be able to see you tonight. My time may not be my own for a while.”
“I understand,” he said, hearing the dread in her voice. “Are you okay?”
She fell silent a moment. “I’m interfacing with my old crew from Major Crimes-first time since I put the uni back on. It’s weirder than weird.”
“You’re doing what you want to be doing,” he told her. “That makes you way smarter than they are. Not to mention ten times hotter.”
“Guess I just needed to hear the words,” she said faintly. “Thanks, baby.”
“That’s the second time you’ve called me baby. You never did that before.”
“Do you mind it?”
“The next time we see each other, I’ll show you just how much I mind,” he said to her with tender affection.
But as soon as he hung up the phone Mitch was overcome by feelings of confusion and helplessness. Twelve hours ago he and Moose were feeding Elrod together. And now, through no apparent fault of her own, she was gone. Why? He stood there for a long moment gazing out his windows at a lobsterman in a Boston Whaler as he chugged his way slowly out onto the Sound. Mitch wondered what it would be like to be that man. He wondered what was on his mind right now, at this very second. Then he shook himself and called Lacy.
His editor answered on the first ring. She had just gotten in, but she already sounded alert and sharp as a razor. That was Lacy. “To what do I owe this honor, young Mr. Berger?”
“I had a nice hook on that Cookie Commerce story,” he told her glumly. “Emphasis on the word had.”
“You’re talking about Mary Susan Frye, am I right?”
“Now how on earth did you know that?”
“The first report just came in over the wire,” Lacy answered. “They passed it on to me because of who her father is. What’s going on out there? Talk to me.”
He talked to her. Told her how he had befriended the reclusive Wendell Frye, hearing the immediate uptick of excitement in her voice. Told her about Takai and how she was hooked up with the Brat, who was building houses all over Dorset and offering to donate the land for a big new elementary school. And how his wife, Babette, president of the school board, was the one pushing hardest for it. He told her about how Babette was squared off against the school superintendent, Colin Falconer-the hush-hush cyber-sex scandal, his suicide attempt. He told her about how this battle over Center School wasn’t about a school at all, but over the very soul of a quaint, rural New England village.
As he talked, Mitch began to realize that he was pitching Lacy a story. He hadn’t planned to, but deep down inside he must have wanted to. Why else had he felt the urge to call her?
“Mitch, how does the death of Wendell Frye’s daughter fit into all of this?” she asked when he’d finished filling her in. “How do the pieces fit together? Do they fit together?”
“Lacy, I honestly don’t know. But I’d like to look into it.”
“Go for it. I’ll talk to the magazine and call you back.”
Mitch hung up and reached for a fresh notepad and started jotting down questions that needed answering. Questions like… How much of Dorset had Bruce Leanse actually bought up? What were his real plans? How did the school figure into them? How did Takai?
Now his phone was ringing. He picked it up, thinking it would be Lacy.
“I’m going to kill the son of a bitch who did this to my Moose!” Hangtown roared at him. “You hear me, Big Mitch? With my own two hands!”
“Hangtown, I’m so incredibly sorry-”
“He’s a dead man! Dead!”
“That’s no answer. You’ve got to let the law handle this.”
“But that lieutenant’s a muscle-bound cretin-he’s actually trying to pin it on Jim!”
“Des will keep an eye on things,” Mitch assured him. “Believe me, nothing gets by her. And if there’s anything I can do…”
The old master was silent a moment. “Are you my friend, Big Mitch?”
“You bet.”
“You’ll help me?”
“Just tell me how.”
“Jim and me, we were smoking ourselves some homegrown when Moose was killed. Understand what I’m saying?”
“You were getting stoned together.”
“It helps me with my arthritis pain. Mornings are the worst. I can barely get out of bed. But I can’t tell them we were getting high because it’s a violation of Jim’s parole. They’ll send him back to jail. And, wait, there’s more- Jim still keeps his hand in. Had some dynamite plants growing out behind the cottages this summer. I’ve got pounds of the stuff stashed in my dungeon, Big Mitch, and a state trooper camped on my doorstep at this very minute-” Hangtown broke off, wheezing. “Will you tell Des for me?”
“Tell her what, Hangtown?”
“The truth-that I can vouch for Jim’s whereabouts. That he’s innocent. Only, you’ve got to whisper it in her ear, or they’ll set the dogs loose on him. Can you do that for me?”
“I can. But I can’t guarantee how she’ll respond.”
“She’ll do what’s right,” the old man said with total certainty.
“Hangtown, there’s something else we need to talk about. I just spoke to my editor at the paper-”
“You’re going to write a story about this. Of course you are. I understand.”
“How did you know last night? That I might have to write about you. How did you know?”
“I told you-you get a sense of things when you get to be my age. You lose your friends. The people who you love… they get taken from you. But you do gain that.”
“I won’t quote you. Not unless you want me to.”
“I don’t care, Big Mitch. Don’t care about that stuff anymore. My Moose is gone. My Moose is…” Wendell Frye let out a strangled cry. “Someone just cut my heart out.” Sobbing, he hung up the phone.
Mitch’s own chest felt heavy with grief. Moose’s death was causing him to revisit emotions he hadn’t gone near since he lost Maisie. He didn’t want to go through this. He didn’t want to go to another funeral. He didn’t want to ask himself those awful, painful questions that had no answers, such as: Why does someone vibrant and good get snuffed out before her time while the cruel, the dishonest and the horrible just keep right on using up air and skin until a ripe old age? When he was on the job in a darkened screening room, alone with his notepad, Mitch never had to ponder such unanswerable questions. Hollywood movies steered carefully around them. Hollywood movies steered carefully around anything that made audiences unhappy. But out here in the sunlight, he did have to think about such things. Because if you got involved with people, things happened to those people, and not all of those things were good.
In fact, sometimes it seemed that none of them were.
And so he hopped in his old truck and went rattling over the wooden causeway toward town, where he could begin to deal with it.
First he had to stop at Sheila Enman’s mill house in front of the waterfall on Eight Mile River. She needed to be told. It would be better if she heard it in person.
The old schoolteacher was seated on a plain wooden chair by her kitchen window, her stooped, big-boned body clad in a ragged yellow cardigan and dark green slacks. Her walker-Sheila called it her giddy-up-was parked near at hand.
Mitch enjoyed Sheila Enman immensely. She was a feisty old Yankee who’d lived in her wonderful mill house all of her life. She had great stories to tell, and age hadn’t slowed her mind one bit.
Except today it seemed to have ground to a halt entirely. Gazing out of her window at the waterfall, Sheila was almost like a different person-vacant, remote and despondent. “Selectman Paffin just stopped by,” she said to Mitch in a muted, hollow voice. “Is it true, Mr. Berger? Is she really gone?”
Mitch dropped into the chair next to hers. “I’m afraid so, Mrs. Enman.”
“She had every reason in the world to be stuck-up. Her father’s position and all-Lord knows, Takai is. But not Moose. Never Moose. She was so sweet, so giving…” Sheila pulled a wadded tissue from the rolled-back sleeve of her sweater and dabbed at her eyes. “I must apologize, but I didn’t bake anything for you this morning. I just
