The Cold Blue Blood (11 page)

“Do you sail?” he asked Mitch.

“No, I’m a city kid, through and through. I can’t even swim.”

“Not a problem—that’s why they have life preservers. I can’t swim either. Child stars can’t do anything. Hell, I didn’t learn how to tie my own shoelaces until I was …” Jamie paused, glancing down at own his feet. “Actually, I still don’t know how to.” He let out a huge guffaw. “You’ll have to come out for a sail sometime with us, Mitch. You’ll enjoy it. And I promise you we’ll even wear clothes.”

This comment did not go over well with Bud, who immediately stalked off, red-faced.

Evan let out a pained sigh. “Jaymo, why must you rub his nose in it?”

“Sorry, Ev,” said Jamie, patting his hand. “The Bud man’s just such a prig I can’t help myself.”

Evan went to fetch them drinks, leaving Mitch with the one-time star.

“Still doing any acting, Jamie?”

“Boyfriend, I never
was
an actor,” he replied, with no trace of bitterness. “Being a child star means being
you.
When you get to be older, and you find out they now expect you to play a role, you discover you never really learned how. And you have no real life experiences to draw upon, since you’ve had no real life.” Evan returned now with glasses of wine for each of them. Jamie thanked him and turned back to Mitch. “In answer to your next question: No, I never watch the reruns. It was all a lie. Bogus people living in a bogus world. In fact, we don’t even own a TV That’s all behind me now. So is Tinsel Town. Beverly Hills is the only ghetto in America where the rats don’t live in the walls. Being here, I have achieved peace for the first time in my life.” He glanced fondly at his handsome young companion. “Poor Evan still has the bug, I’m afraid. That’s how we met—he was in an acting class that I was teaching in New York. I’ve been doing my best to talk him out of it. That’s absolutely the only thing Bud and I see eye to eye on.”

Evan had brought hors d’œuvres that needed heating. He excused himself to go take care of them. Mitch and Jamie drifted into the study, where Bud and Red sat talking. The subject was Niles Seymour and what a bastard he was.

“It wasn’t enough that he broke Dolly’s heart,” Red was saying, his voice a low murmur. “He had to leave her high and dry, too. That’s the detestable part.”

“Unforgivable,” agreed Jamie, sipping his wine.

“He cleaned out their joint checking and savings accounts,” Bud explained to Mitch. “He even liquidated their stock portfolio. Well over a hundred thousand dollars altogether.
And
he used their joint Visa card to buy two airplane tickets to St. Croix—before Dolly could get around to freezing it.”

Mitch nodded, wondering why they were suddenly being so open with him.

“Has he filed for the divorce yet?” Jamie asked Bud.

“No, but
she
will,” Bud replied. “On the grounds of desertion.”

“I call it outright theft,” Red fumed. “He should be in jail. The man is a no-good con artist.”

“I wouldn’t call him no good,” Jamie said. “I’d call him damned good. He’s handsome. He’s charming. And he’s as persuasive as hell. Convinced Dolly to put his name on everything, didn’t he?”

“We can’t touch him, Red,” Bud admitted glumly. “Niles had a legal right to that money.”

“But the money in those accounts was
hers
,” Red said insistently. He had grown considerably more loquacious with a couple of stiff drinks in him. And, like Bud, he was very protective of Dolly. “Those investments were
hers
. They do not belong to Niles Seymour and that … that …
bimbo
.”

“Who is the other woman?” Mitch asked.

“We don’t know,” Bud answered, reaching for his scotch. “Some little redhead he knew in Atlantic City before he met Dolly, apparently. All we can say for certain is that one day she showed up at the Saybrook Point Inn and the next day Niles, his car and every penny Dolly had to her name were gone.”

“We spotted them together,” Red mentioned. “Bud and I. We’d docked at the inn after a sail for a bite of brunch. And there they were having a cozy breakfast together in the dining room. She was exactly what you’d expect from Niles—young and sleazy. A thorough tramp.”

“Dolly found a Dear John letter on the kitchen table the next morning,” Bud added. “Bastard didn’t even have the nerve to face her. Just cleared out.”

“What does he do for a living?”

Evan came in now with a platter of quesadillas. He lingered, refilling his father’s scotch and Jamie’s wineglass.

“He sells things,” Red answered. “Menswear, cars, yachts …”

“And himself,” Bud added bitterly. “Above all, Niles Seymour sells himself.”

