In the city there was no such thing as autumn. There was summer. There was one cold, rainy weekend in October when all of the leaves fell off of the street trees. And then there was winter. But out on Big Sister, even though a torpid August haze hung low over Long Island Sound, autumn had already begun. Mitch saw its signs everywhere as he made his way down the beach to Bitsy Peck’s house, bucket in hand. Orange leaves dotted the island’s gnarly old sugar maple trees. A squadron of geese flew low overhead in a V-formation, heading due west. And a swarm of monarch butterflies were encamped in the cedars bordering Bitsy’s place, resting up on their long migration south. Fall was coming for sure. It just wasn’t in the air yet.
Bitsy had a mammoth, natural-shingled Victorian cottage with sleeping porches, turrets and amazing views in every direction. Her multilevel garden was truly spectacular. Hundreds of species of flowers, vegetables and herbs grew in her fertile terraced beds. It was Bitsy who’d taught Mitch the joys of gardening. She was out there right now, pruning away the yellowing vines on her heirloom tomato plants, the better to expose the ripening fruit to the sun’s rays.
“It’s the corn man,” he called out to her, brandishing his bucket.
“Come ahead, young sir,” Bitsy called back. “What’s mine is yours.”
She’d grown more than she could eat and had told him to take as much as he wanted. The best way to cook the fresh ears, he’d learned, was to plunge them into a bucket of cold water as soon he picked them. Then throw them on the grill to steam in their husks.
Bitsy was a round, snub-nosed little woman in her fifties who’d welcomed Mitch from the day he moved out to Big Sister. She was always happy to share her bounty and her wisdom. Also her insider’s knowledge of Dorset. There wasn’t anyone or anything that Bitsy Peck didn’t know about. It was the Pecks who’d first settled Dorset way back in the 1600s. Bitsy was also someone who had been through a lot. She’d lost her husband right after Mitch came to town. And her daughter, Becca, was a recovering heroin addict. Even though the lady gave the impression of being a ditsy hausfrau, she was plenty tough and shrewd.
“I just ran into Beth Breslauer,” he told her as he plucked a few choice ears from her corn patch. “Her name used to be Lapidus. She lived across the hall from me in Stuyvesant Town. Her son Kenny and I were pals growing up.”
“Isn’t that something? Such a small world.” Bitsy paused from her labors, fanning herself with her floppy straw hat. “I could use a tall glass of iced tea. Care to join me?”
Mitch filled his bucket from her garden faucet and followed her to the shade of her wraparound porch. He took a seat in one of the rockers and gazed out at the Sound. There were no sailboats out. Not enough breeze. No gas-guzzling cigarette boats either-which had nothing to do with the breeze and everything to do with the economic times they were living in. The chesty boys could no longer afford their toys.
Bitsy came back outside with their iced teas and sat down next to him.
Mitch took a long, grateful drink before he said, “Beth’s bought a place in the Captain Chadwick House. It’s supposed to be impossible to get in there.”
“It’s very, very hard,” she acknowledged. “I know of at least six ladies who’d love to buy a unit.”
“And yet Beth swooped right in even though she’s a widow from Scarsdale with no social connections here-that I’m aware of.” He studied Bitsy, his eyes narrowing. “Nobody gets in there without a green light from Bertha Peck, am I right?”
“You most certainly are.”
“And you’re related to Bertha, aren’t you?”
“We’re second cousins by marriage. My husband’s father was a cousin of her late husband Guy Peck, Jr.”
“I don’t get it. What kind of a connection could Beth possibly have with someone like Bertha Peck?”
Bitsy let out a merry chortle “Exactly what do you know about Bertha?”
“I know that she’s the queen bee of Dorset polite society.”
“That’s Bertha Peck, all righty.” Bitsy sipped her iced tea. “But what do you know about Bertha Puzewski?”
“Not a thing,” Mitch said eagerly. “Do tell.”
“Before Bertha married Guy she was a pretty little steelworker’s daughter who’d danced her way to Broadway from Weirton, West Virginia. Bertha was a chorus girl when Guy met her. Check out her legs some time. They’re still fabulous.”
“I had no idea.”
“That’s because she reinvented herself as Yankee royalty. Trust me, the only finishing school she attended was the Billy Rose Aquacade at the 1939 World’s Fair. And she got around in those days, too. Dated racketeers, gamblers, prizefighters. She was quite the little tootsie, our Bertha. There was a whole lot of whispering about her when she married Guy. I can still remember the old Dorset biddies saying that she’d once been the kept mistress of some mobster. Why, they practically made her out to be the Woman in Red.” Bitsy paused, frowning. “I don’t suppose that name will mean anything to someone your age.”
“You’re referring to Anna Sage, the madam who fingered John Dillinger for the FBI. She told them he’d be at the Biograph Theater in Chicago watching Manhattan Melodrama, an MGM gangster picture with Clark Gable, William Powell and Myrna Loy. It was the first on-screen pairing of Powell and Loy, who went on to make fourteen pictures together. Most notably their Thin Man series.”
Bitsy stared at him with her mouth open. “Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to.” She sipped her iced tea and resumed. “Bertha has outlasted all of those old ladies. There’s hardly anyone left who knows her real story.”
“Tell me, what have you heard about Beth Breslauer?”
“Not a whole lot, honestly. She doesn’t socialize much. I understand that her late husband was an eye doctor in the city. I do know that Bertha prefers New York City doctors to the fellows out here. Maybe that’s their connection. Maybe Beth’s husband treated her.”
“It turns out that Kenny is getting married to Kimberly Farrell, my yoga teacher.”
“So I’ve heard. Kimmy went through school with my Becca. She’s always been a real sweetheart.”
