David Handler - The Cold Blue Blood

“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.”

Now it flowed. Now he had it.

Now he knew.

Mitch was still clicking away at it that evening, Clemmie dozing contentedly in his lap, when he heard a car pull up outside in the gravel driveway. Followed by footsteps and a tap on his door.

It was Lieutenant Mitry. She was casually dressed-a gray Henley shirt and faded jeans. And she was not empty-handed. She held a gym bag in one hand and a cat carrier in the other. An occupied cat carrier. Meowing was taking place in there. Clemmie was immediately intrigued. So was Mitch. So intrigued that it took him a moment to realize that something was radically different about the lieutenant.

“My God, you cut off all your hair!” No more dreadlocks. Her hair was cropped short and nubby now. Way different but no less striking. It accentuated the long, graceful contour of her neck and shoulders. Her bearing now seemed positively regal. A sculptor would have a field day with this woman. “How come?” he asked her curiously.

“I had my reasons,” she answered, setting down the cat carrier. Clemmie immediately let out a playful squeak and went nose to nose with its resident, both of them crouching low.

“And who, may I ask, is in there?”

She flashed her wraparound smile at him. “Put your hands together for Dirty Harry. Tal Bliss’s cat. I have to move him out now that Big Willie’s in the house.”

“You brought me a dead man’s cat?”

“Hey, you’re lucky and you don’t even know it-I could have brought you Big Willie. Besides, Harry’s a good little mouser. Figured he could show Clemmie the ropes. Cats are happier in pairs, anyway. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Would it matter if I did?”

“Of course not. How’s the leg?”

“It’s fine.”

“Glad to hear it.” She started across the living room with the carrier, Clemmie in eager pursuit. “No need to get up. I know the way.”

She let Dirty Harry out upstairs while Mitch shut down his computer and fetched two beers from the fridge. He handed her one when she came back down a moment later.

“Success,” she reported after taking a long, thirsty gulp. “They’re already hissing at each other like family.”

“Did you eat dinner? I’ve got some of my famous American chop suey left over in the fridge.”

“God, that sounds great, Mitch. But, you know, I’m really kind of full right now.”

Maybe it was a gender thing, Mitch reflected. Maybe women simply didn’t comprehend the finer points of American chop suey.

The lieutenant had something to tell him. Something heavy. Mitch could sense it. She seemed very uneasy now as she stood at the windows in silence, drinking her beer and watching the sun drop into the Connecticut River. Mitch joined her there, listening to the cats tear around after each other up in his bedroom.

“This case made me realize something,” she finally said, her voice low and guarded. “I’ve been in a kind of a holding pattern ever since Brandon left. And the time has come for me to… What I mean is, I’ve decided I need to make some serious changes in my life.”

“Such as?” he asked, watching her carefully.

“I’m putting my house on the market, Mitch. I’m moving somewhere else.”