by Cleo Coyle
I turned to scan the beach in the other direction. But all was dark and quiet. This was the only party on the shoreline that I could see, and I concluded this had to be the bash that David was attending.
Yet it didn’t make a lot of sense on the face of it. Unless I was mistaken, this party was taking place on the grounds of The Sandcastle. But Edward Myers Wilson claimed David and Bom Felloes had waged an ugly war over the restaurant space. Since David had never mentioned Bom to me, I assumed things were still chilly between them.
So why was David going to a party at Bom’s home? Was Bom trying to make up with David?…Or was there something more sinister in the invitation?
I was still fairly far from the whirl of activity, and I picked up my pace to get a better view. Apparently, I was not alone in my curiosity. As I drew closer, I heard a sound that was totally out of place. A click of metal on metal, like a rifle being cocked.
I stopped dead, straining my ears.
For a long moment all I heard was the lapping waters and the party’s tinkling piano. I was ready to believe I’d experienced an audio hallucination when a dark silhouette moved out of some high scrub grass on the beach. In the uncertain light, I was sure the figure was wearing a full body wet suit so black it seemed to absorb the night.
The man carried something clutched close to his chest. I could not see his face because he was facing the party. I was pretty sure the stranger had not seen me on the dark beach, but I was too afraid to do more than stare, figuring that if I moved, I might attract his attention. He gripped something in his hands, but because his back was turned to me, I could not see what it was.
For a long time the man just stood there, his broad back to me. Finally he turned away from the bright lights and darted across the beach, toward the lapping water. I watched him dive into the surf, quickly vanishing beneath the dark surface of the churning waters. I hurried to the shoreline. Large finned footprints creased the wet sand.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon had returned.
I scanned the ocean, wondering where the mysterious swimmer was headed. I made out the dull white gleam of a pleasure boat bobbing perhaps fifty yards off shore. There were no lights aboard, even the running lights were dim in what I was certain was a violation of maritime law. In any case, the boat was barely a smudge on the horizon and I was not certain I’d properly judged the distance from the beach. But since I’d been swimming in these same waters for weeks, I didn’t hesitate.
Dropping my sneakers on the sand, I waded into the churning surf until I was waist deep. Then I dived through the middle of a wave and started swimming. The water was chilly, but I generated my own heat, moving with strong strokes that pushed against a mild but persistent undercurrent.
Never one to miss the opportunity for a morbidly inappropriate thought, my mind began to replay the opening of Jaws—the scene where a young girl is eaten alive during a midnight skinny dip—and I began to worry whether there were any dangerous sharks in these waters. On the other hand, considering that I was probably chasing a professional hit man who had killed before, I realized that marine life probably should not have been my primary concern.
It took several minutes, but I was soon approaching the boat, which was anchored and seemingly deserted. Then a head popped out of the water next to the stern ladder, face covered by huge goggles.
Blowing against the waves breaking over my face, I watched the stranger grasp a ladder and drag himself out of the water. Yes, the swimmer was definitely a man, lean and hard-muscled under the form-fitting wet suit. He grasped the brass rail with one hand; in the other he clutched something I still could not see. Once aboard, the man dropped what he’d been carrying and moved toward the superstructure. Then I heard a hatch open and, a moment later, the engine rumbled to life. Finally the running lights came on and a tiny lamp illuminated the pleasure craft. I read the plain black letters on the bow:
Rabbit Run, Hampton Bays, N.Y.
The motor’s rumble became a roar and the boat lurched forward. The roiling waves spilled over me as the craft began to move. In just a few seconds the boat accelerated until it was skipping across the waves, heading south. I bobbed like a cork in its wake, watching its lights fade in the distance.
Before the boat was gone, I began to shiver. I was in fairly deep waters, and the incoming undercurrent was practically frigid. Okay, I thought, now it’s time to worry about sharks—or hypothermia. I suddenly understood why the intruder had worn a wet suit (beyond its obvious camouflage potential) and I wished I’d had one, too.
