The Cold Blue Blood (5 page)

As Mitch sat there, gazing out his windshield, he felt a powerful tug. This would be the first summer in a long time that he wouldn’t be renting a beach cottage. He couldn’t go back to Fire Island. Too many ghosts. And he detested the Hamptons, which were strictly for show. Even the way people gardened there was relentlessly competitive and joyless. Peony envy, Maisie used to call it. So he had decided to stay in town this summer. Work on his book in air-conditioned solitude.

But sitting here now, he felt a pang of regret.

Near the southernmost tip of the Point, the dirt road ended at a barricaded bridge. It was a long, narrow wooden bridge that led a quarter-mile or so out over the swirling surf to a small island. He could make out a cluster of houses out there. Towering over them was a lovely old whitewashed lighthouse. A sign that was posted at the barricade said PRIVATE PROPERTY. ACCESS BY PERMISSION ONLY. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. The barricade was raised and lowered by inserting a coded card in an electronic sensor device, like in a private parking garage. Deliverymen and guests could gain access only by buzzing the residents, who were obviously very rich and very lucky.

Mitch consulted his map. The island was called Big Sister.

He was still sitting there gazing at it when someone pulled up behind him. Someone who wanted to cross this private bridge that Mitch was doing a very effective job of blocking. It was a woman in an ancient blue Mercedes diesel that rumbled and shook as it idled there, sending plumes of exhaust into the air. Before Mitch could move out of her way she got out and approached him.

She was in her late forties or early fifties, and she must have been quite beautiful when she was a girl. She was still an exceedingly lovely and well put-together woman. Tiny, no more than five feet two, and slender, with an air of innate class and elegance that reminded Mitch of Deborah Kerr at her most genteel and ladylike. She had porcelain blue eyes, delicate features, high cheekbones. She wore her silver blond hair cropped at her chin and parted on the side, like a boy. She was deeply tanned but her complexion was unlined and youthful. She wore no makeup. She wore a buttery yellow cashmere sweater, tailored gabardine slacks and pearls. A silk kerchief was knotted at her throat.

She smiled faintly at Mitch through his open window. “You’re early—I wasn’t expecting the ad to run until Tuesday.” Her voice was very gentle and reserved.

“The ad?”

“You
have
come about the carriage house, haven’t you?” she asked, flushing slightly.

“Yes, I have,” Mitch said impulsively.

“If you’ll lead me to my house—it’s the cream-colored one—I should be happy to show it to you.”

“And I should be happy to see it.” He was here to write a getaway story. If his getaway happened to include a guided tour of a private island, so much the better. “I’m Mitch Berger, by the way.”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Berger. I am Dolly Seymour.” She inserted a plastic card into the security slot. The barricade in front of the bridge hummed and slowly began to rise. “Kindly lead on. I shall follow.” She started back to her car.

Mitch eased his way slowly out over the choppy blue water on the spindly wooden bridge, trying to remember the last time he had heard someone use the word “shall” in ordinary conversation. The bridge was exceedingly loud, bumpy going. Also exceedingly narrow. Not much more than one car-width, with railings on either side, along with utility poles that carried the power and phone lines out there.

As he drew closer to Big Sister he began to realize that the houses were not clustered nearly so close together as they had seemed. Each of them was built on the rocky cliffs overlooking the Sound and distanced from its neighbor by acres of woods and green meadows. There was the cream-colored center chimney colonial that Dolly had referred to. It was at least two hundred years old, and quite grand. But not nearly so grand as the natural-shingled Victorian summer cottage next door. This place had wraparound balconies and turrets and sleeping porches and must have had at least ten or twelve bedrooms. Also a spectacular garden. There was a second Victorian summer cottage that was like a miniature version of the big one. There was a squat stone lighthouse-keeper’s cottage house built in the shadow of the old lighthouse. A gravel driveway connected the houses, which were also joined by footpaths bursting with wild beach roses and bayberry. They had a tennis court out here, their own private beach and their own dock, where two yachts were presently moored.

It was, Mitch reflected, a hundred or so acres of pure paradise.

He told her so when he pulled up outside of her house and got out. It was at least five degrees cooler out here, thanks to the brisk breeze off of the water.

