Mitch smiled inwardly, pleased he’d pushed the right button.
“If I let you read it,” she said, shaking a tiny finger at him, “can I trust you to keep your mouth shut? Because I don’t want people knowing what’s in it. It’s my own private thing. And certain people might take it the wrong way.”
“Certain people like Bement Vickers?”
“He’s led a very sheltered life.”
“What kind have you led?”
“You’d be shocked.”
“I doubt it. I don’t shock easily. And the answer is yes, you can trust me.”
“Why should I believe that?”
Mitch sighed with exasperation. Justine Kershaw definitely required some effort. “Why shouldn’t you?”
She cocked her head at him, considering this. “Well, I do trust Rut. And, who knows, it might be interesting to see how a guy like you reacts to it.”
“ ‘A guy like me?’ What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Uhoh, I’m out of here,” Justine said suddenly, glancing at her watch. “I have to be back on the killing floor in, like, ninety seconds. Not that I’m counting. Just so you know, cupcake, there’s nothing in this world that I’m afraid of. Not one single thing.” She hopped nimbly to her feet and flashed him a dazzling smile. “Tell you what, I’ll think it over. Cool?”
Mitch smiled back at her, liking her. “Cool.”
CHAPTER 6
Des made sure Cliff cut the loin pork chops mondothick for her, the way Mitch liked them. The butcher was happy to oblige. He had wonderful meat. Actually, everything at Dorset’s gourmet food hall, The Works, was wonderful. She gathered up fresh, beautiful mustard greens, pounds of sweet Vidalia onions. A bottle of champagne that the wine shopkeeper recommended. A chocolate cheesecake that was pure sin.
Armed with these provisions, she steered her cruiser up toward her cottage high over Uncas Lake. She needed a few more ingredients to make the meal perfect. One was the little yellow knit dress that clung to her every curve for dear life. Whenever Mitch set eyes on her in that dress he made her feel like she was the most delicious creature on the planet.
Not that she was ever able to keep the dress on for very long.
Bella was home. Des parked in front of the garage beside her roommate’s Jeep Wrangler. There was no room in the garage for their rides since it served as their designated home for wayward kitties. Presently, they had seventeen residents of all ages, colors and religious denominations-strays that she and Bella had rescued. Some were feral, others simply abandoned. All were healthy and neutered. She and Bella had seen to that, with a kind assist from Andre the mobile vet.
Des paused on her way inside to fuss over Mos Def, their newest, baddest arrival. He immediately went into a low crouch inside his cage and hissed at her, still not happy about being warm, safe and well fed. Most were that way at first. Mos would come around. The ones who had were given free run of the garage, where they were munching or hanging together in open crates lined with hunks of carpet. Des petted them one by one. That little smudgenosed gray guy, Carmelo, licked her nose and purred and purred. A real thief of hearts, little ’Melo was. She’d end up inviting him upstairs if she wasn’t careful.
When she’d renovated the cottage, Des had opened it up so that the dining room and kitchen were all one big room. The living room, which had floor to ceiling windows overlooking the lake, served as her studio. Here, Des slashed away with a graphite stick at her fearsome portraits of the crime victims she came across on the job. It was how she survived the horror.
Right now she had an entirely different sort of portrait in progress on her easel-her own. Unfinished. Stubbornly so. Des had never tried a selfportrait before. And now she was genuinely sorry she had. Because she hated the face that was gazing back at her. Des saw selfdoubt in that face. She saw the face of a woman who had no idea what she was doing with her life. As she stepped back from the easel, studying the drawing with unflinching honesty, she could not help comparing it to that Giacometti selfportrait in Poochie’s parlor. His pen strokes were alive. Her own were so halting and timid it was as if she’d been nicking away at her own flesh with a razor blade.
Her stomach churning, Des ripped the selfportrait from her drawing pad and buried it deep under a stack of old drawings. Out of sight. Not out of mind.
“I didn’t hear you come in, tall person!” exclaimed Bella Tillis as she barged in dressed in her ancient black ERAYES sweatshirt and fuzzy red sweatpants. Bella was fivefeetone, totally round and truly the hardestcharging seventysevenyearold widow Des had ever met. “I was just on my way to my yoga class at the senior center-oyyoy, it starts in less than an hour.” Hurriedly, Bella started for the kitchen.
To many of Dorset’s oldschoolers, it seemed a bit odd that the resident trooper had a Jewish grandmother from Brooklyn for a roommate. Back when Des and her husband Brandon had lived in Woodbridge, a leafy suburb of New Haven, Bella was her nextdoor neighbor. Bella had rescued her when Brandon dumped Des for another woman. And, eventually, became her best friend. When Des moved here, Bella sold her own place and joined her.
“Bella, it’s a fiveminute drive to the center,” Des pointed out, following her into the kitchen.
“I like to get there early.”
“And do what, cruise for booty?”
“Oh, please,” Bella scoffed, filling her water bottle from a jug in the refrigerator. “Trust me, Desiree, you do not want to hear an old man attempt the downwardfacing dog. They moan. They groan. Teddy Cavendish, you’d think some tsotske was sucking on his pizzle.”
“Girl, do you kiss your grandchildren with that mouth?”
“Oh, please.” Now Bella fetched her yoga mat from the coat closet by the front door. “If I don’t get to class an hour early I don’t get a good spot. Your elderly people are pathologically early.”
“Okay if I steal a container of your chicken stock? I’m doing dinner for Mitch at his place.”
“Of course. I put away gallons for Passover. What are you making him?”
“Um, smothered pork chops. That a problem?”
“It is not. Better you should violate my dietary laws than use something out of a can. Besides, we both know the way to Mr. Berger’s heart takes a permanent detour through his tummy. Nu, what’s the occasion?”
“No occasion, okay?” Des growled, fetching a container of homemade stock from the freezer. Also the bag of stoneground grits her mom had sent her from a small mill in Georgia-not far from where she’d moved after she left the Deacon. Then Des went into her room for that yellow dress. When she returned to the kitchen Bella was standing right where she’d left her, a scowl on her bunched fist of a face.
“Let’s have it. What’s bothering you?”
“Nothing’s bothering me, Bella. I’m totally cool.”
“Tie that bull outside, liar mouth.”
“Aren’t you worried about being late for class?”
“No, I’m worried about you. You’re still agonizing over his marriage proposal, aren’t you?”
“I’m not agonizing. It’s a big step, that’s all.”
“Indeed it is. But it’s the step that two people generally take when they want to be in each other’s lives. There’s an oldfashioned word for it that you hipsters don’t like to use-commitment. Is he bugging you for an answer?”
“Not at all. He’s been incredibly patient and understanding. And, time out, but hipster?”
“He loves you, Desiree.”
“And he knows I love him.”
“So what’s holding you back?”
“For one thing, I like my independence.”
“Vastly overrated as a concept. We are meant to be mated.”