Treading water, I turned to face the shore. It was a lucky thing for me that the beach party was still in full swing, because it would have been very hard to judge how far away the dark shoreline was otherwise. The only source of light close by was the scarlet glow of the Japanese lanterns, alarmingly tiny in the distance. I struck out, swimming along with the incoming waves for what seemed like a very long time.
Finally I touched soft sand. Battling the sucking surf, I climbed out of the white-capped waves in my bare feet, my wet khaki skirt plastered against my naked legs, my Cuppa J Polo clinging to my cold, clammy flesh. A gust off the ocean whipped against my wet back. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered again. My teeth were actually chattering now, and I was certain my lips had turned the color of a Hamptons’ summer sky.
A dozen or so startled partygoers had watched me emerge from the crashing waves like some kind of bedraggled mermaid. I was vaguely aware that these people looked familiar—they wouldn’t know me, but I knew their faces. A few had been at David’s party. There were sports figures, TV stars, a famous model.
As I moved off the sand, and onto the vast green carpet of lawn, I heard snickers from the men, confused laughter from the women. Someone made a loud joke and pointed to a nearby garden table of wrought iron. Raw oysters and sushi surrounded the centerpiece of a life-size representation of Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus—the iconic fifteenth-century painting of a naked woman emerging from an oyster shell on the shores of the Mediterranean. Here the grace and delicacy of that masterpiece of Renaissance style was rendered in ice.
No, I wasn’t as naked as Venus. Or as beautiful. But the carved-in-ice part—yeah, okay, that was me.
I shivered again and smoothed my clothes, trying to regain a shred of dignity by tugging at the clinging canvas skirt, folding my arms over my wet, skintight Polo. As I continued moving through the crowd on the lawn, a woman touched my arm. She was young and very beautiful, eyes wide on a too-perfect face (possibly sculpted like that chilly statue of Venus, but with a surgeon’s instruments instead of an ice pick). Her blond hair was swept back to reveal a pert nose, high cheekbones, bee-stung lips, and a flawless forehead the color of ivory.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Got bored. Went for a midnight swim.”
The woman blinked vacantly.
The young man at her side looked away, offering me his profile—handsome but boyish, with sideburns so long, they nearly went back in time, to early-seventies muttonchops. He appeared to be waiting for me to recognize him, but I actually didn’t have a clue.
“By the way, have you seen David Mintzer?”
The woman’s eyes grew wider. She shook her head. “I don’t know him, but there are lots of people here I don’t know.” Then she blinked as if in surprise when a thought sprang into her pretty, pampered head.
“Wait a minute! Oh, gawd. I’ve seen that Mintzer guy on TV. He works for Oprah, doesn’t he?”
“Ah…That’s okay, I’ll find him on my own.”
Stepping off the lawn and onto the cold stone patio, I continued moving among the surprised partygoers—socialites and show business personalities alike—who parted at my barefoot, sopping wet approach as if I were carrying a tray of bird flu appetizers.
I recognized New York City’s most public real estate tycoon—the one with the reality show and the trademark hair. I spied a popular young singer, a famou
s movie director who was now doing commercials for a brand of camera film, and that handsome movie actor, Keith Judd, who’d given Joy his cell phone number—the creep.
I even saw David Mintzer’s lawsuit-happy neighbor, Marjorie Bright. The heiress stood chatting with a group of well-dressed men and women. While I watched, she dropped a cigarette butt and crushed it with an elegant sandal, even as she fired up a fresh smoke with a gold filigreed lighter.
In fact, the only people I didn’t recognize were a group of graying, balding, pudgy men gathered around some lounge chairs, drinks and cigars in hand. Their conversation appeared quiet and sober compared to the festive people around them.
Earlier that summer, David mentioned such men to me at a similar gathering Cuppa J had catered. He told me these men only seemed anonymous and interchangeable. In truth they were the real movers and shakers of the business world.
“They don’t appear impressive, but believe me these low-key, unglamorous little men buy and sell the billion-dollar talent around them like any other commodity. Like pork bellies or oil futures. Scary, isn’t it?”
