someone’s privacy was selling your land to a developer.
Lacy sent Mitch a tart one-line e-mail message from the office: Still think you can be left alone?
To which Mitch replied: I’m doing my damnedest not to think.
His paper’s Connecticut correspondent phoned him in the hope of getting Mitch’s exclusive firsthand account of how it had felt to dig up Niles Seymour’s body. Mitch didn’t want to talk about it. “Sure, I understand,” the correspondent retorted, thinking Mitch wanted the story for himself. He did not. He wanted no part of it. He didn’t like this real-world invasion. He didn’t like that his photograph had been in all of the newspapers. He thought about going back to the city until the whole mess blew over. But he didn’t want to do that either. So he stayed and tried to work on his book. Only now it seemed hard to get excited about a sagebrush ventriloquist on horseback.
So he was slouched in his easy chair, chasing doggedly after Hendrix’s “Little Wing” on his Stratocaster, when Lieutenant Mitry returned to question him for the second time.
She did not bring her sketch pad. She did not knock. She just stood there in his doorway, smiling at him sweetly. “I learn something new every day, you know that?”
“Oh yeah? What did you learn today?”
“Well, I had no idea that Don Ho ever covered Jimi Hendrix’s songs.”
“Gee. Thank you, large.”
“Hey, don’t get me wrong, Mr. Berger. I hear ‘Tiny Bubbles,’ I go to pieces.”
“I’ll remember that, Lieutenant. Now what can I…?” Mitch trailed off, frowning. “Wait, what was that noise?” he demanded suspiciously.
“What noise?” she said innocently.
“Meowing. I distinctly heard meowing.”
“Oh, that’s Baby Spice,” she said, retrieving a nylon cat carrier from the front porch. There was a small, wide-eyed kitten inside, predominantly gray, and extremely anxious to be let out of jail. “She’s free of worms and ear mites. She’s had all of her shots. And she comes with a certificate for one neutering, free of charge. She’s my best girl. All she needs is somebody to love her.”
“Lieutenant, I told you I wasn’t interested in taking in a stray cat.”
“You sounded wavery.”
“I did not,” Mitch insisted. “Look, I had one when my wife was alive. That was then. I don’t want to go there again, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay. You can’t take it out on the entire cat population that your wife died of cancer.”
Mitch peered at her, startled. He hadn’t told her anything about Maisie’s cancer. She had been checking up on him.
“We’re living in the here and now,” she went on. “This is today. And today Baby Spice needs a home.”
“Did you have to name her Baby Spice? I mean, that’s really nauseating.”
“So I’m not good with names. I know this about myself. Call her Ashley. Call her Heather. Call her any damned name you please. Just take her. You won’t regret it. She’s the sweetest little thing. She’s excellent company. And it’s a proven fact that a cat’s soothing presence helps reduce a man’s blood pressure.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my blood pressure, or at least there wasn’t.”
“Just try her out for a few days, okay?” She was already barging her way upstairs to his room with the carrier. “It doesn’t work out, I’ll take her back. No harm, no foul.”
“You’re really going to do this to me, aren’t you?”
“You’ve got that right.”
“And my feelings don’t enter into it at all?”
“Not one bit,” she affirmed. “Now I’m going to release her up here in your bedroom. They like to get acclimated in a small, contained space. She may stay up here a few days. When she’s feeling ready to come down, she will. I’ve brought you a week’s supply of food. And I’ve got a litter box in my trunk. All we need is some native sand.” Mitch could hear her cooing softly to the kitten now. “Lookie, lookie
… She just loves your bed.”
“How touching.”
The lieutenant charged back downstairs and went into his kitchen to fill a saucer with water.
“Just out of curiosity, do the authorities know about you?”
“I am the authority,” she replied, carrying the saucer back upstairs. Then she returned, empty carrier in hand. “And you may as well know this-when it comes to cats, I am utterly ruthless.”
Mitch did not know what to make of this woman at all. There was something disconcerting about the pale green eyes behind those thick horn-rimmed glasses. Her gaze was so direct, so calm, so lacking in guile or deceit, that he found himself flummoxed by her. Then again, maybe it was just that he had never been alone in a room before with someone who was licensed to carry a loaded semi-automatic weapon. Mitch’s experience with the police was extremely limited. His apartment had been broken into once. That was it. He had never been involved in a serious crime.
The lieutenant had. She tracked down killers for a living. She was obviously tough. She was obviously bright. She was obviously a marshmallow when it came to stray cats. She was also someone who did not like to reveal anything personal about herself. Clearly, she’d been bothered when Mitch had noticed the charcoal under her fingernail. Beyond that, Mitch could not read her. Which would not have been of any great concern to him were it not for two undeniable facts.
Fact number one was that she suddenly seemed to be running his life.
Fact number two was that she was good-looking. She was very good-looking. Her skin was smooth and glowing. Her smile, when she flashed it, did warm, strange things to the lower half of his body. And her figure was positively breathtaking. She was a big woman, at least six feet tall, but lithe and loose-limbed and light on her feet. She also happened to possess one of the top half-dozen cabooses he had ever laid eyes on, right up there with Cyd Charisse, Sheree North and Emily Rosenzweig, the girl who had sat in front of him in tenth-grade Biology at Stuyvesant High. Not that the lieutenant was showing it off. Her clothes were downright mannish. She wore no jewelry either. There was no wedding ring.
She was gazing intently at his right bicep now. It was a warm day and Mitch was wearing the complimentary red T-shirt that had been included in the press kit for Amityville: The Evil Escapes. “What does that mean?” she asked, referring to his Rocky Dies Yellow tattoo.
“It’s the headline from Angels with Dirty Faces.” On her blank look he added, “I guess you’re not into old movies. It’s one of the best films Cagney ever made for Warner Brothers. A true classic. It’s got Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan, Pat O’Brien, the Dead End Kids. Direction by Michael Curtiz… What does yours say?”
“My what?”
“Your tattoo.”
“What makes you think I have one?” she demanded.
Mitch shrugged his shoulders.
“It says The Answer,” she responded grudgingly.
“Are you?”
“On my good days.”
“And where do you have it?”
“Somewhere you’ll never, ever see it,” she said, sneezing.
Mitch shook his head at her. “I told you you’d catch a cold.”
“I don’t get colds,” she objected, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. “It’s mold spores. I’m allergic to them.”
“Then we’d better get out of here-this house is mold city.” Mitch flicked off his amp stack and started for the door. “Let’s get you some fresh air.”
“Mr. Berger, I do happen to be here on official business.”
“Uh-huh. Like Baby Spice is official business. C’mon, let’s walk.”
She wavered there uncertainly, her feet set wide apart. Clearly, she was ill at ease on Big Sister.
“Look, I’ll make this easy for you,” he said. “I am taking a walk. If you want to ask me any questions, then I suggest you walk with me. Do you need to use the bathroom before we go?”
“I’m fine, Mr. Berger,” she said curtly.
“I wish you’d call me Mitch. How about Kleenex? Can I get you some more Kleenex?”
