The Bright Silver Star (12 page)

Becca was out there working with her right now, weeding a flower bed in a halter top and shorts, her own efforts rather distracted and halfhearted. Mitch had seen old photographs around the house of Becca in her full ballerina getup. She had been a slender and graceful young swan of a girl. Truly lovely. But that was before the needle did its damage. Now she was a gaunt, frail shell of a woman with haunted eyes that were sunk deep in their sockets and rimmed with dark circles. Her long brown hair was twisted into tight braids that looked like two lifeless hunks of rope.

Mitch smiled and said hello to her. Becca mouthed “Hello” in polite response, although scarcely a whisper came out. She was painfully quiet. This, too, was the needle, according to Bitsy, who said Becca had been the most outgoing, popular girl in her high school class. Looking at her now, Mitch found it hard to believe.

“So sorry about all of those press vans at the gate today, Bitsy,” he said, toting his bucket over toward her corn patch.

“They didn’t bother us one bit,” Bitsy assured him.

“Well, they sure bothered me.”

Bitsy swiped at the perspiration on her upper lip, leaving a smear of mud behind. “My, my, aren’t you all fresh scrubbed and smell-goody,” she observed with motherly pride as he began stripping choice ears of corn off their stalks and plunging them into his
bucket. “And here we are like a pair of sweaty farm animals, aren’t we, Becca?”

“Yes, Mother,” Becca responded faintly.

“What’s the occasion, Mitch?” Bitsy asked, her good cheer a bit forced.

“I’ve been invited to the beach club. I’m kind of anxious to check the place out, actually. No one’s ever invited me before.”

“And who did, dare I ask?”

“Dodge Crockett.”

Becca immediately dropped her trowel, which clattered off a low stone retaining wall onto the ground. She stared down at it briefly, but didn’t pick it up. Just walked away instead—straight into the house, her stride still uncommonly graceful.

Bitsy watched her go, biting down fretfully on her lower lip. “She doesn’t like to talk about Dodge.”

“I noticed. How come?”

“I’m worried about that girl, Mitch. She spends too much time alone. It’s not good for her. She needs stimulation. I wish Esme would come see her.”

Mitch glanced at her curiously. “They know each other?”

“Oh my, yes. They were best friends when they were girls. The great Esme Crockett practically grew up out here. Slept over almost every night during the summer. There were slumber parties and pillow fights, and poor little Jeremy was
so
in love with her.” Becca’s younger brother, a senior at Duke, was away serving a summer internship in Washington. “He’d follow her around like a gawky little puppy. The house was full of kids and laughter then,” Bitsy recalled fondly. “Not like now.” She went back to her forking, throwing every fiber of her body into turning over the soil. “I didn’t realize you and Dodge had become buddies.”

“We walk together every morning. I like him a lot.”

“People do think very highly of Dodge,” she allowed, nodding. “There was even talk about the party running him for lieutenant governor some years back. I suppose it’s just as well they didn’t.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Yes, he’s a bright, enthusiastic fellow, all right. More than willing to do his part around town. So is Martine, who is so generous with her time, always ready to throw herself body and soul behind a good cause. And such a decorative creature, too.” Now Bitsy trailed off, glancing up at Mitch uncertainly. “Just promise me one thing. Promise me you won’t be too taken in by them. Will you do that for me, Mitch?”

“Okay, sure,” Mitch said, frowning at her. “But why?” “Because they’re cannibals,” she said quietly. “They eat people.”

The Dorset Beach Club was located at the end of a narrow and perilously bumpy little dirt road that snaked its way back through a half mile of marsh and wild brambles off of Old Shore Road. It was a private dirt road. No sign on Old Shore marked its presence. In fact, the roadside brush was so overgrown at the beach club turnoff that if you weren’t looking for it you would never know it was there.

Which, this being Dorset, was the whole idea.

In fact, Mitch wasn’t even sure he was bouncing his way down the right dirt road until he reached a grassy clearing filled with beat-up old Ford Country Squire station wagons, Mercedes diesels, and Subarus. Then he knew this had to be the beach club—in Dorset, the richer they were the junkier their ride. Only the working poor drove shiny new cars.

