eyewitnesses. Plus he operated in the dark of night. All she knew was that he was of average height and weight. He appeared to be reasonably fit. He dressed in dark clothing and wore a black ski mask over his face. Des knew zero about his age or appearance. The old dears couldn’t-or wouldn’t-provide her with any helpful details regarding the particular part of his anatomy that he’d been so anxious to show them. Questioning them about it? Not Des’s idea of a good time.
There had been two additional acts of malicious mischief in the Historic District on the very same nights that the Dorset Flasher had struck. A sign in front of the Fulton Funeral Home had been defaced. And a dead skunk had been left on Amy Orr’s welcome mat. Des had no evidence that the same perp was responsible. Possibly there was no connection between the events at all. But her instincts told her it was the same nutso. Dorset was a very small town. It was also an affluent, picture-postcard town. A serial flasher exposing himself to rich old ladies was just the kind of story that Connecticut’s local TV news stations ate up. They were all over the Dorset Flasher case. And all up in Des’s grille. They weren’t the only ones. A lot of Dorseteers were afraid to go out at night. She was under a lot of heat to nail the sick bastard. Translation: Dorset’s noodge of a first selectman, Bob Paffin, was in her face even more than usual.
Thwacketa-thwacketa-thwacketa…
As she stood there in her sweltering little office, Des could feel the sweat trickling down her legs. She could not wait to floor it out to Mitch’s place, strip off her uni and dive into the cool blue water of Long Island Sound. She was giving herself the evening off tonight. One evening to enjoy a cold beer and a nice meal. To feel Mitch’s deft, sure hands on her. To relax and stretch and…
“Have you got any news for me, Des?”
Busted, damn it.
Dorset’s snowy-haired, red-nosed first selectman stood planted right there in her doorway. “Folks are getting awful darned anxious,” he reminded her. Bob Paffin was real helpful that way.
“I have nothing to tell you, Bob.”
Which didn’t satisfy him. “I need to be able to tell them that you’re making good progress.”
“Bob, we’ll be out there with three extra cruisers tomorrow night. Believe me, the state police are taking this case very, very seriously.”
Short of assigning a detective to it. But the state had limited resources and its detectives were swamped with far more serious cases. The Dorset Flasher hadn’t raped or otherwise assaulted anyone. Hadn’t broken into a home. Hadn’t stolen or destroyed anything of value. The sad reality was that he rated as nothing more than a high-profile nuisance. Which Des was totally fine with. She felt certain she’d nail him faster than any outside detective would. She’d cultivated strong contacts among Dorset’s many stoned and disaffected young people. The Dorset Flasher, she felt certain, was one of them.
Bob Paffin stood there with a pained expression on his long, narrow face. “Des, you know I have every confidence in your ability.
…”
Actually, what she knew was that Bob had gone over her head to Don Rundle, her troop commander, and complained about the piss-poor job she was doing. Dorset’s first selectman had never considered Des “right” for the job and never would, despite the undisputed fact that she excelled at it. She tried very hard not to seethe with resentment whenever the meddlesome snake came near her. Sometimes she almost succeeded.
Mercifully, her cell phone rang. A 911 call. She listened to the dispatcher and then barked, “Bob, I’ve got to take this.” Elbowing past him, she hurried out to her cruiser.
An intruder call had come in from the Captain Chadwick House, the eighteenth-century whaling captain’s showplace that was one of the anchors of Dorset Street’s tree-lined Historic District. It was a mammoth, brick mansion with wraparound enclosed porches and four acres of rose gardens and manicured lawns. Back in the 1920s, the Captain Chadwick House had been converted into a summer hotel. Then it was the Dorset Inn for a while. These days it housed the village’s most exclusive luxury condominiums. Six very desirable units-plus an apartment over the garages for the live-in caretaker. The Farrells lived in one of the downstairs units. A New York widow named Breslauer lived across the hall from them. The other two downstairs units belonged to wealthy couples that had multiple residences around the world and spent only a few weeks out of the year in Dorset. The owner of one of the upstairs units had recently passed away. Her children were fighting over it. The other upstairs unit belonged to Bertha Peck, the indomitable eighty-eight-year-old widow who was the Heidi Klum of Dorset polite society. Bertha Peck decided who was in and who was out. No village blue blood dared to marry, divorce or sneeze without clearing it with Bertha. Bertha was rich. Bertha was powerful. Bertha was Dorset.
