The Cold Blue Blood Read Online Free PDF Page B

was done she ate her breakfast of grapenuts, banana and skim milk. It was the same breakfast she ate every morning. She showered and dressed in a crisp white blouse and pressed gray gabardine slacks, blue blazer, polished cordovan loafers. She cleaned the charcoal smudges from her horn-rimmed glasses and put them back on. She applied a bit of purple lipstick. She wore no other makeup. Her hair burst forth in dreadlocks that tumbled wild and free halfway down her shoulders and back. A woman in East Hartford did them for her every three months. All Des had to do was keep them washed and oiled. Des’s immediate higher-ups on the job, all of them white men, regarded her hair as some kind of a militant black feminist statement. They hated it. Des didn’t care.
    In fact, that was kind of the whole point.
    Gazing at herself in the mirror, Des felt that she looked remarkably like a stylish, promising young minority quota executive at one of the insurance giants in Hartford.
    Just as long as you didn’t notice the top-of-the-line SIG-Sauer that she wore on her hip.

CHAPTER 3

    THE STORM WAS GONE in the morning. The sky was blue, the birds were chirping and the air wafting through Mitch’s window was scented with cherry blossoms and the tangy freshness of the sea. It was a cheerful, life-affirming sort of day. It was just the sort of day that made Mitch yearn for a darkened movie house, a Tod Browning double bill and an economy-sized tub of buttered popcorn.
    But not today. Today he had a story to write.
    After he had shaved and dressed he partook of the Frederick House’s homemade scones with honey and coffee on the porch. Then, armed with his notepad and a local map, he headed out to tour the village on foot, blinking in the blinding sunlight and trying very hard not to bump into any sharp objects.
    Quickly, Mitch found himself in the Dorset Street Historic District, which was lovingly restored, immaculate and straight out of Norman Rockwell. There was a marvelous white steepled Congregational church, a town hall, library, schoolhouse, general store. There were stately colonial mansions with picket fences and window boxes and flower gardens. There was a firehouse and a barber shop with an old Wildroot hair tonic sign hanging out front. The Dorset Academy that Lacy had referred to, which attracted painters and sculptors from all over the world, was located in the Gill House, circa 1817. There were huge, leafy maples and oaks everywhere. There was no graffiti, no trash, no traffic and no stress. An elderly woman who he passed on the sidewalk smiled and said, “Good morning.” A boy rode by on a bike with a fishing pole, a sheepdog tailing after him, arfing happily.
    “Day One—Have found it,” Mitch scribbled in his notepad. “ Have at long last discovered the land that time forgot. All is quiet—too quiet. Have queer feeling that someone, or something, is following me.”
    He stopped in at the barber shop. Had himself the seven-dollar haircut and listened to some crusty locals make fun of each other’s fishing prowess. All of it was good-natured—clearly they had known each other since they were boys. Mitch asked them how the fishing was this year and got three sharply different responses, all of them vigorously voiced. Freshly tonsored, he strolled over to the village’s cemetery, where he discovered an exceptional slice of New England history. Sea captains who had lived in the 1600s. Family plots that dated from the present all the way back to before the Revolution. In one such plot he found a beloved Pembroke Corgi resting for eternity by its master’s side. Mitch was so taken by the tiny headstone that he tore a sheet from his notebook and made a rubbing of it.
    His appetite whetted by the fresh air and exercise, Mitch trudged back to the inn for a lunch of cold poached salmon, potato salad and baby greens. Then he climbed into his rental car and headed back out.
    He found the village’s business district on Big