She kissed him on the forehead and poured herself some coffee and sat down opposite him, hearing steady, determined crunching noises coming from the direction of the back door. Cagney and Lacey, the two stray cats Des had talked him into adopting, were nose down in their kibble bowls. They, too, thought it was time for breakfast.
“Why’d you go and do that to your hair?” he asked, eyeing her dreadlocks critically. “What is it, some kind of a statement?”
“No statement. It’s just hair.”
“Doesn’t look professional,” he grumbled at her. “And the powers that be think you’ve become a Rastafarian.”
“They are seriously behind the times.”
“They are in charge.”
“It’s just hair,” Des repeated, louder this time.
“So why don’t you wear it normal?”
“This is normal, Daddy. The Anita Hill look was chemicals. And when my head looked like the business end of a felt-tip marking pen, that was chemicals, too. Now I look like me. And it’s my head, thank you, so let’s just drop the subject, okay?”
They dropped it, Des gazing across the table at him in anxious silence. The two of them were not especially close. No one ever got close to the Deacon, not even Des’s mother. If she had she wouldn’t have fled elsewhere in search of joy.
“If this about Captain Polito I can’t help you, Desiree,” he spoke up. “Polito runs his own squad his own way. And if he wants to bring in further supervisory manpower, that’s his business.”
“That’s not why I needed to see you,” she said quietly.
He sat back in his chair, big hands folded before him on the table, waiting for her to continue.
She took a sip of her coffee, followed by a deep breath. “I want to see Crowther.”
His eyes widened at the mention of the one man, the only man in the Connecticut State Police who outranked him-Superintendent John Crowther. “What about?”
“Some unanswered questions from his past.”
“Which unanswered questions, girl?” he asked sternly. “And don’t you be giving me any double-talk. I want it straight up. I want it specific.”
“The Weems murder-suicide on Big Sister Island thirty years ago. Crowther was the investigating officer.”
“So…?”
“So the bodies were found by a seventeen-year-old girl named Dolly Peck who had recently been forcibly raped by the male victim. So this girl’s grandfather happened to be a U.S. senator. So this girl now goes by the name Dolly Seymour and is smack dab in the middle of three more murders that practically have me chewing my own foot off. She’s the linchpin, Daddy, then and now. I’ve been looking through Crowther’s official bio. The man’s career just took off after the Weems case. He went from sergeant to captain in the blink of an eye. I am talking zooom. And it so happens that his report is full of holes. So is Dolly Seymour’s memory-she claims to remember nothing of what happened that day. I have to find out what he left out.”
He got up and refilled his cup, his face stony. “You want to rattle the man’s cage, is that it?”
“Absolutely not. I could care less about the politics. All I care about is this investigation. Here and now. What’s happening now isn’t adding up. If I can find out what really went down thirty years ago, maybe it will.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“I am under the gun. I need results. I can’t help it if the trail leads me to him, can I?”
He considered this for a long moment before he said, “Have you gone through Polito on this?”
She ducked her head, her mouth tightening.
“Uh-hunh,” he grunted. “Because he’d tell you to drop it. And that’s exactly what I’m telling you to do. Don’t go there. You don’t accuse the superintendent of falsifying a report and concealing information. You’d be committing political suicide.”
“I told you, this isn’t about politics.”
“Girl, everything is about politics,” he said, shaking his head at her. “That is the reality of the situation. And if you don’t accept it you will get ground into dust. Crowther is one tough SOB. You do not want to go one-on-one with him. What do you think is going to happen-you’ll twitch your fine tail at him and the man will spill something he’s been holding onto since Richard Nixon was in the White House?”
Des could feel her face burning now. She said nothing.
“Do you honestly think he’s going to jeopardize his whole career to help you put away a rich white woman he didn’t put away thirty years ago? Not a chance. All that’ll happen is you will make yourself one powerful enemy. Probably end up back in uni, staked out at a speed trap outside of Killingley. Is that what you want? Explain yourself, girl. What is going on here?”
Des got up and went over to the sink, aware of his eyes on her. Clearly, he was baffled by her. She had never given him much reason to be. She had always been the good daughter. Good grades. Good manners. Never got into drugs. Never brought home a thug. Hell, her idea of running away from home was going to West Point. She’d taken the right job. Married the right man-or so they’d all believed. Never once had she been the wild child. Never once had she rebelled.
And now, standing here in this small, spotless kitchen of this small, spotless house, Des suddenly felt herself suffocating. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be crying out for spontaneity, for life. “I don’t know what’s going on here,” she replied softly.
“Well, Desiree, you’d better figure it out. And soon. Because there is zero room for doubt in our business.” He watched her intently over his coffee cup. “Tell me, what’s his name?”
“Whose name?”
“This man who has thrown you for a loop.”
“No man has thrown me anywhere,” she shot back, bristling. “Why do you immediately assume it’s a man? Why can’t it just be me?”
“Little late for us to be having this conversation, isn’t it?”
“Are you talking about late in the evening or late in life?”
“Like I said,” he responded, “it’s late.”
She rinsed out her cup and sat back down at the table across from him. “So what do I do now?”
“Your job.”
“You just told me that the one man who might be able to help me is off limits.”
“That’s your job,” he affirmed. “To get results, no matter what. If it were a smooth, easy ride, nothing but cherry pie, they wouldn’t be paying you. You’d be paying them. That’s the truth, girl. That’s the real world.” He trailed off a moment, his broad chest rising and falling. “Deal with it. Or find yourself a new world to live in.”
The Havenhursts, Bud and Mandy, lived in a doll-sized version of the big summer cottage where Redfield and Bitsy Peck lived. The shutters and front door of the little house were painted colonial blue. The window boxes were bursting with pansies. Two cars were parked out front in the gravel drive, a Range Rover and an old MG convertible.
One tabloid news crew was parked at the entrance to the bridge. Otherwise, all was quiet.
No Studebaker pickup was parked outside of Mitch Berger’s carriage house. Des pulled up in her slicktop and got out, buttoning her blazer. The stiff morning breeze out on Big Sister was distinctly chilly.
She used his spare key to check up on Baby Spice, a.k.a. Clementine. This time Des found her upstairs in Mitch’s half-open T-shirt drawer, fast asleep. The little vixen barely stirred at the sound of Des cooing at her. Doubtless she had spent the wee hours exploring her new universe. She still had plenty of food and water. Her litter box had been used. Des cleaned it out, yawning hugely. What she really felt like doing was shucking her clothes and jumping into that nice warm bed.
The man’s clothes closet was downstairs. Des opened the closet door, figuring now was as good a time as any to find out. A wool shirt Mitch Berger had been wearing the first day she met him was hanging from a hook. She removed it and buried her face in it, inhaling his aroma. Instantly, she felt a fluttering sensation all the way from her tummy to her toes. Followed by a sense of giddy light-headedness. Briefly, she thought she might faint.
And this was with a stuffed-up nose.
