dozen good men to get this job. And I know you stink at it!”
“You’ve had a few too many, Augie. Why don’t you go up to your apartment and sober up?”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
She put a gentling hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy. I’m on your side.”
“Like hell you are. Get your goddamned hand off of me. Get it off!” he hollered with a violent shrug of his shoulder. So violent that it rocked him back on his heels. Teetering, he lost his balance and came down hard on his butt in the driveway.
John and the others across the street were laughing at him now.
“You shoved me!” he spat at her, enraged.
“I did not.” Des held her hand out to him. “Come on, let’s get you up.”
He bared his ugly, yellow teeth at her. “Get away from me.”
“Take my hand, Augie.”
He refused. Just sat there on the gravel like a petulant little boy.
“Fine, have it your way. But go home and sleep it off, will you?”
In response, Augie told her to do a very bad thing to herself. Then, in a menacing voice, he said, “Homegirl, you’re going to be sorry you ever met me.”
“Trust me, wow man…” Des showed him her wraparound smile. “I’m already there.”
CHAPTER 3
In the city there was no such thing as autumn. There was summer. There was one cold, rainy weekend in October when all of the leaves fell off of the street trees. And then there was winter. But out on Big Sister, even though a torpid August haze hung low over Long Island Sound, autumn had already begun. Mitch saw its signs everywhere as he made his way down the beach to Bitsy Peck’s house, bucket in hand. Orange leaves dotted the island’s gnarly old sugar maple trees. A squadron of geese flew low overhead in a V-formation, heading due west. And a swarm of monarch butterflies were encamped in the cedars bordering Bitsy’s place, resting up on their long migration south. Fall was coming for sure. It just wasn’t in the air yet.
Bitsy had a mammoth, natural-shingled Victorian cottage with sleeping porches, turrets and amazing views in every direction. Her multilevel garden was truly spectacular. Hundreds of species of flowers, vegetables and herbs grew in her fertile terraced beds. It was Bitsy who’d taught Mitch the joys of gardening. She was out there right now, pruning away the yellowing vines on her heirloom tomato plants, the better to expose the ripening fruit to the sun’s rays.
“It’s the corn man,” he called out to her, brandishing his bucket.
“Come ahead, young sir,” Bitsy called back. “What’s mine is yours.”
She’d grown more than she could eat and had told him to take as much as he wanted. The best way to cook the fresh ears, he’d learned, was to plunge them into a bucket of cold water as soon he picked them. Then throw them on the grill to steam in their husks.
Bitsy was a round, snub-nosed little woman in her fifties who’d welcomed Mitch from the day he moved out to Big Sister. She was always happy to share her bounty and her wisdom. Also her insider’s knowledge of Dorset. There wasn’t anyone or anything that Bitsy Peck didn’t know about. It was the Pecks who’d first settled Dorset way back in the 1600s. Bitsy was also someone who had been through a lot. She’d lost her husband right after Mitch came to town. And her daughter, Becca, was a recovering heroin addict. Even though the lady gave the impression of being a ditsy hausfrau, she was plenty tough and shrewd.
“I just ran into Beth Breslauer,” he told her as he plucked a few choice ears from her corn patch. “Her name used to be Lapidus. She lived across the hall from me in Stuyvesant Town. Her son Kenny and I were pals growing up.”
“Isn’t that something? Such a small world.” Bitsy paused from her labors, fanning herself with her floppy straw hat. “I could use a tall glass of iced tea. Care to join me?”
Mitch filled his bucket from her garden faucet and followed her to the shade of her wraparound porch. He took a seat in one of the rockers and gazed out at the Sound. There were no sailboats out. Not enough breeze. No gas-guzzling cigarette boats either-which had nothing to do with the breeze and everything to do with the economic times they were living in. The chesty boys could no longer afford their toys.
Bitsy came back outside with their iced teas and sat down next to him.
Mitch took a long, grateful drink before he said, “Beth’s bought a place in the Captain Chadwick House. It’s supposed to be impossible to get in there.”
“It’s very, very hard,” she acknowledged. “I know of at least six ladies who’d love to buy a unit.”
“And yet Beth swooped right in even though she’s a widow from Scarsdale with no social connections here- that I’m aware of.” He studied Bitsy, his eyes narrowing. “Nobody gets in there without a green light from Bertha Peck, am I right?”
“You most certainly are.”
“And you’re related to Bertha, aren’t you?”
“We’re second cousins by marriage. My husband’s father was a cousin of her late husband Guy Peck, Jr.”
“I don’t get it. What kind of a connection could Beth possibly have with someone like Bertha Peck?”
Bitsy let out a merry chortle “Exactly what do you know about Bertha?”
“I know that she’s the queen bee of Dorset polite society.”
“That’s Bertha Peck, all righty.” Bitsy sipped her iced tea. “But what do you know about Bertha Puzewski?”
“Not a thing,” Mitch said eagerly. “Do tell.”
“Before Bertha married Guy she was a pretty little steelworker’s daughter who’d danced her way to Broadway from Weirton, West Virginia. Bertha was a chorus girl when Guy met her. Check out her legs some time. They’re still fabulous.”
“I had no idea.”
“That’s because she reinvented herself as Yankee royalty. Trust me, the only finishing school she attended was the Billy Rose Aquacade at the 1939 World’s Fair. And she got around in those days, too. Dated racketeers, gamblers, prizefighters. She was quite the little tootsie, our Bertha. There was a whole lot of whispering about her when she married Guy. I can still remember the old Dorset biddies saying that she’d once been the kept mistress of some mobster. Why, they practically made her out to be the Woman in Red.” Bitsy paused, frowning. “I don’t suppose that name will mean anything to someone your age.”
“You’re referring to Anna Sage, the madam who fingered John Dillinger for the FBI. She told them he’d be at the Biograph Theater in Chicago watching Manhattan Melodrama, an MGM gangster picture with Clark Gable, William Powell and Myrna Loy. It was the first on-screen pairing of Powell and Loy, who went on to make fourteen pictures together. Most notably their Thin Man series.”
Bitsy stared at him with her mouth open. “Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to.” She sipped her iced tea and resumed. “Bertha has outlasted all of those old ladies. There’s hardly anyone left who knows her real story.”
“Tell me, what have you heard about Beth Breslauer?”
“Not a whole lot, honestly. She doesn’t socialize much. I understand that her late husband was an eye doctor in the city. I do know that Bertha prefers New York City doctors to the fellows out here. Maybe that’s their connection. Maybe Beth’s husband treated her.”
“It turns out that Kenny is getting married to Kimberly Farrell, my yoga teacher.”
“So I’ve heard. Kimmy went through school with my Becca. She’s always been a real sweetheart.”
“And yet Beth seemed a bit cool about her. Told me there was baggage. Kimberly’s father, for starters. Her mother is hoping a great big wedding will get them back into the good graces of Dorset’s elite.”
“That’s not too likely,” Bitsy said with a shake of her head.
“Meaning people aren’t ready to forgive him?”
“Meaning Dex and Maddee Farrell never belonged to Dorset’s elite in the first place.”
Mitch looked at her in surprise. “I thought they were upper crusters.”
