trying to call you for nearly thirty minutes but an automated recording kept telling me they could not complete my call as dialed. An operator finally got through for me.”
“Did you remember to use the area code, Lila?” The phone company now required Dorseteers to dial the 860 area code even for local calls. It wasn’t an easy habit to get into, especially for older, wiftier residents.
“I-I may have forgotten,” she confessed. “It so happens I’m just a bit-”
“Here, give that to me…” Now he heard a more assertive voice on the other end of the line. “Is that you, Mitch?”
“What can I do for you, Luanne?”
“It’s Winston. He’s taken off again. I turned my back for one second and he was out the door and gone. I tried to go after him but you would not believe how fast he can scoot. And it’s terribly dark out.”
Now Mitch heard Des’s cell phone ring up in the sleeping loft. She answered it right away.
“Luanne, do you have any idea where Winston was heading?” he asked.
“That’s the part that has us a bit alarmed. Just before he darted out of the door he, well, he said he really wanted to go ‘bite some colored ass.’”
“Uh-oh…”
CHAPTER 5
When her cell rang she snatched it off the nightstand and said, “This is Resident Trooper Mitry.” It was nearly ten-thirty, according to her watch.
“Young lady, you need to get over here right now,” a familiar male voice thundered at her.
“What seems to be the problem, Mr. Bond?”
“He has an out-of-control dance party or rave or whatever they call it going on over there. Hundreds of them are swarming the neighborhood…” Them. “They’re screaming like banshees and-and playing their thug music so loud it’s shaking my whole house. I demand that you do something.”
“I’ll be right over.”
Des had just swung her size twelve-and-half AA bare feet to the floor when her cell rang again. This time it was the 911 dispatcher. A call had just come in from Mr. Rondell Grantham requesting an ambulance to treat the victim of an “incident” at the Grantham residence. Little brother hadn’t asked for state police assistance but it was automatic for Des to be called. She hurried down the stairs for her uniform and discovered Mitch throwing on a T-shirt and shorts. “You going somewhere, boyfriend?”
“Winston has wandered off again. The Joshua sisters are afraid he may have headed over to Tyrone Grantham’s.” He watched her jump into her uniform. “And you?”
“They’re having a party. And there’s been an incident of some kind.”
Mitch frowned at her. “Des, you don’t suppose?…”
“I don’t suppose anything yet.” She was fully dressed in less than two minutes. Her West Point training. “But you’ll never get in the gate on your own. I’m flooring it there. Can you keep up with me?”
“You betcha. Mind you, if I had a brand new Silverado with the 360-horsepower Vortec-”
“Mitch, you don’t need a new a truck.”
“Be right behind you, Master Sergeant.”
She went outside to her cruiser, jumped in and pushed it across the rickety causeway. Mitch stayed right behind her on the dirt road that twisted through the Nature Preserve, but once she made it onto the smooth pavement of Old Shore Road and floored it, he fell back a bit, his vintage sepia-toned headlights growing weaker in her rearview mirror. When she turned onto Turkey Neck and ran into the hot mess there, he caught up with her again.
Dozens and dozens of parked cars were crowded onto shoulders of the narrow road. Des spotted plenty of New York license plates, not to mention New Jersey and Rhode Island. Partiers were coming and going on foot right down the middle of the street. Boisterous groups of young guys, joshing and laughing. Couples walking hand in hand. All of them black. Them. She had to hit her siren to get through, Mitch snug on her tail. The media mob, when she managed to get near the Grantham place, seemed even bigger than before. The bright lights of the news cameras lit up the driveway out front like a red carpet movie premiere. People were lined up at the gate trying to get in. Big, impassive Trooper Olsen was turning them away.
“Hey, Des,” he said when she pulled up at the gate. “The Jewett girls got here two seconds ago.” Marge and Mary Jewett ran Dorset’s volunteer ambulance service.
“What happened, Oly?”
“Fist fight between a couple of partiers, I hear. I was just on my way back to check it out.”
“You can stay here. I’m on it.”
“It was supposed to be a small party, Des. Clarence had a very short guest list. He left the father-in-law, Calvin, up here to make sure no one else slipped in. Because I told him flat out-I’m a state trooper, not your doorman. Well, you know how it goes with parties. Word gets out and everyone just starts showing up. Good old Calvin let in pretty much anyone who had a pretty girl with him. I’ve got it on lockdown now.”
Des looked around at the media crowd. “Any sign of Plotka?”
“Him I haven’t seen, thank God.”
She jerked a thumb back in Mitch’s direction. “He’s with me.”
She eased down the gravel driveway with Mitch on her tail and pulled up behind the Dorset volunteer ambulance van, hearing the music loud and clear. Jay-Z and Alicia Keys were singing “Empire State of Mind.” Not exactly her idea of “thug” music but what did she know? Mitch pulled up behind her and got out.
“If Winston’s here, you hustle him home and don’t look back,” she said briskly as they started around the house toward the pool. “Just clear out, got it?”
“Got it.”
At least a hundred partiers were enjoying the warm night air, the swimming pool and each other. They were dancing to the music. Splashing around in the water in their bathing suits. Shrieking, laughing, having a great time. And why not? They were kicking it at the mansion of an NFL superstar. There was a long table loaded with food, an open bar and more than a trace of reefer smoke in the air. A DJ was working the music. Lights were on inside the house, upstairs and down, but the party seemed to be confined to the outdoors.
Des didn’t spot either of the Grantham brothers or Jameson sisters. She did see Calvin floating in the pool on an inflatable chaise, his man boobs sagging, beer gut hanging out. Des could have gone her whole life without seeing Calvin Jameson in swim trunks. She went directly to the DJ and ran a finger across her throat. He cut the music at once. A chorus of boos met the silence until the partiers noticed her uniform. Then they fell silent, too.
The Jewett sisters were crouched over a lounge chair by the pool house with a cluster of guests gathered around them. It was Winston Lash who Marge and Mary were attending to. The old fellow was stretched out there, in a pair of striped PJs and bedroom slippers, bleeding from his nose and mouth. Marge was packing his nostrils with gauze while Mary pressed an ice pack against his upper lip and blood-soaked handlebar moustache.
Standing nearby, sobbing and carrying on, was a deeply upset twenty-something sister who was wearing a gold string bikini and a lot of exotic war paint. She was amply built. Her full breasts and even fuller booty were pretty much exploding out of that little bikini.
Clarence was standing there, too, seething with anger. Two burly young guys were trying to settle him down. At least half a dozen partiers had whipped out their cell phones and were sending streaming video of it all to their friends.
“Evening, girls,” Des said to Marge and Mary, ultra-mindful of the camera phones. Bystanders routinely produced them at crime scenes these days and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it-other than go about her business the right way. “How’s Mr. Lash?”
“He’s responsive, which is good,” Marge answered.
“What the hell happened to him?” Mitch wanted to know.
“He got punched in the face by that giant over there,” Mary said, meaning Clarence. “The back of Winston’s
