Dead In The Hamptons (7 page)

“How could you possibly know that?” I blurted. Oh, God, I was in the soup for sure.

“It will interest you to know that we found Ms. Hansen’s notebooks in her room on the premises. She made an entry the night before she died. The whole group ate together that evening. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” Sullenness on my part would make him even less sympathetic and more suspicious. I sat up straighter and spoke louder. “Yes, sir, we did. I didn’t even speak to her. I mean, pass the butter, that kind of thing. We didn’t have a conversation.”

“Maybe not. However, I would like very much to hear you explain why she wrote—” He whipped a smartphone out of his pocket, thumbed it a few times, and read from the screen, “‘Blast from the past— an old familiar face at dinner tonight. Bruce has changed. I wonder how much. It would be fun to find out. A woman scorned never forgets. I’ll have to think up a way to embarrass him’.”

I could feel my cheeks and the back of my neck heat up, hotter than when I’d been out in the broiling sun chipping away at that damn boat. My face had to be brick red.

“Jesus Christ!” I burst out. “I was only fifteen years old!”

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” He had a great poker face. I couldn’t tell if he expected to believe me.

I stumbled through the story. If Clea had yearned to embarrass me, she’d succeeded from beyond the grave. Wiznewski listened in silence. At least he didn’t smile. I hoped the stupid, inexperienced kid I’d been wouldn’t become a joke that made the rounds to every cop in the Hamptons. I wouldn’t be able to look so much as a meter maid in the eye.

“This information would have come a lot better from you at the first interview,” Wiznewski said. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I didn’t recognize her! She had short hair when she was a kid. I didn’t realize it was her until we were cleaning up after, uh, cleaning up her room and found a picture. Then I remembered her green eyes, and the whole thing came back to me.”

“She’d changed her hair.” Wiznewski repeated my words, hefting them in some mental balance. “She hadn’t changed her name, though.”

“I didn’t know her name.” I couldn’t afford to get angry. But I couldn’t help leaking exasperation. “It was part of the deal I turned down.”

“What a pity.” I suspected mockery, but the deadpan face was still in place. He must be thinking how he wouldn’t have said no to a blow job when he was fifteen. He must think he would have been in heaven. “Did you tell anyone about this incident at the time?”

“When I was fifteen? You’re going to track down someone I knew that long ago?” Maybe out here in the boonies— and the Hamptons were the boonies as far as the locals were concerned, all the chic was part-time or imported— you knew where all your teenage friends were thirty years later. But I was a Manhattan boy to the bone. I still had the apartment, but the neighborhood had changed beyond recognition. I had jumped up a class, too, by going to college. Mentioning the city, though, would be a dumb move. The locals must have a chip on their shoulder the size of a million-dollar beach house about the way New York City intruded on their country paradise every summer.

“Did you tell anyone at the time?” he repeated.

Duh. Of course I did. If I hadn’t been so flustered, I would have remembered right away that I’d told Jimmy all about it. The odds were in my favor that he’d remember too. Neither of us had started having blackouts at that age. Not every time we drank, anyhow. Nor had the parochial school girls we knew ever made that kind of offer.

“Jimmy knew,” I babbled, feeling like a candidate for hanging reprieved with the rope around his neck. “You can ask him right now. He’ll tell you. We were just kids, and I really didn’t know her name.”

“What a coincidence,” Wiznewski said. “Did you mention it to Mr. Cullen when you realized who she was?”

Shit! Why hadn’t I? Because I valued Jimmy’s good opinion, that’s why. It wasn’t my fault I hadn’t done what you’d think an innocent person would do in the circumstances. Of course I should have mentioned it to Jimmy. He was my best friend. Oh, man, I hated this self-honesty shit. Digging deeper, I had to admit the real reason I hadn’t told Jimmy was that I knew what he’d say. Even though I hadn’t dreamed the cops could possibly find out, he would have told me to go and tell them.

I walked into the kitchen carrying a stack of greasy dinner plates piled high with bones and other detritus of an all-out barbecue. Barbara snatched two fingers out of her mouth and her other hand, dripping, out of a bowl of sticky chocolate oobleck. Stewie bent over the table with a blowtorch, welding crème brûlée. Stephanie and Jeannette peered over his shoulder.

“Hey! Easy does it on the chocolate pudding,” I said.

“Leave her alone!” Stephanie and Jeannette chorused.

“It’s brownies, anyhow.” Barbara glowered. “Don’t critique the process.”

