Mitch wasn’t sure whether he believed him or not. The man baffled him. He had seemed so proper, so responsible. Yet the more Bud talked now, the more unhinged he sounded. In fact, if what he’d said was to be believed, the man was pathologically self-destructive. Was he to be believed? Had he put his career and his second marriage in jeopardy in order to protect Dolly’s assets? Or had he cooked up something far more fiendish-and was now merely trying to spin the truth in such a way that would keep him clear of the murders? Just how clever was this man? How good a liar?
“I repeat,” Mitch said. “Why don’t you just tell Dolly?”
“I’ve told you-because Mandy will find out.”
“Why didn’t you think of that when you did it?”
“I wasn’t exactly expecting Niles to turn up dead, was I?”
“Well, what were you expecting?”
“That he’d turn up in Boca or Vegas or some such hole,” Bud said. “I’d tell Dolly I’d managed to put the squeeze on him to cough up or else-not bothering to go into any details. And that would be it.”
The lawyer used his wedge now to chip onto the green. His ball rolled within eight feet of the cup. If he holed it, he’d make par.
Mitch didn’t see his own ball anywhere. He would have to go hunt for it. “You said you thought I could help you. How? What can I possibly do?”
“I haven’t got long, Mitch,” Bud answered, his voice rising with desperation. “A day at most. The lieutenant is bound to figure it out. And when she does she will lower the boom on me.”
“So why don’t you explain it to her? She seems like a reasonable person.”
“My thought was that if it came from you it might conceivably stay off the books, as it were. Because this can’t go in her official report. If it does I’ll be disbarred. You do understand that, don’t you?”
Mitch stared at the man in disbelief. “You want me to tell her?”
“Well, yes. You two are friends, aren’t you?”
“We are?”
“She’s going for barefoot strolls on the beach with you, isn’t she? I saw you two together this morning. You seemed very tight.”
“She was questioning me, Bud. We were walking on the beach because she’s allergic to the mold in my house. Or so she claimed. I think she has a cold-but that’s beside the point. The point is, you were totally mistaken. We aren’t friends. In fact, I would go so far as to say the lieutenant actively dislikes me.”
Bud’s face dropped. “Christ, now I’ve gone and screwed the pooch. I’ve told you everything.” He ran a hand through his neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper hair, clearly distraught. “Now you have to tell her.”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Mitch shot back, suddenly feeling himself getting sucked in deeper and deeper.
“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Bud said hastily. “Oh, beans, I don’t know what to say, Mitch. I’m completely at sea. You were my best hope.”
Mitch sighed inwardly. I am lost in a foreign language film. I can’t figure out what is going on. I don’t understand these people. “Look, Bud,” he finally said to him. “I honestly think the truth will go down a whole lot better coming from you. But if you really want me to, I’ll tell Lieutenant Mitry for you.”
The lawyer’s face broke into a huge grin. “Thanks, Mitch,” he exulted, pumping his hand gratefully. “You’re the real goods. A true friend. Somehow, I just knew I could count on you.”
It was midafternoon by the time Bud maneuvered his Range Rover through the crowd of media people at Peck Point and back out onto Big Sister.
They had played nine holes. Bud shot himself a respectable 43. Mitch holed out with a sparkling 57.
The resident trooper’s cruiser was parked outside of Dolly’s house. Tal Bliss was helping Dolly and Bitsy unload groceries from the trunk of her old blue Mercedes.
“Anything new, Tal?” Bud asked the big trooper as Mitch hopped out and fetched his borrowed golf bag from the back.
Bliss shook his head. “Just making sure the girls could go about their business.”
“We’ve been shopping,” Bitsy burbled brightly. “And it was not pleasant. Those reporter persons-they just will not take no for an answer.
“Say, aren’t those Niles Seymour’s clubs?” Bliss asked Mitch sharply.
“Why, yes,” Mitch replied. “Bud thought it would be okay if I used them.”
Bliss pondered this disapprovingly, hands on hips. “Is that so?”
“He’s absolutely right, Tal,” Bud said placatingly. “I did.”
“It’s perfectly fine, Tal.” Dolly rested a small hand on the trooper’s sleeve. “Niles no longer has any use for them.”
“Fair enough, Dolly,” Bliss said gently. “If you say so.”
“How are you feeling?” Mitch asked her. Her eyes seemed a bit unfocused. He suspected she was on tranks.
“I shall be fine, Mitch,” Dolly replied. “It was the not knowing- where Niles was, what he was doing. Now that I do know, now that I have some sense of closure, I can begin to…” She broke off, her voice choking with emotion. “I don’t need to tell you the rest, do I, Mitch? You know what it feels like to lose the one you love.”
“Yes, I do,” Mitch said quietly, feeling the trooper’s steely eyes on him. Bliss didn’t seem to like her talking to him so intimately.
“And I did love him,” Dolly added, her voice soaring with defiance.
“Of course, you did,” Bitsy clucked, putting a protective arm around her.
“Everyone assumes I didn’t,” she said bitterly. “Because they didn’t approve. They thought he wasn’t good enough for me. They thought I was a fool. But Niles Seymour talked to me. Niles Seymour listened to me. He made me feel wanted and desired.”
Clearly, all of this was pointed directly at Bud, whose lips immediately tightened. After a brief, awkward silence, the lawyer elected to bail-got back in his Ranger Rover and eased down the driveway toward his own house.
“Poor Tuck, though,” Dolly lamented sadly. “He knew so little joy in his life. And now…”
Bitsy steered her inside. Bliss followed with the groceries.
Mitch deposited the dead man’s clubs back in the barn and strolled home, where he found a hand-lettered invitation taped to his front door:
Jamie Devers and Evan Havenhurst present
A Supper Cruise
A sophisticated comedy in three acts starring Mr. Mitch Berger
Location: The B.S. pier Time: 6:00 this evening
Boating shoes are a must
A reply is not-you wouldn’t dare turn us down!
Well, well. First a lunch invite from Bud. Now this. I am suddenly a very popular fellow on this island, Mitch reflected. What now? What did they want? Maybe they didn’t want anything. Maybe they were just being nice.
There was, of course, only one way to find out.
He cranked up the old Studey and went riding, high and bouncy, over to Old Saybrook for a pair of boating shoes at Nathan’s Country Store, a narrow, old-fashioned general store on Main Street that had worn wooden floorboards and a genuine penny candy counter. It was Barry, the bearded storekeeper, who explained to Mitch why the white-soled Topsiders were a must-ordinary shoes left stubborn black marks on the surface of the deck. This was not something that had ever occurred to Mitch, who also bought himself a pair of green rubber wading boots so he could slog farther out into the tide pools.
Mitch did something else while he was in Old Saybrook. He cruised out past the elegant North Cove waterfront mansions toward Fenwick, the very exclusive colony of shingled summer cottages where Katharine Hepburn was living out her last days. Here, in the shadow of the Old Saybrook lighthouse, Mitch found the Saybrook Point Inn, where Torry Mordarski had spent one night and paid cash. And where Bud Havenhurst and Red Peck had seen her and Niles Seymour breakfasting together. It was a spanking-new, ultra-posh resort hotel with docking facilities for boaters, a restaurant and a health spa. The grounds were immaculate. The brass plates on the lobby
