It's Hot in the Hamptons

by Holly Peterson

  A navy and brass trunk with the client’s name engraved on a brass plaque on the front stood beside the entrance to each stall. Caroline walked down one hall and saw the infamous Talbot family green and silver trunk, which, despite her apprehension at this moment, still amused her. Every other client in the barn had agreed to Eddie’s rule that they purchase navy trunks with brass borders from a specific supplier. This did not sit well with Mr. Talbot, one of those stubborn New York rich guys who had to score a point in every situation. Even when Eddie offered to pay for the blue trunk himself—just to meet his compulsive need for neat lines and order—Mr. Talbot refused.

  There had been no further texts from Thierry and no calls. Caroline knew more clues lay before her—about everyone’s strange behavior this summer and about Joey and his delivery truck—but there were none yet.

  If Thierry didn’t show up soon, she would go up to Eddie’s office again to look for papers that might shed some light on that emergency text. Those horse trunks the men were always arguing over—now she’d take time to look at one carefully. She noticed that the bottom siding on Laetitia’s trunk seemed to stick out. As she started to jam it into the base with her toes, Caroline heard a familiar voice inside the stall behind her. “Don’t do that. Please, don’t touch it. Be very discreet right now, Mrs. Clarkson. Not sure why you’re here today.” He didn’t want to tell her they’d set a trap.

  She whispered to Marcus McCree without turning her head: “I’m just checking on things.” Caroline sat on the trunk instead, cross-legged, and pretended to busy herself with emails. “I just, uh, need something here, I’ll leave soon.”

  Caroline nodded and asked, “Are you okay in there? You want to tell me why you’re hiding in a horse stall?”

  “This horse is looking at me like a bull,” he said.

  “He’s not going to do anything,” Caroline said. “Just stay in front of him, so he doesn’t kick. That’s the only way you can get hurt. If you surprise him from the back, he might kick his hind legs.”

  “He keeps rolling his lips up like he’s showing his teeth to a dentist. Hell, now this guy is pushing his nose at the back of my head here. Do they bite, ever?”

  “Marcus, no. Now, please: I know something is going on. You have to tell me.”

  “Tell you what, Mrs. Clarkson?”

  “C’mon, at this point you have to call me Caroline. Every single thing you know. I got half the story, and if you would just please help me fill in what I need, okay?”

  “Okay . . . so, for starters, Joey is here.”

  As Caroline inhaled, her whole body jerked. She laid her head back on the wooden stall behind her and said, “I guess you mean Joey Whitten.”

  “Yes, ma’am. That Joey.”

  Chapter 53

  So the Ghost Can Walk and Talk After All

  That Joey Whitten appeared at the far south opening of the stables. As the early morning sun lit up the tips of his blond hair, particles of dust danced around his shoulders. He pushed a wheelbarrow with feed down the center corridor.

  The tears streamed down Caroline’s face. Her chest ached; she clasped her hands over her sternum as if she could force the throbbing to stop.

  Marcus stood behind her. Sweetly, he reached his hand out and patted her shoulder. “It’s going to be okay,” he said. “Starting today, everything will be different. Best you stay on the trunk, and just let it play out for a minute, but then you should go.”

  She hadn’t cried this hard since the Ocean Rescue chief came to her door: “I’m sorry, we can’t look for him anymore. It’s now a search and recover mission, not a search and rescue.”

  Through the rivulets of tears, Caroline could see enough to judge from a distance that Joey was thicker all around, but still lean. His long legs propelled the heavy cart along, and his arms looked bigger, perhaps he’d been doing manual labor for years. Now, thirty-eight, he’d grown his hair out. The color was always a mix of brown and honey, but it had turned more uniform over the years as if the alchemy of sun, sand, and saltwater had dyed it lighter.

  She stood now as he approached, and reached out to touch him, to weave her fingers into his hair. The stubble on his face was rougher, and he had creases beside his mouth. He was heavier in the middle, and his shoulders looked wider; there was just more of him everywhere.