At the mention of the name Evan abruptly slammed the wine bottle down and went fleeing back to the kitchen.

“Evan doesn’t like to talk about him,” Jamie explained to Mitch quietly. “He murdered Bobo, you see. We loved Bobo. She was our baby. Most traumatic experience of Evan’s life, watching that poor little dachsund writhe in pain in his arms, unable to do a thing to help her. The vet did an autopsy—said someone had fed her ground meat laced with arsenic. We could never prove it was Niles, but we have no doubt. He’s the one who was always complaining about her barking.” Jamie’s face tightened at the memory. “He used to call us the Queers. Was always leaving us nasty little notes that began: ‘Dear Queers.’ If we left a trash can out. If we had people in for drinks … I think he believed we were having gay orgies. He’s a truly horrible person.”

“None of us were particularly sorry to see him go, Mitch,” Red said. “It was almost as if he went out of his way to antagonize every single person on this island. Kept pushing me to build luxury condos out here. He wanted to bulldoze the woods, have plans drawn up.
Condos …”
Coming out of Red’s mouth it sounded like the single dirtiest word in the English language. “Can you imagine?”

“He put the moves on Mandy repeatedly,” Bud spoke up angrily. “She was not the least bit interested. But he wouldn’t leave her alone. I finally confronted him about it. Do you know what that bastard said to me? He said, ‘Don’t blame me if your wife is a common slut.’ I popped him one right in the nose. First time I’d hit someone in thirty-five years.”

“Niles used to smack Dolly around,” Red recalled. “I saw the bruises. So did Tuck Weems, who threatened to strangle him. That put a solid scare into Niles—Tuck not being the stablest individual around. Niles reported Tuck to Tal Bliss.”

“Did Bliss arrest him?” Mitch asked.

“No, that’s not Tal’s style,” Bud answered. “He just told Tuck that it would be best if he didn’t work here on Big Sister anymore. Now that Niles is gone, he’s back. Dolly insisted. She’s always been fond of Tuck.”

Red stared morosely into his empty glass. “I must confess there’s one thing that greatly concerns me …”

“What’s that, Red?” Bud asked.

“What’ll happen when Niles comes back. Because he
will
be back—just as soon as the money runs out.”

“Never,” Bud snapped. “That’s totally unthinkable.”

Jamie said, “I agree with Red. The bastard
will
come crawling back. What’s more, Dolly will take him back.”

“After what he did to her?” Mitch said. “How could she?”

“Oldest reason of all,” Red replied. “She still loves him.”

They fell into grim silence. Outside, ominous clouds were rolling in over the Sound. The sky was growing dark.

“Understand you got yourself locked in your crawl space yesterday, Mitch,” Bud said offhandedly.

“Yes, I did. Someone closed the trap door on me.”

“Damned foolish thing to do,” muttered Red.

“Who did it?” asked Jamie.

“No idea,” said Mitch. “All I know is I heard footsteps. Heavy footsteps.”

“I see …” Bud glanced uneasily over at Red, who seemed a bit uncomfortable himself. “May I ask—how did Dolly react to your little misadventure?”

“Rather strangely, now that you mention it. She maintained I
hadn’t
heard any footsteps. She was quite insistent about it, actually.”

“Well, she would be,” Red said heavily.

“What do you mean by that?” Mitch asked.

Red gazed out the window at the approaching darkness. “Not that it’s anything you should be concerned about—because, well, we are talking about someone who was clinically deranged—but Tuck’s father, old Roy Weems …”

The madman who had shot his wife and himself in Mitch’s bedroom. Mitch leaned forward in his seat. “Yes …? What about him?”

“In the weeks leading up to the incident,” Red Peck said, “Roy kept claiming he heard footsteps.”

Now was when Mitch had his second nightmare.

This one was a doozy. This time Mitch was back in Dolly’s study with those three men. Only now their eyes were red and their teeth very sharp, like the vampires in those garish Hammer Films horror flicks with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. And Maisie was in this one. In fact, she was one of them. She was trying to kill him. To get away from her he fled back down into the crawl space—only they followed him. They all did. Their eyes glowed at him in the darkness. And they had him surrounded. And they were edging closer and closer and …

He awoke screaming. His heart was racing. His T-shirt was drenched with sweat. And his little house was shaking. A wicked storm had blown in. The wind was howling. Lightning crackled in the sky. Thunder rumbled. And the Sound had come to life, pounding angrily against the rocks.

