“Who, me? God, no.” Felicity let loose a jagged, painful laugh. “I’m chief marketing weasel. Vice president of, to be exact. We haven’t been here long. Just moved here from Brussels. Richard’s an economist with the World Bank. He’s in London right now and I’m…” She trailed off, wringing her hands.
“What happened this evening, Mrs. Beddoe?”
“I had just gotten home,” she answered, her mouth tightening. “I was putting our dinner on. It’s just Phoebe and me. She’s our girl. She’s… Phoebe’s fourteen.”
Des nodded, thinking how much house this was for three people. How many empty bedrooms did they have? Three? Four? What did they do with so many empty bedrooms?
“Please believe me, trooper, I’m not looking to make trouble. But we have talked to him and talked to him and it has done no good. So I-I felt it was time to contact you. I honestly didn’t know how else to proceed. I’ve no experience in these matters. None. Zero.”
“Exactly who are we talking about here, Mrs. Beddoe?” asked Des, shoving her horn-rimmed glasses back up her nose.
“Jay Welmers,” she answered, her cheeks mottling. “Our neighbor.”
Why did the name Welmers sound familiar? Des couldn’t place it offhand. “And what is it that he’s…?”
“He’s a peeper,” Felicity blurted out. “I don’t know what else to call him-is ‘pervert’ more apt? He watches Phoebe through her bedroom window. Tonight, I-I caught him in our yard. There’s a granite ledge out behind the house. Phoebe was upstairs in her room doing her homework when she heard footsteps in the leaves back there. She called out to me. I flicked on the floodlights, thinking, hoping it might be deer. It was Jay, perched back there with a pair of binoculars. It was him. I know it was him.”
“I see,” Des said, not liking where this was going at all. “Let’s talk to Phoebe, shall we?”
Felicity called to her, and she appeared in the doorway to the study, clutching a flute in her small, soft hands. Phoebe Beddoe was no lubricious tartlet. She was a slender, serious little teenaged girl with large, moist brown eyes and smooth, shiny blond hair-the kind of hair that the sisters up in Hartford’s Frog Hollow section would kill for. She wore a baggy fleece sweater, sweatpants and fuzzy bedroom slippers. And Des had no doubt whatsoever that something had happened to her-the girl was pie-eyed with fear.
Des smiled at her reassuringly. “Nice to meet you, Phoebe. I’m Resident Trooper Mitry, and I have to ask you something a little personal about this evening, okay?”
Phoebe nodded at her, swallowing.
“Did Mr. Welmers show you anything?”
“Show me anything?” she repeated in a quavering voice.
“Trooper, is this absolutely necessary?” Felicity cut in.
“I have to know what I’m dealing with, Mrs. Beddoe,” Des explained. “Otherwise, I can’t help you. And I want to help you. You’re old enough to understand what I’m talking about, aren’t you, Phoebe?”
The girl hesitated, then gave a short nod. “I guess.”
“Well, did he?”
“I don’t think so,” she replied, ducking her head. “No.”
“Okay, thank you,” Des said. “That’s all I needed to know.”
“Phoebe, will you please excuse us now?”
The girl darted back into the study, her slippered feet barely making a sound.
Felicity yanked a half-empty bottle of Sancerre out of the refrigerator and filled a goblet. She took a sip, her hand shaking. “I’m sorry, that… was not something I was emotionally prepared for.”
“Why did you call me, Mrs. Beddoe?” Des asked, watching her closely.
“Because I want something to be done about that man.”
“You’ve had trouble with Mr. Welmers before, I take it.”
Reluctantly, she nodded. “He always waits until Richard is out of town. And then he starts in again-watching Phoebe, saying things to her in the driveway.”
“What kind of things?”
“Things that he’d like to do to her,” Felcity said angrily. “She’s just a child. It’s obscene. He’s obscene. And those two boys of his are absolute monsters!”
Of course. Now Des knew why the name sounded familiar. “Have you told your husband what goes on when he’s away?”
Felicity’s eyes widened. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
She didn’t respond, aside from a brief shake of her head.
“Are he and Jay friends?”
“Not at all. That man’s been nothing but hostile toward us both since the day we moved in.”
“Does Richard keep a handgun in the home?”
“Yes.”
“You’re afraid he might try to use it on him, is that it?”
“Yes,” she said once again, fainter this time.
“If that’s the case, why don’t you let me hold on to it for a while?”
“I can’t go behind Richard’s back that way. He would take it as a lack of trust on my part.”
“I understand,” said Des. “Look, I’ll go have a talk with Mr. Welmers, okay? See if we can’t smooth this out. We’re all reasonable people here, right?”
“Right,” Felicity said, lunging for her wine. “Absolutely. But please don’t…”
“Don’t what, Mrs. Beddoe?”
“I just…” Her face tightened into a mask of fear. “Never mind. Thank you.”
Des showed herself out and went next door on foot, the whine of the leaf blower growing steadily louder as she made her way up Jay Welmers’s lantern-lined driveway. His own dogwoods, she noticed, were tied with red SAVE OUR SCHOOL ribbons. And his expanse of floodlit lawn had been blown completely free of leaves. It looked as spotless as a freshly vacuumed living room rug. Des had never quite understood the leaf-blower compulsion. It was one of those Man versus Nature hang-ups that baffled her. Plus the sound of the damned thing bore in at the base of her skull like an ice pick.
She found a middle-aged man busily blowing the leaves from his circular turnaround toward a swale at the base of the trees edging the property. His leaf blower was a hi-tech backpack unit that resembled a personal jet pack. He worked intently, wearing protective goggles over his eyes and earmuffs against the horrible racket he was producing.
The rottweiler that was chained to a post on the front porch started barking furiously at Des as she approached. None of which the man heard. She had to tap him on the arm to get his attention.
His gaze immediately hardened at the sight of her uniform. He shut down the unit and stripped off his earmuffs. “What is that woman complaining about now?” Jay Welmers demanded, instantly on the offensive. “Is it the noise? Is little Phoebe trying to practice her flute? I swear, some people you can’t please… Shut up, Dino!” he hollered at the barking dog.
The dog did not stop barking.
“Can we go inside, Mr. Welmers? We need to talk about a certain matter.”
“I can’t believe she called you. I’m just trying to spruce things up.”
“I understand, sir. Can we go inside?”
He grabbed hold of the dog so Des could get in the front door without having her ankle torn off. A bag of golf clubs was propped against the entry-hall closet door. Otherwise, the huge house was bare to the point of vacant. There was no furniture in the living room. No pictures on the wall. Not even any curtains.
Jay Welmers was in his fifties. He was a big man, at least six feet three, with a flabby gut and a red, choleric face. His wavy rust-colored hair was streaked with white. His eyes were blue, his hands freckly. He wore a yellow crew-neck sweater and a pair of those wool tartan plaid slacks that no black man on the face of the earth would ever be caught wearing. Jay looked as if he was fresh off the eighteenth hole at the country club. Or make that the nineteenth hole-he reeked of alcohol.
He led her back toward the den, their footsteps echoing in the empty house. There was a set of cheap plastic patio furniture in there, and a big-screen TV inside a home entertainment unit. Nothing else. Two boys were sprawled out on the rug, watching a movie.