  As Joey passed by her, he shook his head, and lifted his chin, signaling her to go back and sit. His own eyes welled with tears. “You’re more beautiful,” he whispered quietly, as he rolled a wheelbarrow into the stall next to Caroline, dumped a bit of feed into the horse’s box, and then exited. As he passed by her, Joey leaned in, and his shoulder brushed hers. “I owe you a big explanation.”

  “Can’t we do it now?”

  “It’s not safe yet, not until everything goes down here,” Joey said, rubbing her arm with his. He then rolled the wheelbarrow toward the other end of the corridor.

  Sitting on the trunk again, her legs crossed, Caroline pulled her ankles in and banged her head several times against the wooden beams behind her. Her stomach was tightening like the middle of a rope with people tugging on either end.

  Marcus whispered again, “He’s right: something is going down here today. Right here. With the trunks. It’s going to look like business as usual, so just stay cool.”

  “Marcus, it’s never business as usual when we are talking Eddie Clarkson,” Caroline said. In her mind, she was going over Maryanne’s ledgers, books, and files. “I’m working on my own clues.”

  “Okay, but I’m not sure it’s fully safe,” Marcus said. He didn’t want to force her to leave, but he worried she’d mess up something they’d worked on for two years.

  “And screw that idea of safe Marcus. I’m the wife, what the hell are they going to do to me?”

  “All right, I get that. If you want to know what’s really going on, stroll around a little. Then, notice the sides of half the trunks are loose. Just please don’t kick them, in case someone is around. Then come back, we got time. Be back here in five minutes. Don’t go long.”

  Caroline closed her eyes and did three Darth Vader yoga breaths to pull oxygen deep into her chest. Then she pushed it out through her nostrils from the depths of her diaphragm. Whether the technique helped or not, she wasn’t sure, but it was less dramatic than hyperventilating into a brown paper bag.

  She stood and walked down one of the corridors, her heart pounding. She sensed she was being watched. “Hello?” she yelled out. Her voice echoed into the high cathedral ceilings. Aware security cameras were taping her, she pretended to playfully sweep the dust with her feet, but actually kicked the side wall of each trunk. The bottom gold brass molding was indeed loose on some of them.

  She sat again on the von Tattenbach trunk and waited. “Ten minutes. You’ll get a full picture then,” Marcus whispered. “You deserve to know it all. And I get that you on your own know things, just please, in a little while, you must leave.”

  Right on time, to Caroline’s left, on the opposite end of the corridor from where Joey had entered, Philippe appeared, along with four men. They walked straight to the first trunk, not noticing Caroline fifty yards away, slightly hidden beside a column. Caroline knew it wasn’t a coincidence that they were here on a Monday.

  The four men leaned down and circled a trunk at the end of the corridor. One used a screwdriver to jimmy open the bottom sash of the trunk. He started to slide something out, but Caroline’s view was obstructed by the other men. One of the men handed Philippe a backpack. He opened it, and placed several brown tightly wrapped packages on the ground, all the size of stacks of bills. Then Philippe shook the men’s hands. He heaved the backpack onto his shoulders, jumping slightly from the immense weight of it. Did Eddie know about this? He was most likely on the jungle gym about now, under a fort made of blankets, with a bagel picnic he’d made for the kids.

  Caroline coughed loudly—on purpose.

  “Is that you? Caroline?! No lessons on Mondays!” Philipp
e yelled.

  She stood up nonchalantly, noting Philippe’s body language. He stood too erect, like a six-year-old boy who’d been caught eating cookies before dinner. The other men straightened their spines as well. One of them threw up his hands in shock at Philippe. Another angrily shook his head.

  Marcus whispered back, “They turned the cameras off, as they always do, but we’ve got armed security in every second or third stall, hiding with one of these huge horses.”

  “I’m going to ask them what the hell they are doing,” she whispered back at Marcus.

  “No, no, just act all cool. And then, go. Promise me, you gotta leave.”

  “I trust you, but cool is not my style, Marcus, even on a slow day in my life. Everything makes me anxious. And today, it’s about as bad as it’s ever been. But I’ll try.”

