couldn’t bring myself to.”
“Don’t be sorry about that, Mrs. Enman. Don’t even think about it.”
“But I have such a favor to ask. That is, if you don’t mind…”
“Of course not. Anything.”
“Will you take me with you when you go to her funeral?”
Mitch sighed inwardly and said, “Absolutely. I’ll be happy to.”
Dorset’s town hall was a sober two-story brick building with dignified white columns, a flagpole and a squat bronze monument out front honoring the village’s Civil War dead.
Inside, it smelled of musty carpeting, mothballs and Ben Gay. The office of First Selectman Paffin was just inside the front door. He kept his door open at all times-if anyone had something to say to him, they could simply walk right in. One of those quaint small-town New England customs that Dorset cherished.
Ordinarily, Mitch found town hall to be about as lively as a wax museum. Today, its corridors were buzzing. People dashing in and out of one another’s offices, gathering in doorways for urgent conversations about Moose’s death, their voices animated, eyes shiny. Today, the natural order of things had been knocked utterly off-kilter.
The town clerk’s office, where property deeds were recorded and kept, was all the way down at the end of the hall. Connect the dots, Jim Bolan had urged Mitch. Here were the dots.
The town clerk was a chubby, pink-cheeked grandmother named Jessie Moffit. “Do the troopers have any idea what happened yet, Mr. Berger?” she asked Mitch eagerly.
Which Mitch thought was a bit odd, since he and Jessie had never actually met before. He drew two conclusions from this, just in case he’d harbored any doubts. One was that everyone in Dorset knew him when they saw him, and two was that the new resident trooper was wasting her hard-earned money at the Frederick House. They all knew.
“Not yet,” Mitch replied. “But I’m sure they will.”
The property deeds were kept in a walk-in fireproof vault that looked as if it belonged in Dodge City, stuffed full of gold. Hanging from an inside wall was a U.S. Geological Survey map of Dorset’s wetlands and estuaries. The plot plans were kept in an oversized map book. Jessie found him the map for the area of Connecticut River frontage where Hangtown lived, also the map encompassing Jim Bolan’s old farm and the proposed site for the new elementary school. The deeds were recorded and filed by an index number. To find out a property’s index number he had to look it up in the index book under the deed holder’s name. Which presented a problem since he was trying to learn the deed holder’s name.
Not to worry, clucked Jessie, who sent him down the hall to the assessor’s office to dig up who had been paying taxes on the properties in question. After spending two hours there, combing through surveyer’s map books and grand lists, and another hour back in the vault, Mitch was able to piece together not only who owned the major parcels of undeveloped land surrounding the proposed school site but when they had taken title to them.
Jim Bolan had not exaggerated. Huge chunks of land had changed hands in the past twenty-four months, just under three thousand acres of pasturage and forest in all-a vast amount of land for the precious Connecticut shoreline. The parcels formed a half-mile-wide ribbon between Route 156 and the river, bordered on the north by Uncas Pond and on the south by state forest. The ribbon was a continuous one, with the notable exception of Hangtown’s farm, which was situated right smack-dab in the middle and enjoyed the choicest river frontage.
Jim Bolan’s old farm was now owned by an outfit called Great North Holdings of Toronto, Ontario. Great North also owned two other parcels, 88 acres and 232 acres apiece. Bruce Leanse owned some 400 acres in all. Twenty that he lived on. Ten that were earmarked for the new school. The rest were presently under development as housing sites. Pilgrim Properties of Boston, Massachusetts, had bought three parcels numbering 40 acres, 22 acres and 410 acres. Two more chunks of land, totaling 860 acres, were owned by Lowenthal and Partners of New York City. The remaining 600 acres belonged to Big Sky Development Corporation of Bozeman, Montana.
A good start, Mitch reflected as he emerged, bleary-eyed, from the vault, feeling every inch like Erin Brockovich, minus the push-up bra. Now he’d have to find out who was behind all of these different companies, and what, if anything, they had in common. A journalism school buddy of his was a real estate reporter on the newspaper. In exchange for two seats to the premiere of the new Tom Cruise, she would tell Mitch how to track these people down.
He ran into Dorset’s resident trooper on his way out. She was standing in the doorway of the conference room with her hands on her narrow hips, looking tall, trim and very lovely. “What’s up, Master Sergeant?” he asked, smiling at her.
“Setting up a command center. What are you doing here?”
“I spoke with Lacy this morning. I’m writing a story about this.”
Des’s green eyes widened with surprise. “About Moose?”
“That’s right,” he affirmed, nodding.
She motioned for Mitch to join her in her office. It wasn’t an Emergency Services facility-just a community outreach cubbyhole where she tried to make herself available to the public for an hour every day. The walls were papered with public service posters for handgun safety, spousal abuse and drug prevention. There was a desk and a phone. Otherwise, the office was impersonal and bare.
She sat down at the desk, shaking her head at Mitch when he started to close the door behind them.
He pushed it back open and said, “Her death is just my jumping-off point. It’s really going to be about the changing face of a small New England town. The Leanse invasion, the battle over Center School, the Colin Falconer mess. What I’m searching for is how it all fits together.”
“So you think it does?” she asked, glancing uneasily out at the hall every time someone walked by her door. An awful lot of people did, it seemed.
“Oh, definitely,” Mitch responded. “I don’t believe things like this happen by coincidence. That’s the hallmark of mediocre screenwriting.”
“Um, okay, this is the part where I remind you that we’re talking about real life, not a movie.”
“I may need to interview you. Being the resident trooper and all. Oh, and I’ve got something for you from Hang-town…” Mitch told her what Wendell Frye had said he and Jim were doing when the red Porsche was blown off the road. “He’s hoping you’ll know how to handle it. He seems to feel you will.”
Des sat back in her chair, making a steeple of her long fingers. She never painted her nails. Considered nail polish a frivolous affectation. “I’ll see what I can do. That’s the best I can give you.”
“Is Jim really a suspect?”
“Soave likes him.”
“Soave?” Mitch frowned. “Wasn’t he your sergeant?”
“Man’s got his own sergeant now.”
“Hangtown thinks he’s an oaf. Muscle-bound cretin, to be exact.”
“He’s a competent officer,” Des insisted, refusing to badmouth Soave to an outsider even though the guy had ratted her out to further his own career. She was strangely loyal that way.
“Do you think he’ll arrest Jim?”
“Too soon to say. They’re still collecting crime scene evidence.” Des filled him in on what she knew about the Barrett. “They’ll run a statewide search to see if anyone around here’s got one. Hit the gun dealers and shows, one by one,” she added, looking up again at the sound of footsteps.
These belonged to Bob Paffin, the red-nosed, snowy-haired first selectman, who stood there in her doorway with a jovial grin on his long, horsey face. “Trooper Mitry, I’m sorry to interrupt if you’re having a personal conversation-”
“I’m not,” she said crisply. “Mr. Berger is working on a story for his New York newspaper.”
“Sure, Miss Enman says very nice things about you,” Bob Paffin said, shaking Mitch’s hand. “Awful business, this. Can put a real stain on a place. I hope you’ll be kind to our little town in your story. You’re one of us now.”
“It’s nice of you to say so,” said Mitch, who was well aware that he would never, ever be one of them, not if he lived in Dorset for the next fifty years and served on every board and commission that existed. He was a Jew from New York and he always would be.
“What can I do for you, Bob?” Des asked the first selectman politely.
“I got another call from a merchant this morning about those boys,” Paffin told her. “They spray-painted more of their obscene graffiti last night.”
