Murder in Montauk

by Carter Fielding

  “On the counter.” Finley pointed to the covered butter dish on the center island. “I forget that you and Mama like your butter cold. I started leaving both my butter and eggs out in Morocco. I keep forgetting folks here in the States refrigerate everything.”

  It was getting easier to talk about Morocco now. Things she used to do. Places she used to frequent. She knew in time she would be able to talk about people she used to know and do things with. She prayed there would come a time when she could speak his name without her chest seizing. But now was not that time.

  “We better get a move on, or we’ll be late.” Finley gulped down the last two swigs of her coffee and put her cup in the dishwasher. “We need to run a load of dishes tonight or we’ll soon be out of wine glasses.”

  Finley grabbed the straw satchel that held her camera and a copy of The Sheltering Sky, heading for the door. They kept a swift pace as they walked up the beach, Finley’s flax linen drawstring pants flapping in the breeze. On the deck that encircled the spa, they stopped to catch their breath.

  “You trying out for a race-walking medal?” Whitt asked, taking a sip of her water and wiping her brow with the hem of her sundress. “You were trucking it.”

  “No, trying to sweat some of the alcohol out of my system—so I can put more in later today!”

  “I don’t think it works like that, sister mine.” Whitt rolled her eyes.

  “Well, I can try it. It can’t hurt!”

  “True. Let’s head in.”

  Gurney’s spa had come a long way from its wooden lodge origins. The pine-stained wood paneling of yesteryear had been replaced by bleached wood walls, driftwood shoji screens and gently bubbling Zen fountains. The receptionist, a scrub-faced young woman of college age, looked up in greeting. “Good morning, ladies. With whom do you have your sessions today?”

  “We are both with Rachel. My session is first and then my sister’s. She’ll just read while she waits,” Whitt added. Finley simply smiled and nodded. “My mother and a friend will be coming in later.”

  “No worries. Rachel normally doesn’t work on Saturdays, so we have moved her to a different room,” the receptionist, whose nametag read Patty, explained. “She is just setting up. She’ll come get you once you’ve changed.”

  At the receptionist’s request, they signed in and were each handed a fluffy white robe and celadon slippers before being led into a changing room that matched the slippers in color and smelled of lemon and verbena.

  “The scent makes you feel so Zen!” Whitt had slipped out of her striped sundress and was hanging it in the locker. Her sister had changed into her robe and was standing by the door to the anteroom that separated the lockers from the session rooms.

  “You sure are in a hurry today,” Whitt drawled. “Slow down. No one’s chasing you!”

  “I know.” Finley shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I’m just antsy for some reason.”

  “Well, if there is no one in the waiting room, we can play a round of the Murder Game to distract you!”

  Finley shook her head. Given her druthers, that girl would play that game all day. How she comes up with this stuff, I haven’t the slightest. Let’s just hope she never wants to try any of it out on folks that get on her nerves.

  Whitt found an Elle Décor magazine and sat down to read. Finley pulled out her camera and began scrolling through the frames. She had some nice shots of the dunes, and the series of pictures of the sand etchings would make an intriguing wall collection.

  Rachel stuck her head out of one of the session rooms. “Be with you ladies in just a bit. I am almost rea—”

  Before she could finish the sentence, a deafening wail followed by a piercing scream wracked the room.

  “What the hell?” Whitt dropped the magazine on the table and stood, looking at Finley as she tried to determine the nature and direction of the sound. By that time, both the receptionist and Rachel had come into the anteroom.

  “Are you all right?” the receptionist asked. She and Rachel exchanged glances.

  “It’s not us,” Finley said. “I think it came from one of the rooms. I thought it was this one.”

  Finley crossed the room swiftly to the first distressed wood door on her right. It was slightly ajar. She pushed is open slowly, expecting to find a woman on a chair screeching at a field mouse. Instead, she found a young woman who had backed herself into a corner. Her face had lost all color and fear had rendered her mute.