At the water’s edge sat a modest, weathered gray shingled cottage-style clubhouse that looked as if it had been built in the 1930s. Mitch got out, corn bucket in hand, and made his way around to the beach-side on a raised wooden walkway, passing through a portal directly into a different time and place. Here, on a wide wooden dining porch beneath a striped blue awning, Mitch found properly attired club members being served their proper lobster dinners by hushed, respectful waiters in white jackets. Proper attire for men was apparently defined as a madras sports jacket and Nantucket red pants. Proper attire for women was anything Katharine Hepburn might have worn to a summer concert under the stars in, say, 1957. A rather
tinny sound system was playing soothing, vaguely Polynesian-sounding music. Not a single one of these members was under the age of seventy. Actually, not many appeared to be under the age of eighty. They seemed lifelike enough, although none of them actually spoke and all of them moved in slow motion, as if this were a dream. Standing there on the walkway with his bucket, Mitch had the astonishingly powerful feeling that this
was
a dream, that none of it was real, just his own Jewish schoolboy fantasy of what a private club like this might have been like in bygone days.

Mitch had experienced these paranormal phenomena several times before since he’d moved to this place. He’d taken to calling them Dorset Interludes.

Dodge had instructed him to continue past the dining porch to the long wooden veranda that faced the sand. Here there were showers and changing stalls, a cold drink stand and other amenities for beachgoers. Umbrella tables and built-in barbecue grills were provided for members who wanted to cook out and eat right there on the beach. It was all pretty unassuming considering just how exclusive the beach club was. Three letters of recommendation and a certified check for $10,000 were required—and that was the easy part. The hard part was that the membership roll capped out at a strict maximum of two hundred families, meaning that in order to get in you had to know people and then those people had to die. Not that it looked as if it would necessarily be a long wait, given the median age of the members who were politely gumming their lobster and corn back there on the dining porch.

Of course, the main attraction of the club was the beach itself— and a very nice, wide stretch of clean white beach it was, the sand so immaculate it looked as if it were raked hourly. No trash, no doggy poop, and above all, no beer-bellied pipe fitters from New Britain with their loudmouthed wives and squalling kids. Only the right sort of people were to be found on this beach. People who
belonged
here. Mitch didn’t and he never would and he knew this. But he plodded his way toward the barbecue grills anyway, footsteps thudding heavily
on the wooden walkway. He was not here to fit in. He was here to bury the hatchet with Tito Molina.

The Crocketts had commandeered two umbrella tables at the far end of the veranda, where they were sharing a pitcher of iced margaritas with Will and Donna and Jeff. Tito and Esme hadn’t arrived yet. A big spread of cheeses and crackers was laid out on the table. No one seemed to be touching any of it. They were too busy drinking and talking, their eyes bright, voices animated.

“Hey, it’s macho man,” called out Donna, who was the first to spot him.

“Mitch, you look like you just went three rounds with Roy Jones Jr.,” observed Will.

“How does the jaw feel?” asked Jeff, who sat huddled under the umbrella with a beach towel over his exposed knees. Being a redhead, he burned easily.

“It’s really not so bad as long as I don’t smile, talk, or eat.”

“Where’s our resident trooper?” asked Dodge as he refilled everyone’s glasses. The pitcher was already half empty—they’d gotten a serious head start.

“I’m afraid she couldn’t make it.”

“That’s an awful shame,” clucked Martine, who was stretched out languorously on a lounge chair in the sun, looking tanned, terrific, and not a day over thirty-five in her snug-fitting black one-piece swimsuit. Martine’s hips were slim, her legs long, shapely, and smooth. She glanced fondly up at Dodge as he brought her a refill, stroking his arm with tender affection. Then she turned her inviting blue-eyed gaze on Mitch, drawing him effortlessly toward her. “But I’m so glad
you
could join us.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Mitch, his mind straying back to that word Bitsy Peck had just used to describe the Crocketts—
cannibals.
“Beautiful evening, isn’t it?”

“Beautiful,” she murmured, gazing at the soft glowing sky over the Sound.

“It will be raining by midnight,” Dodge predicted. “My left knee aches—old lacrosse injury.”

“Darling, I always thought it was your right knee,” Martine said teasingly.

“It’s
always
been the left,” he kidded back.

“Oh, goody, Berger brought corn,” observed Donna, her eyes gleaming at Mitch. She already seemed a bit tipsy. “Some men bring flowers and champagne, others bring hog feed. Speaking as one of the hogs, I say thank you.”