It was she who’d placed the intruder call. Bertha wasn’t exactly a stranger to the 911 dispatchers. Just last Tuesday she’d dialed 911 to report that her toilet was stopped up. “Ma’am, you do realize that this number’s for emergencies, don’t you?” the dispatcher had pointed out. To which Bertha had loftily replied, “Young lady, my toilet isn’t working. Allow me to assure you, that is an emergency.”
The old girl was high maintenance. Downright dotty. But as first responder, Des had to play it by the book. As she parked her cruiser out front, her eyes scanned Dorset Street for any sign of a getaway driver idling nearby. She saw no one. Got out and rushed up the path to the front door.
The entry hall of the Captain Chadwick House was elegantly wallpapered and carpeted. A chair lift had been built into the grand staircase up to the second floor. Bertha’s, from when she’d had hip-replacement surgery last year. She didn’t need to use it anymore. Got around just fine now. Played a round of golf every afternoon at the country club with three other rich widows, who together comprised an octogenerian Heathers set.
When Des arrived at the top of the stairs she found the door to Bertha’s apartment wide open. The lock did not appear to be tampered with but Des unsnapped her holster anyway. “Mrs. Peck?” she called out, rapping on the open door with her knuckles.
“Come in, Desiree!” Bertha sang out from somewhere inside of the apartment. “We’re in here, dear!”
We?
Bertha Peck’s grand-sized living room had a twenty-foot ceiling, a chandelier, wood-burning fireplace and a balcony that looked out over the rear lawn to the Lieutenant River. Her taste in decor leaned toward Victorian plush. Sofas and armchairs that looked like great big ornate pincushions. But the artworks that crowded her walls were quite modern and exotic. Bertha was a major supporter of the Dorset Art Academy and liked to display the originals she purchased at the annual student show-including one of Des’s own horrifyingly brutal pen-and-ink drawings of a murder victim. This one a battered ten-year-old girl named Honoria Freeman. Giving artistic life to the murdered souls whom she encountered on the job was Des’s passion and her salvation.
She found Bertha seated on the sofa in her den, calmly watching a rerun of Seinfeld. The episode where Jerry decides to buy his dad a new Cadillac. Bertha Peck was a dainty little thing who’d topped out at maybe five feet two back in her prime a half century ago. Now she was more like four feet eleven, and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. Her linen summer dress was trimly cut, expensive and stylish. So was her cropped, layered hair, which she dyed an unlikely jet black. The round glasses she wore were also black, the saucer-shaped eyes behind them a piercing blue. Her lips were bright red, as were the nails on her tiny hands.
“Mrs. Peck, did you place a call about an intruder?”
“I most certainly did,” Bertha responded airily. “He’s there in the corner. I’ve taken care of him myself. But I still require your assistance, I’m afraid.”
Des saw no one in the corner. Saw nothing. Frowning, she moved slowly in that direction until she reached the overstuffed chair that was parked there and saw… well, it was a small field mouse imprisoned inside of an overturned highball glass. The mouse was dead. Covered in blood.
First, Des reached for her cell phone to stop the other cruisers from rushing to the scene. Then she tipped her big Smokey hat back on her head and said, “Want to tell me what happened, Mrs. Peck?”
“I spotted him out of the corner of my eye,” Bertha informed her proudly. “He was fast, but my own reflexes have always been well above average.”
Des nudged the glass with her foot-and discovered, to her shock, that the poor creature was still moving. “He’s alive.”
“Of course he is. I’m no murderer.”
“But… he’s got blood all over him.”
“That’s not blood, dear. It’s Clamato juice. I was having a Bloody Mary at the time.”
“I see. And now you…?”
“I want him removed from my residence, if you please.”
“Of course, ma’am. Do you have a piece of cardboard I could use?”
Bertha went down the hall and returned with a shirt cardboard. Des slid it beneath the glass to secure the mouse in place, then carried it downstairs to the backyard and released it on the lawn. It ran away in a flash of red.
Maddee Farrell was out there fussing with the Captain Chadwick House’s prized, fragrant Blush Noisette rosebushes, her pewter-colored hair drawn back in a tight helmet. Summertime could be very cruel to older women, Des reflected. Even those who were tall, slender and patrician. Maddee had no doubt been willowy and lovely when she was young. Now that she was approaching seventy, Maddee’s sleeveless white blouse and pastel-yellow shorts revealed sticklike arms and legs that were mottled with liver spots. Her elbows were pointy, her throat shriveled. The poor woman looked like a famine victim. It didn’t help that she had a street beggar’s needy look on her deeply creased face. And wore too much lipstick that was such a ghastly shade of magenta.
