Killer Summer. Lynda Curnyn

Dream was the only thing I’d ever called my own. Because the house on Fire Island was mine in a way that the apartment on E. 64th never was. The apartment was hers—Tom’s first wife, Gillian. Oh, Tom let me repaint the living room and choose new area rugs for the bedrooms, but it was Gillian who had met with broker after broker looking for the perfect home for her life with Tom. If it were up to me, I would have gone for prewar elegance, rather than reconstructed modern grandeur. But a woman isn’t supposed to complain about these things. What did I really have to complain about? In the space of a year, I had gone from a poorly heated, ramshackle two-bedroom in midtown to a triplex in one of the best neighborhoods in Manhattan.

      Still, it was hard being second. I tried to explain this to Tom, but from his viewpoint, it would have been foolish to give up the apartment. He had bought it for a song back at a time when real estate values in New York weren’t as astronomical as they are now. It just wasn’t practical to sell the apartment and buy new, and Tom was, if nothing else, a practical man.

      Then there was the decor. Antiques passed down through generations and deemed too precious to put away or sell off to strangers. It didn’t matter that the chandelier in the living room didn’t speak to me—it clearly was still having some cosmic conversation with Victoria Landon, Tom’s long-deceased great-aunt. Then there was the Art Deco furniture that Gillian had salvaged at antique fairs from the Hamptons to Paris. We certainly couldn’t get rid of that stuff, because, as Tom said, unique pieces such as those were hard to come by.

      And Gillian, of course, no longer wanted the furniture. Why should she? She got a brand-new house in Boca Raton and an alimony settlement fat enough to allow her to move on to a whole new period of furniture.

      But Maggie’s Dream was mine. Had been from the start. Well, mine and Tom’s anyway.

      I remember the first time I saw the house. We had gone out late one afternoon on a Saturday when Dolores Vecchio, the broker who was working with us, called to say she had found exactly what we were looking for. I was a bit distrustful, since she had already ushered us through some less than spectacular homes in the neighboring town of Saltaire, which was Tom’s first choice since he had friends with homes there. I wasn’t fond of the houses—or Saltaire, for that matter. Too many rules. No barbecues or riding bikes at night. I mean, really, who ever heard of a beach house without barbecues or nighttime bike rides? This new place was in Kismet, and when I saw it, I felt like this house was fated to be mine.

      It was so beautiful, hovering on stilts high above the ocean, as if that great swirling mass might swallow it whole. The beach had eroded a lot that year due to a hard winter, but somehow the precariousness of the house, which sat a bit too close to the crashing waves back in those days, only added to its majesty.

      Of course, Tom resisted. “One good storm and that house will go right into the ocean.” But I stood firm. The house would last. It had to. I could see myself spending my summers there.

      It was one of the few battles in our marriage that I won.

      Now, as I watched my house infested with the very shareholders I hadn’t even wanted to take on, watched them lie about my sofas, sipping cocktails (and leaving rings on the furniture, mind you), I wondered if I had really won at all.

      I felt a little like Mrs. Ramsay in To the Lighthouse, dying in parentheses.

      Oh, who am I kidding? I’m no Mrs. Ramsay, despite the lovely view of the lighthouse from my house. No one would be writing books about me, least of all Virginia Woolf. No, there would be no books, no songs about Maggie Landon. Even the police had reduced me to a four-page report, which I wouldn’t exactly call lyrical. Or even just, for that matter.

      I wondered if anyone would even think of me now. Or ever. Well, I knew at least one person would. Out of fear, if nothing else.

      Fear of getting caught.

      10

      Zoe

       Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water again…

      “Who’s up for striper tonight?” Tom said, startling me from where I lay on the blanket, eyes closed. Not that I had been sleeping. More like closing my eyes against the brightness of the day. Or reality.

      I sat up, blinking at the sight of Tom heading down the beach toward us, outfitted in long khaki shorts, a T-shirt and baseball cap and sporting two long fishing poles. Janis Joplin loped beside him, tongue lolling.

      Ah, a man and his dog and his fishing rod. With that grin on his face, Tom looked like he was posing for an ad in American Fisherman magazine.

      I hate sports. Especially sports that involve killing.

      “Hey, Tom,” Sage said, smiling up at him from where she sat in her beach chair, a copy of Vogue spread across her legs. “Finally decided to get out of the house, huh?”

      “Yeah,” he replied, stopping next to us, his gaze going pensive. “Too nice a day to stay inside.”

      Too nice a day to feel depressed about the fact that your wife died two weeks ago, I thought, watching as he tied up Janis a short distance away from us, underneath the umbrella Sage had set up earlier. Then he waved and grinned as he headed down to the shore to set up his fishing pole.

      “Don’t tell me you don’t think that was weird,” I said to Sage once I was sure he was out of earshot.

      She looked up from her magazine, regarded me for a moment behind brown-tinted sunglasses. “What was weird?”

      “Tom. Smiling. Soaking up the sun. Fishing!”

      She turned back to her magazine. “We gotta eat, don’t we?”

      I stared at her until she finally looked at me again. “Okay, Zoe, tell me what’s weird,” she said, giving in.

      “The fact that Tom hasn’t so much as wrung out a tear since Maggie’s death,” I began. “The fact that he barely even reacted the night her body was found—”

      “You don’t know what was going on in his head.”

      “I saw him, Sage. I mean, I was the one who told him about…about Maggie. If you could have just seen how he acted. He was a little too cool about the whole thing. As if he somehow expected it. I felt like I was watching one of those videos they show you during safety week in high school, demonstrating how you should act in an emergency.”

      I saw her look up, running a hand through her sun-streaked waves while she watched Tom dig out a hole in the sand to stand his rod. “Tom was always good in an emergency. Very organized. You should have seen him during the blackout last summer. He had both floors of the office evacuated within fifteen minutes.”

      “But this wasn’t a blackout, Sage. His wife had just drowned!”

      She turned to me again, lifting up her glasses to look at me. “You better put some sunscreen on those shoulders, Zoe. You’re starting to burn.”

      “Oh, never mind,” I said, flipping onto my stomach and closing my eyes. I was able to ignore Sage for a full five minutes—until I felt the sun beginning to burn at the edges of the navy blue tankini I wore. I rolled over onto my back, feeling a sudden urge for fresh company, seeing as present company didn’t seem to want to acknowledge my worries, much less my existence at this point, judging by the way Sage immediately focused on her magazine again. I guess I couldn’t blame her. I had been harping on the subject from the minute we arrived at the house last night and I was faced with the lonely look of Maggie’s Dream sans Maggie. Okay, maybe I was feeling guilty for being here. I had just turned in my final edits on the documentary to Adelaide, and I was, well, curious enough about Maggie’s death to return to the scene of the crime. Now I was glad I had come. I don’t think I would have believed it if I hadn’t been here to see Tom arrive this morning, cheerful as can be, pulling a wagon loaded up with food for the big Fourth of July bash he was still planning, because, as he said, Maggie would have wanted it that way.

      I had to wonder about that as I watched him tossing out the meal