The Shimmering Blond Sister Read online

  And it had gone straight downhill from there. Augie was always trying to goad her. Part of him was just kidding around. But not all of him. His eyes, when he turned serious, were cold, forbidding holes. Augie had a definite problem with the likes of Des wearing a uniform. She didn’t know if it was because of her pigment, her gender or both. Didn’t care, actually. The man was an ass.

  He started up the Gator, Ballantine in hand, and eased it over to the Farrells’ garage, which was open. Big, plastic tubs full of nickel deposit bottles were stowed in there next to their long, white Cadillac. On a Ping-Pong table there were a dozen or more black plastic trash bags stuffed with old clothing. Each bag had a label on it that read something like Women’s Sweaters: Petites, Men’s Shirts: Mediums or Goodwill. A cord of seasoned firewood was stacked against the back wall.

  Augie began to fill the Gator’s box-shaped cargo bed with armloads of wood. “That skinny old bitch Mrs. Farrell accosts me this morning and tells me they must have firewood on their porch right away.” He paused to belch audibly. “I say to her, ‘Lady, it’s ninety effing degrees out.’ But her husband positively swears the weather’s going to turn sharply colder next week. And she says he chills easily. Must be that blue blood of his. Me, I’m a hot-blooded Mediterranean. I never get cold. Never screw people out of their life’s savings either. If it weren’t for that bastard, I’d be out fishing right now—maybe some nice, long-legged babe rubbing suntan lotion on my back. Instead, I have to put up with them and their crap. Get this—I was out sweeping the front walk this morning, maybe seven-thirty. I come back and I find that skinny old bitch in my apartment. You’ll never guess what she was doing.”

  “Rummaging through your trash?”

  “Exactamundo. She ain’t all there, you ask me. And, boy, does she have her nose up in the air. Her and all of the other rich old broads in this town. You say hello to them and they act like you just took a leak on their shoes.”

  “Mr. Donatelli . . .”

  “It’s Augie.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Working. Why, what does it look like I’m doing?”

  “I mean here in Dorset.”

  “Oh . . .” His face went slack. “My missus, Gina, always wanted to retire to a cozy little New England village. All those years in Mineola she kept saving brochures, magazine articles. It was her dream. But she never got the chance. The cancer got her.”

  “Is that why you retired from the NYPD?”

  “That is none of your damned business.”

  She’d run a computer background check on him at the Troop F barracks. Detective Lieutenant Augie Donatelli had received four commendations for valor during his career. He’d been working out of the 24th Precinct on Manhattan’s Upper West Side last year when he chose to retire after twenty-six years on the job.

  “I’m here for the both of us,” he grunted as he toted one more armload of wood to the Gator. His gait was not entirely steady. He was at least a six-pack into the Ballantine. “The job was dead to me. The city was dead to me. House was empty. So here I am, sugar pie. You got a problem with that?”

  “No, Augie, I don’t.”

  He got back in behind the wheel of the Gator, grinning at her. “Good, because I think I’ve got a break in our flasher case.”

  Des immediately felt herself tighten up inside. “I thought we had an understanding about that, too. You’re not on the job anymore. And I don’t discuss ongoing investigations with members of the public.”

  He shook his head at her in disgust. “Drop the act, will ya? I’ll admit it—you’re walking around with one of the top ten cabooses I’ve ever seen in my life. And I used to work uptown, if you follow what I’m saying. . . .”

  “Actually, I’m trying really hard not to.”

  “But I was busting heads back when you were still in kindergarten. So be smart. I’m a resource. And I’ve got one doozie of a theory. If I were you, I’d listen to it.”

  “It’s been a long, hot day. How about tomorrow?”

  “You blowing me off?”

  “I’m saying how about tomorrow.” And hoping he’d forget that they’d ever had this conversation. Beery haze and all. “Have a good one, Augie.” She tipped her Smokey hat at him and started down the driveway toward her cruiser.

  Augie turn the Gator around and eased along next to her. “What time should I call you?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Know what? You have got some attitude on you, homegirl.”

