One boy Des recognized right off. It was Ricky, the little no-necked bully with the black eye. The one who’d asked her if she was a nigger.
The other one was about fifteen, with a long, wiry build. His peach-fuzz goatee and furry, overgrown burr cut gave him the look of a wolf cub. This would be brother Ronnie, the garbagehead Moose Frye had told her about. Ronnie Welmers dressed in thug chic: baggy prison jeans that were falling off him, sleeveless black T-shirt, red bandanna knotted around his throat, Timberland work boots. He was trying to look like a gangbanger, but sprawled here on the floor of his Dorset McMansion, he looked about as street as Britney Spears.
Des smiled at the younger boy and said, “Nice to see you again, Ricky.”
Ricky mumbled something in response that sounded vaguely like hello.
“How you know my boy, trooper?” Jay Welmers asked her.
“I was at his school for a presentation,” Des replied, noting that big brother’s eyes never left the television. Ronnie would not make eye contact with her. “Sorry to hear about your teacher, Ricky. She seemed like a nice lady.” To Jay she said, “Your neighbor, Felicity Beddoe, reported a prowler in her yard this evening. I wondered if you saw or heard anything.”
Jay considered his reply for a long moment, his red face revealing nothing. “Do you boys want to excuse us?”
“But, Dad, this is the best part,” protested Ricky.
“What are you guys watching?” Des asked him.
“It’s called Westworld,” Ricky answered. Ronnie still wasn’t giving up anything. “Yul Brynner plays a really cool robot.”
“You can watch it later,” Jay said brusquely. “Go take Dino for a walk.”
Ronnie flicked off the TV, sighing, and the two of them shuffled slowly out of the room. A moment later she heard eruptions of boyish laughter.
“I was just going to fix myself a Scotch and soda,” Jay said. “Can I offer you anything? Coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
He went into the kitchen for a moment, returned with his drink and sat in one of his patio chairs, his movements measured and careful. He’d already had him a few, and was trying not to show it.
“What is it that you do for a living, Mr. Welmers?”
“I’m a financial planner.”
“Is that right? I’m in the market for one of those-who are you with?”
“I was with Fleet Bank for twenty-two years,” he answered. “Got downsized right out the door last year. So I’ve set up on my own. Much better that way, really. Don’t have to worry about corporate politics anymore. I can focus on what I do best, which is helping people plan for the future. It does come, you know…” He took a business card out of his wallet and offered it to her.
“Great. Thank you.” She pocketed it, glancing around at the decor, or total lack thereof. “Are you refurnishing?”
Jay let out a short laugh. “I guess you could call it that. My wife took the furniture when she left me-the furniture and everything else, except our two boys.” He sipped his drink, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. It was too small for him. “Exactly what did Felicity tell you?”
“That she saw you over there, Mr. Welmers.”
“I was looking for one of my golf balls a little while ago,” he conceded, very casually. “Ricky knocked it into their yard. He fancies himself a golfer now.”
“You were looking for your golf ball,” Des said back to him.
“That’s right.”
“In the dark?”
“There’s no law against that, is there?”
“Not at all. But there is a law against peeping through bedroom windows. And making verbal suggestions to a fourteen-year-old girl her in her driveway.”
“Felicity said that?” Jay Welmers shook his big red head at her disgustedly. “Nothing like that has ever happened, believe me.”
“You’re saying Mrs. Beddoe is mistaken?”
“I’m saying she’s new in town and she’s frightened to death of everybody. Especially when her husband’s away. And that girl of hers, that Phoebe, is so terrified of men she runs away screaming if I so much as say hello. That’s how we are in Dorset-friendly. We say, ‘Good morning, don’t you look pretty today?’ I’ve lived here my entire life, trooper, so maybe I haven’t heard the news… Is that a crime now?”
“No, of course not.”
“And is it sane behavior to call the police if a neighbor sets foot on your property?”
“She seemed like a pretty decent lady to me.”
“She’s a hostile, uptight bitch,” Jay snarled. “And you know how teenaged girls are.”
“No, how are they?”
“They overdramatize,” he said, peering over his glass at Des. The color had risen in his face. He looked as if he had a real temper. “She’s just looking for attention, that’s all.”
Des raised her chin at him. “And what are you looking for, Mr. Welmers?”
“Believe me,” he said in a low voice, “I’m not casting around for trouble.”
“I’m sure you’re not,” Des said soothingly. “But could you do me a huge favor? Next time you need to go over there looking for your golf ball, could you call her up first and tell her you’re coming? Because she is new here. And she’s ill at ease. Maybe she’s overreacting. Hey, maybe there’s no maybe about it.” Des flashed a smile at him. “But it seems like an easy enough thing to do if it would smooth things over. Mr. Welmers, you seem like a good neighbor to me-a responsible homeowner, a father. I don’t want to have to come back here. It’s within your power to make sure that I don’t. The ball’s in your court. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“Of course I do,” he responded coldly. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Good. Then I won’t take any more of your time.”
As Jay led her out, Des asked him about Ricky’s black eye.
He waved a freckled hand in disgust. “He got in another fight at school. He’s a got a mouth on him, that one. Inherited it from his mother.”
“I see,” Des said, leaving it there even though she was positive the man was lying to her. About Ricky’s eye. About Phoebe Beddoe. About it all. Trouble was, she had nothing to go on. Just her instincts, which were telling her loud and clear that Jay Welmers was a bum. She could smell it all over him. Same way she could smell that Felicity Beddoe was no hostile bitch and her daughter was not delusional. But she had to play this call straight down the middle. No taking sides. She’d done all she could for now.
She crossed the lawn back to the Beddoes’s house in the darkness, hearing footsteps crashing through the fallen leaves, playful barking, youthful laughter. The Welmers boys and Dino.
Felicity answered her doorbell at once.
Des filled her in on her conversation with Jay Welmers. “He says he’s not looking for trouble, Mrs. Beddoe.”
“And what do you say?” Felicity asked, her eyes searching Des’s face.
“I say that he’s been put on notice. If anything else happens, there are avenues you can pursue. This is not a free country. Not if grown men are acting inappropriately toward young girls.”
“Do you mean some form of restraining order?”
“My hope is that it won’t come to that,” Des said carefully, not wanting to throw fuel on the fire. “For now, I want you to call me if there’s anything else I can do. Just pick up the phone, day or night. That’s why I am here.”
“Thank you, trooper. You’ve been very understanding.”
Des tipped her hat and strode back to her cruiser-only to discover that her windshield had been liberally smeared with mud. Absolute monsters, Felicity Beddoe had called those boys. Shaking her head, Des got some paper towels out of her trunk and started to wipe it off. It was only when she got a good, strong whiff of it that she realized it wasn’t mud.
It was fresh dog poop.
Seething, she uncoiled the Beddoes’s garden hose and washed her windshield off with their power sprayer. If