As Mitch lay there in the darkness, listening to this, he heard footsteps again. At first, he felt he might be letting his imagination get the best of him. But he wasn’t. These footsteps were real. And they were
in
the house. Downstairs. Now they were
on
the stairs. He could hear the stairs creak. Each creak was a footstep, each one louder than the last. Someone was moving steadily, stealthily toward him in the darkness. Growing closer. And closer …

“Who’s there?” Mitch demanded to know.

Silence. Only silence.

He fumbled for matches. Lit his hurricane lamp, bathing the upstairs loft in a golden light.

Dolly Seymour stood there at the top of the stairs.

She wore a long white nightgown and an utterly blank expression. She was barefoot. She was shivering. She stood with her hands clasped behind her, rather like a child posing for a class picture. Except she was no child. She was a mature, lovely woman. And her nightgown was very nearly sheer. Mitch could make out the fullness of her breasts, the rosy hue of her nipples, the darkness of her pubic hair.

“What is it, Dolly?” he asked her huskily. “Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer him. Just stared at him, her gaze eerily unfocused. She seemed to be in a kind of trance. Was she sleepwalking? Drugged? He couldn’t tell. Her lips were moving, a low murmur coming out of her mouth. But no words. At least, none he could comprehend.

He raised his voice. “Dolly, can you hear me?!”

“The mother,” she said in a soft little sing-song voice. Saliva bubbled from her lips.

“What about the mother?”

“The mother is
hurt.”
Now she started across the loft toward Mitch, unclasping her hands, raising one of them over her head.

She held a carving knife in her hand. A long carving knife. And she was coming right at him with it.

Mitch clambered from the bed and grappled with her, wrestling the knife from her hand. Dolly relinquished it with little resistance. Their brief struggle seemed to rouse her from her trance. She blinked her eyes several times now. And she looked around at the loft, wide-eyed. Then she let out a gasp of utter horror and fainted dead away in Mitch’s arms. He stood there holding her for a moment. He thought about putting her right to bed here in his bed. But then he thought better of it. He carried her sideways down the narrow stairs, hugging her to his chest, feeling the aliveness, the animal warmth of her in his arms and his hands. He carried her out his open front door into the darkness, the wind howling, the trees rustling. Fat raindrops were beginning to patter down. Soon it would pour. He started down the gravel path with her toward her place. It was a long way to carry someone but she was as light as a feather. He made it through the laundry room door with her and managed to flick on the kitchen light. Several drawers were open, the contents strewn on the floor as if the place had been burgled. He carried her up to her bedroom and set her down gently on her bed. He turned on the nightstand light. Dolly was stirring now, her eyes flickering. Her tiny hands and feet were frozen. He began rubbing them for her.

That was when she came to. She panicked at the sight of him there. “Why, Mitch!” she cried, pulling her nightgown tightly around herself. “Wh-What are you doing here in my … ?”

“You were wandering in the night, Dolly. You were in my house.”

“That’s not possible!”

“I assure you it is. You came all the way upstairs to my room.”

“Oh, dear.” She swallowed, reddening. “I’m so sorry, Mitch. I do sleepwalk from time to time. I-I’m sorry to have put you to so much trouble.”

“Not a problem. That’s what neighbors are for.”

“Thank you for being so kind.” Her eyes softened now, her gaze holding his. She reached out for his hand and took it, gripping it tightly. She seemed very frightened and alone at that moment, very vulnerable.

And, suddenly, Mitch was keenly aware of just how awkward the silence was becoming. He remembered how she had felt in his arms. He realized how long he had gone without a woman. But he was also aware that it was a genuinely bad idea to go down this road. So he said, “Can I get you anything—a glass of water, another blanket?”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’m just so sorry I bothered you. Imagine what you must have thought …” She yawned. She suddenly seemed overwhelmingly sleepy. “Good night, Mitch,” she mumbled, burrowing under the covers. “And thank you.”

Mitch shut off the light and went back downstairs, only to discover he was not alone.

Bud Havenhurst was standing there in the kitchen in a silk bathrobe, glowering at him. “I saw the light,” he said to Mitch accusingly. “Just exactly what do you think you’re doing here?”