information, please.”
She didn’t respond. Did not, in fact, seem to hear her. She was still gazing around at the bedroom decor. Her lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.
“I think I can help you with that, Lieutenant,” Bud Havenhurst cut in discreetly. “Perhaps if we moved downstairs? Dolly’s really got to get some rest.”
“Very well,” Des allowed.
He closed the curtains and turned off the bedside lamp, pausing to stroke his ex-wife’s forehead gently. Then they left the room and went down to the study. Havenhurst seated himself at the desk. Des took a chair, watching him skeptically. He was a lawyer. Therefore, she assumed that every word out of his mouth was a lie. Bliss parked himself in the doorway once again, stolid and silent.
The Dear John letter that Niles Seymour had left Dolly was in the top drawer of the desk. It was on a sheet of common copier paper, folded neatly in half. Des cautioned Havenhurst not to touch it-it might contain latent fingerprints. She sent Bliss out for tweezers. She used these to lift it from the drawer. It was a short letter. It read:
Dearest Dolly-I should never have come into your life. You are too fine. And I am too greedy. I must leave you for another now, my darling. Try to remember me fondly. All my love, Niles.
The letter was not handwritten. It had been computer-generated and printed out.
“He didn’t sign it,” Des observed.
“Why, no. Is that so important?” Havenhurst’s eyes widened. “My God, what am I saying? Of course, it is. That never occurred to me before-when I thought he had run off on her, I mean. I just chalked it up to his utter rudeness. But now that we know he never… Niles didn’t write this at all, did he?”
“Whoever killed him did it, most likely. Chances are, Seymour was already dead.”
“Anyone could have written it. Anyone with access to their computer.” Havenhurst glanced at it there on the desk, his shoulders slumping. “Assuming it was done here.”
“We’ll try to match it up,” she said. “Dust it for prints. Maybe we’ll even find it on the hard drive. Although I’m doubting that whoever did this was stupid enough not to delete it.”
Bliss went back out to notify a crime scene technician.
Havenhurst remained seated at the desk. “She never locks her doors. It could have been anyone on the island.”
“Um, okay, about those credit card and bank statements…?”
Dolly Seymour’s ex-husband seemed very far away for a moment. Des found herself wondering where he was. Then he shook himself and opened another drawer. “You’ll find their receipts and records here. Seymour’s own things are out in the barn-old papers, letters. There isn’t much, but…”
“Thank you. We’ll look at those, too.” She sat back in her chair, crossing her long legs. “Why did you try to talk Mitch Berger out of moving in, Mr. Havenhurst?”
“He was a stranger,” the lawyer responded mildly. “I knew nothing about him. Still don’t, for that matter.”
“You sure it wasn’t something else?”
He raised his chin at her. “Such as?”
“Such as that you knew what was buried in that garden.”
“Absolutely not,” he said, bristling at her. “And I would advise you not to throw around such reckless and slanderous accusations, Lieutenant. You are not handling a drive-by shooting in Hartford’s North End. You are not dealing with the disenfranchised, the disempowered or the destitute. You are dealing here with individuals of great influence. The cream of our society. And you will behave accordingly, or suffer the consequences. Is that understood?”
No two ways about it, Des reflected unhappily. She would be feeling Captain Polito’s hot breath very soon indeed. “I am well aware of where I am, Mr. Havenhurst,” she evenly. “I am also aware that a murder has taken place here among your fine, rich cream. I have a job to do. I intend to do it. And I expect you to cooperate. Is that understood?”
“Proceed,” he snapped.
“Mr. Berger alluded to certain events that have taken place since his arrival. He seems to feel someone was trying to scare him away.”
Havenhurst sighed glumly. “He told you about Dolly’s episode, I take it.”
Des kept her face a blank. “As a matter of fact, he didn’t.”
Havenhurst got up and went over to the window. He was obviously annoyed with himself for volunteering this.
“Perhaps you would like to,” she suggested.
“Very well,” he said heatedly. “Dolly occasionally… She wanders in the night. She’s not a well woman, Lieutenant. It’s important for you to understand that. It goes back to an incident that happened here quite a number of years ago.”
“The Weems shootings?”
He glanced at her sharply. “I suppose Tal Bliss told you.”
“He said Mrs. Seymour found them.”
“Hell of a thing for her to experience,” Havenhurst recalled. “She went into a serious clinical depression directly after that. There were suicide attempts, several of them. She had to be hospitalized. We almost lost her, Lieutenant. She remains, to this day, an extremely vulnerable creature. If I seem perhaps a bit overly protective toward her, that is why.”
“I understand, Mr. Havenhurst.”
“No, you don’t understand,” he insisted vehemently. “Because there’s more to it than the simple fact that she found the bodies. Certain details were not included in the newspaper accounts. It was possible to keep such things from the public in those days. But as I’ve no doubt you will soon dig up the official report for yourself, I’ll tell you right now what you will find in it.”
“And what is that, Mr. Havenhurst?”
“She was raped, Lieutenant,” the lawyer answered bitterly. “Roy Weems, the Peck family’s own caretaker, forcibly and savagely raped my Dolly. She was a virgin. A carefree, sunny, lovely seventeen-year-old virgin. And that bastard took that away from her forever. He-” Havenhurst broke off, pausing a moment to compose himself. “We believe that his wife walked in on it… happening. And that she threatened to have him arrested. So he shot her. And then turned the gun on himself. And that poor Dolly witnessed the entire thing.”
Des frowned. “You say that you believe she witnessed it…”
“That’s correct,” Havenhurst affirmed, nodding. “We have never known for sure. Not really. You see, Lieutenant, Dolly retains no memory of the incident. To this day, she remembers nothing about it whatsoever.”
It was a small convoy of cruisers that headed up the Old Boston Post Road toward Uncas Lake. Resident Trooper Bliss, who knew where they were going, took the lead. Des followed in her car. A third state trooper brought up the rear as precautionary backup.
Soave remained behind on Big Sister to attend to the Seymours’ computer and business records. He had, he informed Des, learned very little from the victim’s stepson, Evan Havenhurst. As for the sister-in-law, Bitsy Peck, Soave reported, “Loot, I never heard someone talk so much and say so little in my whole life.” He still had to take a statement from Jamie Devers. And the island was still being searched for weapons. Two of the islanders remained at large. Redfield Peck, who was still en route to Tokyo, and Mandy Havenhurst, who had not yet returned any of the calls placed to the Havenhursts’ New York apartment. According to her husband, she had intended to spend the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In reality, there were two Dorsets, Des reflected as she drove. One was the Dorset of the Pecks and the Havenhursts, the old money WASP gentry who’d long ago claimed the lush meadows and pastures, the precious Long Island Sound frontage, the village’s power structure and its upper social rung. The other Dorset was made up of the people who plowed that gentry’s driveways and mowed their lawns and pumped out their septic tanks. Some of them held low-end factory jobs at the Electric Boat submarine plant in Groton. Or toiled as chambermaids at the mammoth Indian reservation casinos in Uncas. Most of these lower-rung people were crowded into the mildewed cabins and cinder-block ranchettes that were squeezed, shoulder to shoulder, around Uncas Lake. The fetid,