  “I don’t have an attitude. I treat everyone with respect. Why don’t you give it a try sometime?”

  “Wait, I got something else for you. I’m talking huge here. Has to do with our Beth Breslauer,” he confided, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of her condo. “She and your boy Mitch are real tight, you know. They met for smoothies at The Works this afternoon.”

  “And you know this because . . . ?”

  “I have the lady under surveillance.”

  Des came to a stop, hands on her hips. “You’re following her?”

  “She’s quite some dish. I’d tap that in two seconds flat if it gave me a chance.”

  “Um, okay, I’m guessing it hasn’t. Augie, are you aware that we have stalker laws in this state?”

  “Who’s stalking? The Works is a public place. So’s the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville.”

  “What about the Mohegan Sun?”

  “I drove up there a couple of weeks back to see Billy Joel. The Piano Man did ten straight sold-out nights there. And, believe me, he put on a show. Pounded those ivories for two and half hours, sang his heart out . . .”

  “You saw Mrs. Breslauer at the Billy Joel concert?”

  “Outside in the parking lot. She was working it.”

  “What do you mean by ‘working it?’ ”

  “Trust me, that lady is not who she pretends to be,” he explained, taking a long swig of his Ballantine. “This is one of the most fascinating characters I’ve come across in a long time. Ever hear of the Seven Sisters?”

  “Sure, that’s what they called the ladies’ Ivy League back before the schools went coed. There was, let’s see, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Smith . . .”

  “No, not those Seven Sisters. Geez, don’t you hick troopers out here know anything?”

  By now they’d reached the foot of the driveway. Des could see the Farrells seated on their screened-in porch. Dex Farrell was sitting in a rocker, reading a book. He was a severe-looking white-haired man with rimless eyeglasses. He didn’t look up at them. But Maddee did—and promptly got busy making space on the porch for the firewood.

  Across the street, John the barber was locking up his little shop for the night. He and a couple of his fellow volunteers from the firehouse next door were gabbing. All three of them waved at Des.

  She waved back at them, then took a deep breath and said, “Can I give you a piece of advice, Augie? If you want to remain employed in this hick town, you’d better stop tailing your tenants and start fixing their leaky faucets. And you might want to cut back on the Ballantine, too.”

  “You are trying to get me fired,” he snarled in response. “Nothing makes you people happier, does it?”

  “By ‘you people’ you mean . . . ?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, you bitch! You know what I mean. Can’t stand having me around, can you? Afraid your little secret will get out.”

  “What little secret?”

  “That you haven’t got the slightest goddamned idea what you’re doing!”

  The men across the street could hear Augie quite plainly. Were missing none of this.

  “Get hold of yourself, Augie,” Des cautioned him quietly.

  No chance of that. He climbed out of the Gator and charged toward her, staggering slightly. “They don’t know the truth about you!” he roared, stabbing her in the shoulder with his finger. “But I do! I know you stepped over a dozen good men to get this job. And I know you stink at it!”


  “You’ve had a few too many, Augie. Why don’t you go up to your apartment and sober up?”

  “Don’t tell me what to do!”

  She put a gentling hand on his shoulder. “Take it easy. I’m on your side.”

  “Like hell you are. Get your goddamned hand off of me. Get it off!” he hollered with a violent shrug of his shoulder. So violent that it rocked him back on his heels. Teetering, he lost his balance and came down hard on his butt in the driveway.

  John and the others across the street were laughing at him now.

  “You shoved me!” he spat at her, enraged.

  “I did not.” Des held her hand out to him. “Come on, let’s get you up.”

  He bared his ugly, yellow teeth at her. “Get away from me.”

  “Take my hand, Augie.”

  He refused. Just sat there on the gravel like a petulant little boy.

  “Fine, have it your way. But go home and sleep it off, will you?”

  In response, Augie told her to do a very bad thing to herself. Then, in a menacing voice, he said, “Homegirl, you’re going to be sorry you ever met me.”

  “Trust me, wow man . . .” Des showed him her wraparound smile. “I’m already there.”

