Dead In The Hamptons (29 page)

Mrs. Dowling groaned, her cheek against the deck. Barbara tucked the bluefish under her arm like a football and started wrapping fishing line around Mrs. Dowling’s ankles.

“I hate bluefish,” Mrs. Dowling said. “All the times I worked or sat home alone so he could run after his goddamn blues— it must add up to years. I won’t even eat the things any more.”

“You took us out today,” Barbara pointed out. “You fished with me.”

“I had to be somewhere after I’d taken a knife to Ben Dowling and run him over with his own damn pickup. On the water was as good a place as any.”

“You weren’t coming back,” Barbara said. We all took the point: she’d known all along that she had to get rid of us one way or another.

“It was bad enough losing him to the goddamn blues. That little tramp was the last straw.”

We tied her hand and foot and propped her up against the side, sitting on the deck. She had tried halfheartedly to negotiate, saying we needed her cooperation to get home. But she’d already told us how to get home: follow the trail of breadcrumbs on the GPS. Anyhow, we could see where we were. Belatedly, we remembered we had three cell phones on board. But before we could call 911, the Marine Patrol found us. A man with the same weatherbeaten look as Dowling stood in the bow of the white police boat with its broad blue stripe on the side. As the boat pulled alongside, he looked from us to Mrs. Dowling and shook his head sadly.

“Oh, Mary,” he said. “What have you done?”

Dowling survived. Mrs. Dowling had left him for dead in the farmhouse driveway, where Karen found him when she wandered over there to ask him to fix the leaky showerhead in our outdoor shower. If Mrs. Dowling hadn’t been in a hurry to meet us at the boat, she’d have done the job properly. She’d been all ready to run. The fuel tank on the boat held a hundred gallons, and she’d filled it up and stashed money, extra fuel, and everything she needed to take with her on board. If Dowling had set foot on the boat, he’d have known. She’d meant to buy herself some lead time by taking us out, dumping us, and leaving him to wonder why she didn’t come back. But he argued. Going out for blues was such a passion that he didn’t want to miss a day of it, even with a couple of novices as passengers. So she stopped him the only way she could.

Guess who cleaned the fish we caught with Mrs. Dowling? Amid all the uproar, Barbara insisted we bring them home. She had committed to fish for dinner, so fish it had to be. Lewis instructed, Barbara supervised, Jimmy provided moral support, and I whacked off fish heads and scraped fish from the bone with a knife much like the one Mrs. Dowling had threatened us with. Karen marinated, Lewis grilled, and we all ate it.

“Bluefish is loaded with omega-three,” Barbara said. “Don’t you want to prevent heart disease, cancer, and rheumatoid arthritis? It’ll also improve your memory and your mood.”

“Thank you for sharing,” I said. “My mood is grumpy, and I remember I never liked fish.”

“Finish your fish,” Barbara said. “Think of the starving children. Oh, God, I sound exactly like my mother.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “It tastes fine. It’s good. I love fresh bluefish.”

“‘And when we were wrong, promptly admitted it’,” Jimmy quoted.

If I’d known recovery meant you couldn’t even eat your dinner without the Twelve Steps coming into it, I’d never have given up drinking.

“In her mind,” Barbara said when we talked it over later, “he’d been unfaithful to her every time he went out fishing. The affair with Clea was the last straw.”

“She had a few last straws,” Jimmy said. “He wanted to sell the farm, and it was her farm that had been in her family for generations.”

“He wanted to do a geographic,” Barbara said. “People always think things will be better somewhere else, but it’s an illusion.”

“Maybe he just didn’t want to farm,” I said. “A few million bucks would make life a lot easier.”

“You’ve still got to solve your life, though,” Barbara said. “What was he going to do if he didn’t farm?”

“He could have bought a bigger boat,” Jimmy said, “and spent the rest of his life casting for blues.”

“You know when that marriage really ended?” Barbara said. “When the daughter died. Lots of families break down over the death of a child.”

“Mrs. Dowling blamed Oscar for what happened to Amelia,” I said.

“He was a lot older than her,” Barbara said. “Her first lover, maybe. He sleeps with her, he turns her on to drugs, and then he drops her. The fact that he got clean and sober and lived happily ever after while she OD’d must have made it worse.”

