“Yeah, he told me. You’ll be real pleased with how it turns out. Timmy never cuts corners. He may take a little longer than some of the others, but it’ll be worth it.”
“I’m sure it will.” Des knew no such thing, although she sure did know about the taking longer part.
“He’s been trying to get me to come in with him for years,” Dirk said. “Buying places and fixing them up together. Plenty of money to be made, if you’re good with a hammer and have some capital. Laurie and me have talked about it, too. But her family’s in Toledo. She’s got a real support network there. And a good job with a regional bank. Still, I’m not getting any younger,” he added wistfully. “And I’m away from home an awful lot. That gets old fast.”
“Can anyone vouch for your whereabouts at five-twenty this morning?” Soave asked him.
Dirk shook his head. “I was asleep in bed-alone. I don’t fool around on Laurie. I had me a lot of seasons on the circuit. And a whole lot of girls. But I made a promise to myself that when I settled down with the right one I’d give all of that up. I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in four years either. A lot of peace of mind comes with that. I sleep soundly at night.”
“Yet you don’t wear a wedding ring,” Des observed, her eyes falling on his meaty ex-catcher’s hands. “Why is that?”
Dirk’s face broke into a broad grin. “Can’t grip a bat-especially an aluminum one.” He reached inside the collar of his sweatshirt and pulled out the gold chain he wore around his neck. His wedding ring was suspended from it. “I keep it right here.”
“Let’s talk about Bruce Leanse,” she suggested, shifting gears on him.
Dirk immediately chilled. “What about him?”
“You gave him a decidedly nasty look when I was there yesterday. What was that about?”
“I’d rather not say,” he replied, lowering his eyes.
“We have zero time for crap, Doughty,” Soave said harshly, his chest puffing out. “Give it up right now or you’re on your way to Meriden for formal questioning.”
Dirk remained stubbornly silent.
“Does it have anything to do with him and Takai being romantically involved?” Des asked him.
Dirk drew back, narrowing his eyes at her. “No way to keep a secret in Dorset, is there?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” she responded. “Moose sure managed.”
“Takai’s up to her old tricks,” he disclosed reluctantly. “I don’t like it. Don’t like to see her messing up another marriage. Ben’s a nice, nice boy. And Babette’s one tough lady, but she’s a good mom and she genuinely cares about that lying bastard. Those two deserve better than what he and Takai are doing to them.”
Soave moved in on Dirk again. “You didn’t try to rescue that family, did you?”
“I didn’t shoot anyone,” Dirk said patiently.
“Any chance that Bruce was seeing both sisters?” Soave pressed.
“Moose was no home-wrecker.”
“And yet, she was visiting someone on the third floor of the Frederick House just prior to her death, correct?”
Dirk shrugged his broad shoulders. “Certainly sounds that way.”
“And you’re trying to tell us it wasn’t you?”
Dirk looked Soave right in the eye, his gaze steady and unwavering. “I am.”
“Do you actually expect us to believe you?”
“I do,” Dirk said, refusing to be shaken from his story.
Des found herself believing him. Even though it absolutely did not add up. Not at all. Because, damn it, they’d checked the inn’s registry. And they knew who else besides Dirk had been staying up on the third floor. And if it wasn’t Dirk who Moose was mixed up with, then, well, this case was getting more whacked by the minute.
In fact, it made absolutely no sense at all.
“Yo, this is just like old times,” Soave remarked as Des steered her cruiser down the Old Shore Road toward Smith Neck Cove. He rode shotgun. Tommy was running Dirk back to the inn. “You and me going out on a call together, huh?”
“Don’t let Tommy hear you say that. He’ll think you miss me.”
“I do miss you, Des. Geez, I thought I made that awful clear
…” Now the man sounded hurt. He was still pouting over her stinging rebuke in the art academy lounge. “We worked good together. Our minds meshed. Plus you notice things quicker than I do.”
“Only because I’m a woman.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Women listen. Men are too busy strutting around, trying to impress people.”
“I miss working with you, Des.”
“Rico, you’re a day late and a dollar short,” she said to him coldly.
He fell into troubled silence for a moment. “The thing is, I had my whole future to think of.”
“Yeah, you made that pretty clear at the time.”
“No, you don’t understand! Hear me out, will ya? I was under a ton of pressure from up above to stick with my boys.” He was referring to the Brass City crew-his brother, his uncle, the whole lot of them. “They watch out for me, Des. I need that. I need them. I’m nowhere on my own. And you…”
“I was a lone wolf. Say no more.”
“If I had it to do all over again, I would have protected you better. I owed you that. I realize it now.”
Des kept her eyes on the road. “We all do what we have to do,” she said grudgingly.
“I realize that, too. But tell me this-why do I still feel so lousy about it?”
“You’re picking at your own scabs, Rico. I can’t help you.”
He peered at her intently from across the seat. “You’re a hard woman, Des.”
“I have to be. If you want soft, call Tammy.”
“It’s Tawny!”
Along with her family’s thriving art gallery, Greta Patterson had inherited a sprawling Cape Cod-style cottage out at the end of Smith Neck Cove. Its half-mile-long private driveway was flanked by vineyards. Going into the entry hall, where Greta greeted them, was practically like walking in the front door of an art museum. Paintings lined the walls from floor to ceiling. Landscapes, mostly, many of them by Wendell Frye’s father and grandfather. One of Hangtown’s own sculptures was featured prominently in the entryway, a tower comprised of old beauty- salon hair dryers, toasters, television sets and the front end of a 1957 T-Bird.
Greta’s wide-bodied frame was covered in a caftan of purple silk lined with gold brocade. She wore a pair of black velvet lounging slippers on her feet and an extremely guarded expression on her square, blotchy face. Her mouth was freshly painted a garish red. In one hand she was clutching a long-stemmed goblet of red wine. She was drinking alone-her husband was nowhere to be seen. “May I offer you folks a taste of mine own merlot?” she asked them.
“You folks produce your own wine here?” Soave asked her, awestruck, after they’d politely declined her offer.
“Well, I’m getting there,” she replied huskily. “The vines are starting to yield grapes of genuine depth and subtlety.” She held her goblet up to the light, the better to admire its color. “There’s a cooperative winery in operation in Stonington that I belong to, although I am by no means a winemaker myself. I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“Nothing to it,” Soave said, grinning at her. “You just got to be Italian-my grandfather used to make it in his bathtub.”
Des, for her part, was thinking about how many times Greta had used the word I instead of we.
She led them into the living room, where there were more paintings, a well-stocked bar, a roaring fire. Also a gold-inlaid Browning twelve-gauge shotgun in an ornate glass case. Des’s eyes fell right on that.
So did Soave’s. “Who’s the shooter?” he asked Greta.
“I am. Colin hates guns.”
“You hunt?”
“No, never. I shoot for sport. Targets…”
“Ever fire a Barrett fifty-caliber?”
“That’s not sport. That’s a weapon of mass destruction.”
