The predawn often found Des, Bella, and Martine staked out near a Dumpster somewhere, strings in hand, discussing life, love, and men-three subjects they freely admitted they knew nothing about. They made for an oddly mismatched trio. One tall, cool, late-forties WASP from old Philadelphia money. One round, feisty, seventy-six- year-old Jewish grandmother from Brooklyn. And Des Mitry, ahighly gifted artist who was twenty-nine, black, and Dorset’s resident Connecticut State Police trooper. Throwing a bona-fide Hollywood movie star into the mix just added more flavor. Not that the girl looked like much at this hour. It was obvious to Des from her puffy eyes, disheveled hair, and soiled clothing that Esme Crockett hadn’t been to bed yet.
Unexpectedly, Martine had suggested that her famous daughter and Bella team up together. Obviously, it was so she could drop her bombshell on Des. But why had she?
Des studied her there in the early morning light. Martine was a strikingly pretty blue-eyed blond with good, high cheekbones. The age lines in her tanned face were like the gentle creases in fine leather. She wore her shiny, silver-streaked hair cropped appealingly at her chin, a hair band holding it in place. She wore a pink Izod shirt, khaki shorts, and a pair of spotless white Keds. Martine was almost as tall as Des, who was a legit six feet tall in her stocking feet, and she was very active. Played golf several times a week at the country club, swam for an hour a day at the beach club. It showed. Her figure was excellent-shoulders broad, hips narrow, her long legs toned and shapely.
At first, Des had had some trouble warming up to her. Martine was still very much the belle of the debutante’s ball, a privileged white aristocrat who’d never wanted for anything. All she’d had to do was smile and it all came right to her, just like mumsy and daddy had promised. It was all just so easy for someone like Martine Crockett. Des had her problems with such women. She, well, hated them. Couldn’t help it. But now that she was resident trooper of Dorset, which boasted even more millionaires per square mile than Easthampton, she was coming in contact with a whole lot of them. And she really did need to give them the benefit of the doubt. Besides, she genuinely liked Martine, who was unaffected and caring and sweet. She rescued feral strays, volunteered at the Shoreline Soup Kitchen, and the Dorset Day Care Center. Plus she was bright, perceptive, and good to talk to when you were camped out behind a stanky Dumpster waiting for a feral animal to show.
And now her husband was cheating on her, thereby confirming Bella’s old axiom: Most rescuers are ladies with good hearts and bad husbands.
This had certainly been Des’s own story. “How do you know he’s having an affair?” she asked, crouched there in her tank top and gym shorts.
“I can tell. You can always tell, can’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose you can.”
Not that Des had been able to herself. Not when it came to Brandon. They were living in Woodbridge at the time, a leafy suburb of New Haven. He was in the U.S. Attorney’s office. And she, the Deacon’s daughter, was flying high on the Major Crime Squad out of Meriden. After Brandon left her, Des crashed. Bella, the no-bull Yale faculty widow next door, recruited her as a rescuer. And saved her. Woodbridge was now in both of their rearview mirrors. When Des started her new life here in Dorset Bella unloaded her own big barn of a house and came with her. It was working out fine. Between the job, the art academy, and the doughboy, Des wasn’t home much. Plus Bella was a fastidious housekeeper, great cook, funny, independent, and thoughtful. True, theirs was not what other people might consider a typical living arrangement, but quite honestly Des couldn’t think of a single thing about her life these days that was typical.
“How long has this been going on, Martine?”
“A few weeks,” she replied, wringing her hands. She had strong hands with long, graceful fingers. She painted her nails pink. “I’m sorry to be burdening you with this. I just, I feel you’re someone who I can talk to. I don’t have anyone else.”
Des pushed her heavy horn-rimmed glasses back up her nose, frowning. Martine Crockett had a million friends, women who she’d known a lot longer than she’d known Des. Why not confide in one of them? One possibility jumped right out.
