The Cold Blue Blood (39 page)

“Welcome to Lawrence and Memorial Hospital in historic New London, Connecticut,” Lieutenant Mitry said to him briskly. She was seated at the foot of his bed, dressed in a crisp white shirt and gray flannel slacks. The woman looked bright and efficient and way more alert than Mitch felt. “You’ve been out for something like sixteen hours. The bullet hit an artery so you lost a lot of blood. Straight up, another fifteen minutes and you might not have made it. But you’re okay. No broken bones. You took it in the meatiest part of your thigh. Lot of meat there. Whole lot of meat there. In fact, the doctor said—”

“Okay, you’ve made your point about the meat, Desiree,” interjected the lady seated next to her. She was a roundish little old lady in a faded sweatshirt that was emblazoned with the bygone slogan: E.R.A.-Y.E.S. There seemed to be a great deal of cat hair on this sweatshirt.

“Who are you?” Mitch croaked at her. There was nothing in his mouth after all. He was simply thirsty. He had never been so thirsty.

“Give it up for my girl Bella Tillis,” said the lieutenant.

“I am a huge fan of your work, Mr. Berger,” Bella exclaimed. “Although I must tell you I still disagree strongly with your negative assessment of
The Truman Show.
I felt that its message about the pernicious pervasiveness of modern media far outweighed the inherent plot weaknesses.”

Mitch groaned inwardly.
I am not in any hospital in New London. I have died and gone to film critics’ hell
. “Bella, we’ve met before, haven’t we?” he asked, peering at her.

Bella stuck her lower lip out at him. “I don’t believe so, no.”

“You ever live in Stuyvesant Town?”

“No, never.”

“Wait, I know—you were my Uncle Sid’s first wife, am I right?”

“No, dear, you’re not.”

“We’re related,” Mitch insisted. “I’m positive we’re related.”

“Can I get you anything?” Lieutenant Mitry asked him.

“Water, please.”

There was a carafe on the credenza next to his bed. She got up and poured some. Mitch could feel his pulse quicken as she stood there close to him. His gaze held hers when she handed him the styrofoam cup, her own eyes growing large and shiny behind her horn-rimmed glasses.

“What’s up with that Band-Aid on your arm?” he asked her after a long drink. “Were you wounded?”

“No, no. Just donated some blood, that’s all.”

“That was nice of you.”

“Well, you needed it.”

“You mean you donated your blood to me?”

“What I said, wow man.”

“You mean
your
blood is coursing through
my
veins at this very moment?”

The lieutenant cocked her head at him curiously. “Why are you making such a big deal about it?”

“Because it means we’re members of the same tribe now.”

“Get out of here—that’s kid stuff.”

“It most certainly is not. It’s a time-honored truism that dates all the way back to
Broken Arrow.”

“Man, if you’re about to start in on old movies again I am way out of here.”

Now he became aware that someone else was standing in the doorway.

“You’re awake,” this someone said.

Mitch’s jaw dropped. “Lacy, what on earth are
you
doing here?”

His editor stiffened. “I am deeply offended by your overt display of astonishment. I can nurture. I can donate blood … Well, I can nurture. Besides, the press corps is mobbing the parking lot outside and I
need
your article.”

“I’ll get right on it, boss. Have you folks … ?”

“Oh, we’ve met,” Lacy responded tartly. “We’ve bonded. We’ve swapped secrets. We’ve arranged for me to pick up two neutered male tabbies on my way home to the city.” She broke off, her lips pulling back from her teeth in a pained grin. “Mrs. Tillis has even been kind enough to share her thoughts with me on the overall decline of our arts coverage.”

“I especially hate that dance critic,” Bella sniffed. “So smug.”

“How did it go with your people?” Mitch asked the lieutenant.

“It went,” she answered curtly. “I told them I was there because I’d brought a stray kitten by for you. And I happened to be upstairs with her when the three perps showed. And that turning on the tape recorder was your idea.”

“All of which is technically true,” Mitch pointed out. Of course, it was also true that he’d sneaked her out there in his truck and that she’d been hiding upstairs, waiting for them to show their hand. “Did they buy it?”

“They did and they didn’t.”

“Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning my case is still under review. And I’m still on administrative leave.”

“I’m really sorry, Lieutenant. This is all my fault.”