“Yes, it is quite lovely,” she acknowledged wistfully. “Sometimes, I forget just how lovely.”

“How did it get the name Big Sister?”

She squinted at him, as if she were regarding him from a great distance. “It’s the tides. At low tide one can actually walk out here across the rocks and tide pools. That’s how the animals get out here. The deer and so forth. But when the tide is high, such as it is now, the cross currents from the river are swift and treacherous. Swimming out here from the Point is unthinkable—one would be washed out to sea instantly. And there are rocks. That was why they built the lighthouse. It’s been decommissioned for years, poor thing. But in its heyday, it had a pair of thousand-watt lamps that could be detected from thirty-five miles away on a starry night. There was no bridge in the old days. We had our own little ferry boat to the Point. And once, during a terrible storm, my grandfather’s older sister, Enid, capsized in it and drowned. That’s why it’s called Big Sister. It was simply known as Peck Island prior to that. That’s also why we built the bridge. Hurricane Gloria totalled it in 1985,” Dolly Seymour recalled, her chin raised with stubborn Yankee pride. “We rebuilt it.”

Now she marched briskly down a path that led around to the back of her house. She pumped her arms vigorously as she walked, her small fists clenched. He had to speed up to stay with her. She had a formal ornamental garden back there. But that wasn’t where they were heading. She was leading him in the direction of a sagging, unpainted old barn.

“They used to raise salt marsh hay on the island in the old days,” Dolly continued. “There are about fifty good acres of land. They floated the oxen out here on flat barges.” Beyond the barn there was a carriage house that had been converted into living quarters. “Well, here we are,” she exclaimed. “What do you think?”

Mitch didn’t know what to think. It was small. It was dilapidated. It was a wreck. One end of it appeared to be sinking down into the overgrown shrubbery. Then again, it was entirely possible that the shrubbery was actually holding it up. Its shingles were green with mildew and rot. Its windows were either broken or gone. It looked as if one good gust of wind would blow the whole place over.

“It used to be our caretaker’s house,” Dolly explained. “But we haven’t had anyone full-time in years. And now that my Niles is gone I’m afraid that money is …” She broke off, her bright blue eyes widening with alarm. “Oh, dear, should I be telling you this? I suppose there’s no harm. What I mean to say is that the income would be most welcome. That’s why I’ve decided to rent it out.”

“For the summer?”

“I
had
hoped year-round,” she answered fretfully, “but I suppose if you’re only interested in the summer we
could
work something out … Oh, dear, maybe I shouldn’t have said that either, since you
are
the first person who has come. I didn’t want to go through one of the agencies, you see. The Realtors out here are such busybodies. Frightful, nosy women. And it’s none of their business, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” Mitch agreed, liking her. She was just the tiniest bit dizzy.

“My lawyer will want references and deposits and things,” she added with a vague, helpless wave of her hand. “You’re a New Yorker? I noticed the license plate.”

“Yes, I am.”

“And do you and Mrs. Berger have children? The reason I ask is because it’s really quite ill-suited for a family.”

“No, no. I’m a widower.”

She considered this, her brow furrowing sympathetically. “How awful. She must have been frightfully young, poor thing.”

Mitch said nothing, knowing his voice would catch if he did.

Dolly plunged hastily into the awkward silence. “Let’s have a look inside, shall we? Now I should warn you—I’ve been using the downstairs for storage and it’s, um, a bit …”

Filthy. It was filthy. There were cobwebs and mouse droppings everywhere, coupled with the pervasive smell of mold and disuse. A man’s things had been heaped rather carelessly in the center of the bare floor. There were garment bags and suitcases stuffed to bursting with coats and suits and sweaters, cartons crammed with shoes, athletic trophies, old yearbooks, papers. There was a set of golf clubs, a bicycle, a stuffed and mounted warthog’s head.

But in spite of this, Mitch was awestruck by what he saw. Because this was no ordinary outbuilding. It was a genuine antique post-and-beam carriage house with exposed beams of hand-hewn chestnut. The room, which was a good-sized one, had a big fieldstone fireplace at one end, wide-boarded oak floors and floor-to-ceiling windows that afforded a totally unobstructed view of the water in three different directions. It was a bit like being on the bridge of a ship at sea.