  CHAPTER 3

  In the city there was no such thing as autumn. There was summer. There was one cold, rainy weekend in October when all of the leaves fell off of the street trees. And then there was winter. But out on Big Sister, even though a torpid August haze hung low over Long Island Sound, autumn had already begun. Mitch saw its signs everywhere as he made his way down the beach to Bitsy Peck’s house, bucket in hand. Orange leaves dotted the island’s gnarly old sugar maple trees. A squadron of geese flew low overhead in a V-formation, heading due west. And a swarm of monarch butterflies were encamped in the cedars bordering Bitsy’s place, resting up on their long migration south. Fall was coming for sure. It just wasn’t in the air yet.

  Bitsy had a mammoth, natural-shingled Victorian cottage with sleeping porches, turrets and amazing views in every direction. Her multilevel garden was truly spectacular. Hundreds of species of flowers, vegetables and herbs grew in her fertile terraced beds. It was Bitsy who’d taught Mitch the joys of gardening. She was out there right now, pruning away the yellowing vines on her heirloom tomato plants, the better to expose the ripening fruit to the sun’s rays.

  “It’s the corn man,” he called out to her, brandishing his bucket.

  “Come ahead, young sir,” Bitsy called back. “What’s mine is yours.”

  She’d grown more than she could eat and had told him to take as much as he wanted. The best way to cook the fresh ears, he’d learned, was to plunge them into a bucket of cold water as soon he picked them. Then throw them on the grill to steam in their husks.

  Bitsy was a round, snub-nosed little woman in her fifties who’d welcomed Mitch from the day he moved out to Big Sister. She was always happy to share her bounty and her wisdom. Also her insider’s knowledge of Dorset. There wasn’t anyone or anything that Bitsy Peck didn’t know about. It was the Pecks who’d first settled Dorset way back in the 1600s. Bitsy was also someone who had been through a lot. She’d lost her husband right after Mitch came to town. And her daughter, Becca, was a recovering heroin addict. Even though the lady gave the impression of being a ditsy hausfrau, she was plenty tough and shrewd.

  “I just ran into Beth Breslauer,” he told her as he plucked a few choice ears from her corn patch. “Her name used to be Lapidus. She lived across the hall from me in Stuyvesant Town. Her son Kenny and I were pals growing up.”

  “Isn’t that something? Such a small world.” Bitsy paused from her labors, fanning herself with her floppy straw hat. “I could use a tall glass of iced tea. Care to join me?”

  Mitch filled his bucket from her garden faucet and followed her to the shade of her wraparound porch. He took a seat in one of the rockers and gazed out at the Sound. There were no sailboats out. Not enough breeze. No gas-guzzling cigarette boats either—which had nothing to do with the breeze and everything to do with the economic times they were living in. The chesty boys could no longer afford their toys.

  Bitsy came back outside with their iced teas and sat down next to him.

  Mitch took a long, grateful drink before he said, “Beth’s bought a place in the Captain Chadwick House. It’s supposed to be impossible to get in there.”

  “It’s very, very hard,” she acknowledged. “I know of at least six ladies who’d love to buy a unit.”

  “And yet Beth swooped right in even though she’s a widow from Scarsdale with no social connections here—that I’m aware of.” He studied Bitsy, his eyes narrowing. “Nobody gets in there without a green light from Bertha Peck, am I right?”

  “You most certainly are.”

  “And you’re related to Bertha, aren’t you?”

  “We’re second cousins by marriage. My husband’s father was a cousin of her late husband Guy Peck, Jr.”

  “I don’t get it. What kind of a connection could Beth possibly have with someone like Bertha Peck?”

  Bitsy let out a merry chortle “Exactly what do you know about Bertha?”

  “I know that she’s the queen bee of Dorset polite society.”

  “That’s Bertha Peck, all righty.” Bitsy sipped her iced tea. “But what do you know about Bertha Puzewski?”

  “Not a thing,” Mitch said eagerly. “Do tell.”

