“Eric tries to act like everything is okay. Does his yoga every morning to perpetuate his calm. Tends his flock. But I can tell he’s upset about Poochie.”
“I hear she drove into Duck River Pond last night.”
“And didn’t think a thing of it. This morning, she acted like it was a big joke. All of which means more ammunition for Claudia.” Danielle’s eyes met Mitch’s briefly, then looked away. “Claudia has designs on the family purse strings. That greedy woman has driven poor Mark away with all of her scheming. Mark is a sweet and sensitive man. He has the soul of an artist. And now he’s sleeping on his office sofa and drinking too much and…” Danielle broke off, coloring slightly.
Mitch couldn’t help thinking Danielle seemed awfully upset about her brotherinlaw. Was she involved with him? Could Eric actually be on to something? “Has Eric talked to Claudia about Poochie?”
Danielle shook her head. “Eric detests confrontations. And everything with Claudia is a confrontation. If Eric sees her coming, he walks the other way. If she phones him, he won’t take the call. She doesn’t speak to me at all, you know. If I answer the phone she just says, ‘Is Eric there?’ I don’t exist. I never have, as far as she’s concerned. I’m just some trash her weird brother dragged home with him from college. Eric won’t stand up to her. He just says, ‘If it’s about money, then I don’t care.’ Well, I’m sorry, that’s no kind of an attitude. Not when it involves your own mother-and our whole future. Only I can’t say a word to him about it. He won’t listen. It’s very frightening.”
“Why frightening, Danielle?”
“Because Claudia is strong willed but at the same time very weak. She relies on her mother more than she cares to admit. If Claudia gets her way, she will be totally out of control. Very dangerous.”
“And will she get her way?”
“Mitch, I honestly don’t see how anyone can stop her.”
CHAPTER 4
The Kershaws lived in the wooded hill country north of Uncas Lake off of Laurel Ridge, a key connector road between Nowhere and Nowhere Else. A mailbox by the side of the road marked the Kershaws’ property, as did the handlettered plywood signs that read KEEP OUT and NO DUMPING. Des had to take it slow up the steep rutted drive that climbed and twisted its way through bleak, scrubby woodland before it finally arrived at a clearing.
There was a squat log cabin here. Wood smoke rose from a stovepipe. A Doberman was chained to the porch, barking furiously at her arrival. A mudcaked blue Toyota pickup was parked out front next to a canary yellow Ford van that had D amp; S PAINTING written on its side.
Near the cabin there was a leanto where many cords of firewood were stored. The rest of the clearing resembled the salvage yard out behind a secondhand building supply center. There were piles of old windows and doors, kitchen cabinets, shutters, chimney tiles. Milo Kershaw was Dorset’s most noted pack rat, famous for dragging things home from residential demolition jobs and reselling them. On occasion, some of these items didn’t exactly belong to him. A few weeks back, Des had had to smooth over a dispute over some mahogany pocket doors he’d liberated from a house he was renovating. Milo insisted the owner had told him to go ahead and take them. The owner vehemently denied this. Grudgingly, Milo had coughed them up. No charges were filed.
But it was not the first time Des had dealt with Milo. Over Christmas, he’d gotten into a drunken brawl with a man half his age at the Rustic Inn, Dorset’s popular inspot for the inbred. Milo was getting the better of him, too. Again, no charges were filed, but Milo Kershaw was definitely one of those men who Des had to keep her eye on. He was sneaky, not to mention highly antagonistic.
His sons Stevie and Donnie, aged twentysix and twentyfour, were obviously no bargains either. They’d started out with the usual playground bully stuff like vandalism, criminal mischief and unlawful possession of alcohol by a minor. Then they started boosting items from parked cars. Then they started boosting the cars. Along the way there was a string of drug possession collars. They’d been given chance after chance-counseling, community service, probation without incarceration. Until, that is, they got caught shoplifting a brand new chainsaw. For that they were deemed incorrigible and sent to the Long Lane Boys’ Facility. With their most recent offense-attempted distribution of stolen property-they’d graduated to a felony and been sentenced to two years, discounted to eighteen months for good behavior, at Enfield Correctional, a mediumsecurity institution.