  The room appeared normal—set up for a massage with the blinds partially closed, New Age music playing softly in the background, and patchouli and other essential oils offering more ambiance from a small stand to the right of the massage table. A man was lying on the table, facing away from Finley, Whitt, and the others who had entered the room. His arms hung relaxed over the edge of the table, a sheet covering the rest of his body.

  “Suzanne, what’s going on?” Rachel asked.

  “I think he is dead!” the woman in the corner managed to say. She was a ruddy-complexioned woman with a robust stocky build, but drawn up in the corner, she looked like a frightened child. “He’s not breathing.”

  Finley and Whitt approached the table. Whitt took the man’s arm to check his pulse and shook her head. “I think you had better call an ambulance.”

  “Do you know who it is?” Finley asked.

  Before either Patty or Rachel could get around the table to look at the man’s face, Suzanne spoke again. “It’s Mr. Lanahan!” she whispered.

  “Mike?” Rachel asked. “What is he doing here?”

  “He didn’t have anything booked today on the schedule,” Patty said.

  “Well, whatever he was doing here, he isn’t going to move without some help. We need to call an ambulance,” Whitt repeated, which Patty responded to, rushing out to the reception phone.

  By the time the ambulance came, less than five minutes later, Whitt and Finley had changed back into street clothes and sat waiting for the emergency team to raise the dead, unlikely though it was that Mike could be resuscitated, given that rigor mortis was beginning to set in. Still, the sisters waited while the EMTs assessed the situation, loaded him on the gurney, and wheeled him away.

  “I’m so sorry,” Whitt said to the small group still assembled in the waiting room. “You seem to have known Mike well.”

  “He was a regular here at the spa. A real metrosexual,” Patty said. “He would get treatments, pedicures. But sometimes I think he just liked to look at the ladies.”

  “Patty, what a thing to say!” Rachel drew back in surprise.

  “Well, it’s true,” Patty retorted.

  “But he was always a gentleman,” Suzanne added.

  “Yes, of course, he was.” Patty now understood the potential ways her comment could have been misinterpreted. “He was always a gentleman.”

  “In any case, please accept our condolences,” Finley said. “I guess we had better head back to let the others know sessions are canceled for today.”

  Mama and Mooney were up when Whitt and Finley got back to the house. Whitt dropped her bag on the sofa and headed into the kitchen where Mooney and Mama were having breakfast.

  “You will never guess who we found,” Whitt said.

  “From the look on your face, it was an exciting encounter, dear.” Mama took a sip of her coffee before continuing. “Was it some celebrity? I hear that the Hamptons are a good place for sightings.”

  “No, Mike!” Whitt was about to reach across the island to pinch the end off of her mother’s croissant but thought better of it and went to wash her hands first.

  “Mike? What is so interesting about seeing Mike?” Mama said. “Don’t tell me that you are infatuated with the man, Whittaker!”

  “And aren’t you two supposed to be having your massages now?” Mooney had picked up her phone, ready to call Mike and set things s
traight in typical Mooney fashion. “Did Mike screw up the bookings? I’ll give him a piece of my mind if he did. What gives?”

  “I hate to have to break this to you, but Mike’s dead,” Finley said matter-of-factly. She poured herself a cup of coffee, trying to steady her nerves, and waited for the news to sink in.

  Four

  “Finley Walker Blake, you and your sister have got to stop playing this sickening game of yours. It really is so unbecoming!” Mama had gone into comportment mode. “And you, as the elder, should know better.”

  “No, Mama. He really is dead.” Whitt rallied to support her sister, just as she always did. “He was found in one of the massage rooms.”

  “It may have been a heart attack or something,” Finley continued. “He was just lying on one of the tables like he was asleep. Except he wasn’t.” She looked hard at Mooney to see how she was taking the news.

  Mama had stood up to pour herself more coffee, but upon hearing the news, she lowered herself back into her chair. After several moments, she uttered, “I hardly knew the man so I shouldn’t be so upset, but it is unsettling when you realize that just last night you were having dinner with a dead man. For goodness sake, I didn’t even have a chance to send him a thank you note!”

