which she dyed an unlikely jet black. The round glasses she wore were also black, the saucer-shaped eyes behind them a piercing blue. Her lips were bright red, as were the nails on her tiny hands.
“Mrs. Peck, did you place a call about an intruder?”
“I most certainly did,” Bertha responded airily. “He’s there in the corner. I’ve taken care of him myself. But I still require your assistance, I’m afraid.”
Des saw no one in the corner. Saw nothing. Frowning, she moved slowly in that direction until she reached the overstuffed chair that was parked there and saw… well, it was a small field mouse imprisoned inside of an overturned highball glass. The mouse was dead. Covered in blood.
First, Des reached for her cell phone to stop the other cruisers from rushing to the scene. Then she tipped her big Smokey hat back on her head and said, “Want to tell me what happened, Mrs. Peck?”
“I spotted him out of the corner of my eye,” Bertha informed her proudly. “He was fast, but my own reflexes have always been well above average.”
Des nudged the glass with her foot-and discovered, to her shock, that the poor creature was still moving. “He’s alive.”
“Of course he is. I’m no murderer.”
“But… he’s got blood all over him.”
“That’s not blood, dear. It’s Clamato juice. I was having a Bloody Mary at the time.”
“I see. And now you…?”
“I want him removed from my residence, if you please.”
“Of course, ma’am. Do you have a piece of cardboard I could use?”
Bertha went down the hall and returned with a shirt cardboard. Des slid it beneath the glass to secure the mouse in place, then carried it downstairs to the backyard and released it on the lawn. It ran away in a flash of red.
Maddee Farrell was out there fussing with the Captain Chadwick House’s prized, fragrant Blush Noisette rosebushes, her pewter-colored hair drawn back in a tight helmet. Summertime could be very cruel to older women, Des reflected. Even those who were tall, slender and patrician. Maddee had no doubt been willowy and lovely when she was young. Now that she was approaching seventy, Maddee’s sleeveless white blouse and pastel-yellow shorts revealed sticklike arms and legs that were mottled with liver spots. Her elbows were pointy, her throat shriveled. The poor woman looked like a famine victim. It didn’t help that she had a street beggar’s needy look on her deeply creased face. And wore too much lipstick that was such a ghastly shade of magenta.
“Why, good afternoon, Master Sergeant Mitry. Is everything okay with Bertha?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Please tell me you’ve apprehended that awful pervert.”
“I wish I could, ma’am.”
“I’m afraid to go near a window after dark. We have a ground-floor unit. I-I could be his next victim, you know.”
Des started back upstairs with the highball glass. Maddee stayed right on her tail, matching her step for step. When they reached Bertha’s apartment, Maddee went barging into the lady’s kitchen and started rummaging around.
Bertha stood in the entry hall, shaking her head. “I call her the trash Nazi, Desiree. Just watch, I guarantee you she won’t return empty handed.”
She didn’t. Maddee emerged from Bertha’s kitchen clutching an empty tonic water bottle as well as several used, gunky Ziploc freezer bags. “Bertha, you can get a nickel back on this bottle,” she clucked. “And these Ziplocs can be washed and re-used.”
“They’re all yours, dear,” Bertha said grandly. “Desiree, it might interest you to know that our Maddee has the largest privately held collection of used Ziploc bags in southern New England. What do you suppose she does with all of them?”
“And if you’re discarding any other items of clothing, please let me have them for the Nearly New shop. I found several very nice sweaters of yours out in the garbage cans yesterday.”
“Tell me, do your old Vassar classmates know that you’ve taken to Dumpster diving in your golden years?”
“We can get good money for them,” Maddee plowed on, undeterred. “Or at the very least take them to the Goodwill bins behind Christiansen’s Hardware. And honestly, Bertha, I do wish you’d called us about that mouse. Dex would have been only too happy to-”
“Make another sixty percent of my life’s savings disappear?” Bertha demanded, turning savage. “Once was enough, thank you.”
Maddee’s eyes widened in shock, her magenta lips drawing back in a frozen grin that reminded Des way too much of death rictus. Blinking back tears, she scampered out of there.
“There,” sniffed Bertha, “goes the cheapest damned woman I’ve ever met.”
“Maybe she just cares about the environment.”
“Like hell. Maddee Farrell’s not eco-anything. She’s simply a needy pest. Honestly, if I ever end up like her, I sincerely hope that someone will shoot me.”
“Mrs. Peck, I’m always here if you need me. But disposing of a mouse is really something you should be calling Augie about.” Meaning Augie Donatelli, the live-in caretaker.
Bertha made a face. “That beery do-nothing? I did phone his apartment. He didn’t answer. Wasn’t on the premises. Never is when I need him.”
“Did you try his cell phone? He carries it with him at all times.” Des happened to know this because the man was in the habit of speed dialing her four, five, six times a day to tell her how to do her job. Augie was a retired New York City police detective and full-time pain in the butt.
“He didn’t answer his cell phone either. He’s probably passed out drunk somewhere. I swear, when his contract comes up for renewal I’m going to make certain that the condo board cans him.” Bertha batted her big, saucer eyes at Des. “But thank you for coming, dear. You’re the one person who I know I can always count on.”
Des returned downstairs and headed out back, to the row of garages. Augie’s was the last one on the right. It was a double garage. His apartment upstairs was reached by a wooden staircase inside. Augie’s shiny red Pontiac GTO muscle car from the sixties was parked inside, along with the John Deere riding mower and Gator utility vehicle that he used if and when he felt like working. Which he actually was as Des approached. The ex-cop was firing up the Gator, his left hand wrapped around a tall can of Ballantine Ale. The man had to be good for eighteen cans a day. He kept a supply in an old refrigerator next to his workbench.
“Mr. Donatelli…?!” she called out to him over the roar of the Gator.
He shut off the engine, grinning at her wolfishly. Augie Donatelli had to be the most gleefully obnoxious sexist she’d ever met. The Notorious P.I.G. positively rolled around in the inappropriateness of his behavior. “I thought I told ya to call me Augie, sugar pie,” he sprayed at her in his juicy Brooklyn bray.
“And I thought we had an understanding.”
Augie took a swig of his ale. “We did?”
“You were going to be reachable by cell so I wouldn’t keep getting nine-one-oned by Bertha Peck. Mice are your deal, not mine.”
“Don’t know nothing about that,” he grumbled, rubbing a hand over his unshaven face. Augie was in his mid- fifties, with snaggly yellow teeth and brown eyes that were bleary and red-rimmed. His face was battered and bent-nosed. His droopy moustache, which harkened back to the Serpico Seventies, was flecked with gray. So was his black hair, which he wore unusually long. Almost to his shoulders. He wasn’t particularly tall, but his shoulders were heavy and the arms that stuck out of his too-snug black T-shirt looked powerful. He had on a pair of ragged blue jean cut-offs, white tube socks and a pair of old-school Pumas. “But, hey, I’ll get right on it,” he promised, draining his Ballantine.
“You’re too late. It’s already done.”
“So why are you busting my chops?” He fetched himself a fresh can from the refrigerator, moving with the cocky ease of a man who’d spent his entire career refusing to be intimidated by anyone.
“Bertha is talking about terminating your contract, that’s why.”
“I’m guessing you have a little something to do with that. Am I right, homegirl?”