What was scary for me at the moment was that I had risked my life to follow a clue that could lead to David’s mortal enemy, and now I couldn’t even find David to tell him. Even worse, my bedraggled appearance was continuing to garner attention, which I tried to ignore.
I passed a table occupied by a local senator who appeared on the Sunday morning chattering-class news shows like clockwork. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help staring for a few seconds—and this politician noticed me when his eyes met mine. We both froze, and I immediately looked away, but it was too late, the burly man not far away from the senator’s side noticed me staring, as well.
By the time I approached a knot of people gathered around an outdoor bar, to ask again about David, the senator’s bodyguard came up behind me and grabbed my left elbow—and his grip was not gentle.
“Hey!” I cried. “Let me go. I’m a neighbor. My name is Clare Cosi—”
“Come with me, and don’t make any trouble.”
The bodyguard was a head taller than me and as wide as a Hamptons Hummer. His thick neck was stuffed into a too-tight collar, and I noticed a small radio receiver in one ear. The way the wire coiled out of his bullet-shaped head and down the collar of his finely tailored outfit, I was sure I’d just been accosted by an Armani-clad Frankenstein monster.
I tried to yank my arm free, only to have my other arm grabbed by a second man, another bulked-up guard in a dark suit, this one a redhead with a crewcut.
“You are not on the guest list,” said Crewcut. “That means you’re trespassing. Don’t make a scene. You can explain it all to the police.”
Frankie and Crewcut began to drag me away. Heads turned, conversations ceased as I resisted.
“Wait! Listen,” I pleaded. “I want you to call the police. I saw a real trespasser. And I’m worried about the safety of someone who was invited to this party. David Mintzer. He’s here somewhere. I’m a guest at his house, just ask him.”
“Mr. Mintzer has left the party,” Crewcut replied. “His manager, Mr. Papas, drove him home fifteen minutes ago.”
“He’s okay then?” I pressed. “David’s all right?”
Crewcut responded in a monotone. “Mr. Mintzer was just fine when he left the premises.”
“Good,” I said, extremely relieved. “That’s all I wanted to know. You can let me go and I’ll be on my way.”
Naively, I thought the crisis was over. In my mind it was…for David anyway. For me it was just getting started. When I yanked my arms to break free, Frankie refused to release my left one, and Crewcut actually tightened his hold on my right.
“Ow! You’re bruising me!”
Crewcut’s response was to tighten his grip even more. With his free hand, he flipped open a cell to call the police. He was about to bring the phone to his ear when another hand, a strong one, belonging to someone else, reached out and closed on his wrist.
“Let her go,” said the man attached to the hand. “She’s telling the truth. She is a guest of David’s.”
Crewcut looked down his nose at the interloper, a tall, handsome, well-built man in a gorgeous summer-weight Helmut Lang suit. The man I’d seen before—the suit I hadn’t.
Crewcut angrily shook his wrist free of the interloper’s grip. “And are you on the guest list?” he demanded.
With a smug grin, my defender nodded. “I’m on the list, along with Breanne Summour. You know who she is, certainly.”
“Yes, of course,” sputtered Crewcut, releasing my arm. “And you are?”
I faced my impeccably dressed defender with the chiseled features and Caesar haircut, saw the amusement in his dark brown eyes.
“I’m Matteo Allegro,” he said flatly, “this woman’s ex-husband.”
THIRTEEN
CLARE, you’re soaking wet,” said Matt after the Incredible Hulks left us. “And you have seaweed in your hair.”
I sighed, feeling around for the strand of soggy vegetation, “Hey, a girl’s got to look her best.” I pulled the slime off my head and flicked it away.
Matt’s dark eyebrow rose as he checked out my skintight Polo, his gaze snagging on the wet outline of my full breasts. “I never said you didn’t.”
I felt my cold cheeks flush warm as he smiled and opened his mouth again—probably to say something I’d make him regret—when Breanne Summour walked over.