“Speaking as another one of the hogs, I say you’re welcome.” Mitch delivered the bucket to Will, who was building a fire in one of the grills out of seasoned hardwood chunks and mesquite. Dressed in a tank top, nylon shorts and leather flip-flops, Will could easily be mistaken for the club’s lifeguard. To Mitch he also seemed a bit less lighthearted than the others. Distracted, maybe. Was it being around Martine when both her husband and his wife were around? Mitch wondered.

“Seriously, Mitch, how is your jaw?” he asked with genuine concern.

“Seriously, it hurts like hell. I really don’t like getting hit.”

“But you’re okay to eat?”

“Oh, I’ll manage,” said Mitch, his stomach growling as he checked out their dinner—racks and racks of baby back ribs, potato salad, red cabbage slaw, fruit salad, brownies.

“For what it’s worth, I’ve known Esme since she was in pigtails,” Will said. “She’s always had good instincts about people. If she likes somebody, there’s some good in there.”

“I believe it.”

“Care to try a margarita, Mitch?” asked Dodge.

“I’ll settle for a beer, thanks.” Mitch fetched a Dos Equis out of the cooler, popped it open, and settled into a deck chair with it. “This is nice here,” he said, taking a long, thirsty gulp.

“You’ll have to be our guest more often,” Martine said lazily, crossing her ankles. “We vastly prefer it down at this end. You’ll find all of us club rebels down here. That dining room crowd
is so
stuffy.” A cell phone rang in the canvas tote bag next to her. She reached for it. “I’ll bet that’s Esme. She’s
always
late. . . . Hi, sweetie,” Martine
said into the phone, nodding her blond head at them. “We’re all here waiting for you. . . . It’s lovely out, although Daddy is absolutely convinced it’s going to rain. His right knee’s acting up.”

“Left knee,” Dodge interjected, grinning at her.

“Sweetie, when are you two—?” Now Martine’s face fell, her brow furrowing. “What do
mean,
you’re not . . . No, I absolutely
don’t
understand. This is very important. You
know
it is. Tito needs to— Esme? Esme, are you still there? . . .” Martine flicked off the phone, sighing, and tossed it back into her bag. “She couldn’t get him to come. They quarreled about it and he drove off in a huff. Everything with them is such a battle, Dodge. I wish we could do something.”

“They have to work it out for themselves,” Dodge said. “It’s their marriage.”

Now Mitch heard sharp footsteps coming their way.

“Oh, great, here comes Little Mary Sunshine,” muttered Jeff.

Chrissie Huberman was marching toward them, the wooden veranda shuddering under each of her onrushing strides. The publicist’s face was set in a determined scowl, her fists clenched. She did treat Dodge and Martine to a great big toothy smile when she arrived at their table. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Crockett!” she exclaimed, all sugar and spice for the parents of a prized client. But then Chrissie abruptly whirled, stuck her finger in Mitch’s face and snarled, “Don’t you
ever
try to pull something like this again! I
forbid
it, you hear me!”

Mitch took a sip of his beer and said, “I hear you, Chrissie. But I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Like hell you don’t,” she raged. “You’re trying to feed off of Tito behind my back. No way! You want face time with my client then you come through me! I protect those kids. I bleed for those kids. And there will be no secret sessions with Tito Molina as long as I’m—”

“Before you go any further,” Mitch interrupted, “it’s my duty to inform you that you’re way off base.”

Chrissie tilted her head at him mockingly. “Tell me this wasn’t a secret meeting.”

“It really wasn’t, Chrissie,” Dodge spoke up. “It was simply an informal get-together between family and friends.”

“Of which
you
are neither,” Martine said to her pointedly.

“Honestly, all I want is for this situation with Tito to go away,” Mitch said.

Chrissie let out a derisive laugh. “Yeah, right. I know all about you, Mitch Berger—how you’re the Mother Teresa of film critics. Won’t do the junkets, won’t accept gifts. Well, guess what? I don’t believe any of it. What Tito did to you today is
every
critic’s wet dream. You’re no different than the rest. You
all
want a taste,” she jeered at him, grabbing her own crotch for lewd, crude emphasis. “You want it so bad you can’t stand it.”

Mitch gazed at her in stunned silence. They all did. Heads were even starting to turn all of the way back at the dining porch. It was safe to say no one had ever seen such a public display of behavior by a female at the fabled Dorset Beach Club. Certainly not by one over the age of three.