She shook her head at him. “Don’t even go there. I had a choice to make and I made it. No regrets. But I
can
tell you this much—if you hadn’t pulled through I would be roadkill.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t be doing so hot, either. How’s Dolly?”

“Not great,” the lieutenant replied grimly. “She’d always blocked it out. What happened that day, I mean. Now that the truth’s come flooding in, she’s gone into a severe depression. Her doctor believes she’ll be able to deal with it in time. But for now she’s downstairs in the psychiatric ward—under a suicide watch.”

“Poor Dolly,” Mitch said heavily. “Will she be charged in those murders?”

“There’s no great desire on the part of the district prosecutor to proceed on that.”

“How about the Three Amigos?”

She brightened considerably. “They were arraigned this morning in New London Superior Court. They’re being charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Plus the attempted murder of yourself—times two on Bud Havenhurt’s part. They’re being held without bail.”

“Well, this is good news.”

“It gets even better—Jamie Devers has already confessed. Man’s trying to cut a deal for himself.
And
we found strands of Torry Mordarski’s hair in Bud’s Range Rover.”

“Excellent.”

“Indeed,” she agreed. “Although it’s kind of quiet out on that island. The only two people left are Bitsy Peck and Evan Havenhurst.”

“What happened to Mandy?”

“She hightailed it for New York.” The lieutenant’s voice dripped with scorn. She did not have much use for Mandy Havenhurst. “She’s in seclusion, quote-unquote.”

“Shall I arrange to have a reporter and photographer tail the little bitch around the clock?” Lacy asked her sweetly.

“Girl, you and I are going to be friends,” Lieutenant Mitry said, smiling at her. “Oh, hey, I almost forgot …” She reached for a covered Tupperware bowl and presented it to him. “Here’s your tapioca. Mrs. Enman was only too pleased.”

“You remembered!”

“Damned straight I remembered. A man’s last request matters. Although I can’t imagine why you’d want to eat this stuff. Looks like a bunch of eyeballs floating around in custard, if you ask me.”

“Who asked you?” Mitch demanded. “Besides, what do you know about food?”

“You are so right, Mr. Berger,” Bella agreed, shaking a stubby index finger at him. “This girl does not eat. If I didn’t watch her dietary intake like a hawk she would simply waste away.”

The lieutenant let out a pained sigh. “Okay, now I am definitely out of here.”

“You are not,” Bella huffed at her. “You will stay here and you will feed this poor man. He needs to get his strength back.” She began rifling through the credenza. “Do you suppose there’s such a thing as a spoon around this place?”

Lacy said she would try to find one. Or maybe it was the lieutenant who said this. Mitch wasn’t sure. He was slipping away again. He was tired. He was so tired that everything was starting to get fuzzy again.

But he didn’t join Maisie this time. Maisie wasn’t there anymore. She was gone—gone for good. Mitch felt certain of it. She had given him one precious parting gift before she went away. She gave him the Fibonacci Series. And for this Mitch would always be grateful. Because from now on, whenever he thought of his beloved wife, Mitch would be able to smile.

And maybe, someday soon, he might even be able to laugh again.

EPILOGUE

THREE DAYS LATER

“I WANT YOU TO tell the whole story, Mitch,” Evan Havenhurst informed him as he scampered about the deck, raising the sails. “Every word of it—even the part about Mother and Tuck Weems’s father. Don’t hold anything back. Not one thing.”

There was a morning mist out on the Sound. The late May air was soft and warm and held the first promise of summer. Mitch manned the tiller of
Bucky’s Revenge,
huddled there in his life jacket with his bad leg held out stiffly before him. The throbbing was beginning to subside. He no longer needed the pain pills and he could hobble around on it pretty well, although he still tired quickly. To build up his strength, he’d taken to walking the beach three times a day—each time a little bit farther than the last.

Going out for a sail had been Evan’s idea. The young man wanted to talk. “Let’s get it out in the sunlight,” he declared, taking over the tiller from Mitch. Soon the J-24 began to pick up the breeze and run with it, its sails taut, the salt spray cold and bracing. “Blow the cobwebs and the dust off. Let it breathe.”

“You’re sure about this, Evan?”

“Mitch, I’m totally positive. I need for you to do it. Consider it part of my healing process, okay? And I
will
heal.”

“Sure you will,” Mitch said encouragingly.