“He didn’t live happily ever after,” Jimmy said, “thanks to mom.”

“She didn’t want him to get away with it,” I said. “But how come Dowling managed to stay friends with him? Why didn’t he hate Oscar too?”

“Maybe Dowling didn’t know as much about Amelia as her mother did,” Barbara said. “I’ve told my mother many, many things I would never tell my father.”

Gradually, we put a lot of pieces of the puzzle together. It turned out that the Dowlings were not the only ones Phil had targeted for blackmail. He needed money badly, not just to keep on gambling, but to keep the leg-breakers at bay. He must have been more scared of them than of the chance one of his victims would turn on him. Another gamble that he’d lost. Jeannette hadn’t been as candid with us that day in the car as we’d thought. She had left out her motive for killing Phil. He’d known she was Clea’s mother. Clea had told him. That’s also how he knew that Lewis had slept with Clea. Lewis admitted that Phil had demanded money not to tell Karen. Lewis had outfoxed him by telling Karen himself and making amends. Once Mrs. Dowling had been arrested, Karen confessed her affair with Oscar too. They forgave each other so thoroughly that they went to bed and didn’t come out of their room for two days. As Jimmy pointed out, the ninth step works.

On the Saturday night of Labor Day weekend, Corky and Shep gave a big party at what everybody still called Oscar’s house. Oscar’s pre-recovery end-of-summer blasts had been legendary. And in recent years, they’d become the clean and sober event of the season. Now that the shadow of death had passed from Dedhampton, everybody talked fast, laughed hard, and danced with abandon.

When the moon rode high in the sky, Corky jumped up on a picnic table and banged a couple of sauce pan lids together to get everybody’s attention.

“Listen up, everybody,” she shouted. “Shep and I have got an announcement to make!”

“You’re engaged!” Barbara blurted.

“Nope.” Shep reached up and squeezed Corky’s ankle, since she still had a pot cover in each hand. “We’re married.”

“Have been all summer,” Corky confirmed with a grin.

Then there was a lot of squealing and hugging and warm fuzzy stuff that I enjoyed more than I’d admit, especially to Barbara.

“So why didn’t you tell anyone?” Barbara asked Corky later. A bunch of us sat on the steps looking out at the moon over the ocean. The ocean was still warm, but nobody suggested skinny-dipping. We could hear the faint music of other Labor Day parties up and down the beach and see the red-gold flicker of bonfires.

“Oscar knew,” Corky said.

“She was on the run,” Shep said.

“I had an abusive ex looking for me,” Corky explained. “He knew me as Corinne. And when I married Shep, I took his last name.”

“So why was your being Oscar’s sister such a big mystery?”

“You couldn’t hide Oscar.”

“You hid in plain sight,” Barbara said.

They couldn’t tell anyone else, because the wedding of Oscar Ainsworth’s sister would have been news, at least in the Hamptons.

“She looked different, too,” Shep said, playing with the spikes of Corky’s punk hair.

“Would you believe big blonde hair and beige pants suits?” Corky shook her head. “Talk about losing yourself in a bad marriage. But that’s over now.”

“You aren’t still scared about the bad guy catching up with you?” Barbara asked.

Corky shrugged.

“If he turns up now, I can afford to protect myself. Or buy him off. But that’s not it. It was time to let go.”

“No point living in fear,” Shep said. “All we’ve got is today.”

I thought for the umpteenth time how ridiculous program sayings sound and how much better they can make you feel.

“We went out on Ben’s boat this morning,” Corky said. “Well, our boat— we bought the Pursuit from him. He wanted to give it to us, but we wouldn’t let him. We went way out, maybe halfway to Block Island, and scattered Oscar’s ashes.”

“How was it?”

“It was peaceful,” Corky said. “We saw whales. Not a big show, just a couple of finbacks gliding along. Like Higher Power saying what Shep just did— that all we’ve got is today.”

“Hear that, cowboy?” I felt a light hand on my shoulder and warm breath at my ear. “We’ve only got today. Come for a walk.”

Cindy took my hand and drew me up. We picked our way among the people perched on the steps and kicked off our shoes at the bottom, so we could enjoy the cool feel of the sand.

I put my arm around her.

