David Handler - The sweet golden parachute

Not that he had the power to stop him. The old geezer could play cards.

Rut returned from the kitchen with two bottles of stout. He set them down on the table, wheezing slightly, and fed his wood stove with more logs. It was a cold, damp March night. Soon it would be St. Patrick’s Day, which was Mitch’s least favorite holiday of the year. Not because he hated parades or corned beef and cabbage, but because of something very personal and sorrowful.

Mitch poured the creamy stout slowly into his tilted mug and took a sip, savoring its rich, nutty flavor, before he dove for another slice of the pizza he’d picked up at a small family run pizzeria in Niantic. It was not Lombardi’s coalfired pizzeria on Spring Street, but it was very good.

Rut sat back down and reached for the cards, shuffling them as the logs crackled in the wood stove. “Mitch, I have a small favor to ask of you. And if this isn’t your kind of thing just say so and there’ll be no hard feelings. Do you happen to know Justine Kershaw? She’s Milo’s youngest.”

“No, we’ve never met.”

“Well sir, Justine’s life is about to get a whole lot more complicated,” Rut told him, setting the cards aside. “Her big brothers, Stevie and Donnie, are getting out of prison tomorrow. And it sure doesn’t help that the young man who she’s been seeing, Bement Widdifield, is the very fellow who called the law on them.”

“So I’ve heard. Everyone’s talking about it.” The Kershaw brothers were Dorset’s reigning nasty boys. They’d been behind bars ever since Mitch had moved to Dorset. Something to do with property that they’d stolen from the Vickers family. “Rut, are those two as bad as everyone says?”

Rut sat back in his chair, considering his answer carefully. “Stevie and Donnie have been boosting booze from people’s houses since they were twelve years old. Fighting. Drug dealing. Getting nice girls high, stealing their parents’ cars-you name it, Stevie and Donnie have done it. I think they’ve pissed off more people in this town than any two boys I’ve ever known. But I should also say that nobody’s ever given them half a chance, what with feeling the way they do about Milo. He’s an ornery little cuss. Has a lot of bluster in him. Plus he’s been at odds with the Vickers family for years, and if you tangle with them there is no way in hell you will ever come out ahead.” Rut paused to sip his stout. “But Milo’s okay in my book. When he’s over here, he’s always rewiring a lamp, fixing a leaky faucet. Never asks for anything in return. Milo’s been a real friend. And a comfort, both of us being widowers and all.”

“You were going to ask me something about Justine…”

“I feel bad for that girl,” Rut confessed. “Let’s face it, Stevie and Donnie will be furious about her being mixed up with Bement. Not just because of what happened but because of who he is.” Bement Widdifield was the great Poochie Vickers’s grandson by way of her daughter, Claudia, and Claudia’s husband, Mark Widdifield. Claudia was Eric’s older sister. “Milo’s mad enough about it to spit. The Vickers are the reason he spent three years in jail himself. Claudia’s none too happy either. She thinks the Kershaws are trash, every last one of them. Not that it’s anyone’s damned business. Bement’s over twentyone. So is Justine. Who she dates is her own affair.” Rut shifted around in his chair, sighing. “Mitch, she’s like a granddaughter to me. Prettiest little thing you ever saw. Has a mouth on her like you wouldn’t believe. Got that from Milo, I guess. I’m real concerned there’ll be a kerfuffle now that the brothers are getting out. Not that I’m asking you to get in the middle. That’s more a job for your exgirlfriend.”

“She’s not my exgirlfriend, Rut.”

Rut frowned at him. “Are you sitting here telling me that you and the resident trooper weren’t a hot and heavy item?”

“I’m telling you she’s still hot and I’m still heavy. We didn’t break up.”

Rut peered across the table at Mitch doubtfully. “Word is, you popped the question, she turned you down, and you two are history.”

Mitch didn’t know how this splitsville rumor about Des Mitry and he had gotten started, but it had taken on the weight of absolute truth-no matter what he or his exceedingly bootylicious lady love said to the contrary. “Rut, what are you asking me to get in the middle of?”

The old postmaster hesitated, thumbing his chin. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, what with there being so much bad blood.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that? Tell me about the Vickers and the Kershaws. Why is there so much bad blood?”

“Well, I suppose I’m uniquely qualified to answer that, seeing as how I’m the only soul in town who’s kin to both families. I’m related to the Kershaws through my late wife, Helen. She and Bessie Kershaw, Milo’s mother, were cousins. And I’m first cousin to Poochie on my mother’s side, the Dunlop side. Poochie’s mom, Katherine, and my mom, Eunice, were sisters. Dunlop is an old, old name around these parts. It was Bish Dunlop, my granddad, who built Four Chimneys.”

Four Chimneys was the colossal brick mansion a couple of miles outside of the village where Poochie resided on two hundred acres of choice riverfront land. Eric’s farm was there, as was Claudia and Mark’s home.

“Granddad Bish put a big dent in the family fortune building that place,” Rut continued. “The stock market crash took care of the rest. The family was practically bust by the time my mom and Aunt Katherine reached marrying age. Mom was no help. Married herself a science teacher. Aunt Katherine was a different story entirely. Went and married herself John J. Meier of the Pittsburgh steel Meiers. They ensconced themselves like royalty in Four Chimneys and raised Poochie just like a princess. Sent her to the finest schools in the world. She was smart as a whip, beautiful and spirited. Not to mention a worldclass swimmer.”

“Rut, is it true that she was kicked off the ’56 Olympics team for drinking champagne with a reporter?”

“It is. And I still say that if a male athlete had kicked up his heels that way no one would have said boo. Poochie’s always been ahead of her time. Never gave a goddamn what other people thought. And yet, when the time came, she married herself that big money stuffedshirt Coleman Vickers. Or the Ambassador, as he preferred to be called,” Rut added dryly. “He did serve as ambassador to France for several years. That’s when Poochie took up her chef thing.”

Mitch was quite familiar with Poochie Vickers’s chef thing. Everyone was. She’d helped revolutionize American cooking in the 1970s by introducing home cooks to the pleasures of French farmhouse cooking, which emphasized locally grown seasonal ingredients flavored with fresh herbs, not the ones that came dried in a jar. “If they’re dead then they taste dead!” Poochie used to exclaim on The Country Chef, the PBS cooking show that had made her a household name. And a bestselling cookbook author. The woman was so full of daffy charm that she’d made her mentor and good friend, Julia Child, seem almost demure.

Mitch was also quite familiar with the name Coleman Vickers. A distinguished advisor to three different U.S. presidents, Coleman Vickers had been president of Columbia University when Mitch studied there.

“A prized horse’s patootie if ever I met one,” Rut sniffed. “The guy’s supposed to be a professional diplomat and he couldn’t buy a quart of milk in this town without putting somebody’s nose out of joint. Always accusing the merchants of overcharging him. Which they’d never do on account of Poochie. That lady is beloved. And Eric is a terrific fellow. So is Bement.”