Murder Most Frothy

by Cleo Coyle

  Matt’s initial response was understandable. “And you let my daughter and mother stay in that house!”

  “You try moving them,” I cried, throwing up my hands and nearly knocking Matt’s large suit-coat from my shoulders. “The two of them, together and individually—they’re nearly as stubborn, pigheaded, and apparently amoral as you are.”

  “Get a grip, Clare.”

  “You get a grip. Okay, maybe the amoral snipe was out of line—but only for them. Anyway, I’m the only one who believes David is in danger. And your mother. Madame sees the danger, too—”

  “You dragged my mother into your little thrill ride?”

  “It’s not a thrill ride, Matt.”

  “Are you sure about that? You’re talking to a guy who was hooked on cocaine for years! Clare, a drug impairs your judgment. And this playing detective is obviously getting out of hand with you. It’s a thrill ride all right. It’s your drug and I’m starting to think it’s also your obsession!”

  “It’s not a drug. It’s not a thrill ride. And it’s certainly not my obsession! It’s a matter of life and death is what it is! I didn’t ask for this to happen, but it did. Now we’re talking about David’s life. You saw for yourself what happened to him tonight.”

  Matt shook his head. “And I can’t believe you’re involving my mother again.”

  “Your mother’s staying at David’s. She was in the middle of everything as it unfolded.” I shrugged. “She couldn’t be held back. You know how she gets.”

  Matteo had nothing to say about his mother because he knew her even better than me. However, he did zero in on a bulls eye of another sort—

  “I’m guessing David doesn’t see things your way, does he?”

  “Nobody sees things my way,” I replied. “Not the police, and certainly not David, who’s worse than anyone. David’s in denial, though he may not have that luxury much longer given tonight’s close call.”

  Matt drove on in silence while he considered my dilemma, the road’s hum filling the void. We were almost in sight of David’s mansion when Matteo finally spoke again.

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  I was surprised. For once my ex-husband’s voice lacked its usual accusatory tone.

  “I’m going to stick around and do what I can to prevent any harm from coming to David,” I replied frankly. “Not to mention our daughter and your mother, both of whom are too stubborn to leave the mansion. And I’m going to find out who’s trying to kill him and reveal the assassin’s identity to the police, if that’s possible.”

  Matt swerved into David’s driveway and rolled the Mercedes up to the house. The guard waved us forward, nodding his head in greeting. Matt parked the Mercedes behind my Honda and faced me.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but the chirp of Matt’s cell phone filled the car. I realized after a moment that the cell was in the pocket of the jacket I still wore around my shoulders. I fumbled around in the pockets until I found the phone, handed it to Matt. The cell stopped ringing as he took it from my hand.

  Matteo slipped the phone into his shirt pocket and waited for my answer. The cell phone beeped three times. Three missed messages, all from Ms. Summour, no doubt.

  I slipped the jacket off my shoulders and popped the door.

  “Thanks for vouching for me at Bom’s party, and for helping me get David to the hospital…I owe you, Matt—”

  “Clare!”

  “You better get back now. Hurry. Bree is waiting.”

  SIXTEEN

  ANOTHER day in paradise.

  The next morning came all too soon. The sun broke through my windows with more brightness than I could handle, and my clean canvas of forgetfulness, that momentary innocence at early awakening, was quickly splattered with black recollections of the days before.

  Skipping my usual morning swim, I rose and showered fast, deciding the one good thing I could say about the horrendousness of the last evening was that I’d found my daughter home safe and sound when I finally dragged myself upstairs. After looking into her room and finding her sleeping peacefully, I knew I’d be able to do the same.

  My mother-in-law, however, was another matter. She’d gone missing. I’d found her room empty, her bedcovers unmolested, but I’d panicked for only a few minutes. Her message on the cell phone, which I’d left in my handbag, explained it all—

  “Clare, dear, just letting you know, I’m spending the night at…” Her voice lowered, “…a friend’s. I did receive your earlier message, the one about Graydon Faas. I’ll ask around about that young man as well as Bom Felloes, and see what I can find out for you. I’ll see you tomorrow, dear. Good night!”

  I was still shaking my head over Madame’s message as I blew my hair dry. She was spending the night at…“a friend’s”? Her attempt to be discreet was almost laughable, I thought as I pulled on jeans and a yellow vee-neck tee-shirt. I mean, really. That’s one mystery I won’t need help solving.

  After slipping into a pair of leather sandals and grabbing my handbag, I headed for the quiet kitchen. By rote, I prepared a doppio espresso and drank it down, savoring the crema (the rich caramel-colored layer that defines a properly drawn espresso). Fortified for the day ahead, I climbed into my Honda in the mansion’s driveway. I tossed a wave at the security guard on duty, a new one since the night before, then drove off the mansion’s grounds, down the country lane and towards the main road. My destination was west of Southampton on Montauk Highway—

  Hampton Bays, NY.

  The words were practically burned into my brain. They were the exact words that had been painted on the bow of Rabbit Run, the boat I’d seen floating offshore near Bom Felloes’s mansion. The name and location of that boat were the only clues I had to finding my frogman, and, before I reported for work today, I hoped to locate the boat and its owner.

