Killer Summer

by Lynda Curnyn

  “I mean, it was kind of odd, wasn’t it,” I continued, “that she would go in the water like that? Alone?”

  “I try not to think about it,” he said easily, despite the tension I felt in him.

  I wished I could look up at him, but realized I’d only get a bull’s-eye view of his chin. What I wanted to see was his eyes.

  Then suddenly he dropped his arms away from me, and I did look up, only to find a baffled expression on his face. “You really can’t dance, can you?” he said, shaking his head at me.

  My stomach plunged. I wasn’t sure whether it was because he’d avoided my question or because I felt…insulted.

  The only feeling I was sure of was the relief that washed over me once Tom disappeared into the bathroom. I headed immediately for the sink to wash dishes. Actually, what I did was load them into the dishwasher. I probably should have hidden in my room at that point, but Tom’s avoidance of the topic of Maggie only made me more curious. Besides, cleaning up was the least I could do. He did cook for me tonight, I thought, rinsing off the last plate and sliding it into the crowded washer. I opened the top rack and was just trying to figure out a way to jam the two wineglasses in, when Tom came back.

  “Those need to be washed by hand,” he said.

  “Oh,” 1 replied, smiling tentatively at him as I closed the dishwasher and turned to the sink to soap up the first glass.

  I felt him watching me as I hurriedly rinsed off the glass, placing it on the counter to dry.

  But then I realized he had only been waiting for the glass when he picked it up and proceeded to polish it dry with the towel.

  I almost laughed. That was Tom. Ever efficient. I had, at least, learned that about him in the past few weeks, I thought, placing the second glass on the counter when I was done and watching as he snatched it up and started polishing away.

  Once he was satisfied with his handiwork, he grabbed both glasses and headed to the living room to put them away in the bar.

  I was just drying my hands and contemplating how I could safely return the conversation to the night of Maggie’s death when I heard the sound of shattering glass.

  “Goddammit!” he yelled.

  Janis lifted her head and let out a little whine.

  I stepped into the living room to see Tom stooped over, picking up the pieces of the glass he had dropped. “I’ll help you with that,” I said, dashing back to the kitchen and retrieving the dustpan and brush from under the sink.

  I handed him the items, and without even so much as a glance at me, he grabbed them out of my hands, his movements brisk as he brushed the remaining pieces on to the dustpan, then stood to dump them in the garbage pail in the kitchen.

  Uh-oh. He seemed pretty pissed off.

  Which was why I was shocked when he finished his task and turned to me with tears—tears!—glittering in his eyes.

  “Tom? Are you—”

  “I’m fine,” he said, leaning over to put the dustpan and brush away. Once he stood again, I watched as he swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.

  He wasn’t fine. Far from it, I realized when he let out a sob so deep I felt an answering ache in my throat.

  Even Janis began to howl.

  Tom didn’t seem to notice, his shoulders shaking as he fought the sudden wave of emotion now clearly moving through him.

  “Tom,” I said, reaching out tentatively to touch him, then pulling my hand back. I didn’t know what to do. So I turned to Janis. “Shhhhh,” I soothed, though I felt far from soothing at the moment. Janis must have sensed my alarm, because she immediately settled down, her head going to rest on her paws, her eyes on Tom.

  I turned to Tom once more. “Maybe you ought to sit down,” I said. Then I did take his hand, leading him to the sofa to sit.

  My actions seemed to settle him a bit more, though the tears still streamed down his cheeks. I made a quick dash to the bathroom, grabbed a box of tissues, and returned.

  “Here,” I said, holding out the box to him.

  He reached for a tissue, dabbing at his eyes and then blowing his nose. When he looked up again, I saw his tears had abated, his eyes filled with something close to embarrassment. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “It’s okay,” I said, sitting down beside him.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what came over me.” He let out a shuddery sigh, his gaze moving to the row of wineglasses lining the bar. “Maggie and I got those glasses as a wedding gift,” he said softly. “I told her I didn’t want to keep them here. They’re so fragile.” He shuddered again.