  “Just don’t ask too many questions. Then leave,” he said. “My phone fell in a damn water bucket in here, I left it on the ledge and the horse moved his head, dropping it in. I’ll get another phone from the guys and text you when I can.”

  Caroline rotated her head in circles to ready herself for this strange confrontation. She ambled, just to make the men at the end of the corridor uneasy. When she reached them, she calmly said, “Hello, gentlemen. I’m just here to give the horses some treats. What are you doing here? My husband likes no work at all on Mondays.”

  “It’s just business, Caroline. Normal business for the barn,” Philippe said.

  “Can I see what kind of business . . .” She motioned to his backpack, and then the horse trunk in front of them, aware she wasn’t exactly following Marcus’s overly cautious instructions.

  Philippe glared at her.

  “I mean, it’s a simple question, Philippe. Eddie is at home with the kids. Should I call him over?”

  “No, it’s fine. We are talking about horses. I may be leasing some new ones.”

  “I see.” She squinted at him. “Goodbye, gentlemen.”

  Caroline made her way down a corridor and outside. As she reached her car door, she received a text:

  IT’S MARCUS, I GOT THE GUY’S PHONE TWO STALLS DOWN.

  JOEY SAYS MEET HIM AT THE ROCK.

  Chapter 54

  That Rock

  That same Monday morning, 9:00 a.m.

  On Mondays, which were off days for many Hamptons restaurants, it was always calm on the beach lining Fort Pond Bay, shaped like a crab with its claws facing inward. The soft bayside waves slapped against the shore, splashing rhythmically. Caroline remembered how, on so many nights, Joey would take her here and lay beside her on a blanket, the moon painting a thick white stripe on the flat bay before them. She walked slowly over the pebbly concrete toward the public access to the bay, beside the closed-up Navy Beach.

  A loud pop sounded down the lane. Her nerves on fire now, Caroline dropped her phone. A white box truck rolled away in the opposite direction a hundred yards down. She waited, in case Joey was driving, but the truck turned right toward the main Montauk drag.

  Caroline walked through the gate and toward their slanted boulder. She lay against it, soaking up the sun, willing herself to breathe normally. She took off her sweatshirt and used it as a cushion for her head. She craned her neck every minute in each direction to see if Joey was approaching.

  Caroline knotted her sweatshirt sleeves around her head like a turban to prevent her fair skin from getting burned in the morning sun. An hour had passed, and still there was no sign of Joey. What’s more, she had no way of contacting him; she had no idea where he’d been for the past thirteen years, much less his phone number. She’d texted Marcus from that new number twice. He told her to keep waiting.

  She texted Annabelle.

  Can you meet me at Navy Beach now?

  JOEY IS 100% ALIVE . . .

  Twenty minutes later, Annabelle approached her friend. Caroline stated clearly, “I don’t think Joey is coming.”

  “And we’re waiting right here because . . .”

  “Something’s going on at the barn,” Caroline said. “Something illegal. Thierry knows about it and is involved. But I feel he’s not a willing participant, just from the looks he gave me when I asked him if there was anything he wanted to talk about. This morning—early, at around seven-thirty—Thierry made me rush over to the barn. I did what I was told, but when I showed up, there was no Thierry at all. I texted him, but he didn’t answer. I think he wanted me to see Philippe in some business deal with men I’d never seen, passing cash around. Joey was there for a minute, and I was told to meet Joey here. This is our rock—the place we used to meet when we were together, he used to . . .”

  “I know about the fucking rock! You made out here, you shagged him here a billion times in the moonlight. Jesus! It’s me, okay?” Annabelle said, smiling. “But why isn’t Joey here if he said he’d be?”

  “I don’t know. I’m worried,” Caroline said, banging her palms together several times.

  “By the sound of your voice, I can tell it would be a bad time to make a joke about Joey reappearing during our summer pact.”

  “It would.”

  “Just give this a second of consideration, in all seriousness,” Annabelle continued. “His arrival this summer is a twist of timing here that could be really . . .”

