“No, no,” she said hastily. “Not at all. It was more about me than about you. I-I probably shouldn’t have shown that one to you.” She raised her eyes to his. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to apologize. None at all. You don’t ever have to…” Mitch swallowed, his Adam’s apple suddenly feeling as if it were the size of a musk melon. He gazed at her. She gazed back right at him, her eyes large and lustrous behind her horn-rimmed glasses. “I’m genuinely honored that you chose me to show your work to, Lieutenant,” he said. “It’s an experience that I’ll never forget.” Then Mitch got in his truck, started it up and eased away from the curb, glancing back at her in his rearview mirror.
She remained there on the curb, watching him pull away. She was still standing there, watching him, when he went around the bend by the public library and was gone.
CHAPTER 14
AN ATTEMPT TO TRY to understand a certain situation?!
Jesus, how could she have said something so stiff, so impersonal, so outright lame? Des could not imagine as she piloted her slicktop up the Post Road toward Uncas Lake. Hell, compared to her the IRS sounded positively warm and fuzzy. What on earth had she been thinking? She’d wanted to tell him she was trying to sort out her feelings, that’s what. But she hadn’t wanted to spring that particular f-word out into the open air and so she got all bollixed up and wham, out came the Notification of Pending Audit.
I do not know how to talk to a man anymore. I am hopeless.
Des slowed her cruiser way down as she rolled past the seedy cottage where Tuck Weems had lived. He was scheduled for burial that day, same as Niles Seymour. Same minister. No doubt a lot of the same mourners. Dolly Seymour would be there, for one. That rusty pickup was still up on blocks in his driveway. No other vehicles were parked there. There was no actual sign that anyone was around.
Des kept on going past more shacks and bungalows, wondering if Mitch Berger were right. Had she wanted to hear that she was no good? She didn’t know. All she knew was that her life was starting to feel as if it were spinning out of control. It was a most unfamiliar feeling. It made her slightly dizzy.
The road began to climb steeply as it snaked its way around the lake. The resident trooper’s house was perched high on a hill overlooking the water. Tal Bliss had served two tours in the jungle in Vietnam. Sunlight and fresh air were a priority for him now. She deduced this from the way he’d added on a second storey with walls of glass and a wooden deck suspended all the way around. From the road, the place looked like a firefighter’s lookout station in the mountains.
His bedrooms were downstairs. The kitchen, dining room and living room were up on the second floor, the better to watch over his domain. He kept the house very neat and clean. Particularly his professional kitchen, which gleamed.
“My one and only indulgence,” he confessed, as he poured Des coffee.
There was a center island with a double sink and well-used copper pots hanging from a wrought-iron holder bolted into the ceiling. The countertops were granite, the cupboards pickled-pine. The range was a stainless-steel Jenn-Air with a down-draft vent, the refrigerator a top-of-the-line Sub-Zero. No walls enclosed Tal Bliss’s kitchen. It opened right out into the sun-drenched living and dining area.
On the stereo, Miles and Trane were putting the moves on “Kind of Blue,” filling the house with everything that was sweet and pure.
Dirty Harry, an immense orange-and-white male tabby, was out on the deck applying his death stare to a squirrel in a nearby cedar tree, his body poised, his tail swaying back and forth. The squirrel was chittering at him in derision. Down below, two men in a kayak were making their way slowly across the shimmering blue lake.
Lunch had been the resident trooper’s idea. When Des had mentioned that they needed to talk he had extended the invite. And she had accepted. When Tal Bliss offered to cook you something you did not say no. He wore a denim apron over a spotless white T-shirt while he was preparing it. Right now, he was finishing a fruit salad, his big tanned hands moving swiftly and expertly as he sectioned a pink grapefruit and halved strawberries. A quiche was baking in the oven, smelling marvelous.
“You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.”
“No trouble at all, Lieutenant,” he assured her. “I already had the pie shell on hand. I make a half-dozen of them at a time and freeze them. Just hope you like sage. I’ve fallen in love with it this year and am trying it in everything.” He tossed fresh blackberries and a cup of toasted walnuts into the salad, and began chopping up some mint. “We should really have ourselves a spicy Bloody Mary with this meal. Damned shame we’re on duty.”
“Damned shame.”
“Oh, I got a call from Bud Havenhurst,” he mentioned offhandedly. “Regarding what happened yesterday in New York.”
Somehow, this did not surprise Des.
“He felt a bit more at ease talking to a man about it, I guess,” he explained. “So I listened.”
“To what?” Des sipped her coffee.
“Apparently, Mandy gave Mitch Berger some form of playful shove on the subway platform as a train was pulling in. All in fun, was how Bud described it.”
“And just exactly what’s so damned fun about it?”
“Bud said that she considers danger to be a powerful aphrodisiac,” Bliss replied, coloring more than a little. He wasn’t so comfortable talking to a woman about this either. “She feels when someone has been mortally frightened that he or she is more susceptible to achieving a heightened level of sexual arousal. It seems she intended to seduce him later that evening. And this was simply her idea of…”
“… Foreplay?”
“According to Bud, she would have pulled Mitch back if there was even a remote chance he might fall.” Bliss had a pained expression on his face. He was hating this. He paused to check on his quiche in the oven. It was done. He removed it and placed it on a rack, fragrant and golden brown. “She was strictly playing a game.”
Des shook her head at him skeptically. “Are you trying to kid me, Trooper?”
“Why, no, Lieutenant.”
“Good, because there is no such thing as playful when it comes to pushing an unsuspecting individual in front of an oncoming train. They teach kindergarteners that. And when an adult in full command of her faculties does it, that’s called reckless endangerment. In Mandy Havenhurst’s case it might even qualify as assault with intent. She has a track record for inflicting bodily harm on men. I mean, come on, this is so not sane.”
“I know, I know,” Bliss agreed quickly. “Believe me, I’m not excusing it. Or condoning it. I’m merely reporting what Bud told me. And you’d better get ready, because there’s more.” He hesitated, clearing his throat. “Bud was there when she hit on Mitch at the apartment.”
“What do you mean he was there?”
“I mean he was listening in the bedroom the whole time. Watching, too, I imagine. Another little game they play. It… excites both of them.”
“They get off on making each other jealous-is that it?”
“Precisely.”
“And what does he…?”
“He tells her he’s still sleeping with Dolly.”
“Is he?”
“I’m quite confident he isn’t.” Bliss sighed, puffing out his cheeks. “What can I tell you-it’s not my idea of a healthy, normal relationship. But maybe there is no such thing as a healthy, normal relationship. What do you think, Lieutenant?”
“I think that I could be very happy never knowing this stuff about other people.”
“That makes two of us,” he agreed, smiling at her faintly. He removed his apron and wiped his hands on a towel. The stomach under his T-shirt was flat and hard. He was in excellent shape for a man over fifty. “Shall we eat?”
They ate out on the deck at a redwood table. The quiche was delicious-its crust flaky, the sage-scented filling of egg, bacon and gruyere rich and savory. And the fruit salad somehow managed to be sweet, tangy and nutty all at the same time. The man was truly gifted. Des told him so.