Dead In The Hamptons by Elizabeth Zelvin Read Free Book Online Page A

but I wouldn’t faint.
    “I don’t.” Cindy grinned at me. She sat crosslegged in the only patch of shade in the vicinity, sanding an oar. Today her sweatshirt said, “Dolphins do it with a smile.” “I don’t see any obvious cracks, do you?”
    “I wouldn’t know what to look for. All I see is encrusted schmutz. Dirt. A Barbara word,” I explained.
    “The three of you seem pretty tight,” she remarked. “Don’t you have a girlfriend of your own?”
    “Not since I got sober. How about you?”
    “Too busy. Hey, watch out for the barnacles. You might need some kind of knife or scraper to get them off.”
    “‘It’s me, it’s me, I’m home from the sea, said Barnacle Bill the Sailor’,” I sang. “Hey, don’t wince when I’m serenading you. These clingy little shell bumps around the pointy end here are barnacles? Who knew?” I rocked back on my heels, knees creaking, and drew the tail of my T-shirt up to wipe my sweaty face.
    “Let’s see.” She swung the oar to vertical, stuck the blade in the ground, and used its six-foot length to pull herself up. “Yeah, yeah. I get it, you’re a landlubber. I suppose that makes me the press gang.” She came around the bow to stand next to me. She put a light hand on my shoulder and leaned over to look. I could feel the warmth of her flushed cheek next to mine. “Yes, those are barnacles or something very like them. We need to scrape them.”
    “We? You really meant it about the press gang. So we get this thing in pristine condition and then what?”
    “We take it out on the bay. It’ll be fun.”
    I really liked her grin. Her eyeteeth were a bit long. It gave her a predatory look that belied the sweetness of her mouth and the twinkle in her eye. Like a very charming vampire.
    “How do we make it go?”
    “That’s the easy part. I give the orders, you man the oars.”
    I opened my mouth to voice my dismay. The heavy chomp of tires biting gravel and the purr of an engine interrupted us. A red Lexus swept past us. The car drew up in the cleared area to the side of the house. Phil emerged, slamming the door.
    “Hey, Phil,” Cindy called. “How’s it going?”
    He stalked over to us. Mirror shades hid his eyes, but the scowl above and below them expressed anger.
    “Those bastards think I’m a suspect!”
    “You had to talk to the police again? What did they tell you?”
    “They didn’t tell me anything. They asked a lot of damn insulting questions that I’ve already answered over and over.”
    “Sounds like they’re treating it as a homicide. Did they do the autopsy yet?”
    “I have no idea. They acted like it was my fault they had to work on a holiday weekend, so they had a right to give me a hard time. How long had I known Clea, were we living together, was I seeing anybody else, when did I leave the city that day, could I prove it. What’s the sense of asking all those questions if they’re not going to believe the answers?”
    “What don’t they believe?”
    “When I got out here, for one thing.”
    “You didn’t have a ticket for your garage?” I’d have been astounded if he didn’t garage that car.
    “Sometimes I throw it away.” Phil pried a piece of gravel out of the tread of his fancy running shoe and threw it like a hardball. “Sometimes they stick it in my windshield and it blows away once I hit the highway.” The pebble glanced off the hull of the overturned boat. Phil threw another. “But I didn’t put the car in the garage the night before I came out.”
    “You parked a Lexus on the street?” The shiny red hunk of overpriced machinery looked new. Garage space in the city cost a fortune. But so did theft and vandalism, in money or in hassle with the insurance company. So did retrieving it from the pound if it got towed. Even Jimmy garaged his Toyota.
    “I had a lot of gear to load in the car, and I didn’t want the hassle of bringing it around to my building before I could take off.”
    “Where do you