Tall and thin as a runway model, she wore a flowing white silk pantsuit with glittering silver sandals, her brown hair twisted into a tight chignon to show off the faceted rocks in her ears. Her elongated neck was still as annoyingly swanlike as I remembered, her forehead still as wide as an HDTV screen, but her lips looked a whole lot more bee-stung than I recalled. Probably pumped up with collagen for the party, I concluded.
“Clare, isn’t it?” she asked, stepping between me and Matteo.
I nodded, resisting the urge to shield my eyes from the glare of her earrings.
Now it was her turn to look me up and down. Her reaction, however, was far from identical to Matt’s. Not even close. “My god,” she said, her revulsion undisguised. “I didn’t know the drowned rat look was in season.”
Well, Breanne, I thought, if rats are all the rage, you ought to know.
As the editor-in-chief of Trend magazine, Breanne knew all about what was in season and what was passé, partly because she was one of a powerful circle of media types who helped deem it so. At the moment, all things coffee were hot and trendy, so said her magazine. Was that simply because of the coffeehouse craze ignited by Starbucks and other newcomers to the java biz? Was it because of Lottie Harmon’s super-hot line of Java Jewelry? Was it because of her friend David’s brand new Hamptons restaurant, Cuppa J? Or…did it have something to do with my ex-husband, coffee buyer and co-manager of that New York City institution, the Village Blend?
Whether the woman had been into coffee first and Matt because of it (or vice versa), two things were true: Matt was overseeing the Village Blend’s expansion into “hot, hot, hot” coffee kiosks in upscale clothing boutiques and department stores throughout the world, and Breanne couldn’t get enough of him.
The two had been seeing each other, on and off for almost eight months now. Not that I was counting. I only knew because Esther Best, one of my part-time baristas back at the Blend, had an annoying habit of pointing out photos of Matt and Breanne. The typical shots, taken at black-tie charitable functions, gallery shows, or restaurant openings, appeared from time to time in gossip columns like New York Post’s Page Six.
Still, I could (almost) forgive poor Breanne for her nasty snipe. Anyone would have been embarrassed to see her date participating in the ugly scene that just took place. So, instead of taking the swipe I was dying to, I simply said—
“So nice to see you again, Breanne.”
Although my words were civil, I just couldn’t resist wringing out my shoulder length chestnut hair right in front of her
. The water made a satisfying spat on the patio stones. A woman nearby gave me a dirty look and Breanne blanched whiter than her pantsuit.
Of course, Ms. Summour’s attention span—not unlike her magazine’s flashy, shallow articles—had always been as short as a gnat’s life, and she was already moving on. (Okay, okay, so I’d pushed it with the hair wringing. But people like Breanne Summour were almost too easy to horrify.)
Anyway, seeing Breanne here made me wish my ex-husband had minded his own business. Not that I wasn’t grateful to him for defending me. But spending the night in the Hampton Village jail with drunken college kids would have been a lot less annoying, in the scheme of things, than enduring Breanne’s smugness under these circumstances.
Ms. Summour waved a manicured, beringed hand at a group of guests she apparently hadn’t noticed before. Then, without so much as a “toodles,” she and her diamonds were gone, sweeping across the stone patio to bestow a flurry of air kisses.
After she’d zoomed out of our airspace, Matt turned to me. The sexual amusement was completely gone from his eyes now. Something a lot less playful, a lot less Matt, had replaced it.
“Clare, what’s going on?” he quietly demanded. “Why are you here, dripping wet?”
Clearly, he was taking his emotional cues from Breanne now—at least when it came to caring what people thought of his ex-wife at a public party.
“I could ask you the same question,” I replied, gesturing to Breanne’s back. “Except for the dripping wet part.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just this morning you told me you were totally jet lagged and heading back to the Village for a good night’s sleep.”
“I said a few hours sleep.”
“Whatever! You never mentioned coming out to the Hamptons…with her.”
“Bree knew I was back from the West Coast. She invited me to hop a chartered plane into East Hampton airport and join her for the weekend. I accepted.”