“As you wish,” Nuri Acar said with weary resignation.
A customer in a BMW pulled up at a gas pump out front. Mr. Acar darted outside to help, grateful for the chance to get away from her.
Des was just as happy to see him go. One of the things in life that she was truly bad at was being civil to people who she thought were creeps. Get along. That was the Deacon’s motto, and he had ridden it all the way to the tippity toppity-deputy superintendent of the Connecticut State Police, highest-ranking black man in the state’s history. But Des was not her father, and that was why she wasn’t working homicides anymore. At age twenty-eight, Des had been Connecticut’s great nonwhite hope-the only black woman in the state to make lieutenant on the Major Crime Squad. She had produced, too. Outperformed every single man in the Central District. Except she didn’t get along with the so-called Waterbury mafia-the inner circle of Italian-American males who pretty much ran things in the state police. They liked to have their big, fat egos stroked, especially by the pretty girls. Des hadn’t played along, hadn’t respected them. And they could tell. And when the chance came to knife her, they had.
“May I offer you a coffee?” Nema asked, smiling at her uncertainly. “A baklava, perhaps?”
“I’m all set, thanks,” Des said, as Kevin began hammering the plywood into place over the broken window.
“I regret the circumstances, but I am so pleased to meet you at long last. Your friend is my friend, after all.”
“My friend?”
“Mr. Mitch Berger,” Nema said. “He is a fine, fine man. And one of my very best pastry customers.”
“I’ll just bet he is,” Des said, her eyes scanning the case of sweets. Some were covered with powdered sugar, just like the powdered sugar he’d had on his collar at lunch. So this was where he came to blow huge holes in his diet. It did occur to Des, standing there at the counter, that Mitch was at heart a fat little boy and always would be. Still, if this was the worst kind of lie he was capable of then she was lucky and she damned well knew it.
“Such a modest gentleman,” Nema added. “No airs, despite his prestigious position with the newspaper. And quite the gourmet. Very discerning.”
“That he is.” Des did not mention his penchant for eating potloads of his god-awful American chop suey, or that she had once found a box of Great Starts microwave sausage-and-egg breakfast burritos in his freezer. She did not want to shatter any illusions, or slow Nema down. The lady was working her way up to telling her something.
“Nuri does not mean to be difficult,” she finally said, clearing her throat uneasily. “We wish only to blend in. Surely you can understand that.”
“Absolutely,” Des said, because she could understand. She justcouldn’t blend in. “Your husband said he was in back when it happened. You were here behind the counter?”
“Yes, that is right.”
“Sure there’s nothing else you want to tell me, one friend to another?”
Nema glanced nervously out the glass doors at her husband. “No, nothing.”
Clearly, the lady was holding back. She was also frightened. Of what? Who? “Well, if you remember anything…” Des handed Nema her card and urged her to give her a call, knowing she never would. Then she bagged and tagged the rock, which would go to the Westbrook Barracks along with her report. The task force would take it from there.
Still, it wouldn’t hurt to do a bit of canvassing.
Mr. Acar was washing the BMW’s windshield. She tipped her big hat to him politely. He acknowledged her gesture with an equally polite wave. She got into her cruiser and eased it down Old Shore to that quick left onto Burnham, where she parked on the shoulder and got out. She knelt and inspected the pavement carefully for fresh skid marks. Saw none.
Three old farmhouses were clustered there on Burnham not far from Old Shore Road. No one was home at the first house. At the second house she managed to wake up a young man who’d worked the overnight shift at Millstone, the nuclear power plant in Water ford. He hadn’t heard anyone speeding by his house in the past hour and was very grumpy about saying so.
Des approached the third house with some reluctance. This one belonged to Miss Barker, an elderly spinster who had called Des twice in past weeks with dire emergencies. A prowler who turned out to be a meter reader from Connecticut Light and Power, and a suspicious-looking hoodlum dumping toxic waste in the marsh who was, in fact, a marine biologist with the Department of Environmental Protection. Still, Miss Barker wasn’t a bad person, just lonely and scared. And she missed nothing that went on out on her street.
It took the old girl a while to get to the door. She didn’t move verywell, which was why Des hadn’t tried pressing a kitten on her-she was too likely to trip over it and fall. She was a slender, frail thing with Q-Tip hair, partial to pastel-colored pantsuits. Today she was pretty in pink. The scent of Miss Barker’s heavy, fruity perfume wafted out of the doorway with her. She wore so much of it that Des got lightheaded if she went inside the house.
“Sure, it’s those darned kids,” she responded promptly after Des had explained the purpose of her visit. “They all come tearing around that corner too fast. Especially at night. I hear their tires screeching when I’m lying here in my bed. I’m afraid of what’ll happen, dear, I don’t mind saying. One of those fool boys is going to smash right into the side of my bedroom some night. The explosion will kill me dead in my bed. Incinerate me sure as I’m standing-”
“This would have happened within the past hour, Miss Barker,” Des said, trying to rein her in.
“We ought to have a speed bump out there to slow those boys down, but do you think they listen to me at town hall? I’ve only been paying property taxes here since 1946, never missed a single payment.”
“Miss Barker, did you hear any screeching tires within the past hour?”
“Why, yes, right in the middle of All My Children, which I don’t know why I still watch. Loyalty, I guess. Not a very popular virtue anymore, is it?”
“Did you see what type of vehicle it was?”
“I absolutely did not see anyone,” Miss Barker said with a sudden flash of indignation. “So, naturally, I would not have the slightest idea what type of vehicle it was. How could I?”
Des peered at her in surprise. This was a lady who always butted in, never out. Why the dumb act? First Nema Acar, now her. What was this? “Well, did it sound more like a car or a truck?”
“More like a car,” she replied after a moment’s hesitation. “The pickups have those huge tires now with the big treads that make so much noise. Why do they need such huge tires? My daddy drove a truck his whole life, never a single accident, and his tires were justnormal, proper tires.” Miss Barker paused, her pale pink tongue flicking across her thin, dry lips. “But I really couldn’t say anything for sure.”
Des didn’t press her any further. Just thanked Miss Barker for her time and started back toward her cruiser, puzzled and frustrated. So much so that she could feel the beginnings of a deep blue funkadelic haze coming over her.
My job is pointless and stupid. My entire existence is pointless and stupid. I am wasting my life.
She knew the real reason why she was feeling this way. Sure she did. But knowing why didn’t make her feel one bit better.
She got back in her ride and cranked up the air conditioner and sat there glowering through her windshield at the huge old sycamore that grew in Miss Barker’s front yard. It was so splendid and lovely that it actually seemed to be mocking her with its presence. Either that or she was going totally nutso. She lunged for her cell phone and called her short-relief man. Whenever she needed a save, she reached out for him. As his phone rang, Des sat there wondering what would happen to her if Mitch Berger were not in her life right now. She would go right down the drain, that’s what.
But he must never know this-he thinks I’m the one who has it all together.
His phone machine answered. She waited, waited, waited for the beep and said, “Hi, it’s me.”
And he picked up. “I’m here,” he said hurriedly. “I’ve just been getting a gazillion calls from the media about Tito.”
“They’re making a big deal out of it?”
“Big doesn’t begin to describe it. Brokaw’s people called me for a quote.”
“How’s your jaw?”
