Des got up and went into the bathroom to wash the charcoal from her hands, her mind beginning to race… What if… Jesus, what if that was what really happened? It sure made a hell of a lot more sense, didn’t it? What if Tal Bliss hadn’t committed those murders at all? What if he had shot himself to spare the life of the woman he loved? What if he had been protecting Dolly Seymour?
Des didn’t know the true story. But she did know that her portrait of the man wouldn’t come to life until she did. Nor would she be able to rest. Not until she knew what happened. She had to know what happened.
She was staring long and hard at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, wondering what on earth she was going to do about this, when her phone rang.
CHAPTER 17
THE SANDWICH BAG FULL of oatmeal cookies that Sheila Enman had pressed upon Mitch as he left was empty by the time he reached the army of TV reporters who were staked out at Peck Point, desperate for a chewy morsel of their own.
Mitch barreled his pickup right through them and out onto the bridge, paying scant attention to their shouted queries. His head was still spinning. Had Tuck Weems been in on it with Bliss? Was there someone else-a third person? Or was Sheila Enman merely an addled old lady who refused to believe her beloved boy was capable of such monstrous behavior on his own?
Mitch wondered. He most definitely did.
He played back the tape of their conversation when he got home, Sheila’s voice firm and strong over the cascading waterfall… “I don’t believe Tal could have dreamt this whole scheme up all by himself.”
Listening to her. And wondering some more.
He cranked up his computer and got to work. He’d put a lot of thought into his opening paragraph. He felt pretty sure he had it:
I think that many of us have a yearning for the joyous and pastoral New England scene. It is the stuff of Currier and Ives, this scene. And Norman Rockwell. The feel-good Yuletide bathos of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life is poured all over it like Vermont maple syrup. But I am here to tell you that the reality does not quite match the fantasy. In fact, it is not even close.
Mitch had his opening, all right. What he did not have was the rest of it. And it was bugging the hell out of him.
By now, the sun was getting low over the sparkling blue Sound, casting long shadows through his living room windows. The tide was out so Mitch went for a walk among the tide pools. One question kept nagging and nagging at him as he plodded along in the wet sand among the crabs and oysters: Why? He could not shake it. It was there as he heated up some three-day-old American chop suey and scarfed it down. Why? And while he watched a few choice minutes of Hombre. The stagecoach scene early on where it slowly begins to dawn on the other passengers that Newman is a half-breed. Ritt’s camera never leaves his riveting blue eyes. Why? When Mitch flicked on his Stratocaster and went chasing after “It Hurts Me, Too,” the old Elmore James blues number, it was still there:
Why had Tal Bliss killed his very best friend in the whole world?
Say Sheila was right. Say he and Tuck Weems had pulled off the murders of Niles Seymour and Torry Mordarski together. Why would he then proceed to eliminate Tuck? Had the two old friends had a falling-out? Had Tuck threatened to expose him? Was this simply a case of Bliss covering his own tracks? Or had another conspirator shot both of them? Someone who was now walking around, free and clear?
It didn’t make sense. Well, it made some sense but not absolute sense. Maybe because Mitch was searching for a proper villain like Richard Boone in Hombre. But this was no Western, its morality clearly etched. This was real life-complex, interwoven and exceedingly murky. And these were real people. Real people did not necessarily have intelligent reasons for the way they behaved. In fact, they might very well have no reasons at all. At least none that were sane or rational.
Mitch arrived at this unhappy conclusion after several hours of lying in bed in the darkness with his wheels spinning. Clemmie was curled up on his chest, purring away. He stroked her soft fur gently, gazing up at the half-moon through his skylight. Take Niles Seymour-why did he show up at the Saybrook Point Inn flaunting his young girlfriend for everyone to see? The man had even told Jamie Devers about her. Why does a married man who’s cheating on his wife do that? Why be so reckless and foolish?
Baffled, Mitch roused Clemmie from her sound sleep and went downstairs to put on milk for cocoa. It being chilly he built a small fire in the fireplace and lit it, the kindling crackling in the quiet. He fixed his cocoa and sat in his easy chair with it, gazing into the flames. After a moment he heard small plopping noises-Clemmie venturing downstairs after him, step by step by step. She let out a squeak to announce her wee presence in the room, then leapt up into his lap. After a few minutes of pad-pad-padding she curled up and fell instantly back to sleep.
Unlike Mitch, she did not have a lot on her mind.
Questions. He had so damned many of them… If there was a third person, who was it? Bud Havenhurst? The man’s timing was awfully fortuitous. After all, he had chosen virtually the same precise moment to raid Dolly’s funds as Tal Bliss had chosen to murder Niles Seymour. Bud’s explanation was that when he’d seen Niles and Torry together at the inn he felt certain Niles was about to skip town. And so, faster than you can say Rouben Mamoulian, he cleared out her accounts to protect them from the man’s evil clutches. Was that believable? Or did Bud know more than he’d let on? He and Red Peck had been together that day at the inn. Both of them had seen Niles with Torry. This made them the only two people who ever had, didn’t it? Hadn’t Lieutenant Mitry said that none of Torry’s friends or coworkers ever saw Stan? Because if that were the case, then that would mean… Wait a minute…
Mitch suddenly sat up in his chair, awestruck. Slowly, he found his gaze drawn over toward the wall-at the art that was hanging there, aglow in the dancing golden firelight. The more he kept looking at it the more the pieces started to fall into place. Ghastly, horrible place. They fit. Sure they did. All of the pieces fit. He had his answer. But how to prove it? How to prove any of it?
Now Mitch jumped to his feet, dislodging Clemmie. She blinked up at him quizzically, unable to comprehend anything that might be more significant than her natural rest. Mitch raced to the phone. He’d tracked down the lieutenant’s home number when he was thinking about calling her. Now he dialed it, his heart pounding. She answered on the second ring.
“Did I wake you up?” he asked her, not bothering with hello.
“Why, no…” Her voice sounded guarded and cool. “I was drawing.”
“Good for you. How is that coming? Have you thought about what we talked about?”
“I have had a few other things on my mind, Mr. Berger.”
“What happened to Mitch?”
“How did you get my home number, Mitch?”
“I went to journalism school, remember? They teach us things like that.”
“And did they teach you how to tell time? It’s four o’clock in the morning.”
“You said I should call if something came up.”
“That was then. I’m on the shelf now, in case you haven’t been paying attention. So if you don’t mind…”
“I do mind. It wasn’t fair. What they did to you. What they said about you in the papers. It wasn’t fair.”
“It’s never fair. If I hadn’t achieved some measure of closure, they would have said I was in over my head. Either way, I end up as toast. Your classic lose-lose situation.” She fell silent briefly. “Actually, there was something I’ve been meaning to tell you. Tal Bliss told it to me before he died…”
It was about that day in New York, when Mitch had almost been pushed in front of the subway train. Bud Havenhurst had informed the resident trooper that it was Mandy who had done it. That it was a sex game with her. With the two of them. Bud had even been in the apartment later that night when she’d tried to seduce Mitch.