It's Santucci.
“We will apprehend suspect. Request backup. Consider suspect armed and dangerous.”
“Danny?”
I jam down on the gas pedal.
We need to be at Chesterfield's like ten minutes ago.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
We scream up to the curb in front of the old-fashioned gingerbread house that's now doing duty as a boarding house for romantic yuppies.
It's a little before four P.M.: high-tea time at Chesterfield's B amp;B.
That's why, when we hop out of the car, we're surrounded by about a dozen smartly-dressed but panicky people milling around on the sidewalk, nervously clattering cups and saucers-the kind of china my mom keeps locked in the hutch so nobody will use it.
“Don't shoot!” shouts one guest. He has a pencil-thin mustache and it's twitching like an over-caffeinated caterpillar. “Those other two police officers! They waved their weapons at us! They're inside!”
“The responding officers drew their sidearms?” Ceepak asks.
“Yes!” This from an angry-looking woman in a long blue dress and lacy black gloves up to her elbows. I think it's a costume. Either that or she stopped shopping for new clothes sometime after the Civil War.
“Are you the owner here?”
“I am.” She looks at Ceepak warily.
“Were any shots fired?”
“No,” she admits. “However, I still consider this an open-and-shut case of police harassment! I intend on speaking to my lawyers.”
“Please remain here on the sidewalk. We are attempting to apprehend a suspect in connection with an ongoing investigation. Danny?”
We march up the steps, past the wicker furniture and potted ferns, and enter the foyer.
Knocked-over knickknacks lie scattered across the oriental carpet. Even the silver tea-service stuff is lying on its side, staining the rug brown.
“Santucci,” mutters Ceepak.
The bull in the china shop. Who got here just in time for the Lipton.
Now he shouts it: “Santucci?”
“We're clear!” Santucci screams from a room upstairs.
“Clear!” Malloy seconds him.
Ceepak shakes his head and we pound up the steps to the second floor.
“We're in here,” says Santucci. “Rose Room.”
We hike down the hall.
Santucci and Malloy are hovering over a woman hunched up in the corner of a wingback sofa. She's rocking slightly and has wrapped a bed quilt around her shoulders to keep warm-even though it's still 90-some degrees outside and the A/C unit in the window is shut off. Her eyes are sad. Her chin rests heavy in her hand.
She looks worse than when I saw her in The Bagel Lagoon on Sunday morning.
“Meet Mrs. Winston,” says Santucci as he snaps his holster shut. Guess he's done waving his Glock in people's faces. Ceepak and I never pulled ours out.
“Are you all right?” Ceepak asks.
Mrs. Winston stops staring off into space long enough to glare up at Ceepak through sad, sleepy eyes.
“Peachy,” she says. Now she reaches under the quilt and pulls out a cigarette and a Bic lighter.
“Douse it, lady,” says Santucci. “This is a non-smoking room.”
“So?” she answers once she's all stoked up. “Arrest me.” She reaches over to a coffee table and grabs the crystal OJ goblet she's been using since breakfast for her ashtray. “I didn't ask for a nonsmoking room. These fuckers just put me in one.”
“I believe they permit smoking on the front porch,” says Ceepak. “I noted decorative ash urns.”
Mrs. Winston blows out a stream of tar and nicotine. “You think I want to go sit on the fucking porch? Down where everybody can laugh at me? They all know about Teddy.”
“Is your husband here?” Ceepak asks.
“Negative,” says Santucci. “Apparently, Dr. Winston took off before we arrived on scene.”
“These jerks,” she laughs, spitting out a couple puffs of smoke. “They race up the street, sirens wailing. Teddy's downstairs in the tearoom. Hitting on the college girl who hands out the cookies and crumpets. I saw them. Saw them from the top of the staircase. Bastard.”
“Why did he run when he heard the police?” asks Ceepak.
“Who knows? Perhaps he assumed one of these gentlemen was the young girl's father.”
She reaches for a brown prescription bottle on the table near her ash glass.
“Fucking childproof caps.”
She works the bottle open by biting at it sideways with her teeth. She pries off the lid, palm-chucks a little blue pill into her mouth. I figure it's not the day's first. I also figure it's some kind of antidepressant. The kind that almost make you sleepy enough to forget how sad you feel.
“You and Boyle stay here,” Santucci says to Ceepak. “Take her statement. We'll nab Winston. He can't have run too far.”
“What about the girl in the photograph?” asks Ceepak.
“Don't worry. We got other people on the street looking for her. Jesus, Ceepak-you think you're the only one who knows how to do this job?”
Ceepak turns to the couch. “Does your husband carry a weapon, Mrs. Winston?”
She shoots us a smoky spurt of a laugh. “Just the thing in his pants. He pulls that one out constantly.”
Ceepak turns back to Santucci. “I don't think your pursuit of this suspect warrants armed intrusions into….”
“Ceepak?”
“Yes?”
“Don't you even
I see Ceepak's jaw popping in and out near his ear. Guess that stops him from telling Santucci to fuck off, which is what I'd do.
“Malloy?” says Santucci. “Let's roll.”
They saunter out, leaving the sour smell of testosterone in their wake. Sea Haven's Finest.
On the couch, Mrs. Winston turns toward the bay window. The vinyl blinds have been rolled all the way down to keep the sun out, the darkness in.
Ceepak takes a step toward the sofa. The floorboards squeak.
“Can you believe I'm the one who suggested this vacation?” she says to the window. She gives a snort. Laughing at herself. “Beautiful, sunny Sea Haven. Historic home of my husband's infamous frat-boy conquests. His glory days.”
Oh, man-if
“Now Teddy's picking up girls in the same house where he keeps his tired old hag of a wife locked up in her room. Typically he has the decency to carry out his vacation liaisons in some remote motel. I often find odd keys in the laundry bag when we unpack. Twisted up in his pants pockets.”
“Did he recently lose his key to this room?”
She turns to Ceepak. Smiles.
“Oh. You know about that?”
Ceepak shows her the key we found at the Palace pier. It's in a sealed plastic bag.
“Where'd he lose this one?”