  “Before Bertha married Guy she was a pretty little steelworker’s daughter who’d danced her way to Broadway from Weirton, West Virginia. Bertha was a chorus girl when Guy met her. Check out her legs some time. They’re still fabulous.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “That’s because she reinvented herself as Yankee royalty. Trust me, the only finishing school she attended was the Billy Rose Aquacade at the 1939 World’s Fair. And she got around in those days, too. Dated racketeers, gamblers, prizefighters. She was quite the little tootsie, our Bertha. There was a whole lot of whispering about her when she married Guy. I can still remember the old Dorset biddies saying that she’d once been the kept mistress of some mobster. Why, they practically made her out to be the Woman in Red.” Bitsy paused, frowning. “I don’t suppose that name will mean anything to someone your age.”

  “You’re referring to Anna Sage, the madam who fingered John Dillinger for the FBI. She told them he’d be at the Biograph Theater in Chicago watching Manhattan Melodrama, an MGM gangster picture with Clark Gable, William Powell and Myrna Loy. It was the first on-screen pairing of Powell and Loy, who went on to make fourteen pictures together. Most notably their Thin Man series.”

  Bitsy stared at him with her mouth open. “Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to.” She sipped her iced tea and resumed. “Bertha has outlasted all of those old ladies. There’s hardly anyone left who knows her real story.”

  “Tell me, what have you heard about Beth Breslauer?”

  “Not a whole lot, honestly. She doesn’t socialize much. I understand that her late husband was an eye doctor in the city. I do know that Bertha prefers New York City doctors to the fellows out here. Maybe that’s their connection. Maybe Beth’s husband treated her.”

  “It turns out that Kenny is getting married to Kimberly Farrell, my yoga teacher.”

  “So I’ve heard. Kimmy went through school with my Becca. She’s always been a real sweetheart.”

  “And yet Beth seemed a bit cool about her. Told me there was baggage. Kimberly’s father, for starters. Her mother is hoping a great big wedding will get them back into the good graces of Dorset’s elite.”

  “That’s not too likely,” Bitsy said with a shake of her head.

  “Meaning people aren’t ready to forgive him?”

  “Meaning Dex and Maddee Farrell never belonged to Dorset’s elite in the first place.”

  Mitch looked at her in surprise. “I thought they were upper crusters.”

  “You thought wrong, Mitch. Neither Dex nor Maddee is from one of the founding families.
To be quote-unquote Dorset you must be a Peck, a Vickers or a Havenhurst. The Farrells are merely wealthy New Yorkers with good social contacts.”

  “Whoa, time out. Bertha Peck is a chorus girl from Weirton, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And no one in Dorset so much as farts without her permission, right?”

  “Mitch, no one in Dorset farts, period,” she pointed out, her eyes twinkling at him.

  “So how come she’s quote-unquote Dorset and they aren’t?”

  “Because she married Guy. Because she’s Bertha. And because Dex behaved despicably.” Bitsy gazed out at the water, her snub nose wrinkling. “My retirement portfolio is worth a fraction of what it once was thanks to that man. He will not be forgiven easily by me or anyone else.”

  Mitch rocked back and forth, sipping his tea. “Beth also has some concerns about Kimberly.”

  “I can’t imagine why. Kimmy’s a terrific catch for the right young man.”

  “I gather she wasn’t the right catch for someone else.”

  “Oh, I get it. She’s wondering about Kimmy’s marriage to Connie Cliffe’s boy.”

  Mitch knew the name Connie Cliffe. She was a high-end interior designer who had a mansion in the Historic District.

  “Surely Beth can’t be holding J. Z. against her,” Bitsy went on. “A lot of us make that sort of mistake when we’re young. Kimmy was barely out of Bennington when she met him. J. Z. was a good ten years older than she. Lordy, he must be forty by now. You’ve no doubt seen him working around the island. He’s the house painter who does my place, Dolly’s. . . .”

  Mitch knew whom she meant now. The big, strapping guy with the ponytail who’d been reglazing Bitsy’s windows a few weeks back.

  “That marriage lasted less than three months, Mitch. And, believe me, it wasn’t Kimmy’s fault. These things happen.”

  “What things happen?”