“Where was it this time?” asked Des, sighing.
“Tyler Brandt’s fish market. I can’t even begin to describe the anatomical filth they drew on that poor fellow’s window…” Paffin shuffled his feet uneasily. “I’d really like to assure the local merchants that you’re making some genuine progress on this. May I tell them that the Mod Squad’s days are numbered? Would that be an appropriate thing to say?”
Des narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m working on it.”
“I’m sure you are,” he said soothingly. “No criticism intended. Everyone is thrilled with the job you’re doing. But it would go a long, long way toward cementing folks’ comfort level with you if you were able to bring these boys to heel-and soon.”
“I am well aware of that,” Des said, raising her voice slightly. Des did not like to be pressured. Mitch had learned this about her. “And I am working on it.”
“Good, good. Well… keep it up.” And with that, Dorset’s first selectman skedaddled back down the hall to his own office.
The two of them sat there in tight silence for a moment. More than anything, Mitch wanted to take her hand and squeeze it, to touch her, feel her. But she had an iron-clad rule against Public Displays of Affection. “You’re having a real problem with Moose’s murder, aren’t you?” he asked her. “Sitting on the sidelines is not exactly your style.”
“That’s something I’ll just have to work through,” she conceded, looking through her eyelashes at him. “How about you? Not like you to seek out a story this raw, is it? I know you wrote about your landlady, but that was different. That happened to you. This didn’t.”
“Yes, it did,” Mitch countered. “That’s what it means to live here-if something happens to one person, it happens to you. You’re involved, whether you want to be or not. I learned a very valuable lesson today, Des.”
“Which is…?”
“When you live in Dorset, everything is personal.”
• • •
Someone was waiting for Mitch at the security gate that blocked public access out to Big Sister Island.
That someone was Takai Frye, who was standing there next to Moose’s old Land Rover trying in vain to buzz his house. A brisk, chilly wind was blowing off the Sound, and Takai wore nothing more than a green silk dress and teetery high-heeled sandals. No jacket or sweater. Not so much as a stitch under her dress, either. Her nipples, hardened by the cold, poked indecently right on through the flimsy silk.
“I was j-just t-trying to buzz you,” she said to him, her teeth chattering.
“Where’s your jacket?” Mitch asked, remembering the beautiful shearling she’d had on yesterday.
“I left it somewhere,” she answered vaguely, shivering. “You’re p-probably wondering what I-I’m doing here.”
“You mean, aside from freezing to death?”
“I’m afraid to be at home, Mitch. Out here, it’s safe.”
“Aren’t the police watching your house?”
She nodded. “But they can’t watch the woods. Or all of father’s secret goddamned passageways. C-can we talk?”
“Absolutely. Hop in.”
Takai grabbed her suede shoulder bag from the front seat of the Land Rover and got in the truck with him. He drove across the causeway and led her inside the cottage. She stood in the center of the living room, gazing somewhat dumbly out at his view. He went and got a pair of heavy wool socks as well as a fisherman’s knit sweater that Des was known to borrow from time to time. He brought these to her and lifted her bag off her shoulder so she could throw the sweater on over her head.
Her bag was surprisingly heavy, and it landed with a metallic thunk when Mitch set it down on the table. He drew back from it, frowning.
Takai showed him what was inside. It was a gun. A small, trim Smith amp; Wesson model called a Ladysmith.
“Is that thing loaded?” he asked her, gulping. He was not comfortable around guns. Guns went off.
“Always,” she said determinedly. “In my job, I sometimes have to be alone in some pretty isolated houses with some pretty strange characters.”
“By characters you mean men.”
“And they get ideas.”
“And you discourage them.”
“No one is going to hurt me.” Takai sat now in his one good chair, kicked off her sandals and crossed her bare legs so she could put on Mitch’s heavy wool socks, thereby affording him a fine view. Her legs were exceptionally long and shapely and smooth. “Not that I’ve ever had to use it, mind you.”
“Do you know how to?”
“What’s to know? You point and click, just like Ameritrade.”
“Are you hungry? Can I get you anything to eat?”
“Not for me, thanks.”
Mitch put coffee on and rummaged around in the fridge for his pot of leftover American chop suey, wondering what it was that she wanted from him. Takai Frye was someone who would always want something. He grabbed a fork and returned to the living room, shoveling hungrily from the pot. “I didn’t have any lunch,” he explained between mouthfuls. “Plus I eat when I’m nervous, which accounts for my appearance.”
She watched him hoover down his cold concoction, frowning prettily. “I’m making you nervous?”
“I would think that you make just about everyone nervous.”
“Now I don’t know whether to be flattered or insulted.”
“I’m not trying to insult you, believe me.”
Takai got up out of the chair, all woolly and warm, and padded over toward the windows. “This is a darling cottage. I can see why you’d never want to leave. And the views. God, if a developer ever got his hands on this island…”
Mitch took some kindling out of Hangtown’s old copper bucket and started building a fire in the fireplace. “That can’t happen. It’s been declared a historic landmark, thanks to the lighthouse.”
“How did you manage to get title to it?”
“Friend of the family.”
“It helps to have friends.”
“It sure does.”
“I admire you, Mitch,” Takai said suddenly, smiling at him. “You don’t lead a conventional life. I’ve tried to do that, too, in my own way. I never wanted to be ordinary like… like Moose was. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a teacher. I just… I don’t ever want to be average.”
“You’re not,” Mitch said, watching her carefully. She seemed to be starting the slow, painful process of dealing with her sister’s death. He laid a couple of logs in and lit a match. The fire caught right away, snapping and crackling and lighting up the room with its golden glow. “How do you take your coffee?”
“Black.”
He went in the kitchen and filled two cups, dumping a generous slug of chocolate milk into his. Takai was back in the chair when he returned with them. She took a grateful sip and set hers down on his coffee table, which he’d made by bolting a storm window onto an old rowboat. Clemmie moseyed over for a sniff, thought about testing out Takai’s lap, but opted for the kibble bowl instead.
Takai watched the cat disappear into the kitchen. “I don’t have any friends. All I had was Moose. And now she’s gone and I-” She broke off, her voice choking with emotion. “Whoever did that to her was after me, Mitch. It’s my fault!”
“You didn’t pull the trigger. You’re not responsible for what someone else did.”
“Yes, I am,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears.
Mitch stared at the fire in silence for a moment, wondering once again why she was here. “Any idea who it was?”
“God, take your pick,” she answered bitterly. “Everyone in Dorset despises me. I’m an aggressive, independent woman. I know what I want and I go after it. They don’t like that. They don’t like it at all.”