“Why, good afternoon, Master Sergeant Mitry. Is everything okay with Bertha?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Please tell me you’ve apprehended that awful pervert.”
“I wish I could, ma’am.”
“I’m afraid to go near a window after dark. We have a ground-floor unit. I-I could be his next victim, you know.”
Des started back upstairs with the highball glass. Maddee stayed right on her tail, matching her step for step. When they reached Bertha’s apartment, Maddee went barging into the lady’s kitchen and started rummaging around.
Bertha stood in the entry hall, shaking her head. “I call her the trash Nazi, Desiree. Just watch, I guarantee you she won’t return empty handed.”
She didn’t. Maddee emerged from Bertha’s kitchen clutching an empty tonic water bottle as well as several used, gunky Ziploc freezer bags. “Bertha, you can get a nickel back on this bottle,” she clucked. “And these Ziplocs can be washed and re-used.”
“They’re all yours, dear,” Bertha said grandly. “Desiree, it might interest you to know that our Maddee has the largest privately held collection of used Ziploc bags in southern New England. What do you suppose she does with all of them?”
“And if you’re discarding any other items of clothing, please let me have them for the Nearly New shop. I found several very nice sweaters of yours out in the garbage cans yesterday.”
“Tell me, do your old Vassar classmates know that you’ve taken to Dumpster diving in your golden years?”
“We can get good money for them,” Maddee plowed on, undeterred. “Or at the very least take them to the Goodwill bins behind Christiansen’s Hardware. And honestly, Bertha, I do wish you’d called us about that mouse. Dex would have been only too happy to-”
“Make another sixty percent of my life’s savings disappear?” Bertha demanded, turning savage. “Once was enough, thank you.”
Maddee’s eyes widened in shock, her magenta lips drawing back in a frozen grin that reminded Des way too much of death rictus. Blinking back tears, she scampered out of there.
“There,” sniffed Bertha, “goes the cheapest damned woman I’ve ever met.”
“Maybe she just cares about the environment.”
“Like hell. Maddee Farrell’s not eco-anything. She’s simply a needy pest. Honestly, if I ever end up like her, I sincerely hope that someone will shoot me.”
“Mrs. Peck, I’m always here if you need me. But disposing of a mouse is really something you should be calling Augie about.” Meaning Augie Donatelli, the live-in caretaker.
Bertha made a face. “That beery do-nothing? I did phone his apartment. He didn’t answer. Wasn’t on the premises. Never is when I need him.”
“Did you try his cell phone? He carries it with him at all times.” Des happened to know this because the man was in the habit of speed dialing her four, five, six times a day to tell her how to do her job. Augie was a retired New York City police detective and full-time pain in the butt.
“He didn’t answer his cell phone either. He’s probably passed out drunk somewhere. I swear, when his contract comes up for renewal I’m going to make certain that the condo board cans him.” Bertha batted her big, saucer eyes at Des. “But thank you for coming, dear. You’re the one person who I know I can always count on.”
Des returned downstairs and headed out back, to the row of garages. Augie’s was the last one on the right. It was a double garage. His apartment upstairs was reached by a wooden staircase inside. Augie’s shiny red Pontiac GTO muscle car from the sixties was parked inside, along with the John Deere riding mower and Gator utility vehicle that he used if and when he felt like working. Which he actually was as Des approached. The ex-cop was firing up the Gator, his left hand wrapped around a tall can of Ballantine Ale. The man had to be good for eighteen cans a day. He kept a supply in an old refrigerator next to his workbench.
“Mr. Donatelli…?!” she called out to him over the roar of the Gator.
He shut off the engine, grinning at her wolfishly. Augie Donatelli had to be the most gleefully obnoxious sexist she’d ever met. The Notorious P.I.G. positively rolled around in the inappropriateness of his behavior. “I thought I told ya to call me Augie, sugar pie,” he sprayed at her in his juicy Brooklyn bray.
“And I thought we had an understanding.”
Augie took a swig of his ale. “We did?”
“You were going to be reachable by cell so I wouldn’t keep getting nine-one-oned by Bertha Peck. Mice are your deal, not mine.”