  “Annabelle. This has become so much bigger. There’s a crime here. I promise you.”

  Annabelle nodded slowly, not at all sure she shared Caroline’s paranoia. “Eddie’s finances are the one thing he’s got under control. Even Arthur agrees he’s fantastic at real estate development,” she reminded Caroline, attempting to lessen her relentless, often silly, anxiety. “Honey, look, relax. There’s so much you don’t get about the horse world. It is very complex. Tons of people are skimming fees and making shady deals. The barn gets a good pony for ten grand from Holland, trains it, puts a great working student on it at good shows so it has a public record of wins, then leases it to women like me for fifty to a hundred grand a year. Of course, Eddie and Philippe are skimming off like that to their clients, but they . . .”

  “It has nothing to do with horse buying and leasing, I promise,” Caroline said. “You get patronizing sometimes. In this case, you’re wrong and I’m right; this time, trust my nerves. The barn is covering up something.”

  Caroline’s phone rang. She screamed into it, breathing quickly, praying Thierry was calling to explain. Without looking at the number calling, she yelled, “Hello! Is it you?”

  “It’s the Upholsterer,” the caller said. “Is that the ‘you’ you meant . . .”

  “Fuck, Ryan! You have to wait a day! Jesus Christ. It’s Monday, not Tuesday! I can’t deal with any of your stuff right now!” She hung up.

  Annabelle shook her head. “Honey, call him back.”

  “I don’t want to call him back,” Caroline said. “He’ll never understand, or be able to know what’s going on at the barn. He’ll never . . .” She looked down at the phone and realized Ryan was still on it and she hadn’t disconnected him. “Fuck!”

  She put the phone to her ear with one hand and banged her thigh with the other. Annabelle rubbed her arm to try to get her to calm down.

  Ryan said into her ear, “Uh, Caroline, can you tell me what the matter is? I’m sorry I called, but I know it says Roger the Upholsterer. You’re not guilty of anything if you’re talking to a tradesman when you’re a designer.”

  “Okay, Ryan.”

  “You sound upset. How can I help?”

  “It’s not totally clear what’s going on. I’m sure we’re safe, just the situation isn’t.”

  “What situation?”

  “Oh my God, like six situations. Can you keep a secret, Ryan? Can you do that for me? Please?”

  “Are you kidding? There’s no one better on the planet to trust than me right now with anything. You think I’m ever telling Suzy or anyone what we’re up to? You got more secrets? Pile ’em into the vault of Ryan Miller.”

  Caroline nodded her head while blinking tears
from her eyes. She slumped down from the weight of the morning and sat in the sand. This did make sense; she could trust Ryan Miller. “Can you meet Annabelle and me at Navy Beach? You know that big boulder in the sand, the one that juts out a little to the right before the bay starts?”

  “Of course. And of course, I know that boulder. Who didn’t get laid in high school at that boulder?”

  “Hurry. And can you bring that volunteer fireman siren thing you have in your car? Just in case.”

  “I can’t use it for fun. It’s not a toy.”

  “This whole situation is not a game. I promise, Ryan.”

  “Give me about ten minutes and I’m there.”

  “You’re perfect,” Caroline said.

  Annabelle grabbed Caroline’s sandals and helped her up, saying, “I like this Mr. Architect guy. Portable siren? That’s sexy. Sometimes you just need a real man in life!”

  Annabelle looked once more at her best friend. “And before Ryan gets here, take that stupid sweatshirt off your head. You look like a freak.”

  Chapter 55

  The Trio Twists and Turns

  Ryan Miller drove up in a beat-up white Volvo wagon, laying his strong arm on the edge of the open car window.

  “Did you get a new car?” Caroline asked.

  “It’s a client’s car. I have no idea what’s going on, but I figured I don’t want to be driving a vehicle with my own plates right now in case you were worried about Eddie.” He shielded his face and looked up. “Nice to see you again, Annabelle. It’s been a while since that stress-free sip of champagne at Duryea’s.”

  “Nice to see you too, Ryan,” Annabelle said. “Awkward doesn’t define that day.”