“Maybe Donna was waiting for her boyfriend to show,” Yolie continued, encouraged by Des’s backing. “Maybe her boyfriend’s jealous woman showed up first and decided to take care of business.”
“All possible,” Soave conceded. “But how would she know that Donna was shacked up here?”
“Easy,” Des said. “She listened in on another phone extension when they made the date. Or intercepted their e-mail. Or maybe she just followed her here.”
“Or how about if the woman and the boyfriend were in on it together?” Yolie offered eagerly. “What if it’s a couple we’re after-a jealous, desperate woman and her boy toy? Esme and Jeff. First they killed Tito, now Donna.”
Soave immediately let loose with an exasperated groan.
Yolie lowered her eyes, pawing at the gravel with her boot. “Well, what do you think, Des?”
“Yolie, it’s not totally out of left field,” Des answered guardedly, not wanting to get caught in between them. “Esme doesn’t come across as a major-league schemer, but she is an actress and great beauty. For the sake of argument, let’s say she could manipulate Jeff into killing Tito for her. It still comes back around to this: What’s so damned special about Donna Durslag?”
“Okay, I’m not hearing you,” Yolie said, frowning at her.
“Then you need to take a deep breath, count to ten, and listen up,” Des explained. “When it came to Tito and other women it wasstrictly take a number, the line forms on the right. That boy slept with everyone. Esme knew this. In fact, she was plenty busy herself. So say he and Donna were sleeping together-why would Esme suddenly care?”
“Maybe Tito wanted to divorce her and marry Donna.”
“Get outta here!” Soave erupted. “He’s going to dump one of the world’s top hotties for that butterball in there? No way!”
“Life is not a P. Diddy video, Rico,” snapped Des, who was immediately sorry. Right away, she was caught in their crossfire.
“Now, what’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded, flexing his shoulders defensively.
“It means,” Yolie shot back, “that love is about more than a tight butt, dawg.”
“Hey, I know that, Yolie.”
“Sure didn’t sound like it, dawg.”
“Can we please move on?” Soave said angrily. “Because I’m about solving these murders, not arguing sexual politics with you all morning, okay?”
“Cool by me,” Yolie huffed. “I’m not about arguing. That’s not what I’m standing here doing.”
“Have you got anything local for us?” he asked Des abruptly, clearly desperate to scramble his way back to safer ground.
Des fed them what she’d learned from Mitch about Dodge Crockett walking on the beach with Becca Peck when Tito went over the falls, thereby putting Martine in the same apparent category as Chrissie Huberman: without an alibi. “You might also look into the whereabouts that night of another Chrissie Huberman client, Abby Kaminsky, who happens to be Jeff Wachtell’s estranged wife.”
Yolie perked right up at the mention of Jeff’s name. “What about her?”
“She had a fling with Tito.”
“Shut up!” Yolie clapped her hands together excitedly. “I am loving this.”
“That’s good work, Des,” Soave echoed. “Anything else we should know?”
“Not that I can think of,” she said tonelessly, twirling her big Smokey the Bear hat in her fingers.
“Okay…” Soave narrowed his red-rimmed eyes at her, sensing that she was holding on to something else. They knew each other too damned well. Plus she was not the world’s greatest liar.
“Any idea where this Abby is?” Yolie asked.
“Boston, I think. Chrissie will have her exact itinerary. I can check with her if you’d like.”
“I want you to do more than that, Des,” Soave said. “I want you to go interview her.”
“Whoa, Rico, I’m resident trooper, remember? I don’t do road trips.”
“I know that, but me and Yolie are going to be buried here all day, and I don’t have time to run all of this by somebody new. And, look, I’m really up against it, okay? They’re going to muscle me out of the way if I don’t score in the next twenty-four.” So he was feeling the hot breath of the bosses on the back of his neck, Brass City family ties or not. “I need you on this one, Des. You know the players. You’ve got the game skills. Will you come off of the bench for me?” he pleaded, his voice catching slightly. “I’d be unbelievably grateful. I really, really would. Honestly, I don’t know what I’ll do if you say no…”
“Damn, Rico, pull on over to the curb and park it, will you?” Des said, flashing a grin at him. “All you had to say was please.”
Will Durslag’s mother had left him a farmhouse up on Kelton City Road, a bumpy dirt road that forked off Route 156 just past Winston Farms. Des piloted her cruiser along it slowly, realizing that Mitch had been totally right last night.
I am a Dorseteer now.
When put to the test, she had put the interests of the locals ahead of Meriden. She’d seen no vital need for Soave to know that Dodge had sexually abused Esme and so she hadn’t shared it. And this was something entirely new for her. She’d heard plenty of shocking news on the job before. But hearing it about people who she knew-this was fresh. So was withholding it from a colleague. Not that any ofthis should have surprised her. She was well aware now that being resident trooper required a whole lot more moral dexterity than she’d realized going in. Nothing about her new job was black or white. Each day brought a brand-new shade of gray.
The Durslag place was at the very end of Kelton City Road, down a rutted, muddy driveway. It was a rundown circa 1920 two-story farmhouse on three acres of stony ground. The porch sagged. The roof sagged. Everything sagged. There was a jack under one corner of the foundation, and a blue tarp was stretched over a section of the roof that needed replacing. Numerous windowpanes were cracked, the glazing crumbling or missing entirely.
Will and Donna had started paving the driveway at some point, but after they’d done the stretch between the house and the woodshed they’d stopped. A portable basketball hoop was set up there, and their catering van was parked alongside of it. Will hadn’t left yet-for his morning beach walk or work or anywhere else.
Des pulled up behind the van and got out, smelling tangy wood smoke in the chill morning air.
At the sound of her cruiser Will came out the door onto the rotting porch. “Do you know something, Des?” he called out anxiously, running his hands through his lanky hair. Dressed in a sweatshirt and cutoffs, he looked like a college kid home for the summer. “Where is she? I’ve been up all night worried sick.”
“Let’s go inside and talk, Will,” she said, starting her way up the steps.
“Why, what do you know?”
The front parlor was small, dingy, and damp. There was a Victorian loveseat upholstered in purple silk brocade shot so full of holes that the stuffing was spilling out. There was an armchair with a blanket thrown over it. There were stacks of old magazines and newspapers. There was dust and there were cobwebs. Whatever they were, the Durslags were not tidy housekeepers. Will had a fire going in the old potbellied Franklin stove, which gave off some welcome warmth against the chill in the room.
“I’ve been calling everywhere,” he said fretfully. “I even callednine-one-one to see if there’d been an accident on the highway. Where is she, damn it?”
Des smelled coffee in the kitchen. “How do you take your coffee, Will?”
“Black, why?”
The kitchen was a whole different scene-bright and sunny and cared for. It was a spacious farmhouse kitchen equipped with a commercial Viking range, Subzero refrigerator, and a massive butcher block island. Well-used copper pots hung from a rack overhead. A paint-splattered dining table was set before sliding glass doors that overlooked the woods. Clearly, this was the room where they spent their time. Des found a cup in the cupboard, filled it from the cof-feemaker and came back to the parlor with it, hating what she was about to do to this man.
Will had lifted the lid of the stove and was feeding the fire with stubby logs, his movements edgy and urgent. “I’m sorry it’s so cold in here this morning. This house has absolutely no insulation, and this wood’s kind of damp. It’s been so humid out.”
“You’d better sit down, Will.”
