was just the lostest little bunny before Jamie came along.”
“Did Bud have a hard time accepting Evan’s gayness?”
“As you can well imagine,” she affirmed. “Bud has a hard time accepting anything that isn’t what he knows. Actually, Bud has been something of a puzzle to me. He’s still so devoted to Dolly. And acts so crushed by what happened. Yet he let Niles steal her away from him.”
Mitch’s shoulders were starting to ache from driving the spade into so many chunks of granite. “He did?”
“Of course. A good woman like Dolly isn’t lured away from her husband. She has to be driven away. Bud didn’t want her anymore. When Niles came along, she was feeling unloved and unattractive. Believe me, it can also get a bit lonely out here. Look at my own situation. Red makes four flights a month to Tokyo. He’s four days on-two days to get there, two days to get back-then he’s three days off, asleep mostly, the poor lamb. And then he’s gone again. Poor Red was such a disappointment to his parents. They wanted him to carry on the Peck political legacy. But he doesn’t like giving speeches. Or mingling with strangers. He likes peace and quiet. His cockpit. His little island. We’re hoping our boy, Jeremy, will show a taste for public life. He is talking about law school after he… Oh, beans!” Her spade had collided with yet another solid object. It didn’t give off the sharp clank of metal upon stone. This was more of a dull thud. “I was afraid of this,” she said.
Mitch leaned on his spade, catching his breath. “What is it?”
“Tree root.” She gazed around them with a critical eye. “One of your garden’s worst enemies, Mitch. It will hog all of the soil’s moisture and nutrients.”
“Is it from that oak?” There was a fine old one over next to the barn.
“No, they have a tap root-straight down. It’s probably that mulberry over there. I’ll fetch my pruning saw. We’ll make short work of it.” She went waddling off toward her place, swiping at the mud on her overalls.
Mitch started digging out the soil from around it so they could get a clear shot at it-when suddenly the smell hit him. It was powerful. It was putrid. It was so sickening he gagged and very nearly threw up.
The solid object was not a tree root at all. It was somebody’s leg.
CHAPTER 6
IT WAS A THIRTY-MINUTE drive straight south on Route 9 from Meriden to Dorset. Des had worked a case down there once before. A sixteen-year-old named Ethan Salisbury had smacked his mother upside the head approximately one hundred times with an aluminum baseball bat, stuffed her body into the trunk of her BMW and dumped it into Uncas Lake. It had not been pretty. Des had the charcoal sketches to prove it. The Salisbury murder had garnered quite a bit of attention. They were bluebloods. They had lived in a $1.8 million home with a sauna and a pool. Things like that weren’t supposed to happen to people like that in places like that. But they did.
The same way dead bodies weren’t supposed to be unearthed in the vegetable patch on Big Sister Island. But one had been.
Des marveled at the historic village’s lushness and calm as she steered her unmarked Crown Victoria slicktop cruiser toward Peck Point. It was so quiet she could hear herself breathe. And so spotless it had the sanitized unreality of a theme park. There was no graffiti, no trash. There was no ugliness whatsoever.
At least none that showed.
As she eased on past the Dorset Academy of Fine Arts, her gaze lingered longingly. There was no postmodern fakery at DAFA. They still believed in the same rigorous, classical training that produced the Renaissance masters. Years and years of study on the human anatomy, on perspective, on materials. It was a private dream of hers to study there someday. Make that a fantasy.
There was a barricade at the end of Peck Point. Here she encountered a horde of cruisers and television news vans. The island itself, which was accessible by a wooden causeway, was shrouded in dense fog. It seemed distant and faintly ominous. It reminded her of the view of Alcatraz across San Francisco Bay.
Tal Bliss, Dorset’s seasoned resident trooper, had taken the initial 911 call. He had immediately called the barracks in Westbrook. They sent out several uniformed troopers to seal the area. They had also contacted Major Crimes.
The instant Des stepped out of her cruiser she was assaulted by news cameras from Connecticut’s four local television stations, 3, 8, 30 and 61. The reporters shoved microphones in her face, crowding her up against her car, demanding answers. They were in a constant ratings battle with each other. And nothing stirred up their blood like a violent crime in a town of wealthy white people.
“Lieutenant, do you have the victim’s identity?”
“Lieutenant, we go on live at noon!”
“We need an update, Lieutenant!”
“Lieutenant, what can you tell us?!”
Des’s heavy horn-rimmed glasses had come sliding down her nose a bit. She pushed them back up, pausing to compose herself before she responded. She had learned from previous experience that if she did not she came across as too hostile. Also her voice had a tendency to bottom out on her when she was nervous. Brandon used to say she sounded like Don Cornelius. “I can tell you very little at the present time,” she stated, blinking into the lights. “As you can see, I have only just arrived.”
“When can you give us a statement?”
“We go on live at noon!”
“Can you give us something between and twelve and twelve-ten?!”
“We need a statement!”
“Now will you please let me do my job?” Des asked them patiently. It was not easy to remain polite with them. They were just so damned insistent. And so positive that nothing, but nothing, was as important to anyone as their own on-air needs. It was perfectly natural that they felt this way. Virtually everyone on the planet conducted their public and private lives around television. And their demands did have to be met. Still, if you were not firm with them they would engulf and devour you whole. “Please step aside now!” she barked.
And they let her by. Nobody liked to be around an angry sister. Not one who had a gun.
Tal Bliss met her at the edge of the wooden bridge, as imposing a figure as ever in his wide-brimmed hat, tailored uniform and polished boots. Des had worked with him on the Salisbury case and respected him. He had handled himself like a professional. He had treated her with courtesy. He was a good resident trooper, comfortable with his size, his badge and his domain. He knew this place. He knew these people. The resident trooper program was a blessing for the smaller Connecticut towns that did not have their own police force. In exchange for his around-the-clock presence, the town paid half of his salary.
“Welcome to Big Sister, Lieutenant,” he said, tipping his hat to her.
She smiled at him and said, “Hey back at you, Trooper. And how is Busta Rhymes?”
“Renamed him Dirty Harry, if you don’t mind.”
“Not one bit.”
“And he’s fat and ungrateful, in response to your question.”
She let out a laugh. “Well, he is a cat. Bake anything good lately?”
Des had not been shocked to learn that Bliss had served two tours of duty in Vietnam. He carried himself like an ex-marine. But it had come as a surprise to find out that he’d studied for a year at the Cordon Bleu in Paris and was considered the finest chef in Dorset.
“I’ve rediscovered the quiche. I’ll have to make you one sometime.”
“And I’ll have to be there to eat it,” she said to him, ducking under the yellow crime scene tape and out onto the wooden bridge.
“I don’t seem to see you down around these parts unless it’s something grizzly, do I?”
“That what this is?”
“Gentleman smells none too sweet, I assure you. Victim was Niles Seymour, age fifty-two, estranged husband of Dolly Seymour. Everyone thought he left town a few weeks ago with a younger woman. It appears he never left at all. He’s been down there for quite some time, as you will see. Anything I can help you with before we head on out?”
“How’s the security here?” she asked, glancing at the mechanized barricade. It took an I.D. card to raise
