“So he wore gloves,” Soave growled at her. Translation: The residue test had turned up negative. “I still like him for it, Des. I like him large. He has motive, opportunity. He was a sniper in ’Nam. He’s done time.”
“What about Wendell Frye’s alibi?”
“It can be shaken,” Soave said confidently. “Who’s to say the old guy didn’t nod off for twenty, thirty minutes? He admits he was stoned. Maybe Jim even slipped a little something extra into his coffee. If that’s the case, we’ll find traces of it in the blood sample we took.” They’d taken it so they could test Hangtown’s DNA against the victims. “Besides which, we bagged us a pair of Jim’s boots in the mudroom, okay? The soles look like a dead-nuts match for the shoe impression we found up at the shooter’s roost. If we can make that stick, we’re in.”
“Not without the gun, Rico. Without the gun you’re still a dollar short.”
“We’ll find the gun,” he insisted. “You ask me, it’s still around there somewhere. Trouble is, that old man’s house has a million way creepy secret passageways. Plus he has that studio out in the barn, full of blowtorches, welders, saws-Jim could have broken the Barrett down into bits.”
“You still have to find them.” Des tapped her foot impatiently, anxious to get back to class. “Otherwise, the state’s attorney will kick it right back at you.”
“Maybe so,” admitted Soave, who didn’t seem anxious to go anywhere. Just sat there, smoothing his mustache. “I sent Tommy out for some dinner. He’s my cousin, and I love him, but I sure do wish I had a partner with a useful, functioning brain. Somebody I could riff with like you and me used to. Know what I mean?”
Perfectly. The little man wanted her help on this, but he couldn’t ask her for it without swallowing his pride. Des, for her part, had no intention of making this easy for him. She didn’t exactly want him to beg but, well-yes, she did.
“The thing is, Des, I can’t request a new partner or it’ll be a knock on me. That stuff matters-your ability to inspire loyalty from your subordinates.”
“Yes, I remember how that works,” Des snarled at him between gritted teeth.
Soave recoiled as if she’d slapped him. The man was totally taken aback by the sharpness of her tone.
Des almost felt guilty for zinging him so hard. Almost, but not quite.
Now her damned beeper went off. She went out to her cruiser to radio in, convinced that she would never be permitted to draw again. After she hung up she cleared her things out of the studio and changed into her uni in the ladies’ room. On her way out she stopped by the lounge. Soave was still flopped there on the sofa, his knees spread wide apart. He looked like a frog on steroids.
“Want some backup?” he offered rather forlornly.
“Not your kind of deal, Rico. Just routine community work.”
“Hey, I don’t mind. We could go someplace and de-freak afterward. Get us a brewski and talk.”
She paused, furrowing her brow at him. He seemed genuinely down. This was new for him. “Why don’t you go see Tammy?”
“I told you-it’s Tawny.”
“So why don’t you?”
“We don’t talk,” he complained. “Not about serious things. We’re not real close that way.”
“Well, you’ve got to work at it. Find common interests.”
“Like what?”
Des did consider telling him about that helpful new Web site: getalife. com. But she remained gracious. “Find something besides The Big Sweaty that you both like to do together.”
He thought this over carefully. “Okay, sure. But tell me one thing before you go: What’s he got that I haven’t got?”
“Who?”
“Berger,” he replied. “The Jew.”
Now it was Des who was taken aback. Although Soave had made a play for her after she and Brandon split up-he and every other so-called player on Major Crimes. Not a one got so much as a single soul kiss out of her. Just a healthy, neutered stray kitten for their trouble-Little Eva in Soave’s case, now known as Bridget. “Are you sure you want to go there?”
“I really do,” Soave insisted. “I want to take something positive from the experience. I want to know where I come up short.”
“Well, okay… Mitch Berger has brains, ethics, talent. And, let’s see, maturity, tenderness, warmth, sensitivity, taste, humor
… Oh, and he’s hung like a horse, too,” she added sweetly.
Soave looked hurt. “You can be real cruel sometimes, you know that?”
“Don’t get sensitive on me, Rico,” she shot back. “You’ll mess up your portrait, and I don’t want to have to do you all over again.”
Then she strode out of the lounge with her sketch pad and charcoals, leaving him slumped there on the sofa with his mouth open.
The call came in from a woman named Felicity Beddoe, who lived in Somerset Ridge, a new development made up of a dozen elegant McMansions that had been carved out of the forest about a mile up the Old Post Road from Uncas Lake.
Somerset Ridge was the sort of upscale cul-de-sac that Des was used to seeing in places like Fairfield and Stamford, which were within commuting range of New York. But the Internet was changing how people went about their business. More and more white-collar professionals telecommuted out of the house, and could live anywhere they wanted. They wanted to live in a place like Dorset.
There was nothing casual about Somerset Ridge. Each majestic colonial was set back from the gently curving road behind lavish new fieldstone walls, artfully positioned young dogwoods and three or more acres of Chemlawn. The dogwoods out in front of the Beddoe house, she noticed, had green WE CARE ribbons tied to them.
A long gravel driveway lined with carriage lanterns twisted its way up to a circular turnaround in front of the house, where Des parked and got out. One door in the three-car garage was open. Inside, there was a gold Lexus. She could hear the whine of a leaf blower coming from a neighbor’s place-someone trying to keep up with the fallen maple leaves. The Beddoes’s front walk was ankle-deep in them. Resisting a powerful girlish urge to go skipping through them, kicking them high in the air, Des plowed her way to the front door, which was flanked by decorative urns filled with assorted seasonal squashes and pumpkins. Most Martha Stewarty. She rang the bell.
She was invited in by a slender whippet of a career woman in her early forties. The gray flannel business suit Felicity Beddoe had on was tailored perfectly. Her ash-blond hair, which was cropped stylishly short, shimmered in the light from the entryway chandelier. Felicity was quite attractive in a toothy, Saran-Wrap-tight sort of way, although right now she seemed tremendously frazzled. “I’m so sorry to drag you away from your dinner, trooper,” she apologized, leading Des quickly in the direction of the kitchen, her low Ferragamo heels clacking on the quarry- tile floor.
“Not a problem,” said Des, following her. The living room and dining room had been furnished by an interior decorator. Everything was just so. “This is my job.”
“Still, you must have better things to do than listen to some hysterical mother rant and rave,” Felicity said, her voice soaring with strain. This woman was more than frazzled, Des realized. She was truly terrified. Trembling with fear.
She led Des into a cavernous gourmet kitchen. There was a sit-down center island topped with granite counters. A stew bubbled on the stove, and on the television The News-Hour with Jim Lehrer was busy dissecting North Korea. Felicity immediately flicked that off and turned down the stew. From a nearby room Des could hear the tentative, trembly trills of someone practicing the flute.
She removed her hat and leaned a flank against the granite counter. “Now what can I do for you, Mrs. Beddoe?”
Felicity said, “It’s just that Richard, my husband, is away on business. And this always seems to happen when he’s… And I just got home from work myself. And…”
“Where is it you work?” Des asked pleasantly, trying to slow the poor woman down. She was sooo hyper. On a good day she probably got by on two hours of sleep and 240 calories. Today was clearly not a good day.
“I’m with Pfizer,” she answered, swiping nervously at a loose strand of hair in her eyes. The pharmaceuticals giant had recently built a big research and development facility thirty miles away in Groton.
“So you’re a chemist?” Des asked, twirling her hat in her fingers.