“Don’t know nothing about that,” he grumbled, rubbing a hand over his unshaven face. Augie was in his mid-fifties, with snaggly yellow teeth and brown eyes that were bleary and red-rimmed. His face was battered and bent-nosed. His droopy moustache, which harkened back to the Serpico Seventies, was flecked with gray. So was his black hair, which he wore unusually long. Almost to his shoulders. He wasn’t particularly tall, but his shoulders were heavy and the arms that stuck out of his too-snug black T-shirt looked powerful. He had on a pair of ragged blue jean cut-offs, white tube socks and a pair of old-school Pumas. “But, hey, I’ll get right on it,” he promised, draining his Ballantine.
“You’re too late. It’s already done.”
“So why are you busting my chops?” He fetched himself a fresh can from the refrigerator, moving with the cocky ease of a man who’d spent his entire career refusing to be intimidated by anyone.
“Bertha is talking about terminating your contract, that’s why.”
“I’m guessing you have a little something to do with that. Am I right, homegirl?”
“Wrong. That’s not how I roll. And I am not your homegirl.”
Their relationship had been antagonistic from day one. The very first words he’d said to her were, “Hey, mama, can I get some fries with that shake?” Her very first words in reply: “How would you like to spend the rest of the afternoon searching the driveway for your teeth?”
And it had gone straight downhill from there. Augie was always trying to goad her. Part of him was just kidding around. But not all of him. His eyes, when he turned serious, were cold, forbidding holes. Augie had a definite problem with the likes of Des wearing a uniform. She didn’t know if it was because of her pigment, her gender or both. Didn’t care, actually. The man was an ass.
He started up the Gator, Ballantine in hand, and eased it over to the Farrells’ garage, which was open. Big, plastic tubs full of nickel deposit bottles were stowed in there next to their long, white Cadillac. On a Ping-Pong table there were a dozen or more black plastic trash bags stuffed with old clothing. Each bag had a label on it that read something like Women’s Sweaters: Petites, Men’s Shirts: Mediums or Goodwill. A cord of seasoned firewood was stacked against the back wall.
Augie began to fill the Gator’s box-shaped cargo bed with armloads of wood. “That skinny old bitch Mrs. Farrell accosts me this morning and tells me they must have firewood on their porch right away.” He paused to belch audibly. “I say to her, ‘Lady, it’s ninety effing degrees out.’ But her husband positively swears the weather’s going to turn sharply colder next week. And she says he chills easily. Must be that blue blood of his. Me, I’m a hot-blooded Mediterranean. I never get cold. Never screw people out of their life’s savings either. If it weren’t for that bastard, I’d be out fishing right now-maybe some nice, long-legged babe rubbing suntan lotion on my back. Instead, I have to put up with them and their crap. Get this-I was out sweeping the front walk this morning, maybe seven-thirty. I come back and I find that skinny old bitch in my apartment. You’ll never guess what she was doing.”
“Rummaging through your trash?”
“Exactamundo. She ain’t all there, you ask me. And, boy, does she have her nose up in the air. Her and all of the other rich old broads in this town. You say hello to them and they act like you just took a leak on their shoes.”
“Mr. Donatelli…”
“It’s Augie.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Working. Why, what does it look like I’m doing?”
“I mean here in Dorset.”
“Oh…” His face went slack. “My missus, Gina, always wanted to retire to a cozy little New England village. All those years in Mineola she kept saving brochures, magazine articles. It was her dream. But she never got the chance. The cancer got her.”
“Is that why you retired from the NYPD?”
“That is none of your damned business.”
She’d run a computer background check on him at the Troop F barracks. Detective Lieutenant Augie Donatelli had received four commendations for valor during his career. He’d been working out of the 24^th Precinct on Manhattan’s Upper West Side last year when he chose to retire after twenty-six years on the job.
“I’m here for the both of us,” he grunted as he toted one more armload of wood to the Gator. His gait was not entirely steady. He was at least a six-pack into the Ballantine. “The job was dead to me. The city was dead to me. House was empty. So here I am, sugar pie. You got a problem with that?”
“No, Augie, I don’t.”
He got back in behind the wheel of the Gator, grinning at her. “Good, because I think I’ve got a break in our flasher case.”
Des immediately felt herself tighten up inside. “I thought we had an understanding about that, too. You’re not on the job anymore. And I don’t discuss ongoing investigations with members of the public.”
He shook his head at her in disgust. “Drop the act, will ya? I’ll admit it-you’re walking around with one of the top ten cabooses I’ve ever seen in my life. And I used to work uptown, if you follow what I’m saying…”
“Actually, I’m trying really hard not to.”