“And yet Beth seemed a bit cool about her. Told me there was baggage. Kimberly’s father, for starters. Her mother is hoping a great big wedding will get them back into the good graces of Dorset’s elite.”
“That’s not too likely,” Bitsy said with a shake of her head.
“Meaning people aren’t ready to forgive him?”
“Meaning Dex and Maddee Farrell never belonged to Dorset’s elite in the first place.”
Mitch looked at her in surprise. “I thought they were upper crusters.”
“You thought wrong, Mitch. Neither Dex nor Maddee is from one of the founding families. To be quote-unquote Dorset you must be a Peck, a Vickers or a Havenhurst. The Farrells are merely wealthy New Yorkers with good social contacts.”
“Whoa, time out. Bertha Peck is a chorus girl from Weirton, right?”
“Right.”
“And no one in Dorset so much as farts without her permission, right?”
“Mitch, no one in Dorset farts, period,” she pointed out, her eyes twinkling at him.
“So how come she’s quote-unquote Dorset and they aren’t?”
“Because she married Guy. Because she’s Bertha. And because Dex behaved despicably.” Bitsy gazed out at the water, her snub nose wrinkling. “My retirement portfolio is worth a fraction of what it once was thanks to that man. He will not be forgiven easily by me or anyone else.”
Mitch rocked back and forth, sipping his tea. “Beth also has some concerns about Kimberly.”
“I can’t imagine why. Kimmy’s a terrific catch for the right young man.”
“I gather she wasn’t the right catch for someone else.”
“Oh, I get it. She’s wondering about Kimmy’s marriage to Connie Cliffe’s boy.”
Mitch knew the name Connie Cliffe. She was a high-end interior designer who had a mansion in the Historic District.
“Surely Beth can’t be holding J. Z. against her,” Bitsy went on. “A lot of us make that sort of mistake when we’re young. Kimmy was barely out of Bennington when she met him. J. Z. was a good ten years older than she. Lordy, he must be forty by now. You’ve no doubt seen him working around the island. He’s the house painter who does my place, Dolly’s…”
Mitch knew whom she meant now. The big, strapping guy with the ponytail who’d been reglazing Bitsy’s windows a few weeks back.
“That marriage lasted less than three months, Mitch. And, believe me, it wasn’t Kimmy’s fault. These things happen.”
“What things happen?”
Bitsy considered her reply carefully. “Connie’s a good friend. She and her husband, Fred, split up when J. Z. was a small boy. She raised him on her own, and that boy… how shall I put this? He was a real stinker, Mitch. The sort of rotten little rich kid who’s always stealing things and getting into fistfights. By the time J. Z. was thirteen, he was into alcohol, marijuana, cocaine. Connie couldn’t handle him. She sent him off to live with his father in New York City. Fred owned an art gallery in Soho, a couple of chic restaurants. He enrolled J. Z. in one of the best private schools. But he had no better luck with the boy than Connie did. J. Z. got himself kicked out of one school after another. Ended up out in New Mexico at a special school for problem kids. Where he did settle down. He even got accepted at Cornell. But he barely lasted a month there before he was back in New York City, working as a roadie for alternative rock bands, which I believe is a polite way of saying he dealt drugs. And used them. He and all of his rich, spoiled friends. They partied day and night, perfectly content to squander the best years of their lives. J. Z. always did well with the girls. He was handsome and wild and a bit dangerous. One night, he and a very pretty Park Avenue heiress totaled her BMW in East Hampton and almost killed someone. She was behind the wheel-and high on cocaine at the time. Went to jail for a year in spite of her daddy’s pull. J. Z. ended up back out here living in Connie’s guest cottage. By then he’d thoroughly fried his brains on drugs. What the kids call a homeschool Ph. D.-as in Permanent Head Damage.”
“How did he and Kimberly hook up?”
“He was helping Courtney Borio paint the Farrells’ house on Turkey Neck. Courtney was a burnout case himself from the Vietnam War. J. Z. went to work for him and, lo and behold, stuck with it. Kimmy was home from Bennington for the summer. The poor girl fell hard for J. Z. Convinced herself that with a little love and understanding, he’d do great things with his life. Dex and Maddee opposed the marriage, naturally. She went ahead with it anyway, naturally. Dex and Maddee bought them the condo in the Captain Chadwick House as a wedding present. That’s how the Farrells came to own it. Gosh knows they couldn’t get in there now if they tried.” Bitsy let out a sigh of regret. “Kimmy and J. Z. didn’t live there for long. She completely washed her hands of him. Took off for Oregon and didn’t come back for years. Connie has never spoken one word to me about why Kimmy cleared out so fast-other than to say it was a private matter. Mind you, that didn’t stop people from gossiping about what really happened.”
“And what was the consensus?”
“That it was something of a sexual nature. Courtney Borio happened to be gay. He had a longtime thing going on with a fellow up in Chester. Anyhow, when Courtney first took J. Z. under his wing there was a lot of whispering that J. Z. might be… so inclined. When Kimmy upped and left him like she did, well, the whisperers thought they knew why. Not that anyone actually knew. But it made for a good, juicy story.”
“What do you think happened, Bitsy?”
“I think J. Z. broke that poor girl’s heart. Don’t ask me how, because I have no idea. But I do know that J. Z.’s a breaker of hearts. He always has been. He can’t help himself. That man can be
… difficult. In fact, some people think that in order to get along with him you have to be able to speak psycho. Not true. But he’s not all there. Still stoned on drugs half of the time, if you ask me.”
“And yet you keep hiring him. Why?”
Bitsy’s blue eyes locked on his and held them. “Because this is Dorset, Mitch. We may not be perfect. Far from it, in fact. But we always take care of our own. Never, ever forget that.”