She had shown up at his cottage around midnight, taut as a tuning fork. He was asleep in bed when she got there, exhausted by his day of fact-finding but very happy to see her. And ready and willing to show her just how happy. But instead of stripping off her uniform and sliding her sleek frame under the nice warm covers with him, she’d barked, “Get dressed. And bring a warm jacket.” Sounding much more like a drill instructor than the new, babe-a-licious love of his life. “I need your truck.”
“Take the keys,” he’d offered, groaning.
“I need you. I’m about ready to chew my own hands off. And if I don’t talk to somebody, namely you, I will.”
So he got dressed while she made the coffee and they piloted his Studey over the causeway to the market and parked it there. And now they sat, growing chillier by the minute, which Mitch didn’t mind. He was amply dressed, not to mention padded. What he minded was that she wasn’t talking.
“Are we on a stakeout?” he pressed her.
“We’re doing some surveillance, cool?”
“Cool. Does this make us a crime-fighting team?”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “What, like Starsky and Hatch?”
“It’s Hutch. Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Salt and Pepper, a vastly underrated-”
“Man, don’t even go there,” Des growled.
“Okay, what’s upsetting you?” he asked, munching on a cookie. “Is it Soave?” Her ex-partner was not someone Mitch had been impressed with. In truth, he thought the guy was a pinhead. And not exactly Mr. Sensitivity. Mitch had seen him smiling for the cameras on the six-o’clock news. When someone asked him why anyone would want to shoot Mary Susan Frye he’d replied, “People may have thought they knew the victim, but maybe they didn’t.” A smarmy bit of innuendo that made it sound as if Moose had been asking for what she got. Des would never have left something that tactless hanging in the wind. She would have shown more consideration.
But Des was not running the case.
“I think he’s got blinders on,” she said tightly. “He’s so in love with Jim Bolan that he’s not seeing Colin. No matter which path you take, you end up right back at that man. And now Melanie has cleared out and I’m with you- it all fits together. I just can’t figure out how.” She paused, glancing at him uncertainly. “You didn’t know he and Moose were a couple, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. And I’m positive Hangtown didn’t. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise to us.” Mitch reached for her hand and gripped it. “In case you haven’t noticed, lonely people have a way of finding each other.”
“Is that what we are?” she asked, caressing the back of his hand with her thumb. “Two lonely people?”
“Not anymore.” He leaned over and kissed her softly on the mouth. “What else can you tell me?”
“Wait, is this for your article?” she asked, her eyes narrowing at him.
“I’ll take whatever you can give me. But if this is awkward, just say no.”
“The medical examiner just confirmed that Moose had sex shortly before she was murdered. And she was not pregnant.”
“Did you think she was?”
“Not really, but she was involved with a married man. It’s something you have to consider.”
“But that would mean you think she was the intended victim, not Takai.”
“I don’t know what to think. The more I find out, the less I know.”
“How about the gun dealers-have you gotten anything from them?”
“Not yet. Not a single reported Barrett sale ties in to anyone involved in this case.” Nor had a trace on Melanie Zide’s credit cards yielded anything yet. “She hasn’t used a single card. Hasn’t stopped at an ATM. She didn’t even wait around after class to pick up her modeling fee. She just…” Des stiffened, peering through the windshield at something across the deserted parking lot.
Mitch followed her gaze. He saw nothing out there but the darkness. “She just what?”
“Skipped town. That girl was scared.”
“Of what?”
“When we figure that out we’ll know who our shooter is.”
Mitch glanced at her curiously. “Sure you’re not upset about something else?”
“What else would there be?”
He didn’t bother to answer. He knew what else. They both knew.
She turned her steady gaze on Mitch. “What about you-pick up any news I can use?”
“Well, Takai carries a loaded gun in her purse. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t. But that’s not so unusual anymore, I’m sorry to say. Anything else?”
He filled her in on The Aerie, Bruce Leanse’s hugely ambitious dream project for Dorset. And about the man’s overheated romantic entanglement with Takai, which could torpedo both the project and his marriage. “He has every motive in the world for wanting Takai gone. And so does Babette,” Mitch said. “Although, personally, if I were in Babette’s shoes, he’s the one I’d be going after.”
“I’m down to that,” Des agreed. “And I’d aim low.” Now she leaned toward the windshield, drawing her breath in. “Lookie-lookie, I thought I saw them…”
There were five of them in all. Teenaged boys, as far as Mitch could tell. They were doing their best to avoid the floodlights as they crept their way out of the shadows from the loading zone behind the market. All of them wore dark clothing. All of them carried knapsacks. Briefly they paused, each reaching into another’s sack to remove spray can after spray can of paint. Graffiti artists-that’s what they were. Now they started their way toward the market’s enticingly huge, pristine picture windows, brandishing their weapons.
“Start your engine, Mitch,” Des said in a low voice. “Hit your lights.”
“Don’t you want to catch them in the act?”
“No, just go ahead and do it.”
“But they’ll run away.”
“I want them to. Start it now.”
He did, and at the sound of his engine kicking over they disappeared instantly back into the darkness-not scattering wildly like the cockroaches in Mitch’s New York City kitchen but in a planned fashion, each in a different direction from the others. The choreography was straight out of West Side Story.
Mitch grinned at her admiringly. “That was them, wasn’t it? That was the Mod Squad.”
“The skinny one’s named Ronnie Welmers. His kid brother called me just before I came over to your place. Told me they’d be hitting the market tonight.”
“Why would he tip you off?”
“He’s afraid. Ronnie told him they were about to pull something major.”
“Like what?”
“Like something he could go to jail for.”
“Where?”
“That part I don’t know yet,” she answered. “We’re done here if you want to head home.”
Mitch put the truck into gear and started back toward Peck Point in the darkness of the small-town night.
“Talk to me about an actress named Claire Danes,” Des spoke up.
“She got hot a few years back in My So-Called Life, a teen-angst TV series. Played a sensitive, misunderstood high school girl.”
“Has she got game?”
“She was very effective in that. Then she went on to the big screen, and the results have been decidedly mixed-Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio, followed by what is possibly the single worst film ever made, The Mod Squad-” He broke off, glancing at her in surprise. “Okay, I’ll bite-how does she connect up?”
“Ronnie’s madly in love with her. Beyond that, I have no idea. Never saw the movie.”
“It was based on the TV show from the sixties,” he said, hitting the brakes as a deer darted across the Old Shore Road ten yards in front of them. That happened a lot late at night. “She played one of three bad kids who’ve gone good as undercover cops. The series was a big success at the time. Very ‘heavy.’ And they should have left it alone, same as they should have left The Avengers alone. It stank out loud. Gone and forgotten in a week.”
“Not by everyone, apparently,” she pointed out. “Ronnie’s a serious movie buff. Knows your work well.”