“But I was busting heads back when you were still in kindergarten. So be smart. I’m a resource. And I’ve got one doozie of a theory. If I were you, I’d listen to it.”
“It’s been a long, hot day. How about tomorrow?”
“You blowing me off?”
“I’m saying how about tomorrow.” And hoping he’d forget that they’d ever had this conversation. Beery haze and all. “Have a good one, Augie.” She tipped her Smokey hat at him and started down the driveway toward her cruiser.
Augie turn the Gator around and eased along next to her. “What time should I call you?”
“I’ll call you.”
“Know what? You have got some attitude on you, homegirl.”
“I don’t have an attitude. I treat everyone with respect. Why don’t you give it a try sometime?”
“Wait, I got something else for you. I’m talking huge here. Has to do with our Beth Breslauer,” he confided, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of her condo. “She and your boy Mitch are real tight, you know. They met for smoothies at The Works this afternoon.”
“And you know this because…?”
“I have the lady under surveillance.”
Des came to a stop, hands on her hips. “You’re following her?”
“She’s quite some dish. I’d tap that in two seconds flat if it gave me a chance.”
“Um, okay, I’m guessing it hasn’t. Augie, are you aware that we have stalker laws in this state?”
“Who’s stalking? The Works is a public place. So’s the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville.”
“What about the Mohegan Sun?”
“I drove up there a couple of weeks back to see Billy Joel. The Piano Man did ten straight sold-out nights there. And, believe me, he put on a show. Pounded those ivories for two and half hours, sang his heart out…”
“You saw Mrs. Breslauer at the Billy Joel concert?”
“Outside in the parking lot. She was working it.”
“What do you mean by ‘working it?’ ”
“Trust me, that lady is not who she pretends to be,” he explained, taking a long swig of his Ballantine. “This is one of the most fascinating characters I’ve come across in a long time. Ever hear of the Seven Sisters?”
“Sure, that’s what they called the ladies’ Ivy League back before the schools went coed. There was, let’s see, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Smith…”
“No, not those Seven Sisters. Geez, don’t you hick troopers out here know anything?”
By now they’d reached the foot of the driveway. Des could see the Farrells seated on their screened-in porch. Dex Farrell was sitting in a rocker, reading a book. He was a severe-looking white-haired man with rimless eyeglasses. He didn’t look up at them. But Maddee did-and promptly got busy making space on the porch for the firewood.
Across the street, John the barber was locking up his little shop for the night. He and a couple of his fellow volunteers from the firehouse next door were gabbing. All three of them waved at Des.
She waved back at them, then took a deep breath and said, “Can I give you a piece of advice, Augie? If you want to remain employed in this hick town, you’d better stop tailing your tenants and start fixing their leaky faucets. And you might want to cut back on the Ballantine, too.”
“You are trying to get me fired,” he snarled in response. “Nothing makes you people happier, does it?”
“By ‘you people’ you mean…?”
“Don’t play dumb with me, you bitch! You know what I mean. Can’t stand having me around, can you? Afraid your little secret will get out.”
“What little secret?”
“That you haven’t got the slightest goddamned idea what you’re doing!”
The men across the street could hear Augie quite plainly. Were missing none of this.
“Get hold of yourself, Augie,” Des cautioned him quietly.
No chance of that. He climbed out of the Gator and charged toward her, staggering slightly. “They don’t know the truth about you!” he roared, stabbing her in the shoulder with his finger. “But I do! I know you stepped over a dozen good men to get this job. And I know you stink at it!”
“You’ve had a few too many, Augie. Why don’t you go up to your apartment and sober up?”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
She put a gentling hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy. I’m on your side.”
“Like hell you are. Get your goddamned hand off of me. Get it off!” he hollered with a violent shrug of his shoulder. So violent that it rocked him back on his heels. Teetering, he lost his balance and came down hard on his butt in the driveway.
John and the others across the street were laughing at him now.
“You shoved me!” he spat at her, enraged.
“I did not.” Des held her hand out to him. “Come on, let’s get you up.”
He bared his ugly, yellow teeth at her. “Get away from me.”
“Take my hand, Augie.”
He refused. Just sat there on the gravel like a petulant little boy.
“Fine, have it your way. But go home and sleep it off, will you?”
In response, Augie told her to do a very bad thing to herself. Then, in a menacing voice, he said, “Homegirl, you’re going to be sorry you ever met me.”
“Trust me, wow man…” Des showed him her wraparound smile. “I’m already there.”