What did I say? Just joshing the way we always did. The others had only beaten me to the kitchen by five minutes, and alliances were already forming.

Cindy stood at the sink.

“Want to put those dishes down?” She smiled at me over her shoulder.

Hands encased in yellow latex gloves, she scrubbed at the crusty residue of baked beans that rimmed a Pyrex dish.

“Want some help?” I asked. “I can dry.”

“That’s okay,” Cindy said. “But if you want to hang out, be my guest.”

“Or you could make yourself useful,” Barbara told my back. She stalked to the refrigerator, opened the door, and gazed at the packed shelves.

“Done!” Stewie threw up his hands like a rodeo cowboy who’s just roped the calf. He thrust two exquisite crème brûlées into my hands. The fluted cups were still warm. “Here, Mary, take these in.”

“Smile when you say that, buster.”

When I came back into the kitchen, Barbara had grabbed a dish towel and bonded with Cindy. Stewie, Jeannette, and Stephanie had taken the rest of the crème brûlées to the table and hadn’t come back.

“First year in a clean and sober house,” Cindy said, evidently answering a question from Barbara. She turned the hot water on full and sloshed a big bowl of soapsuds from side to side. “I know Karen from the program. Last summer I didn’t get much vacation. The summer before that I was getting clean and sober. And before that, well, I was a bit of a party girl. What about you?”

“I wish I’d ever been a party girl,” Barbara said. “I always sat on the good girl side of the aisle.”

Cindy laughed. “I guess you’d call me a bad girl. Still, I’ve enabled my share of alcoholics.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got Jimmy and Bruce.”

“Two guys sounds like a party to me.”

“Not that much of a party,” Barbara disclaimed. “Jimmy and I have been together forever. Bruce is kind of a fun add-on.”

“Gee, thanks,” I chipped in. “Don’t mind me.”

“He’s kind of new in sobriety,” Barbara said. Dammit, was she warning Cindy off?

“Handle with care, huh?” Cindy grinned at me.

“I know, mind my own business.” Barbara took a dripping plate from Cindy’s hands. “I have a long history of progress, not perfection in that area.”

“Especially with us,” I said. I whisked a clean dish towel off the rack and held up my hand for the next rinsed plate.

“I think that’s sweet.”

“They like it,” Barbara said.

“We humor her,” I told Cindy.

“Like I said, sweet. So how did you all get in the house?”

“Oh, Jimmy knows Lewis from the program.”

Cindy reached into the sink, released the drain, and watched as flecks of culinary debris swirled and vanished with a sucking sound. “Interesting how people connect.”

“Did you know Clea?” Barbara asked. “I still can’t believe this happened.”

“Neither can I,” Karen said. She paused in the kitchen doorway. “Do I smell brownies?”

Barbara squawked and leaped for the oven. Cindy produced and handed off a couple of oven mitts like a nurse in the operating room. Crisis averted, we made room for Karen in what actually had become a circle. Spontaneous group therapy.

“Karen, this must have been such a shock for you,” Barbara said. “You knew her, right? You hadn’t just met her like Cindy and me.” She lowered her voice. “What’s the story with her and Phil?”

Karen leaned her Amazon frame against the refrigerator door.

“It’s kind of complicated. When Lewis and I decided we wanted to organize a clean and sober house a few years back, everybody told us we had to talk to Oscar. He’s kind of Mr. AA out here. Clea was in Oscar’s house last summer and the summer before. Two years ago, she and Oscar were an item.”

As Karen spoke Oscar’s name, Barbara shot me a look she no doubt thought was subtle. Luckily, Cindy had her eyes on Karen, and Karen was blowing onto a hot brownie.

“No kidding,” Barbara said. “Serious?”

Karen laughed.

“Not serious at all. Oscar is a master of the summer fling. They call him the Dedhampton Jack of Hearts.”

I frowned at Barbara to forestall another telling glance. I got the point. That was Karen’s story. She was sticking to it, but we didn’t have to believe her.

“Do they break?” Barbara pursued. “The hearts, I mean?”

“I don’t think Clea’s did. Last summer she was with another guy. Ted.”

“Is he back this year?”

“I haven’t seen him yet,” Karen said. “Though extra people pop up at Oscar’s all through the season. He’s got a big house.”

“What does Oscar do?” I asked. “Where does the money come from?”

