The Pact. Jennifer Sturman

hung just so from his lean frame was plastered to his torso, and his wet black hair gleamed in the sun. His face was in the water, but I knew it was him and I knew he was dead. It seemed somehow unjust that he should go just like Gatsby, when he had none of Gatsby’s charm or surprising innocence. That was my first thought. My second thought was muffled by my own deafening shriek.

      Matthew came running out of the pool house in boxer shorts and a faded T-shirt, toothbrush in hand. “Rachel—what is it? Are you—” He stopped short when he caught sight of the body. Before I could respond, he dropped his toothbrush and dove into the water, flipping Richard over with the practiced moves of a lifeguard. I watched, paralyzed, as Matthew hoisted the body up out of the water and checked for a pulse. “Call 911!” Matthew yelled to me, already beginning CPR.

      “I just did,” I heard a calm voice say behind me. “They’re on their way. I gave them the gate code, so they’ll be able to get in.” I turned, startled. Luisa was standing in the open French doors that led to the downstairs sitting room. Her curvy figure was wrapped in a silk kimono, and her dark hair hung nearly to her waist, freed from its usual thick knot. She pulled her silver cigarette case and lighter from a pocket. Her expression was almost bemused, and she dropped her voice, speaking as if to herself. “It looks like it’s too late, though, doesn’t it?”

      The click of her lighter melted my paralysis, and I ran down the steps to the pool. I crouched next to Matthew, listening to him counting under his breath as he pumped Richard’s chest. “Come on, you bastard, breathe already,” he muttered.

      I watched him for what felt like hours but was probably only a minute or two. Finally, he sat back on his heels and shook his head. “He’s dead,” he told me. He glanced at the back of his hands, lightly freckled and sparsely covered with light-brown hair, as if in disgust at their inefficacy. He seemed unaware of the water streaming from his drenched clothing to puddle at his feet.

      I looked at the body stretched on the flagstones before us. In death Richard looked a lot like he had looked in life—just paler and wetter. His icy blue eyes stared unblinking at the sky, and his thin lips were bloodless and tinged with purple. I shivered as Matthew leaned over and gently smoothed his eyelids shut.

      I heard footsteps and voices as other members of the household appeared, awakened by the uproar. Hilary stepped onto the porch dressed in a leopard-print negligee. She rubbed sleepily at her eyes, visibly grumpy at the disturbance. There was some distance between us, but from where I was I could have sworn she brightened considerably when she got a good look at the scene before her. “What have we here?” she asked in a tone that sounded more excited than distraught. She leaned over the wooden railing to get a closer look. Luisa grabbed her elbow and admonished her in a low voice.

      Hilary was followed by Jane and Sean. I knew that happy couples frequently tended to start dressing alike, but surely their matching striped pajamas were a little much, even if they hadn’t deliberately intended to match? They joined Hilary at the railing and made a quick assessment of what had happened. “Dead?” Sean asked, his arm grasping Jane around her waist. I nodded.

      Emma’s mother was right behind Jane and Sean, her petite form swathed in a simple terry bathrobe that she wore with the same unstudied elegance as the Chanel suits she favored in the city and the designer sportswear she wore in the country. Absent her usual subtle makeup and with her dark gold hair hanging loose about her shoulders, Mrs. Furlong looked like an eerily faded version of Emma. “What—?” she started to ask. Then she took in Richard’s body and let out a shriek that made mine seem distinctly amateur.

      Emma ran out after her mother, a long T-shirt hanging halfway to her knees. She looked no older than she had freshman year. “Mother—what’s wrong?” she cried, her voice trailing off as she followed her mother’s gaze. “Oh. Oh. Is he…is he…?” A wave of white washed the color from her face.

      Matthew looked up at her wordlessly, his expression blank. Hilary and Mrs. Furlong caught her as she crumpled to the floor.

      I wasn’t sure when, exactly, Emma’s father arrived, but I remembered that he was panting, having run from his studio in the old stables. He stopped short at the edge of the pool area where the grass gave way to flagstone. I’d just noted his presence when I heard cars pulling up the drive toward the house. Their sirens echoed in the quiet morning air, the sound ricocheting from hill to hill.

      I had a strange sense of déjà vu, as if I had woken up in an Agatha Christie novel. The only missing pieces were the vicar and Miss Marple.

      CHAPTER 6

      The first question to ask was whether Richard had committed suicide. But I knew the chances of that were all but nil.

      Richard had treated the world, and everyone and everything in it, like his oyster. He was far too self-important to even play with the idea of putting an end to himself. And even if he had, he would never have arranged to die by drowning. He had been a varsity swimmer in college, before practices and meets began putting too much of a damper on his playboy aspirations. There was no way he would ever do anything that would call into doubt his erstwhile athleticism. Much less expose his handmade English shoes to chlorine. No, Richard would write a long and vindictive suicide note before blowing his brains out in such a way as to keep his handsome face intact while splattering enough blood and guts and gore to make cleaning up after him a royal pain in the ass.

      I couldn’t have been the only one thinking such thoughts as the paramedics went through the appropriate motions over Richard’s body. The local police officers who’d arrived shortly after the ambulance had immediately roped off the pool area with bright-yellow tape. They now spoke in low voices off to the side, trying to look as if possible foul play was a staple of life in this remote corner of the Adirondacks. Sean had picked up Emma after she fainted and carried her inside, escorted by Mrs. Furlong and Jane and followed by Luisa and Hilary.

      Matthew had disappeared into the pool house, but he quickly reemerged in a dry T-shirt and shorts and came to perch beside me on the steps leading up to the porch. We watched Mr. Furlong talking to the paramedics, his lined face inscrutable.

      “What do you think happened?” Matthew asked me in a low voice.

      “I don’t know,” I answered. “If he were anyone else, I would guess that he had too much to drink or something and fell in. But Richard could always hold his liquor. Maybe he slipped, and hit his head, and then fell in?” I was angling for death by accident, and I was eager for Matthew to validate my hopes with solid medical evidence.

      Matthew was quiet for a moment, as if carefully choosing his words. “I don’t think he drowned, Rach. I think he was dead before he hit the water.”

      “What do you mean? How do you know?”

      “I don’t know, at least not for sure, but I was doing CPR on him, pumping his chest. If Richard were breathing when he went underwater, he would have water in his lungs. If he had water in his lungs, it’s almost impossible that some of it wouldn’t have come up. But none did.”

      I considered this. A police photographer had arrived to record the scene for posterity and, I would assume, for evidence of a crime. She asked Mr. Furlong and the paramedics to back away from the body.

      “There’s something else,” added Matthew. “His pupils were dilated.”

      “What does that mean?”

      He sighed. “I see a lot of ODs—overdose cases—at the clinic. And their eyes look a lot like Richard’s did.”

      “He OD’d?”

      “Possibly.”

      “But Richard didn’t use drugs.” In fact, I remembered him holding forth in a nauseatingly self-righteous way on the topic, complete with several ideas about how the war against drugs should be fought. That most of his suggestions would violate the civil rights guaranteed by a number of constitutional amendments hadn’t seemed to bother him.

      “I’m not necessarily talking about heroin or cocaine.”

      “Even