Frightful, nosy women. And it’s none of their business, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” Mitch agreed, liking her. She was just the tiniest bit dizzy.
“My lawyer will want references and deposits and things,” she added with a vague, helpless wave of her hand. “You’re a New Yorker? I noticed the license plate.”
“Yes, I am.”
“And do you and Mrs. Berger have children? The reason I ask is because it’s really quite ill-suited for a family.”
“No, no. I’m a widower.”
She considered this, her brow furrowing sympathetically. “How awful. She must have been frightfully young, poor thing.”
Mitch said nothing, knowing his voice would catch if he did.
Dolly plunged hastily into the awkward silence. “Let’s have a look inside, shall we? Now I should warn you- I’ve been using the downstairs for storage and it’s, um, a bit…”
Filthy. It was filthy. There were cobwebs and mouse droppings everywhere, coupled with the pervasive smell of mold and disuse. A man’s things had been heaped rather carelessly in the center of the bare floor. There were garment bags and suitcases stuffed to bursting with coats and suits and sweaters, cartons crammed with shoes, athletic trophies, old yearbooks, papers. There was a set of golf clubs, a bicycle, a stuffed and mounted warthog’s head.
But in spite of this, Mitch was awestruck by what he saw. Because this was no ordinary outbuilding. It was a genuine antique post-and-beam carriage house with exposed beams of hand-hewn chestnut. The room, which was a good-sized one, had a big fieldstone fireplace at one end, wide-boarded oak floors and floor-to-ceiling windows that afforded a totally unobstructed view of the water in three different directions. It was a bit like being on the bridge of a ship at sea.
Standing there, Mitch felt a tingle of excitement. It had been Maisie’s dream that they would one day find a little cottage for themselves. A place where they could curl up in front of the fire. Dig in the garden. A place to escape from everyone when they felt like it. This place. Mitch was sure of it. He had never been more sure of anything in his whole life.
“I haven’t quite figured out what to do with his things,” Dolly murmured apologetically. “Niles hasn’t asked me for them-I suppose he’s not settled yet. Mind you, I did consider taking all of it to the dump, but that would have been so petty, would it not?”
Evidently her husband had left her. Which Mitch found rather hard to imagine. Dolly was so attractive and classy and nice. Plus this island was so remarkable. Why would anyone ever want to leave?
“I’ll move all of it out, of course,” she went on. “And have it properly scrubbed and painted. The windows repaired and so forth. But we do tend to be a pretty self-sufficient lot out here. So it would help if whoever took it were handy. Are you?”
Mitch was not. His experience with handyman specials began and ended with Mister Blandings Builds His Dream House, which he considered a vastly overrated film. “Well, I’m certainly game,” he said helpfully.
“Good, good! The roof is sound… Fairly sound, anyway. And it has its own oil furnace and septic and well.”
“You said the caretaker used to live out here?”
“Yes, when I was a girl. I was raised on Big Sister. My maiden name is Peck, you see.”
“As in Peck Point?”
“That’s right. My family settled this area back in 1649. Saybrook was nothing more than a fort at that time, built by Lion Gardiner of Dorset Regis. The rest of this area, hundreds of thousands of acres, was land granted to Malcolm and Matthew Peck for services rendered to the crown.”
“What kind of services?”
“No one knows, but my own theory is that they were thieves and scoundrels,” she answered with a smile.
There was a pullman kitchen and a bathroom with a scarred old tub. They weren’t much, but they were adequate. There was a hinged trapdoor in the kitchen floor fitted with a brass transom catch that had a recessed pull ring. She raised it to show him what was down there. It was a dirt crawl space, very dark.
“There’s no basement, I’m afraid,” she apologized. “That means no washer-dryer. There is a laundromat in town…” She broke off, frowning prettily. “Of course, as it’s just you, I should think you could use mine. And there are a few odd sticks of furniture collecting dust in the barn. Nothing grand, mind you.”
A steep, narrow staircase led up to a loft above the living room. It had a peaked ceiling with exposed beams and skylights. It had a pair of dormered windows for light and ventilation. There was enough space for a bed up there but not much else.
“Dear God, would you believe I had my very first kiss up here?” Her eyes shone with schoolgirl longing. “I was twelve.”
Mitch eyed her curiously. She seemed attached to this place. Also reluctant to part with it. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
A dark look crossed her face-and Dolly Seymour suddenly seemed someplace else. Someplace very far away. Someplace very unpleasant. It shook her. A shudder of pure animal revulsion seemed to shoot right through her entire body. But then, just as suddenly, she returned. “I’m quite sure I don’t want to,” she responded in a soft, thin voice. “But I must. I need the income. I have no marketable skills of any kind. None. And our property taxes are positively crippling. That’s why we gave the Point to the Nature Conservancy. These houses out here are just about all we have left. And we can’t lose them. The trouble is that I’m on my own now, Mr. Berger.”
“It’s Mitch,” he said quietly. “Not easy being alone, is it?”
“No, it’s not. I guess you understand that, don’t you?” She looked him over carefully, as if realizing for the first time that she knew virtually nothing about him. “What is it you do, Mitch?”
“I’m a film critic.”
“How fascinating! I’ve always admired people who do creative things.”
“The filmmakers are the ones doing the creating. I just write about it. But I have a new book to get done. And I need someplace quiet to work.”
“Big Sister is definitely quiet. In fact, winters it’s too quiet for some.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” said Mitch, imagining himself taking long walks on the snow-driven beach. Curling up with a good book in front of a roaring fire, the surf pounding outside his window. “I would want a vegetable garden.”
“There’s an old one out behind the barn that is just waiting for someone to bring it back to life. And I’ve garden tools aplenty and…” Dolly took a deep breath and blurted out, “I’m asking a thousand a month, Mitch. What do you say, shall I call my lawyer and tell him you want it?”
Mitch stood there a moment in stunned silence, realizing to his own astonishment that it had finally happened. One door was closing and another one was opening. Today was the day. As of this moment, I am moving on. Maisie would want him to do this. Change was healthy. Change was life. It was time to get on with his life. And so Mitch Berger smiled at Dolly Seymour and in a loud, clear voice said, “I would love for you to call him.”
CHAPTER 4
THE CENTRAL DISTRICT HEADQUARTERS of the Connecticut State Police’s Major Crime Squad was located in Meriden across from the Lewis Avenue Mall in what had once been a state-run reform school for boys.
A narrow, unmarked road snaked its way up a hill to the secluded and unexpectedly pastoral campus of gently aged red-brick dormitories and classrooms. The state’s prestigious Forensic Science Laboratory had sprouted up here, under the guiding hand of its nationally eminent director, Dr. Henry Lee. The state’s K-9 training center was headquartered here as well, providing a steady background chorus of barking German Shepherds. Des practically heard them in her sleep. And she had learned never to stroll too near any parked cruisers on her way inside-if a K-9 trainee happened to be stationed in the car, it would lunge at her through the partly open