  David’s Suffolk County phone book listed eight marinas in Hampton Bays. I tore out a page and took it with me on my drive, determined to check as many marinas as I could in the time I had.

  Luck was with me, because I struck gold on the second try. Monroe’s Marina had maybe sixty vessels moored in its slips. I parked my car in the small lot and walked the dozen or so long docks, reading the boat names. After about ten minutes of searching, I spotted Rabbit Run, a thirty-five-foot inboard of white fiberglass.

  Gotcha.

  In the light of day, I could see the “boat” was really a power yacht. The helm was weather protected under a hard top, and there appeared to be a salon and galley below the deck, maybe even a sleeping berth.

  From the dock, I looked for any sign of human activity aboard, someone I could speak with, but the yacht looked deserted. And so did the marina. I squinted against the glare of the morning sun, spotted a middle-aged couple on a sailboat at one end of the marina and a young man emerging from a mid-size yacht on the other. But that was it for human activity.

  At seven in the morning in a resort area like this, most people were still sleeping off their partying from the night before. Any serious fishermen would have already taken their crafts out at dawn. And judging by the expensive-looking yachts in this marina, I’d say nobody was actually “serious” about much of anything here except maybe their pleasure.

  I checked my watch again and sighed. If I were a professional P.I., I could have waited around here all day for someone to show up and board Rabbit Run. But at the moment I was being paid for my barista-management talents, not my sleuthing ones, so I had only a few free hours before I’d be expected at work for the Saturday lunch shift, one of the busiest times of the restaurant’s week.

  I’d have to bite the bullet, I decided, and speak with the people running the marina. Certainly, they’d know who owned this vessel. The only question was—would they tell me? I’d have to concoct a good story for them to give away what they might very well consider to be private client information. But if I could persuade them, I’d have a name and
a solid lead.

  I walked over to the marina office, a squat gray building located between the parking lot and the water. I turned the handle on its front door, but it was locked up tight. There was no closed sign in the window, no hours posted. I peered in the window, knocked.

  No answer. No sign of anyone.

  With my morning caffeine still coursing through my molecules, spurring me on, I decided to take another plunge—so to speak. I walked back to the slip mooring Rabbit Run. With one more careful look around, I boarded her. If my luck continued to hold, I figured I could find some sort of lead on the identity of the man who’d been doing the frogman act (and, of course, swim fins and a hunting rifle with fresh fingerprints wouldn’t hurt, either).

  I stepped onto the polished wood deck of the stern, but didn’t see any personal items. There was nothing telling in the helm area, either—just two leather seats, a steering wheel, and a whole lot of technical bells and whistles.

  I went below, and I checked the salon and galley. There were some dried spills of liquids on the bolted-down coffee table, a few wrappers on the floor. I picked them up—Twinkies? A half bag of Doritos had been left in the small galley (reportedly Saddam Hussein’s favorite snack, but I doubted very much the deposed Iraqi dictator was my frogman). I also found six empty Sam Adams beer bottles and a few Coke cans.

  I found more trash in a small container below the sink. But there wasn’t much in there, just a few more Twinkie wrappers, also the kind of thick cellophane that gourmet food stores use to wrap sandwiches, and some newspapers—yesterday’s editions of Newsday and the New York Times sports section.

  Nothing. I found nothing to indicate an identity of the owner or any reason someone would have been in diving gear at night near Bom’s mansion.

  I continued to move forward below the yacht’s deck, opening up the door to the sleeping berth. There was a comfortable-looking double bed, portholes, but no personal items. I was about to inspect the small head when I heard voices outside. It sounded like two young women talking and laughing.

  “Girls!”

  The third voice was deep, a man’s, coming from far away.

  I knew I had to stay below, but I wanted to see who these people were. I moved back into the sleeping berth and peeked out the porthole to see if I could glimpse what was going on.

  Two slender young women of about sixteen or seventeen wearing worn jeans and tee-shirts stood on the next dock over. Approaching them was a gray-haired portly man in khakis and a blue Windbreaker. I strained to hear what he was telling them.

  “…busiest weekend of the year, so don’t waste any time. Here are the boats that came in late last night. Start cleaning them in this order and be quick about it.”

  After the portly man turned and stalked away, one of the girls gave an exaggerated salute behind his back. The other rolled her eyes. They consulted the list for a second then both looked up, straight at Rabbit Run.

  “Oh, damn,” I whispered, reactively pulling back from the porthole. Of course, my luck had just run out. They were heading right for me, and not slowly.

  I knew I couldn’t very well scramble onto the dock now. If I did, they would see me leaving the yacht. In itself, that might not produce any dire consequences. The girls were young, clearly just a couple of local kids hired to keep the rentals clean. They’d probably shrug off my exit, and I could get in my car and drive away without being charged with trespassing. But it would also mean I’d leave here without any good leads.

  Come on, Clare, think of something!

  But I couldn’t. And the girls were getting closer—

  “…and he said he wanted my digits, so I gave them. I really thought he’d call me, you know?”

