hilarious.”
“It does have its humorous side, you have to admit.”
“Mitch, there’s nothing funny about it. This guy is ruining my life. We patrolled the Historic District in force last weekend. And yet, somehow, he managed to hit four more old ladies without us getting so much as a glimpse of him. I’d swear he was getting around the village via the sewer system except-”
“Sure, sure. Just like Harry Lime in The Third Man. God, did Orson Welles slay in that film or-?”
“Except Dorset doesn’t have a sewer system. Meanwhile, I’ve busted my hump working my way through every single loser boy in Dorset. Anyone who’s been picked up for drugs, stealing, fighting in the past five years. Swamp Yankees and rich kids. And I’ve gotten absolutely nowhere. Whoever he is, he’s smart and he’s careful. He doesn’t wear a wristwatch or rings on his fingers. Nothing that could identify him. He leaves no traces behind. Not a single shoe print. He defaced the funeral home’s sign with a plain old Sharpie that you can buy anywhere. A friend of mine rushed that dead skunk through the lab up in Meriden for me. No fingerprints. He wore gloves when he handled it.” Des took a sip of her wine. “I’ve got a theory, too. And I would never admit this to Bob Paffin in a million years…”
“What is it, Des?”
“That we’re dealing with a bright, pissed-off sixteen-year-old boy who has been marinating in self-pity all summer. And when school starts he’ll crawl back into the woodwork and the incidents will stop.”
“If that’s the case then how are you going to catch him?”
“I’m not going to catch him, Mitch.”
“You mean he’s going to get away with it? That’s not a good ending.”
“We don’t always get happy endings. This is real life.”
“Doesn’t matter. Trust me, girlfriend, you still need a rewrite.”
Darkness was falling by now. He put the fish on to cook while she went inside and made a salad out of his ripe, juicy tomatoes, fragrant basil leaves and the buffalo mozzarella. She dressed it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, then mashed up the fingerling potatoes with a drop more olive oil, plain yogurt and a whole lot of fresh dill. After that she set the table, lit the candles and opened another bottle of Sancerre. By then the grill chef was coming in the door with the smoky striped bass and steaming ears of corn.
“Actually, I did have one promising lead,” she told him as they dove in, starved. “I haven’t said anything because you happen to know the guy. I can talk about it now because I’ve crossed him off of my list. But you can’t breathe a word of this, deal?”
“Deal,” he promised. “Who are we…?”
“Hal Chapman, your skullet-head trainer.”
“Hal? No way!”
“Yes way. Hear my thing, okay? The principal at the high school poked around in some old files for me. Back when your boy Hal was fifteen, he got in trouble for behaving inappropriately toward a female classmate.”
“Behaving inappropriately how?”
“He exposed himself to her out by the bleachers at lunch. The girl’s parents declined to press charges so the law didn’t get into it. School handled it internally. Counseling and so forth. And Hal was a model citizen after that. Even got a full ride to play football at Boston College.”
Mitch nodded. “He blew out his knee freshman year and dropped out.”
“He bitter about it?”
“Doesn’t seem to be. He’s always cheerful. A good trainer, real enthusiastic. He lives in his parents’ old house on Griswold Avenue. They’ve retired to North Carolina. His dad worked for Electric Boat, I think. I don’t know a whole lot more about Hal-aside from the fact that he does pretty well with the ladies.”
“He does real well,” she said, munching on an ear of corn. “I shadowed him this week. Tuesday night he got busy with this hot little hostess, Celine Sullivan, who works at the Rustic Inn. She spent the night at his place. Wednesday night he was with Shaun English, that tall, good-looking young thing in the Town Assessor’s Office. He spent the night at her place. And last night your boy had himself a double-header. First he got sandy-rumped at Bluff Point with a young married lady named Lisa Neville. She’s a client of his at the club. Her husband travels a lot on business. After Lisa went home to the kids, Hal got busy down at Rocky Neck with Doreen Joslow, another of his clients. Also married. You’ve got to admire his stamina. Like I said, I’ve crossed him off of my list. He just doesn’t fit the profile. He’s not lonely. He’s not angry. And he’s for sure not sexually frustrated. That man’s out there living the dream.”