  “I’m sorry, Tom,” I said, mostly because I didn’t know what else to say. I was still bowled over by his sudden display of emotion.

  “We already broke two of them last year,” he said, still staring at the glasses. Then he turned to me, fresh tears moving into his eyes. “Now there’s hardly anything left. Of us.”

  Then I did hug him, my hand moving soothingly over his back as he unleashed a fresh wave of sorrow. I was surprised when I felt tears sting my own eyes, realizing they were tears of sympathy. For Tom.

  I made an even bigger discovery after I helped a bleary-eyed and unusually docile Tom into bed. Just as I was about to shut the lights and make my exit, I noticed the closet door hung open.

  Glancing back at Tom, I realized he had probably conked out the minute his head hit the pillow. He was already starting to snore.

  I didn’t blame him, after the night he’d had. In fact, I wasn’t sure I could blame him for anything anymore.

  But since I was certain someone was to blame for Maggie’s death, I turned to the closet, opening the door the rest of the way and studying the contents.

  I needed to find that dress. I wasn’t sure what it would tell me— still, it had to be more than I already knew. But after rilling through Tom’s lonely little collection of trousers and shirts, I discovered it wasn’t there. Frustrated, I closed the door, taking another quick glance at Tom, who let out a snort that nearly made me jump out of my skin. I walked over to the chest of drawers on the other side of the bed and slid open the top one. Socks and underwear. Tom’s underwear. I closed it quickly, as if I had just walked in on Tom in his underwear. I moved to the next one—more T-shirts and polo shirts. Then the fourth, which was empty. Not empty, I realized when I slid it open farther and saw a clear plastic bag, which not only contained something that looked rather pink and girly, but was still tagged by none other than the S.C.P.D.

  Bingo!

  I glanced back at Tom, who was still sound asleep, wondering briefly why he hadn’t thrown this up in the attic with the rest of her things, then realized he had probably gotten it after he did his closet clean-out.

  But why save it? I wondered, holding the bag before me and realizing there was a gold watch, a pink wallet and a cell phone in there, too. Maybe he hadn’t even opened it. Maybe he’d just tossed it in there, knowing he’d have to deal with it at some point. Whatever, I was glad he did.

  I slid the drawer closed, then took my find back to my bedroom for a closer look.

  Once I had dumped the contents out on my bed, I realized I had hit the jackpot. I held up the dress, which was pink and girly, yes, but also a little on the sexy side. Not over-the-top sexy, but then, from what I knew of Maggie, neither was she. If she was having an affair, surely there would be some evidence of that in her wallet or cell phone, right? At least, that’s the way it was on all those detective shows I had seen. But her wallet held only a couple of receipts from gourmet markets near her apartment on the Upper East Side, a collection of credit cards and a photo of Janis Joplin as a puppy.

  Pretty cute. But who carried a photo of their dog in their wallet?

  I picked up the cell phone next, pressing the on button, feeling relief when the screen lit up and a brief melody played. At least it still worked.

  Clicking on to voice mail, I was relieved when I was connected right away. I guess Tom hadn’t gotten around to shutting her service off.

 
“One old message,” the mechanized voice informed me, causing me to suck in a breath. Then I blew that breath right out when I heard my own voice echoing back to me. “Hi, umm, Maggie. I just wanted to tell you that I got the coriander, but I, uh, missed the ferry…”

  I almost hung up on myself, embarrassed anew at my pathetic excuses, but I waited through my whole weary explanation for the time-and-date stamp.“June 12th, 7:37 p.m.,” the mechanized voice informed me.

  I hung up. That sounded about right. I had just gotten back from the market and was on my way to Penn Station to catch the next train.

  Clicking on the call history, 1 was given a choice of “outgoing calls” and “incoming calls.” I hit incoming calls and got a neat little list of names, none of which I recognized except for the two listings for Edge and one for Tom’s Long Island office, which I only knew because it was listed as Landon, LI office, followed by my own number. I began checking times and dates, starting with Landon, LI office.

