“God, yes. There are certain street corners in the West Village, every time I see them I think of Maisie and start to mist up. There are restaurants I haven’t gone back to since she died. Fire Island is off-limits. The Mohonk Mountain House up in New Paltz is flat-out haunted, so is Tuscany, where we spent our honeymoon. Hell, I almost had to give up our apartment.”
“But you didn’t, right?”
“No, I did something much smarter than that-I came to this place. That’s how I met Des. And you and Dodge.”
“Dodge is a rock. If it hadn’t been for him, I’d never have made it after my dad died. Martine, too. I owe both of them so much.”
Will obviously cared deeply about the Crocketts, Mitch reflected. So why had Dodge glowered at him that way on the beach? And if they’d been so good and kind to Will, why had Bitsy Peck called the two of them cannibals?
The garage door was open, Dodge’s diesel wagon parked inside. Mitch pulled up by the front porch and killed the engine. It was very quiet, so quiet he could hear the flapping of gull wings overhead.
“Want to ring the bell?” he asked Will as they got out.
“Let’s check around back. They usually leave the kitchen door unlocked.”
A wrought-iron dining table and chairs were set up out on the terrace to take maximum advantage of its view of the tranquil tidal marshes. A juice glass and coffee cup, both emptied of their contents, sat there on the table. So did the Wall Street Journal, a set of car keys, a pair of sunglasses, Dodge’s birdwatching binoculars, Dodge’s sun hat… everything but Dodge.
“This is really weird,” Will said fretfully, trying the French door to the kitchen. It was locked. “I don’t like this at all.”
They put their noses to the glass, shielding their eyes against the sun’s glare with their hands.
Will let out a gasp. “Oh no…”
Dodge was sprawled out on the tile floor behind the kitchen’s center island. Mitch could make out only the lower part of his body-his hiking shoes and shins. But he could definitely hear faint whimpers of pain coming from in there.
“Better call nine-one-one, Will.”
Will had other ideas-he threw his big shoulder against the glass door with all of his might and shattered the whole damned frame. As the lock gave way he stormed inside, Mitch on his heels. But what they barged in on was not Dodge writhing in pain on the floor.
Because Dodge was not alone.
He was going at it with someone there on the kitchen floor, his hiking shorts bunched down at his knees. The naked woman was slender and pale and appeared to be quite young, although frankly Mitch couldn’t tell much about her because she had a canvas gunny sack over her head, the drawstring pulled tight across her throat. The whimpers that they’d heard were hers. She was pinned there beneath Dodge on her hands and knees, her wrists lashed together around a leg of the massive maple chopping block next to the stove.
As Mitch and Will burst inside Dodge tumbled back against the counter in surprise, reaching for a dish towel to cover himself. He laythere, his chest heaving, sweat pouring from him as Mitch and Will stood there with their mouths open, too flabbergasted to speak.
“W-We phoned,” Will finally stammered dumbly. “When you didn’t answer we got concerned.”
“No reason to be,” Dodge assured him with remarkable calm. “Another opportunity presented itself this morning, that’s all. What with me bunking alone and all.”
From the floor next to the chopping block, the woman bucked and strained against her wrist restraints, moaning incoherently inside of that gunny sack over her head. Mitch stood there, shuddering with revulsion. He felt as if he’d just walked in on a porn film that had been custom-tailored for ranking members of the Gestapo.
“There’s nothing unusual going on here, men,” Dodge pointed out, in response to Mitch’s look of sheer horror. “Just two adults having consensual sex.”
What Mitch wanted to do was run right out the door. Go straight home and wash out his brain with soap and water. But he didn’t. Instead, he crossed the kitchen floor and knelt next to the woman, who was so slender her ribs and vertebrae were plainly visible.
She recoiled in animal fright when he touched her.
“Sshh, it’s okay,” he whispered, gently removing the bag from over her head.
Her eyes were wild with panic and she was gagging for air-some kind of black material had been stuffed into her mouth. Her panties, Mitch discovered as he reached in and pulled them out. She immediately began gulping down huge lungfuls of air, her breathing rapid and ragged. Mitch dug his pocketknife out of his shorts and cut through the leather cord that bound her hands together. Her thin cotton summer dress lay in a heap next to her on the floor. Mitch helped her on with it.
Then he held his hand out to her, and said, “Come on, Becca, I’ll take you home.”
CHAPTER 10
“I didn’t hear Tito smack her around,” Chrissie Huberman insisted. “I didn’t hear anything-and you can’t make me say I did.”
“We’re not trying to, Miss Huberman,” Yolie said back at her, somewhat helplessly. “We’re trying to figure out what happened that night.”
“Well, don’t look at me, okay? And if I’m the best you can come up with as a suspect then you are just totally brain challenged.”
“You’re not a suspect,” Soave said, trying to cool the publicist’s jets. As if he or anyone else could. “We’re investigating an unexplained death.”
“Can you boys and girls even deal with a case this hot?” she wanted to know. “You should consider bringing in an outside consultant. I can pick up the phone and get you a retired NYPD chief of detectives here by three o’clock. He’ll be up to speed by the five o’clock news. You want me to make the call?”
“What we want,” Des said slowly, “is for you to relax and answer the questions that are put to you.”
“Fine, whatever,” Chrissie blustered, puffing out her cheeks.
They were grouped around a conference table in the spare conference room of Dorset’s musty-smelling town hall. The Major Crime Squad computers were up and running in there, and a couple of uniformed troopers were busy working the phones. Outside, there was total insanity-news vans with satellite transmitters lined up every which way on Dorset Street, reporters and cameramen waiting in a noisy, impatient cluster out on the curb for their twelve o’clock feeding.
Chrissie sat erect at the end of the table, dressed in a yellow silkblouse, white linen slacks, and suede loafers. Her hands were placed palm down on the table, fingers spread wide. She had big hands and wrists. She was a big woman, tall, rangy and very sure of herself. She was not pretty, but everything about her manner suggested that if you didn’t think she was then you’d been seriously misinformed.
“At present, we’re still trying to fill in the blanks,” explained Soave.
“What if I told you I’d like to have my lawyer present?” she demanded, glaring at the three of them.
“That’s totally your right.”
“Not necessary,” she said dismissively. “I have a law degree myself.”
“I thought you were a publicist,” he said, frowning.
“That doesn’t mean I can’t be well educated, does it?” Chrissie raised her longish nose in the air, sniffing. “You know, this building smells an awful lot like my grandmother’s house in Great Neck. What am I… Wait, that’s moth balls I’m smelling, right? And something else…”