Standing there, Mitch felt a tingle of excitement. It had been Maisie’s dream that they would one day find a little cottage for themselves. A place where they could curl up in front of the fire. Dig in the garden. A place to escape from everyone when they felt like it.
This
place. Mitch was sure of it. He had never been more sure of anything in his whole life.

“I haven’t quite figured out what to do with his things,” Dolly murmured apologetically. “Niles hasn’t asked me for them—I suppose he’s not settled yet. Mind you, I did consider taking all of it to the dump, but that would have been so petty, would it not?”

Evidently her husband had left her. Which Mitch found rather hard to imagine. Dolly was so attractive and classy and nice. Plus this island was so remarkable. Why would anyone ever want to leave?

“I’ll move all of it out, of course,” she went on. “And have it properly scrubbed and painted. The windows repaired and so forth. But we do tend to be a pretty self-sufficient lot out here. So it would help if whoever took it were handy. Are you?”

Mitch was not. His experience with handyman specials began and ended with
Mister Blandings Builds His Dream House
, which he considered a vastly overrated film. “Well, I’m certainly game,” he said helpfully.

“Good, good! The roof is sound … Fairly sound, anyway. And it has its own oil furnace and septic and well.”

“You said the caretaker used to live out here?”

“Yes, when I was a girl. I was raised on Big Sister. My maiden name is Peck, you see.”

“As in Peck Point?”

“That’s right. My family settled this area back in 1649. Saybrook was nothing more than a fort at that time, built by Lion Gardiner of Dorset Regis. The rest of this area, hundreds of thousands of acres, was land granted to Malcolm and Matthew Peck for services rendered to the crown.”

“What kind of services?”

“No one knows, but my own theory is that they were thieves and scoundrels,” she answered with a smile.

There was a pullman kitchen and a bathroom with a scarred old tub. They weren’t much, but they were adequate. There was a hinged trapdoor in the kitchen floor fitted with a brass transom catch that had a recessed pull ring. She raised it to show him what was down there. It was a dirt crawl space, very dark.

“There’s no basement, I’m afraid,” she apologized. “That means no washer-dryer. There is a laundromat in town …” She broke off, frowning prettily. “Of course, as it’s just you, I should think you could use mine. And there are a few odd sticks of furniture collecting dust in the barn. Nothing grand, mind you.”

A steep, narrow staircase led up to a loft above the living room. It had a peaked ceiling with exposed beams and skylights. It had a pair of dormered windows for light and ventilation. There was enough space for a bed up there but not much else.

“Dear God, would you believe I had my very first kiss up here?” Her eyes shone with schoolgirl longing. “I was twelve.”

Mitch eyed her curiously. She seemed attached to this place. Also reluctant to part with it. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

A dark look crossed her face—and Dolly Seymour suddenly seemed someplace else. Someplace very far away. Someplace very unpleasant. It shook her. A shudder of pure animal revulsion seemed to shoot right through her entire body. But then, just as suddenly, she returned. “I’m quite sure I don’t want to,” she responded in a soft, thin voice. “But I must. I need the income. I have no marketable skills of any kind. None. And our property taxes are positively crippling. That’s why we gave the Point to the Nature Conservancy. These houses out here are just about all we have left. And we
can’t
lose them. The trouble is that I’m on my own now, Mr. Berger.”

“It’s Mitch,” he said quietly. “Not easy being alone, is it?”

“No, it’s not. I guess you understand that, don’t you?” She looked him over carefully, as if realizing for the first time that she knew virtually nothing about him. “What is it you do, Mitch?”

“I’m a film critic.”

“How fascinating! I’ve always admired people who do creative things.”

“The filmmakers are the ones doing the creating. I just write about it. But I have a new book to get done. And I need someplace quiet to work.”

“Big Sister is definitely quiet. In fact, winters it’s too quiet for some.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” said Mitch, imagining himself taking long walks on the snow-driven beach. Curling up with a good book in front of a roaring fire, the surf pounding outside his window. “I would want a vegetable garden.”

“There’s an old one out behind the barn that is just waiting for someone to bring it back to life. And I’ve garden tools aplenty and …” Dolly took a deep breath and blurted out, “I’m asking a thousand a month, Mitch. What do you say, shall I call my lawyer and tell him you want it?”