spinning out of control. It was a most unfamiliar feeling. It made her slightly dizzy.
The road began to climb steeply as it snaked its way around the lake. The resident trooper’s house was perched high on a hill overlooking the water. Tal Bliss had served two tours in the jungle in Vietnam. Sunlight and fresh air were a priority for him now. She deduced this from the way he’d added on a second storey with walls of glass and a wooden deck suspended all the way around. From the road, the place looked like a firefighter’s lookout station in the mountains.
His bedrooms were downstairs. The kitchen, dining room and living room were up on the second floor, the better to watch over his domain. He kept the house very neat and clean. Particularly his professional kitchen, which gleamed.
“My one and only indulgence,” he confessed, as he poured Des coffee.
There was a center island with a double sink and well-used copper pots hanging from a wrought-iron holder bolted into the ceiling. The countertops were granite, the cupboards pickled-pine. The range was a stainless-steel Jenn-Air with a down-draft vent, the refrigerator a top-of-the-line Sub-Zero. No walls enclosed Tal Bliss’s kitchen. It opened right out into the sun-drenched living and dining area.
On the stereo, Miles and Trane were putting the moves on “Kind of Blue,” filling the house with everything that was sweet and pure.
Dirty Harry, an immense orange-and-white male tabby, was out on the deck applying his death stare to a squirrel in a nearby cedar tree, his body poised, his tail swaying back and forth. The squirrel was chittering at him in derision. Down below, two men in a kayak were making their way slowly across the shimmering blue lake.
Lunch had been the resident trooper’s idea. When Des had mentioned that they needed to talk he had extended the invite. And she had accepted. When Tal Bliss offered to cook you something you did not say no. He wore a denim apron over a spotless white T-shirt while he was preparing it. Right now, he was finishing a fruit salad, his big tanned hands moving swiftly and expertly as he sectioned a pink grapefruit and halved strawberries. A quiche was baking in the oven, smelling marvelous.
“You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.”
“No trouble at all, Lieutenant,” he assured her. “I already had the pie shell on hand. I make a half-dozen of them at a time and freeze them. Just hope you like sage. I’ve fallen in love with it this year and am trying it in everything.” He tossed fresh blackberries and a cup of toasted walnuts into the salad, and began chopping up some mint. “We should really have ourselves a spicy Bloody Mary with this meal. Damned shame we’re on duty.”
“Damned shame.”
“Oh, I got a call from Bud Havenhurst,” he mentioned offhandedly. “Regarding what happened yesterday in New York.”
Somehow, this did not surprise Des.
“He felt a bit more at ease talking to a man about it, I guess,” he explained. “So I listened.”
“To what?” Des sipped her coffee.
“Apparently, Mandy gave Mitch Berger some form of playful shove on the subway platform as a train was pulling in. All in fun, was how Bud described it.”
“And just exactly what’s so damned fun about it?”
“Bud said that she considers danger to be a powerful aphrodisiac,” Bliss replied, coloring more than a little. He wasn’t so comfortable talking to a woman about this either. “She feels when someone has been mortally frightened that he or she is more susceptible to achieving a heightened level of sexual arousal. It seems she intended to seduce him later that evening. And this was simply her idea of…”
“… Foreplay?”
“According to Bud, she would have pulled Mitch back if there was even a remote chance he might fall.” Bliss had a pained expression on his face. He was hating this. He paused to check on his quiche in the oven. It was done. He removed it and placed it on a rack, fragrant and golden brown. “She was strictly playing a game.”
Des shook her head at him skeptically. “Are you trying to kid me, Trooper?”
“Why, no, Lieutenant.”
“Good, because there is no such thing as playful when it comes to pushing an unsuspecting individual in front of an oncoming train. They teach kindergarteners that. And when an adult in full command of her faculties does it, that’s called reckless endangerment. In Mandy Havenhurst’s case it might even qualify as assault with intent. She has a track record for inflicting bodily harm on men. I mean, come on, this is so not sane.”
“I know, I know,” Bliss agreed quickly. “Believe me, I’m not excusing it. Or condoning it. I’m merely reporting what Bud told me. And you’d better get ready, because there’s more.” He hesitated, clearing his throat. “Bud was there when she hit on Mitch at the apartment.”
“What do you mean he was there?”
“I mean he was listening in the bedroom the whole time. Watching, too, I imagine. Another little game they play. It… excites both of them.”
“They get off on making each other jealous-is that it?”
“Precisely.”
“And what does he…?”
“He tells her he’s still sleeping with Dolly.”
“Is he?”
“I’m quite confident he isn’t.” Bliss sighed, puffing out his cheeks. “What can I tell you-it’s not my idea of a healthy, normal relationship. But maybe there is no such thing as a healthy, normal relationship. What do you think, Lieutenant?”
“I think that I could be very happy never knowing this stuff about other people.”
“That makes two of us,” he agreed, smiling at her faintly. He removed his apron and wiped his hands on a towel. The stomach under his T-shirt was flat and hard. He was in excellent shape for a man over fifty. “Shall we eat?”
They ate out on the deck at a redwood table. The quiche was delicious-its crust flaky, the sage-scented filling of egg, bacon and gruyere rich and savory. And the fruit salad somehow managed to be sweet, tangy and nutty all at the same time. The man was truly gifted. Des told him so.
She did not tell him that she had almost no appetite.
Dirty Harry moseyed over and sniffed her ankles desultorily, offering no sign that he recalled it was she who had rescued him from out behind that bar in Ansonia, where drunks were throwing beer bottles at him. She who had nursed him and fed him. She who had given him a loving home for nearly three months until she had placed him with Bliss. Not so much as a hello. Not that Des expected any gratitude. He was, after all, a cat.
The kayakers were still making their way across the lake. The sound of their carefree laughter carried extraordinarily well off of the water. It seemed as if they were only a few feet away.
“What can I help you with?” Bliss asked her as he cleaned his own plate.
“Mitch Berger claims that somebody locked him in his crawl space a few days before he dug up Niles Seymour’s body. To scare him off, possibly.”
The resident trooper helped himself to some more fruit salad, his solemn face revealing nothing.
“One of the other islanders recalls seeing your cruiser out there on the afternoon in question. I wondered if you might have observed anything. Seen anyone near his carriage house. Anything like that.”
Bliss munched on his salad thoughtfully. “Not that I recall.”
“Mind if I ask what you were doing out there that day?”
“I’d swung by to look in on Dolly. She wasn’t home, as it turned out.”
“You often do that?”
“Drop in on her? Sure. She’s gone through some tough, tough times. And we’re old friends. And she’s…” He trailed off, grimacing slightly. “Oh, hell, there’s no sense in my being cute about it. The truth is that I’ve been carrying a torch for Dolly since we were eight years old.”
“Does she know that?”
He let out a dismal laugh. “I think it’s painfully obvious to everyone-including her. Sad to say, I’ve never been much more than good ol’ Tal to her. First, there was Bud. Her class of people, unlike me. Except that he was never worthy of her. Bud Havenhurst’s a weakling. Someone who needs a babysitter.”
“I’d hardly call Mandy a babysitter,” said Des.
“I would,” he countered. “To me, she’s a woman who exists solely to feast upon a man’s frailties. Bud’s little