  “You can’t expect that anymore. Some guys just collect numbers. It’s like little trophies or something to them. You know, to brag to their loser friends.”

  My imagination continued to fail me, but I knew Madame would have found a way out of this. My dear old dad would have, too, for that matter.

  That’s it!

  I almost laughed out loud when I realized that each of them—the bookie and the grand Manhattan lady—would have resorted to exactly the same thing in this situation.

  Bribery.

  Digging into my handbag, I found two twenty-dollar tips from waiting tables the night before. I shoved them into a front pocket of my jeans then quickly moved to the cabin’s salon and sat down on the built-in couch, crossing my legs like it was my plan all along to just wait here for the girls to find me. Their last snippets of conversation gave me the final bit of inspiration I needed—

  “That’s pretty shitty. I mean, why are guys like that?”

  “Are you kidding? Romance is a joke. Guys are so cheap. It’s like in their DNA—”

  The girls had come down the stairs together, each carrying a bucket filled with cleaning products. But they pulled up short and gaped when they saw me just calmly sitting on the cabin couch.

  “Excuse us,” said the first one, a blond with a short ponytail and a light dusting of freckles across her nose. “We didn’t know Mr. Monroe rented this yacht out already.”

  “He didn’t,” I told them levelly.

  The blond exchanged a nervous glance with her partner, a brunette with ruddy cheeks and hair in a long French braid.

  “Well…” said the brunette slowly, “should you be on here then?”

  “No. I shouldn’t. But I couldn’t help myself. You see I’m only here because of true love.”

  The girls eyes widened. They exchanged glances again, but not nervous ones. They were clearly now excited and curious.

  “You see, I was having a drink at Bay Bar, you know the one, in Southampton, where the boats can just pull up and dock?”

  The girls nodded enthusiastically. No doubt they’d heard of it. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d even gotten into the popular place using fake IDs.

  “Well, there I was,” I continued, “minding my own business when this man sent me a bottle of champagne.”

  Again their eyes went wide.

  “He sent you a whole bottle?” the blond asked.

  I nodded. “It was Cristal. It must have cost him five hundred dollars.”

  “And he didn’t even know you?” the brunette asked.

  “I think it was love at first sight,” I said. “For me it was. The moment I saw him and our eyes met…I knew.”

  The blond’s mouth gaped. “You knew?”

  I nodded again. “I knew he was the one.”

  The two exchanged glances and sighed.

  “I was about to ask the man to join me when I saw him answer his cell phone. I think it must have been a personal emergency or something, because he threw down some cash at his table and raced off to his boat. And that’s the last time I saw him.”

  “You mean you didn’t even get his name?” the brunette asked. Both girls look absolutely horrified.

  “I followed him out to the dock, but by that time, he was already motoring away. The only clue I had to finding him was the name of this boat.”

  I did my very best to look devastated, and the two girls stared at me for a long, silent moment.

  “I don’t know how to tell you this, ma’am,” the blond said, “but this is a rental. We don’t know who the man is you met last night. Whoever he is, he rented the boat to go out late. And we just work in the mornings.”

  “She should just go talk to Mr. Monroe,” the brunette told the blond.

  But the blond shook her head. “Monroe will never give her that info. He always says all rentals are confidential.”

  The brunette shrugged. “Then I guess she’s out of luck.”

  “Girls,” I said softly. “If you would do me the favor of looking up the name of the man who rented this boat last night, I’d be so very grateful.” I placed the two twenty dollar bills on the small coffee table bolted to the floor in front of the salon’s couch.

  The girls stared at the twenties. Then they looked
at each other.

  “It’d be really easy to look it up, Janice, you know that,” the blond whispered to the brunette. “Monroe’s always schmoozing outside with the owners.”

  “I don’t know, Pam…”

  “Come on, Jan, you heard the lady. It’s, like, for true love!”

  Inside of a minute, the girls had finished their debate and took me up on my offer. The brunette named Janice went topside and returned with news on her boss’s whereabouts. As they’d predicted, Monroe was already out of the office, hanging at the other end of the marina, chatting with the young yachtsman on the deck of his boat.

  Under the pretense of needing more cleaning supplies, the blond named Pam returned to the office and let herself in. She came back in record time, but the look on her face was one of defeat.

  “I snagged the only notation I could find for yesterday under Rabbit Run. No address and no name. Just a phone number. Weird.” She handed me a yellow Post-it note with the number scrawled on it.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” said Janice. “Guess that’s the best we can do. Want your money back?”

  “Not a dime,” I told them. “This is perfect. This is all I need.”

  I climbed off Rabbit Run and didn’t…run that is. I was tempted to, but I walked instead, very casually toward my car. I could see the portly owner at the other end of the marina, still chatting with that yachtsman. The last thing I wanted to do now was call attention to myself.

  I got behind the wheel and pulled out. When I reached the highway, I looked for a spot to park and make a cell phone call. The phone rang once, twice, three times—

  “Yeah?”

  The voice was low and gruff. I’d slept next to the man long enough to know that I’d just woken him up.

  “Sorry, Matt.”

  A yawn was his reply. “Uh…what time is it?”

  “Who is it, darling?”