Dead In The Hamptons by Elizabeth Zelvin Read Free Book Online

parochial-school intellectual girl with glasses, and everybody else danced their brains out and guzzled canned fruit punch spiked with cheap vodka. Even at fifteen, Jimmy and I despised any drink with fruit in it and tanked up in advance on whatever we could swipe from our dads or get an older kid to score for us.
    I’d been hanging out in the doorway of Clea’s room while Karen and the other women sifted through her possessions. The police had taken away the clothes she’d worn yesterday as well as her ID and everything with writing on it. They’d left the rest in chaos. Karen tut-tutted over the balled up clothing. Jeannette sorted shoes and beach gear. Stephanie, the only skinny one, got down on her tummy and wriggled halfway under the bed to retrieve whatever had rolled there. She’d fished out a crumpled photograph.
    “Hey, look at this. It’s us, a couple of summers ago.” Stephanie blew dust bunnies off the picture and handed it to me.
    It was a group shot, taken on Oscar’s deck with the ocean as a backdrop. Oscar dominated the group, his arms around four of the women. Lewis and Karen towered at the back. I spotted Jeannette trying to hide her bulk behind Oscar. I recognized Stephanie and Corky.
    “Clea wasn’t there?” I asked.
    “Let’s see.” Karen plucked the picture out of my hand and squinted. “Sure she is. See? She had short hair.”
    Then it hit me. The toasted-biscuit skin. The green eyes that didn’t come from contact lenses. And the honey-colored hair. She’d worn it short at fifteen too. No wonder I hadn’t remembered. The name hadn’t rung a bell either. It had been the era of Last Tango in Paris, the Marlon Brando movie that everyone went to see for the X rating. Even fifteen-year-olds who couldn’t get in to see it knew the girl won’t tell Brando her name until the very end, when she shoots him. Clea was precocious. She said she’d tell me her name if I let her give me a blow job. At fifteen, I was still shockable. Also, my tolerance for alcohol had already started climbing. It took more than I’d had to drink that evening to abolish my half-Irish-Catholic inhibitions. I’d turned her down.
    Was there any way the cops could trace the connection between Clea and me? The detectives had indicated that they’d time-travel through her life in the city as far as they needed to. I doubted Sherlock Holmes himself could find that party. But you never know. She’d known my name. She’d asked me on the breath right after the first tonguey kiss. Of course I’d told her. I didn’t know it was the first move in a power play. I wondered if the grownup Clea who’d signed up for a summer in Deadhampton still played sexual games. I wondered if she’d kept a diary at fifteen. I wondered if she kept one now. If she’d brought one to the Hamptons, the detectives had it now.
    She could have recognized me. Barbara always said I didn’t deserve to look as good as I did after all those extra years of drinking. She claimed I kept the dissipated portrait version locked in a closet. The whole thing was a helluva coincidence, but I could be in trouble. I had an alibi for whatever time Clea could conceivably have drowned. Of course I did. I’d been with Jimmy and Barbara. And before that, I’d been blamelessly asleep with Stewie gently snoring in the next bed. That part wasn’t such a good alibi. Maybe I’d better tell Jimmy and Barbara the truth. I needed all the backup I could get.

Chapter Seven
    I don’t know how I got roped into scrubbing the salt and dirt off a boat. Okay, I do know. Cindy asked me. She found a fourteen-foot plywood and Fiberglas rowboat half buried in the weeds behind the house and drafted me to help her drag it out to where we could contemplate it. Contemplation turned to cleaning a lot quicker than I wanted.
    “How do you know this thing is seaworthy?” I rubbed at a persistent mass of crud on the hull with a Brillo pad soaked in ammonia. I might end up asphyxiated,