  June 12th, 5:06 p.m.

  Why was someone calling Maggie from the Long Island office on a Saturday?

  I checked the two listings before, both to the Luxe office. One was made Thursday, the other Wednesday. That made sense, since it was during the business week. Probably Tom.

  I clicked on outgoing calls, located my own number, which was followed by a listing for a number with a 631 area code. The one after that said Donnie and Amanda—beach.

  Now that was interesting. Area code 631 was Suffolk County, which could mean Fire Island. And Donnie and Amanda were definitely Fire Island.

  But who was this 631 number? Clearly it wasn’t in her address book, since it didn’t have a name listed beside it.

  I clicked on it and was about to dial it, until I realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to be making calls from a dead woman’s cell phone.

  Grabbing my own cell phone from the nightstand, I dialed the number, prefaced by *67. In case this was my murderer, I certainly didn’t want him to have my number.

  After about four rings, a machine picked up.“You have reached Fair Harbor Market. The market is now closed…”

  Well, that proved one theory. Maggie had called the market. I checked the time of the call.June 12th, 7:20 p.m. The market had been closed by then, which meant she never had any intention of going there, despite what she’d told Tom.

  My eye fell upon the listing for Donnie and Amanda—beach and I clicked on it to get the date and time. June 12th, 7:24 p.m.

  It seemed Donnie and Amanda were the last people Maggie called that night. And if my guess was right, I was betting it was Donnie she wanted to speak to. He might even have been Maggie’s last incoming call, since he worked from the Long Island office.

  My eye fell upon the soft pink dress and the back of my neck prickled. Son of a bitch.

  I think I just found Maggie’s lover.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Maggie

  No woman is an island unto herself.

  My friend Amanda used to joke that you could take the girl out of Long Island, but you couldn’t take Long Island out of the girl. We laughed about it often enough, boning up on our accents to great hilarity in the privacy of the two-bedroom we shared when we first moved to Manhattan, or over drinks at the bars we frequented when we were young.

  But when I married Tom, a subtle shift occurred between Amanda and me, making the laughter a little less easy to share. Maybe it was because I had ascended to the throne Amanda coveted. Not that Amanda wanted Tom, but she wanted what he represented. Money, yes, but that wasn’t all of it. Mostly, I think, it was that Tom came from a world far from the barren strip malls Amanda and I roamed restlessly through as teenagers. Tom’s world of country clubs and private schooling was what Amanda aspired to. Which was why I found it strange that when Amanda did finally marry, she chose a man from the very world she and I had long tried to leave behind.

  Donnie Havens had grown up two towns away from us on Long Island, though we didn’t know him then. In fact, Amanda didn’t meet Donnie until a couple years after I had married Tom.

  She was still living in Manhattan, sharing that same two-bedroom with new roommate after new roommate. She still frequented the bars we used to go to, despite the fact that her mother warned her she would never meet anyone nice in a bar. And she met Donnie in a bar. A little dive up by Penn Station that she went to with some co-workers for happy hour one night. Donnie was in town for some sort of trade show at Madison Square Garden for a line of electronic components he was selling back then. With his thinning hair and blue-collar bravado, Donnie was the kind of man Amanda and I usually avoided. We knew his kind. He looked like the fathers who lurked in the backyards of our childhood, running lawnmowers and shooting the breeze over the hedges about what new car or boat they would buy, if not for the burden of mortgage payments and insurance premiums. The sons who bellied up to the bar, slamming down shots and trading barbs, believing they would never fall prey to the lassitude they saw in their fathers’ lives.

  But Amanda didn’t avoid Donnie that night. In fact, she sat at that bar with him until closing. He made her laugh, she told me over the phone the next day, confiding with something that bordered on embarrassment that she had brought Donnie home with her the night before. And when I met Donnie two months later, after Amanda finally gave in to the fact that he was her boyfriend, I understood right away what she saw in him. It wasn’t just that he was familiar to us, with his accent and his ready smile. Donnie was a good talker. And attentive to boot. I think he won Amanda over by virtue of the sheer persistence with which he pursued her.

