Bud slid a hand in his pocket and fished out the note Mitch had left for each of them. “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded, looking down his long, narrow nose at Mitch.
“It means just what it says,” Mitch replied, pleased by how normal his own voice sounded. “It means that I’m on to you.”
Jamie took a swallow of his scotch. “About what, Mitch?”
“All of it, Jaymo,” Mitch said. “How you banded together to get rid of Niles. How Tuck seduced Torry. Why you had her check into the Saybrook Point Inn. Why Tal Bliss killed himself.” Mitch paused to take in their reactions. Beads of perspiration were forming on Bud’s forehead. Jamie’s breathing had become shallow and uneven. Of the three, Red seemed the coolest and most in control. This was not good, since it was he who was holding the Browning. “Naturally, I intend to go to the law. Only there’s a few things I still don’t understand. For starters, why did you bury Niles out here on Big Sister?”
“Don’t tell him a thing!” Red barked at the others. “Not one word.”
“I don’t see any upside in that, Red,” Bud countered. “It’s not as if he’s going to get that chance to go to the law.”
“Agreed,” Jamie said heavily.
They intended to kill him. Right here. Right now. Mitch swallowed, his eyes falling on the shotgun. Red still had it pointed down at the floor.
“It had to do with the tides, Mitch,” Bud said. “If it had been high tide, we would have taken his body away by boat and buried him under the rocks out on Little Sister. Unfortunately, it was low tide that afternoon. The channel from our dock is narrow. It’s not uncommon for one of us to run aground. We couldn’t afford to take that chance. Not with Niles’s body onboard. Therefore, burying him here was our safest option.”
“But why did you kill him so close to home?”
“Name a better place,” Bud answered. “It’s totally private out here. No witnesses. The women were gone for the afternoon.”
“We met up with him in the barn,” Jamie recalled. “That’s where it happened.”
“Niles was utterly flabbergasted,” Bud jeered. “The bastard couldn’t believe it. He thought we were joking.”
Mitch took a gulp of his scotch, his hand wrapped tightly around the glass. “Who pulled the trigger?”
“Tuck Weems,” Jamie replied. “He shot the girl, too.”
Red was still not saying anything. Just standing there in front of the fire with the shotgun. Outside, the wind howled and the rain still poured down.
“It was stupid of him to use the same gun,” said Mitch. “That was the one crucial mistake you made.”
“Agreed,” Bud acknowledged miserably. “But only with the benefit of hindsight. At the time, we had no reason to believe that anyone would ever find Niles’s body.”
“And Tuck seemed to know what he was doing,” Jamie added defensively. “He ran the early stages, really. All the rest of us did was loan him our cars for his assignations with that girl.”
“Torry,” said Mitch. “Her name was Torry.”
“Tuck didn’t want to leave a recognizable trail behind,” Bud explained.
“And why did you shoot him?”
“Tuck’s conscience started gnawing at him,” spoke up Red, who’d finally decided there was no point in staying silent. Mitch couldn’t decide whether this was a good sign or a bad sign. He suspected it wasn’t good. “Something to do with him becoming a father for the first time at age fifty. Poor guy thought he’d seen God or something.” Red puffed out his cheeks in disgust. “Suddenly, he wanted to set things right-marry Darleen, become a decent family man.”
“He threatened to go to the police,” Bud said. “And take the rest of us down with him.”
Red nodded. “Not an acceptable option. So Tal Bliss took care of him. Which upset Tal greatly.”
“Plotting to kill Niles Seymour didn’t?”
“Niles was a cancer,” Bud said with savage certainty. “Taking care of him was necessary.”
“Just as keeping Dolly’s thirty-year-old secret was necessary?”
Bud took a sip of his scotch, eyeing Mitch over the rim of his glass. “So you know about that, do you? Lieutenant Mitry was getting very close to the truth. That’s what Tal told me over the phone right before he shot himself. He was afraid that after all of these years poor Dolly would be branded a murderer.”
“Well, she did kill them,” Mitch pointed out.
“That man raped her,” Bud argued, his voice choking with emotion. “She was a virgin and he took that from her! No court of law would have convicted her. But the trial-my God, it would have destroyed her. And she didn’t deserve that. She deserved better. She still does. There are very few truly special people on this earth, Mitch. Dolly is one of them.”
“And so is Evan,” Jamie added fondly. “Like mother, like son. They’re too gentle, too good for this world, Mitch. People like Dolly and Evan can’t make it in life on their own. They need protecting.”
“On this particular issue Jamie and I have always been in agreement,” Bud said. “They must be protected.”
“And so must Big Sister,” Red said. “This island has belonged to my family for three hundred and fifty years, Mitch. It’s our legacy. Each generation is beholden to it. We have a duty to make sure it stays ours. Niles didn’t see family tradition. All he saw were big, fat dollar signs. Lord knows what might have happened to this place ten or twenty years down the road if he were allowed to remain here. Niles was a problem that needed solving. We solved it.”
“Even though you had to kill an innocent girl to do it? You guys don’t seem too concerned about sacrificing the life of Torry Mordarski. Or about leaving her son an orphan.”
“We needed the girl,” Red explained simply. “It wouldn’t have worked otherwise.”
“I did suggest using Darleen,” Bud spoke up. “Checking her into Saybrook Point Inn. But Tuck wouldn’t implicate her-he actually loved the little cow.”
“Did he have any feelings for Torry?”
“Torry was a whore,” snapped Red.
“And you three are gutless wusses,” Mitch said, shaking his head at them. “You should have killed me when you had the chance. Not that you didn’t try, of course. On the subway tracks-am I right, Bud?”
“That was… a different matter,” Bud responded quietly.
“You didn’t drive into the city that day, did you? You rode in on the same train we did.”
“Yes,” Bud confirmed, reddening. “I sat ten rows behind you the whole way in. You two never noticed me. But I saw you. I saw how she cozied up to you. I saw how she k-kissed you in the middle of Grand Central with all of those people watching. Her body pressed against yours. Her lips… I-I lost my head on that subway platform. Utterly and completely. Loving Mandy-it’s a disease. A vile, incurable disease.”
“And yet you told Tal Bliss that Mandy was the one who pushed me. Why?”
“That was her idea,” Bud explained. “She said no one would prosecute her. They never have, never will. But with me it might be different. We had my career to think of. And my reputation.”
“You should have killed me,” Mitch repeated, glancing around at the three of them. “But the fact remains that you didn’t kill anyone. You had the Dudleys Do-Right and Do-Wrong do it for you. This time it’s different. You actually have to pull the trigger yourselves. And I don’t think you can do it. In fact, I’m prepared to bet my life you can’t.”
They all stood there in charged silence now.
“What is it you want, Mitch?” Bud asked him finally.
“What is it I want?” Mitch thought he heard a door slam somewhere in the distance. But it may just have been the wind. He couldn’t tell for certain. “I want Hollywood to make some decent, well-acted movies that are not totally devoid of intellectual ambition. I want to lose thirty pounds. I want to spend some quality time with a certain long, tall brunette. I want-”
“He means,” Red broke in impatiently, “what would it take for you to remain silent?”
“None of us are millionaires,” Bud cautioned. “And Mandy’s money is bound up in a trust. But I could arrange to transfer the deed to this house to you.”