Still, when it came to the Kershaw brothers the criminal record didn’t tell the whole story. These boys were local legends. When they’d boosted a parked car from the lot at White Sand Beach one summer evening, for example, they’d been unaware that a couple was getting busy in the backseat at the time. And that one half of the couple was Dorset’s second selectman, who was making love to someone else’s… husband. Or take that chainsaw. They’d stolen it from Lakeside Hardware the morning after a significant snowstorm. On foot. All the resident trooper had to do was follow their footsteps home, where he found Stevie and Donnie using the stolen chainsaw on a dead, frozen deer. As for their most recent offense, some valuable items of silver were stolen from Poochie Vickers’s place, Four Chimneys. Two days after the theft was discovered, Stevie and Donnie strolled right into Great White Whale Antiques and tried to sell Bement Vickers his own grandmother’s silver candlesticks. Bement had politely excused himself and called the resident trooper.
Des parked next to the yellow van and got out, big Smokey hat square on her head, her boots squishing in the mud. The country air here smelled of wood smoke and of a septic tank that badly needed pumping.
Milo came out onto the porch at once and hollered at the Doberman to shut up. Milo was a feisty little whippet in his early sixties. He stood fivefeetfive tops and she doubted he weighed more than onehundredforty pounds, most of it gristle. He wore a heavy wool sweater, jeans, work boots and a tattered orange goose down vest that was patched with silver duct tape. Milo was one of those weathered, hardscrabble workmen who seemed to be deeply tanned even in the winter. He had a suspicious, sidelong way of squinting out at the world. Just his way of letting people know that he was a force to be reckoned with.
“Morning, Mr. Kershaw,” she called to him pleasantly, tipping her hat. “Thought I’d pay your boys a little courtesy call.”
“Oh, is that what you call it?” he demanded, restraining the snarling Doberman by its choke collar. “I call it harassment. They ain’t even been home an hour and already you’re looking to put ’em back in.”
“Mr. Kershaw, I’m strictly the welcome wagon. We’ll have ourselves a getacquainted chat and I’ll be on my way, okay?”
Milo did not go in much for adornment. There were no pictures on the cabin’s walls, no curtains on its windows. There was a woodburning stove in the living room. A bigscreen television, an old sofa with a blanket thrown over it. A spiral staircase led up to the bedrooms. The only other room downstairs was the kitchen, which smelled of cigarette smoke, cooked bacon and unwashed Kershaws. The unwashed Kershaws, Stevie and Donnie, were seated at the kitchen table knocking back cans of Budweiser and savoring their freedom. They’d just put away some bacon and eggs, apparently. There was a greasy cast iron skillet on the stove, egg shells and an empty bacon wrapper on the counter. The sink was heaped with dirty dishes.
“Resident trooper’s come to bust your balls,” Milo informed them sourly. “That tall one’s Stevie. The short, ugly one’s Donnie.”
Stevie’s eyes widened instantly at the sight of someone in uniform.
“Whoa, talk about a buzz kill,” groaned Donnie, whose own eyes were hidden behind a pair of reflecting shades.
“I just came by to introduce myself,” Des assured them, sticking out her hand. “I’m Des Mitry. Glad to know you both.”
The Kershaw brothers got slowly to their feet and shook hands with her. Both wore flannel shirts and jeans. Beyond that, they looked almost nothing alike.
Stevie, who towered over his younger brother, was skinny, darkhaired and, seemingly, determined to prove to the world that the mullet haircut wasn’t dead. Stevie had strikingly delicate features. His pink rosebud of a mouth was almost girlish. Perhaps to compensate for it, he’d grown a soul patch beneath his lower lip. He had a cocky smirk on his face as he eyed Des up and down. Somehow, Stevie Kershaw had gotten the idea that he was a babe magnet.
Donnie was built low to the ground like his dad, though he was a lot stockier and a whole lot hairier. He had