  I had to admit that, after two years of living with Tom, turning down the corners on a bed that had already gone cool and sharing silences that I wouldn’t quite call companionable, I was jealous.

  Not that I let Amanda know it. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I knew it. Instead I invited them out to the house at Kismet time and time again, even more so after Donnie came to work for Tom at Luxe, believing all the while I was doing Amanda a favor by sharing my oceanfront home with her when really I was the one who was aching for the company. As well as for the attention, the compliments, that Donnie heaped on me unabashedly. I enjoyed the way he leaned in close to talk to me, as if I were the only person in the room. How he shared his grand schemes with me about all his future plans. Like me, Donnie was a dreamer. The difference was, Donnie still believed that his dreams might come true, despite the fact that he had failed at them over and over. Still, I started to feel a kinship with him that I had never felt with Tom, and for a while, I even believed it went beyond the similar backgrounds we shared.

  But it wasn’t until the year my father died that the urge to return to what was familiar took root in me. To find comfort in the arms of a man I could understand on a more basic level than I had ever understood Tom.

  It was too bad that man happened to be my best friend’s husband.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Sage

  Enough with the appetizers. I’m ready for the main course.

  There was something about the sun setting over the Great South Bay that always moved me. But watching the sky spread into a spectrum of brilliant pinks and purples and reds while sharing a bottle of wine with the most beautiful man I had ever laid eyes on thus far was something else altogether.

  I think Vince felt that same sense of wonder, too.

  “It’s amazing that something so spectacular happens every night and most people don’t even take the time to notice,” he said, once the sun had sunk into the horizon completely and the waiter came by to light the candle at our table.

  It was true, I realized, thinking of Zoe and how much time she spent fretting over the state of the world that she barely took time to appreciate it. Or Nick, so hell-bent on proving himself that he rarely saw beyond his own nose.

  A memory of my mother, playing in the yard with me and Hope when we were kids, filled my mind. I smiled, the words
she recited that day bubbling up inside of me.‘“We’ll talk of sunshine and of song, and summer days when we were young. Sweet childish days that were as long as twenty days are now.’”

  When I saw Vince’s speculative gaze, heat pooled in my stomach. “Wordsworth,” I explained. “My mother was forever reciting poems to me and my sister when we were kids,” I continued, suddenly feeling silly for spouting poetry when Vince had done nothing, outside of pausing before this sunset, to suggest that romance was on his mind. But I couldn’t help myself. He seemed to bring it out in me.“It’s funny the things you remember,” I said, feeling shy. And I never felt shy with men.

  He smiled slightly. “That’s a beautiful thing to remember,” he said, looking at me as if for the first time. “I don’t think I’ll forget it myself.”

  I’m embarrassed to admit how jubilant I felt hearing that I had somehow managed to strike a chord somewhere in Vince. The feeling, 1 discovered, was addictive. For throughout dinner, I found myself looking for opportunities to see that look in his eyes again, even though doubts still flickered in my mind about Gianna. I hadn’t figured out a way to bring up the topic without seeming like some jealous fool. I wasn’t jealous exactly. I just wanted to know what I was up against.

  But by the end of the meal, my confidence was at an all-time high. Especially when the conversation turned to my favorite subject—Edge. Even more so when I discovered Vince and I shared a lot of the same views about how, exactly, Edge should be run. With some differences. Nothing we couldn’t handle, however.

  “I keep telling Tom, again and again, that he’s still got to keep quality in mind, even with this younger customer,” Vince said, as he poured the last of the wine into our glasses. “That’s why I’m always advocating making bodies in the better leathers. It’s a question of branding. Yes, we want Edge to be the leading name in young, urban outerwear, but we don’t want it to become synonymous with trendy junk. He’s always ready to downgrade to a lesser skin, usually from one of our Chinese tanneries. But there is nothing like Italian leather.”