Not that anyone would have blamed Evan if he’d broken into small pieces. He’d lost his lover, his father and his uncle in one fell swoop. And his mother was still on very shaky ground. It could easily have destroyed him. But that hadn’t happened. Evan had spent a good deal of time alone out on
Bucky’s Revenge
since that night, searching within himself for reserves of hidden strength. And, seemingly, he had found them. To Mitch he seemed more takecharge than he had before.

“Mitch, I despise this notion that they somehow felt they had to do it for me,” he said angrily as they scudded across the blue water. “I don’t need coddling and protecting. I’m not a helpless child. I never asked them to do
any
of that. Nor did my mother. We
never
would.”

“I know that,” Mitch said. “Everyone does. That was all just a grand delusion—an excuse they made up so they could justify their criminal behavior to themselves. And maybe it worked. Maybe they fooled themselves. But they didn’t fool anyone else. So don’t take it to heart, Evan.”

“Believe me, I won’t,” he said. “I just have to stay focused. I’ll get up every day. I’ll run the shop, take care of Mother, manage the island … For the first time in my life I’ll be responsible for more than just myself. But I’ll be okay. Aunt Bits is in my corner. So’s my cousin Becca. She’s coming back from San Francisco to work in the shop with me. She’s had some drug problems, but she’s a genuinely cool, twisted person. You’ll like her, Mitch. Which reminds me—I hope you’ll be sticking around. I mean, I hope this hasn’t scared you off.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mitch assured him. “I can’t—I already promised Sheila Enman I’d be picking up her groceries for her every week. And I still have my damned book to write.”

As the sun got higher it burned off the morning mist and the sky turned blue. It was going to be a bright, sunny day.

A sad smile crossed Evan Havenhurst’s handsome face. “My family, to state the obvious, is really screwed up.”

“I think all families are. I think that’s what earns them the right to be called families.”

“I know that now,” Evan acknowledged. “And I accept it. Once you do, everything else seems to fall into place. Kind of funny how that works, isn’t it?”

Bitsy Peck, meanwhile, had retreated deep into her garden. Mitch found her in there after he and Evan docked. She seemed to be in the process of installing an entirely new hedge between her vegetables and her perennials. A dozen four-foot-tall holly bushes, their roots balled in burlap, were lined up in a row, waiting for her to finish digging a twenty-foot-long trench for them. Bitsy dug with feverish intent, the sweat pouring from her. One day soon her tears would come, Mitch felt certain. For now she was pushing them away, one spadeful at a time.

As he stood watching her, Mitch could not help but remember the sound of his own spade hitting Niles Seymour’s leg.

“It’s Ilex pedunculosa,”
Bitsy burbled excitedly when she noticed him there. “I
finally
found a male. I’ve been searching for weeks and weeks. A commercial grower out on the Cape had one. You see, the females won’t produce those lovely red berries unless you plant at least one male in their midst. They can’t propagate.”

“I had no idea that plants came in different genders,” Mitch confessed.

“Oh, my, yes,” Bitsy exclaimed, puffing. “It’s a very basic birds and bees kind of a thing, Mitch. Just don’t ask me for the scientific details because I don’t understand them.”

“How can you tell which one’s the male?”

“No berries at all. See the third one from the left? That’s my little stud bull.” She paused to swab her face and neck with a bandanna. “Oh, this is so excellent. I have been wanting this hedge for years!”

“How are you making out, Bitsy?” Mitch asked her gently. “Are you going to be okay?”

She immediately resumed her digging, attacking the soil with manic energy. “Of course, Mitch. And so will Dolly. We’re a much hardier variety than you men realize. There’s absolutely no need for you to worry about me. No, no—I’m not the one who has behaved recklessly and stupidly. I’m not the one who’s sitting in a jail cell all by himself at this very minute. I’m the one who’s still out here, holding down the fort.” She paused a moment, gasping for breath. “Take a look, Mitch. Take a good, hard look at what’s happened. And ask yourself this: Which one is the weaker sex?”

Mitch didn’t answer. There was no need to answer.

He limped back to his little house, flicked on his computer and got to work on his Sunday magazine piece. Out went his initial, somewhat treacly Currier and Ives lead paragraph. In came a leaner, more muscular opening:
“She was a slim, bright-eyed girl with blond hair and a nice smile. She was the granddaughter of a U.S. senator. Everyone called her Peanut. Everyone wanted her-especially the family caretaker. And one afternoon, shortly before she shot and killed him, he had her.”