The sour cherry surprise

Instead, she’d blocked out her feelings. Refused to recognize how happy she’d been with that tubby, schlubby Jewish man who’d spent most of his own life sitting in dark rooms staring at a wall. How desperately she’d missed him. Mitch Berger had been her soul mate. When they hooked up she finally became the woman who she’d always wanted to be. Someone who never had to hide a single feeling. Someone open, unafraid, confident, herself. Even now the doughboy was still inside of her. Just hearing from Bella that he’d be working in L.A. from now on with Miss Hawaii had been enough to floor her. And yet when he’d handed her his heart, free and clear, she’d wimped out. She who wasn’t afraid to walk into the line of fire.

God, what a mess I’ve made of everything.

And now she knew it. Now when she would never get the chance to tell Mitch how sorry she was. Because her time had run out. All Des had left were these last precious moments in this dark cellar where she could see things so very clearly. And maybe, before death came, take care of one final piece of personal business.

Des closed her eyes and she prayed.

CHAPTER 14

“Okay, we have to be really, really quiet now,” Molly gasped in his ear as they neared the edge of the woods. “Got it?”

“Got it,” Mitch whispered, his chest rising and falling from the dash they’d made across the Nature Preserve.

“We can’t use our flashlight either-these woods are crawling with Feds. But I know the path home. Just follow me. And try to stay down, will you?”

Into the darkened woods they plunged, hunkered low like two woodchucks in sneakers. Molly a silent, sure-footed creature of the night as she led them along the invisible footpath, her damp little hand clutching his. Mitch bringing up the rear blindly and not at all nimbly. He stumbled repeatedly over fallen branches and exposed tree roots. Fell to the ground more than once. But he found Molly’s hand and kept on going, nose to the dirt.

Thunder rumbled overhead. Off in the distance there was a flicker of lightning. The all-out summer downpour that ace storm tracker Jim Cantore had promised would soon arrive in Dorset. For now the night air remained warm, drizzly and dead calm. Mitch was drenched with sweat, mosquitoes feasting on him.

Molly had won out. He’d agreed to go along with her rescue plan. Hadn’t called Yolie. Hadn’t so much as thought about it. Des needed him. That was all that mattered. It meant everything in the world according to Mitch, which was to say the world according to MGM, RKO and the brothers Warner. When a woman from out of your romantic past needed you, you answered the call. So what if she’d broken your heart? If she was in danger you showed up. You didn’t wonder if it was the right thing to do. You didn’t hesitate. Did Cagney? Did Errol Flynn? Coop? The Duke? Hell no, pilgrim. Neither did Mitch Berger. Which explained why he was now dog-trotting his way through these woods with this strange, fearless little girl, armed only with a little flashlight that he couldn’t use, a pair of wire cutters and Saul Mandelbaum’s old Baby Terrier-the pocket-sized iron pry bar that his grandfather opened crates with back when he drove a produce truck to and from the Hunt’s Point Market.

Here was how Molly had laid out her plan before they left:

“Our root cellar has four air vents, see?” she explained as she made a quick sketch on a notepad at the table. The vents resembled small windows in the farmhouse’s foundation. Mitch’s place had similar such vents. “They’re covered on the outside with quarter-inch wire mesh to keep the little critters out. Under the wire there’s this inch-thick plywood vent cover that gets screwed into place from inside the cellar. We put the covers in over the winter to keep our pipes from freezing. Once spring comes my dad takes them off or the kitchen gets all mildewy. Except he was so messed up this year he forgot. So the vent covers are still on, okay?” Molly paused to finish her glass of milk, licking her upper lip clean. Bella offered her more. She politely declined. “I bet Clay and Hector have never noticed them,” she continued. “It’s dark down there. And it’s not their house. So why would they even care, right?”

“Right,” Mitch said, standing over her with his eyes on the notepad.

“Anybody who’s standing outside can see three of the vents.” Molly ticked them off one by one with her pencil. “This one in front. And this one that faces the driveway. And this one over here by the chimney. So forget them. The troopers will spot you right away and blow the whistle.” She grinned up at him. “But thefourth one faces the barn in back. And it’s underneath the deck my dad put in when he installed those French doors. It comes out sixteen feet from the back of the house and it’s raised twenty-eight inches off of the ground. That should give you okay head clearance. And the vent is twenty-two and a quarter inches wide by fourteen and three-eighths high.”

“Um, okay, just exactly how do you know that?”