footsteps on the gravel, her unlined face broke into a bright, sunny smile of even white teeth and gleaming blue eyes. “Mitch, good morning!”
“Good morning back at you, Mandy. You’re certainly up early.”
“Well, so are you, sir.”
“I’m off to New York for the day.”
In response, she clapped her manicured hands together like a gleeful little girl. “Oh, good! That’s what I figured.”
Mitch frowned. “You did?”
“Absolutely. Why else would you be up and out before dawn? I am, too. Going in to the city today. Assuming it’s okay with that black girl.”
“Do you mean the lieutenant?”
“Well, yeah,” Mandy said, squinting at the unmarked cruiser that was parked out on the bridge. “Why is she just sitting out there like that anyway? Is she spying on us?” Mandy suddenly seemed very tense, very paranoid. “I find it incredibly inappropriate. This island is supposed to be private. We’re not supposed to have strangers matching us.” Just as abruptly, she relaxed, smiling at him warmly. “You should never wear anything but navy blue, Mitch. That sweater makes you look so handsome and trim.”
Trim?! Yeah, right. Move over, David Duchovny.
Mitch shifted from one foot to the other, suddenly very uneasy. Because at the sound of their voices Bud had appeared in the window of his little house. He was watching them. He was watching his lovely and volatile trophy bride talk to an available younger man. Mandy’s back was toward the house-was she aware that Bud was standing there, listening in?
Of course, she was. That was why she’d said what she said.
“You’re very kind, Mandy,” Mitch finally responded. “No one has called me trim since I was… well, come to think of it no one’s ever called me trim.”
Now she let out a laugh, a delicious, cascading laugh that was sure to carry halfway across the island.
“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Mitch spoke up. “You going in to the city today, I mean. The lieutenant said it would be okay if I did.”
“Well, that settles it, then,” Mandy concluded with a happy toss of her long blond hair. “Which train are you taking in? We can ride in together.”
“I haven’t decided yet. I have to do some paperwork before I go. Actually, you’d better not count on me. Just take the train you were going to take. If we run into each other, great.”
Mandy’s plump lips formed a pout. “I sure hope we will.”
“So do I,” said Mitch, as Bud continued to watch them through the window. But not if I can help it. Because there was something profoundly unsettling about this woman. Something that was alluring at the same time that it was frightening. Mandy Havenhurst was clearly accustomed to doing whatever she wanted to whomever she wanted and getting away with it. That gave her an air of recklessness, of danger. The Sharon Stone factor, they called it in Hollywood. Playing with fire, they called it in real life. Guaranteed to stir up the blood. And to make Mitch ask himself questions like: Was it by chance that she’d been out here cleaning her windshield? Or had she spotted him coming across the bridge and purposely bumped into him? Questions like: Was it a coincidence that they were both going to New York today? Or was she going in because he was going in? If so, why?
“What takes you to town, Mitch?” she asked him now. An innocent enough question. So why didn’t it sound innocent?
“I have a couple of movies to screen. And you?”
“Personal day,” she replied. “Nothing but pampering. A massage and facial, my hair, fingers, my toes, a new black dress at Bendel’s… I want to look nice for the funeral tomorrow. Bud is furious about it, you know,” she said, leaning a slender flank against her sports car.
“Why is that?” Mitch asked, wondering how much of this Bud could hear. All of it, he figured.
“He doesn’t think Niles should be buried in the Peck family plot.”
“That’s Dolly’s decision to make, isn’t it? She’s the Peck.”
“Just what I said,” Mandy agreed. “She’s the Peck. But Bud doesn’t see it that way. I think he figured that when the time came he would be the one buried next to Dolly. Which, if you stop and think about it, should make me really angry.”
“Does it?”
“Not really,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t think about what happens after we’re all gone. Hell, I don’t even think about tomorrow. Just about now. He’s also pissed that Dolly wants to foot the bill for Tuck Weems’s funeral. Apparently it was just Tuck and some teenaged slut he was living with, and she has zero money. Are you staying over in the city tonight?”
Again, it was an innocent enough question. Yet, somehow, coming from Mandy it was tinged with the promise of illicit, athletic sex. “I’d planned to, yes,” Mitch replied.
“Me, too. We should get together tonight. Do you like Thai food?”
“I do. Very much.”
“Great! I know a place on Spring Street that will positively blow your doors off. And afterward we can go listen to some jazz.”
“God, I’d love to. But I have a pretty tight schedule tonight. A screening, followed by dinner with my editor. Can’t do it. Sorry.”
She frowned at Mitch prettily. “If I were a bit more insecure I’d think you were blowing me off.”
“Not at all,” he said. Which was not, in fact, completely true. He could have invited her to the screening with him. The invites were always for two. So why wasn’t he inviting her? Simple. Because she was trouble. And her husband was watching her every move. And he was not going to get involved in whatever game the two of them were playing.
“Well, maybe next time,” she said wistfully.
“That would be great,” Mitch said.
Now was when Bud decided to officially show himself. The lawyer came scuffing out the front door toward them in his silk bathrobe and slippers, smiling tightly at Mitch. Bud’s hair was rumpled and he was unshaven. Young men, in Mitch’s critical opinion, tended to look more virile when they were unshaven. Not so Bud. The grizzled white stubble on his chin belonged to an aging pensioner. So did the chalky residue of dried saliva that was caked to his lips like Spackle. “Hey, boy!” he called to Mitch in a phlegmy voice. “You’re up early.”
“We’re both going to New York today, sugar,” Mandy informed him. “Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Yes, it is,” Bud said, peering at Mitch long and hard. Mitch peered right back at him. The man looked positively ten years older this morning. Also ten times more desperate. His face seemed hollow-eyed and gaunt, his gaze uncertain-even fearful. It was getting to him. The thin ice he was skating on was definitely getting to him. “Take good care of her, Mitch. And of yourself.”
“I always try to,” Mitch assured him.
“Make certain that you do.” Now there was a degree of urgency in Bud’s voice. “I don’t believe those numbers, you know.”
“Which numbers?”
“The ones that say that crime is down in New York. I think the people who came up with those are the same ones who keep telling us that inflation is under control. If it is, then why does the price of everything keep going up? Do you know what I’m saying, Mitch?”
Mitch scratched his head. “Not exactly, Bud. No.”
“I’m saying that New York can still be a dangerous, dangerous place,” Bud asserted, his voice rising. The man’s fists, Mitch observed, were tightly clenched. “Watch yourself, my young friend. I’d hate to see anything happen to you. It would be a shame. A damned shame.”
CHAPTER 10
IT WAS SHORTLY AFTER eight when Des started up her cruiser and eased it across the bridge toward Big