“Real estate developer. He’s got a lot of property out here. Land in the Hamptons went through the roof a long time ago, and even in a bad economy, it’s a good investment.”

Money made a great motive for killing someone. Oscar had as good an opportunity as anybody to meet Clea on the beach. His house overlooked the spot where we’d found her body. Maybe he took an early run on the beach himself. Maybe he had a telescope among his fancy toys. How could Clea have become a threat? She’d been a journalist, and someone had called her a crusader. Maybe preserving the environment had been one of her causes. Environmentalists considered developers the bad guys. But Clea didn’t own property herself. Unless she was an ecoterrorist, the stakes wouldn’t be high enough. For him, yes, but not for her. Anyhow, an ecoterrorist might want to kill Oscar for turning cornfields into McMansions, not the other way around. Unless she tried to stop him. If that’s what he was doing. If she was an activist, it shouldn’t be hard for Jimmy to find out online.

“So Ted was out and Phil was in this year.” Barbara was still thinking about Clea’s boyfriends.

“To tell the truth, Clea hadn’t made up her mind when she signed up. She wanted dibs on the room with the double bed, and she paid for two shares.”

“Ohhhh,” Barbara said. “Now I understand why Jimmy and I are stuck in twins, like a couple in a Fifties sitcom.”

“Sorry about that,” Karen said. “Lewis and I took the master bedroom, and Clea asked first.”

“I guess it’s Phil’s room now.”

“He seems to think so,” Karen said.

“You say that as if he’s not your favorite person.” Barbara always comes right out with it. In this case, I was curious too.

“He’s okay.” Karen shrugged. “He’s a bit of an odd duck. She may have been seeing Ted in the city too. She played them off against each other. All I know is Clea wanted to control the room.”

“Pick her guy at the last minute, you mean?”

“Yeah, or have the room to herself if she wanted.”

“And now it’s Phil’s.”

“But will he stick it out all summer?” Cindy asked.

“His girlfriend died.” Barbara frowned and shivered. “That would put me off a summer of fun if it was Jimmy.”

“So would getting arrested for murder,” I said.

The phone rang in the other room. We heard the scrape of a chair and Lewis’s deep voice answering. He listened, with an occasional murmur of assent.

“Thank you, sir,” he said finally. “Thank you. I appreciate that. We certainly will. Goodbye, sir.”

Lewis lounged into the doorway and leaned against the jamb, so those still at the table as well as the rest of us in the kitchen could hear him.

“Listen up, people,” he called. “That was the detective. We’re off the hook. They did the autopsy, and the findings were consistent with drowning. He said they won’t trouble us again and wished us an enjoyable summer.”

Karen clapped her hands. Cindy gave me one of her snaggle-toothed smiles.

“About time!” Phil exclaimed in the other room.

“Hear, hear,” I heard Jimmy say.

Barbara frowned and caught my eye.

“Findings, schmindings,” she said. “So she drowned. I still say she could have had help.”

The only thing wrong with a Sunday in the Hamptons was Barbara’s passion for activity.

“It’s the crack of dawn,” I heard Jimmy protesting as she stuck her head inside my door and threw a shoe at me.

I sat up and rubbed bleary eyes.

“Hey, stop throwing things. It’s the Sabbath.”

“Not for me,” she said. “Shh, don’t wake your roommate.”

Stewie in the other bed lay humped and invisible under a heap of blankets.

“You’ve got a funny idea of considerate,” I grumbled. I yanked my legs out from under the tangled covers. “Ow!” I massaged the cramp in my left calf.

Barbara threw the other shoe.

“It’s a beautiful day, let’s not waste it. Come on, there’s a farm stand down the road with a Pick Your Own Strawberries patch.”

“Be still, my heart.” I swung my legs to the floor and stuck them into the shoes. I left the laces dangling. How the hell did she think I’d pick strawberries when I couldn’t even bend enough to tie my sneakers at this hour?

Barbara held the door wide for me. I marched past her. She closed it gently.

“And no bodies before breakfast,” Jimmy said.

“Hear, hear,” I said. “Coffee first, corpses later.”

“Cut it out, guys.”

“Aw, you know we’re not hardhearted really,” I said. “Are you going to revive us or not?”

“I’m not stupid— I put up the coffee in the automatic pot last night.”

She knew how to get our cooperation.

Twenty minutes later, she was herding us down the road like a Border collie. Sparkling drops of dew glinted on blades of grass and tender leaves. A ton of birds sang their heads off all around us.