Mitch’s phone rang. He took the call on the wall phone in his kitchen. Des glanced at her watch. It was 9:45. Late for someone in Dorset to be calling.
“Oh, hi, Bella,” she heard him say into the phone. “Yeah, she’s right here… No, no, it’s okay… Uh-huh… Okay, I’ll tell her… I don’t know, ten minutes tops.” He hung up and returned to the table with a troubled look on his face. “Bad news, girlfriend. He just struck again-at your place.”
Her place was a snug two-bedroom Cape on a hilltop with a great view of Uncas Lake, which was two miles up the Boston Post Road from the Historic District. The front-porch light was on and the garage door was open, throwing all kinds of light out onto the short driveway. Also meowing. The eight feral strays she and Bella had rescued over the past two months were presently residing in cages in there while not-so-patiently awaiting good homes. Bella’s jeep and Des’s four-year-old Saab were parked out on the street. Des pulled her cruiser into the driveway with a screech and jumped out. Mitch was right on her tail in his pickup. He’d insisted upon joining her.
Bella, a short, feisty widow from Brooklyn in her late 70s, stood there in the garage doorway, hands on round hips, looking like an angry Jewish avocado in her dark green tank top and shorts. Also lopsided. She was wearing only one sneaker. The other foot was bare. Bella had been Des’s neighbor back in Woodbridge when Des and Brandon were still married. It was Bella who’d saved her when Brandon took off. Bella who’d become her unlikely best friend and housemate-although she was always searching for a little place of her own.
“Believe me, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was ruin your romantic evening,” she apologized as Des rushed toward her. “You’ve had no time for each other since this yutz started waving his pizzle all over town. I hope you weren’t making wild love on the kitchen floor, all slathered in lavender oil.”
“Bella, have you been watching The Young and the Restless again?”
“I happen to find daytime drama very stimulating.”
“Yeah, I can tell that.”
“It’s cool, Aunt Bella,” Mitch assured her. “We were just getting ready to wash the dishes.”
“Wash the dishes?” Bella was incredulous. Also way disappointed. “Do I need to draw you two a map?”
“Talk to me, girl. What happened?”
Bella gestured to the front porch, where her missing sneaker lay discarded on the pavement. “The welcome mat is what happened,” she answered, hobbling over there. “I was sitting at the dining table, e-mailing my grandson Errol. He’s Ezra and Babette’s boy. Very nice boy. A first-year dental student at UCLA. He’s dating a girl from Thailand. I don’t know how serious it is but-”
“You were at the dining table,” Des prompted her. “And…?”
“The doorbell rang.”
“What time was this?”
“Nine thirty-seven, according to that little clock on my computer screen. I went to the door and I asked who it was. Believe me, there was no way I was opening it. Not with that nut on the loose. No one answered me. So I turned on the porch light and looked out through the peephole. I didn’t see anyone. I waited a minute, then finally I opened the door, walked outside and…” She made a face. “That’s when I stepped in it.”
It was a turd. A very large, very fresh turd that had been deposited on Des’s sisal welcome mat. She bent over for a closer look, her nostrils crinkling.
“I’m sorry if I compromised the evidence by squishing it.”
“Bella, don’t even go there. I’m just sorry your sneaker’s ruined.”
“Oh, no. It’s not ruined. I’ll bleach it. I’ll boil it. Whatever it takes. That little pisher’s not going to cost me a perfectly good pair of New Balances. And when you catch him I’ll have a little present of my own for him. Let me tell you-if a rotten punk ever tried pulling this on Gates Avenue in the old days, we’d have made him eat that whole thing for lunch between two slices of marbled rye.”
Des popped the trunk of her cruiser and donned a pair of disposable latex gloves, then grabbed a plastic
