staying here that weekend. It was just Daisy and us. I erected a cairn to mark the spot. It’s still there, not far from where they found the shotgun shell, in fact. It looks like something I did for a kick. But that’s Crazy Daisy’s marker… When folks asked us where she’d gone to, we told them she’d hitched a ride out of town early one morning, heading for New York. She’d been hoping to make her way down to Morocco on a freighter. She’d told a lot of people that. So no one doubted our story. And no one ever came looking for her. She had no one. And nothing-no driver’s license, no credit cards, no permanent address. She was just a drifter passing through. A lot of people passed through in those days. Not so many anymore. The world is not as kindly a place now.” Hangtown hung his head for a moment, his breathing ragged. It had to be Mitch’s imagination, but he could have sworn that Wendell Frye was actually growing older by the minute. “Within a couple of weeks she was forgotten by everyone,” he added hoarsely, stubbing out his cigarette. “Everyone except Gentle Kate and me.”
“Whose idea was it to keep it from the police-yours or Kate’s?”
“Mine, of course,” he answered bitterly. “All mine. Because the guilt was all mine. My selfishness cost that poor girl her life. Yet Gentle Kate was her killer-or so the law would say. She was the mother of my child. I loved her. How could I make her pay for my sins? The answer is, I couldn’t. So we buried Crazy Daisy and we tried to move on. Except she couldn’t. The guilt weighed on her, heavier and heavier. She couldn’t sleep. Barely touched her food. Big Mitch, that strong healthy woman just wasted away right before my eyes. Within a few weeks she was merely a shell of herself. I kept telling her: ‘Yes, what we did was horrible. But you have to get on with your life. You have Moose to think of.’ But it was too much for her. Four months later, she was dead. It’s truly amazing just how quickly we can go when our will to live is g-gone.” He let out a wrenching, painful sob. By the woodstove, Sam stirred slightly, but drifted back to sleep. “And I killed her, my friend. Just as surely as if I’d taken a knife and buried it in her chest. I killed her and I left poor Moose motherless.” He paused now, swiping at his tears with the back of his gnarled hand. “Kiki tried to be a mother to her but those two never did hit it off.”
“Where did you meet Kiki?”
“At Greta’s gallery. By then, three years had gone by. All I’d done was work. I buried myself in it. Kiki had come up from New York for my new show. I was instantly smitten. She was gorgeous, very elegant and sophisticated. I married her and brought her home, but Moose was already a confirmed tomboy by then, and she had no use for this perfumed New Yorker in high heels. After we had Takai, I tried to change my wicked ways. No more artists in residence. No more picnics. No more tender lovelies. I even sold my VW bus. I tried, Mitch. God, how I tried. But all that did was bring out my anger, which I took out on poor Kiki until she could stand no more. Eventually, she left me.”
“Takai holds you responsible for her suicide.”
“I’m guilty,” he conceded. “I killed them both-first Kate, then Kiki. And now… now I’ve killed Moose, too.”
“What do you mean? How did you kill her?”
“This is a burial ground,” the old man said in a hollow, faraway voice. “A curse hangs over this entire place. And over me. That’s why I can’t have people around. I’m not fit to be around them. So I smoke my smoke and drink my drink. I work and I work. But I never forget. Not ever.” He turned his intense blue-eyed gaze on Mitch. “That is my curse, don’t you see?”
“What did you mean when you said you killed Moose, too?”
“No, you don’t see,” growled Hangtown, ignoring Mitch’s question once again. Barely hearing him at all. “You’re too young. Your comprehension is limited by what you can understand. The real truth is what lies just beyond-it’s what you can’t grasp.”
Mitch stared at the great artist, perplexed. “Hangtown, who else knows about Crazy Daisy?”
“Jim does. I told Jim because he could understand what it means-he doesn’t belong around people either. Not since ’Nam. I’ve never told Greta. Never told the girls. My God, I couldn’t tell Moose. That would have destroyed her love for me.”
Still, Mitch found himself wondering: What if. What if Moose had found out? What if Jim told her? Could this have had something to do with her death?
Mitch’s eyes fell on the little tape machine that was recording every word of Hangtown’s gut-wrenching confession. He’d held this in for thirty years. Now the whole world was going to know. “Why are you telling me this?” he finally asked him. “Why now?”
“Because it’s all over,” the old man answered tonelessly.
“What is?”
Hangtown sat there slumped at the workbench, looking mournful and defeated. The spark of life seemed to have gone right out of him.
“Hangtown, who killed Moose?”
No answer.
Mitch tried it again, louder. “Hangtown, who killed Moose?!”
At last the old master shook himself and gazed down at Mitch. He seemed very distant from him now. He seemed to be somewhere else entirely. “Don’t you get it, Big Mitch? The past did.”
CHAPTER 10
She was on her way to Mitch’s house to start dinner when the call came through from Felicity Beddoe-it seemed the lady was having trouble again with her next-door neighbor, Jay Welmers.
The late-afternoon sunlight was slanting low through the trees by the time she pulled into Somerset Ridge, its rays casting long shadows on the wide, leaf-blown Chemlawns. The folks at one place were busy putting up their Halloween decorations. The orange-and-black bunting had a rough time competing for attention with all of those red ribbons and green ribbons tied around every other tree. Personally, Des was tired of looking at them. Could not wait for the school bond vote to be over and done with.
Felicity Beddoe answered her door casually clad in slacks and a sweater. Her manner was no calmer than it had been before. The lady looked as if she’d snap like a breadstick if you laid a finger on her. Plus her face had broken out in hives. A pair of reading glasses was nestled in her short blond hair, and her kitchen table was heaped with folders and printouts.
“Thank you for coming, trooper,” she said edgily. “I am so sorry to bother you again.”
“I told you to bother me,” Des reminded her. “Is this about Phoebe?”
Felicity gave her a brief nod. “I couldn’t stay at the office after she phoned me with the news. She’s at soccer practice right now. I felt it would be better if I spoke to you alone.”
“Okay,” Des said easily. “What did he do this time?”
“That man has cut a huge branch off one of the sycamores in between our houses. He’s been out there with a chain saw all afternoon.”
“Is it his tree, Mrs. Beddoe?”
“Technically, it is,” Felicity conceded. “He’s within his legal rights. I called over at town hall to find out.”
“So…?”
“So he can now see directly into Phoebe’s bedroom window from the second floor of his place,” she said angrily. “He no longer has to tiptoe around in the dark to spy on her-he can do so from the comfort of his own home!”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Come look for yourself if you don’t believe me,” Felicity insisted, leading Des out the French doors onto the bluestone terrace.
When the developers had cleared the land for Somerset Ridge they’d wisely left a stand of four gnarly old sycamores as a natural divider between the two houses. By hacking off a lower limb from the rearmost tree, Jay Welmers had cleared himself a bird’s-eye view of the back of the Beddoes’s house from several of his upstairs windows. Felicity was right, no question.
“Tell that girl to draw her curtains,” Des said, as they stood there listening to the harsh whine of his chain saw. He was still busy over there somewhere cutting the branch up into pieces.
“Twenty-four hours a day?” Felicity demanded, her cheeks mottling. “Look, you may as well know this-I’ve