“Why cowboy?” I asked. “I go back to the city on Monday.”

“Me too,” she said. “I don’t know. I saw you sitting there, and I thought, are we going to let this pony run or not?”

I turned her around to face me without letting go. I ran my hands gently up from her waist to her shoulders, then her neck. Cupping her face between my palms, I drew her toward me. Our lips met. Whoa! Suddenly things weren’t gentle any more. We devoured each other’s mouths like a couple of bluefish leaping on a school of mackerel. Pressed together from breast to thigh, we completed some kind of circuit, so high voltage I could practically hear the sizzle.

When we drew back, we were both panting. She grinned at me, the moonlight gleaming on those wolfish little incisors of hers.

“So, cowboy? Do we rip each other’s clothes off in the dunes and get sand mixed in with all our body fluids, or do we take my car back to the house and do it right?”

We did both, along with an interlude in the car and another in the outdoor shower. Everybody else stayed at the party long enough for us to make all the noise we wanted. It felt great to howl.

Finally, we fell back against the damp pillows. I had never felt better in my life. I didn’t even want a cigarette.

“I wish we could just lie here till the full moon,” she said. “It’s only a few days. I’d like to see if we can howl any louder.”

“I knew you were part vampire. We’ll have to move soon. I have a roommate.”

“And I have two,” she said. “Let’s grab some clean sheets and move into Phil’s room.”

“Clea’s room?”

“Why not? It’s empty.”

“You wouldn’t mind?” I asked. “Sleeping in two dead people’s bed?”

“Not at all,” she said. “It’ll be like Corky scattering the ashes. Put their spirits at rest. I think we’re as life-affirming as a couple of finback whales, don’t you? And who said we were going to sleep?”

Half an hour later, snuggled in with her, I felt almost drowsy except that the current was still switched on. My whole body glowed and hummed. We’d left the shade up. Moonlight slanted through. I propped myself up on one elbow so I could watch her face. Her eyes were closed, but she was still glowing and humming too. Her lips curved upward in a smile, the pointy tips of the teeth peeping out on either side. The effect was enigmatic. There was so much I didn’t know about her.

I reached out and flicked a damp lock of hair off her forehead. Then I ran my finger along her mouth. The smile widened. Her eyes stayed closed.

“Tell me something,” I said.

“What?”

“Anything,” I said. “Something I don’t know about you.”

“Ask me something.”

“Okay, what’s with you and Detective Butler?”

“We have mutual friends,” she said.

“Yeah, you met her in Montauk. I already knew that. Do you mean she’s in program? Are you protecting her anonymity?”

She shook her head. Her smile wavered. She opened her eyes and looked at me, searching my face as if deciding whether to trust me.

“Come on,” I said. “It’s okay, whatever it is. You can’t shock me.”

She took a deep, slightly wobbly breath.

She said, “I’m a cop.”

The End

For Brian, always.

First, my deepest gratitude to all the readers who told me that they loved Bruce, Barbara, and Jimmy and wanted to hear more about them. As always, I am grateful for the unfailing support of my friends and colleagues in Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. My thanks to Avery Aames, Persia Walker, and Sharon Wildwind for keen critique and many constructive suggestions. Thanks, too, to Kathleen A. Ryan, Suffolk County Police Department (retired), and to former Sergeant Robert Wood of the East Hampton Town Police, who answered questions about police procedure.

Special thanks, with affection and regret that the book took so long, to the late Bob Liptrot for a glorious afternoon on Gardiner’s Bay. He taught me how to cast for blues, cleaned the ones I caught, demonstrated the nautical use of GPS and cell phone, and told fascinating stories of the area whenever the fish weren’t biting. He was a kind and patient teacher and a wonderful friend and neighbor.

Please note that Dedhampton (or Deadhampton) is an imaginary hamlet in the Hamptons. It lies in a never-neverland on the East End of Long Island and is not a part of any existing town, county, state, or federal jurisdiction.

We’ll give you your money back if you find as many as five errors. (That’s five verified errors—punctuation or spelling that leaves no room for judgment calls or alternatives.) If you find more than five, we’ll give you a dollar for every one you catch up to twenty. More than that and we reproof and remake the book. Email
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Try the whole Bruce Kohler series. The first is
Death Will Get You Sober
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