looming on his personal horizon. At issue was Abby’s half-boy, half-fish hero. There was a lot about Carleton that struck people who knew Jeff as familiar. Such as Carleton’s moppety red hair, his crooked, geeky black-framed glasses, his freckly, undeniably weblike hands, the way he sucked his cheeks in and out when he was upset. Not to mention his constant use of the word “ab-so-toot-ly.” Though Abby vehemently denied it, it was obvious that Carleton was Jeff. As part of their divorce settlement, Jeff was insisting she compensate him for the contribution he’d made to her great success. Abby was flatly refusing, despite what was sure to be a punishing public relations disaster if their divorce went to court. To handle the publicity fallout, Abby had hired Chrissie Huberman, the very same New York publicist who was handling Esme and Tito. As for Jeff, he was so bitter that he refused to carry Abby’s books in his store, even though she outsold every single author in America who wasn’t named John Grisham.
“Hey, I got a shipment of your paperbacks in, Mitch,” he spoke up, chewing on his croissant. Mitch was the author of three highly authoritative and entertaining reference volumes on horror, crime, and western films-It Came from Beneath the Sink, Shoot My Wife, Please and They Went Thataway. “Would you mind signing them for me-you being a local author and all?”
“Be happy to, Jeff. I can stop by around lunchtime if you’ll be there.”
Jeff let out a snort. “Where else would I be? That damned bookshop is my whole life. I’m there twelve hours a day, seven days a week. I even sleep right over the store in a cramped little-”
“Two-bedroom luxury condo with river views,” Will said, his eyes twinkling at Mitch with amusement.
“Plus I have to drive a rusty old egg-beater of a car so the locals won’t think I’m getting rich off of them,” Jeff whined.
“Which, correct me if I’m wrong, you’re not,” Mitch pointed out, grinning at Will.
“Damned straight I’m not,” Jeff said indignantly. “Listen to this, I had to give an old woman her money back yesterday. It seems I recommended a thriller to her and she hated it. Oh, she read every single word of it all right, but she pronounced it garbage. Stood there yelling at me in my own store until I paid her back. It was either that or she’d tell all of her friends that I’m a no-good bum. Barnes and Noble can afford to be so generous. Me, I’m barely hanging on. I don’t know what I’ll do if things don’t pick up.”
“But they will pick up,” Dodge told him. “You’re already building customer loyalty and good word of mouth. Start-up pains are perfectly normal. The Works felt them, too, and now it’s doing great, right, Will?”
After a brief hesitation Will responded, “You bet.”
Which Mitch immediately found intriguing, because if there was one thing he’d learned about Dorset it was this: Often, the truth wasn’t in the words, it was in the pauses.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m not even in the book business at all,” Jeff grumbled. “I’m in the people business. I have to be pleasant to strangers all day long. Yikes, it’s hard enough being pleasant around you guys.”
“Wait, who said you were pleasant?” asked Mitch.
“By the way, Dodger, Martine did me a real solid-she’s so popular with the other ladies that as soon as she joined my Monday evening reading group they all wanted in. I may even add a Tuesday reading group, thanks to her. Best thing that’s happened to me in weeks. You’d think with all of these media people in town I’d be selling books like crazy, but I’m not.” Jeff drained his coffee, staring down into the empty mug. “Did I tell you they’re trying to buy me off?”
Mitch popped the last of his croissant in his mouth. “Who, the tabloids?”
“They want me to spill the dirt on Abby. Every time I say no they raise the ante-it’s up to two hundred and fifty.”
“Thousand?” Will was incredulous.
“And I’ve got plenty to spill, believe me. Hell, I’ve known her since she was typing letters for the children’s book editor and I was the little pisher in the next cubicle.”
“You’re still a little pisher.”
“Thank you for that, Mitchell.”
“My Yiddish is a little rusty,” Dodge said. “Exactly what is a pisher?”
“She loathes kids, you know,” Jeff said. “Calls them germ carriers, poop machines, fecal felons… She hates them so much she even made me get a vasectomy. I can’t have children now.”
“I thought those were reversible in a lot of cases,” Will said.
“Not mine,” Jeff said. “My God-given right to sire children has been snipped away from me-all thanks to the top children’s author in America. Nice story, hunh? And how does the little skank repay me? By boning that-that glorified cab driver, that’s how. I swear, every time I see a box of Cocoa Pebbles I get nauseated.”
Mitch and the others exchanged an utterly bewildered look, but let it alone.
Dodge said, “Any chance you’ll take them up on their offer?”
“I’m flat broke, man. I might have to if she doesn’t give me what I want.”
“Which is…?”
“Twenty-five percent of the proceeds from the first book. My lawyer wants me to aim for the whole series, but that would begreedy. I’m not being greedy. I just… I deserve something, don’t I? I nursed that book along, night after night. I read every early draft, helped her refine it and craft it months before she ever submitted it.”
“Plus you are Carleton Carp,” Mitch added. “That ought to be worth something.”
“I am not a fish!” Jeff snapped, sucking his cheeks in and out.
Dodge, the human timepiece, climbed to his feet now, signifying that it was time to start back for his eight o’clock weight training. Mitch wondered if the man was ever late.
“You’ll never do it, Jeff,” Mitch said. “You’ll never sell out Abby to the tabloids.”
Jeff peered at him quizzically. “Why have you got so much faith in me?”
“Because you still love her, that’s why. No matter how upset you are, you could never hurt her that way.”
“You’re right,” Jeff admitted, reddening slightly. “Abby’s the only woman I’ve ever loved. I’d take her back in a flash. Answer me this, Dodger, what’s the secret?”
“To what?” Dodge asked.
“You and Martine have been together all these years, you’ve got a terrific thing going on-how do you do it?”
Mitch watched closely as Dodge considered this, the older man’s face betraying not one bit of what he’d just revealed to Mitch. “Jeff, there are so many things that factor into it,” he answered slowly. “Shared values, common interests and goals. Affection, respect, tolerance. But if I had to narrow it down to one word, it would be the same one that’s the secret to a happy friendship.”
“What is it?” Jeff pressed him.
Dodge shot a hard stare right at Will Durslag before he replied, “The word is trust.”
CHAPTER 2
“Dodge is having an affair,” Martine Crockett informed Des in a soft, strained voice as the two of them crouched next to the overstuffed, foul-smelling Dumpster behind McGee’s Diner on Old Shore Road, waiting for the kittens to show.
Des drew her breath in. Martine had never confided anything even remotely intimate to her before. Now this, a bombshell out of nowhere. “Who’s the woman?”
“I don’t know,” Martine answered miserably. “I don’t want to know.”
It was just before dawn, which was happy meal fun time in the world of strays. Esme, Martine’s famous daughter, was crouched in wait on the other side of the Dumpster with Des’s roommate, Bella Tillis. It was Esme who’d spotted the two hungry kittens nosing around the trash bin late last night when she and Tito had pulled into McGee’s for a late meal of fried oysters after a night spent drinking tequila shooters on the beach. Somebody had dumped the kittens there, most likely. Summer people did that. Esme had decided that she had to adopt them, and since Martine was the unofficial queen of Dorset’s rescuers, the four of them were out there now with their dog cages, trying to lure the poor, starved things in with jars of Gerber’s strained turkey. A length of string was tied to each cage door. Once a kitten was inside, they could yank the cage door shut behind it.