Because it was one of them.
“You won’t tell anyone about it, will you?” she asked Des urgently. Now she seemed sorry she’d brought it up.
“Of course not. But what will you do?”
Martine raised her chin, and said, “Oh, I’ve moved on.”
“I see,” said Des, although she flat out didn’t. Moved on meant what-that she’d gotten past it emotionally, taken a lover of her own, loaded up a van with her most precious possessions? God, these Dorset people could be so cryptic sometimes. No one just said what they meant.
Esme moseyed over toward them now, looking sleepy and bored. She was a blond like Martine with flawless porcelain skin and the same good, high cheekbones. Her hair was a wild, frizzy mane of curls that cascaded halfway down her back. To Des, Esme still looked very much like a child. Her heartshaped face bore soft, slightly malleable remnants of baby fat. Her big blue eyes held wide-eyed innocence. And her hands were a girl’s hands, chubby and unblemished by time or work. Esme Crockett was famous for her mouth. It was a pouty, highly erotic mouth with a short, upturned top lip that made her look as if she were in a constant state of sexual rapture. She was also famous for her figure. She was a good deal shorter than Martine, perhaps five feet six, but so ripe and voluptuous that she looked positively illicit in the outfit she had on-a deep Vnecked halter top cropped at the belly to show off her gold navel ring, super-low denim cutoffs slashed way high up on her thighs and cheap rubber flipflops. “Where are they, Mommy?” she demanded petulantly. “How long do we have to wait for them?”
“Hours, sometimes,” Martine answered.
“Sometimes they don’t even show at all,” Des said.
Esme flopped down carelessly next to Des on the pavement, reeking of tequila and sweaty girl. She was highly unkempt, in contrast to her spotless, stay-pressed mother. Her hair was unclean, armpits unshaven, ankles soiled. Des noticed that she also had splotchy bruises around her upper arms, as if someone had grabbed her and squeezed her hard. Also a number of scratches on her neck and shoulders.
“Girl, what happened?” Des asked her, as Bella joined them. “Did you get in a fight?”
Esme immediately reddened. “It’s not what you think.”
“Me, I’m thinking Tito beats the crap out of you,” said Bella, who did not know how to mince words.
“No, never. We just get physical sometimes when we’re, you know. ..”
“Getting physical?” asked Des.
She nodded, glanced awkwardly at her mother, who bristled noticeably.
“I never did understand that,” Bella said flatly. “If Morris ever put a welt on me when we were in the throes of connubial passion he would have found his bags on the front porch in the morning, packed and ready to go.”
“He’d never hurt me,” Esme insisted, a defensive edge creeping into her voice. In the flesh, she didn’t seem nearly as bright or mature as the characters she played on screen. “I bruise easy, that’s all. Honest.”
“I believe you,” said Des, who believed no such thing. Not with Tito Molina’s reputation for violent eruptions.
“I wish they’d get here.” Esme sighed, scratching irritably at a mosquito bite on her thigh. “This waiting thing sucks.”
“Patience is everything in life,” Bella said. “Allow me give you an example. When I was your age I desperately wanted to look like Elizabeth Taylor. Which, God knows, I did not. But guess what?” Bella raised her bunched fist of a face to the sky, preening. “Now I do, see?”
Esme gaped at her blankly. “Not really.”
“Time, tattela,” Bella explained. “It’s the great equalizer.”
“Do you still date men, Bella?”
“When the occasion arises. Lord knows, the men don’t. But you have to be very, very careful when you get to be my age.”
“Careful how?”
“One of Morris’s dearest friends, Velvel, started wooing me last year. Very cultivated man. A renowned mathematician, seventy-four years old. Before I’d so much as let him give me a peck on the cheek I had to, you know, check him out,” Bella said waggling her eyebrows at Esme.
“Wait, check him out how?”
“I made a date to go dancing with him, okay? Waited for a nice slow dance, got out him out there on the