  “Do you think it was something he ate?” Mooney asked, her face bunching into a quizzical scowl.

  “None of us got sick, so it wasn’t in the food or the wines we had. And why would someone poison him?” Finley asked. “There wasn’t anything that we could see that suggested anything but natural causes. The police weren’t called. Just EMT.”

  Whitt was quiet for a while. Then she said, “After all the happenings this morning, I am thinking of just hanging out here. Maybe grab a bit more beach time.”

  “Fine with me,” Mooney said.” I probably need to make some calls to let people know. Someone other than me will need to tell his wife, though.”

  “Where does she live?” Finley asked.

  “In the city, but they have a strange marriage,” Mooney said. “He does his thing, and she does hers.”

  “I am assuming the EMTs will take care of letting her know,” Whitt assured.

  “Well, I am fine with a book and a chair by the water.” Mama glanced longingly at the beach. “Wine, in time, of course…or maybe something a little stronger. Is there any bourbon in the cabinet?”

  “I think I might head to Ditch Plains and take some shots of the waves.” Finley headed up the stairs to change into some shorts and a different t-shirt. When she came down, Mooney was waiting for her.

  “I think I will go with you.” Mooney scrolled through her contact list. “I can make these calls from the beach. It will give Whitt and your mama a chance to talk.”

  “Do they need to talk?” Finley asked. “Did I miss something? I have been rather self-absorbed lately.”

  “No, I think your mother wants to make sure Whitt is all right after this morning. And then pry a bit about Hunter. That might be better with a smaller audience.”

  “Oh, so wise, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Finley said as she called upstairs to her mother and sister. “Mooney and I are heading to Ditch Plains. See you in a bit!”

  Ditch Plains was the local surfers’ beach. A long strip of sand not too far from Montauk proper, the area was increasingly known for big waves that drew big crowds. The warm weather had attracted some visitors from the city for the weekend waves, but the beach was less crowded than Finley had expected.

  “Aren’t we lucky?” Finley chirped. “I thought a red flag might be what was keeping people away, but it doesn’t seem so.”

  The flagpole was empty, and yet no more than two or three surfers were out. Only a handful of people were on the beach. The waves were high, crashing against themselves and the sand as they came to shore. Finley pulled her camera from her bag and adjusted the lens. Since returning to the US, she had begun to experiment more with filters and shutter speed. She had rediscovered a photo store on 47th Street where the staff was eager to explain and make suggestions on additions to her equipment.

  While Mooney sat at a picnic bench making calls, Finley walked around taking frames with different lenses and filters. Some shots were of the waves, others of the dunes. She watched the shadows and the reflection of the light off the water. She tried different positions and angles, studying how the light shifted each time to add another dimension of color to the water.

  “You ready?” Mooney was watching her kneel and squat and climb as she was shooting. “What are you focusing on?’

  “At this stage, anything and everything! I don’t know what I am doing so I just keep shooting and hope that something identifiable comes out.”

  “That doesn’t seem very efficient.”

  “Probably not, but it keeps me occupied.”

  “Is that what you want? Just to keep yourself occupied?”

  “Mooney, don’t start. I head back to work next week, so I will be more than occupied. My sabbatical was only six months, so it is not as if I am wasting my life away. I am taking a break.”

  “I’m not ragging on you, kid. I just want you to be happy.”

  “I am happy! I got my besties around me, supporting me. The rest I have to figure out on my own. And that is going to take time.”

  “Okay. I just love you, girl, and want you to be happy.”

  Finley put her camera back in its case, dropped it in her satchel, and went to sit beside Mooney. She put her arm around her friend and pulled her close. “So, are we looking after me so you don’t have to unravel your own messy affairs?” Finley was almost a head taller, even sitting, than her petite friend.

  “No… Yes… Maybe?”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No… Maybe… Yeah.” Mooney sighed. “Chris and I broke up.”

  Mooney was talking about her boyfriend of the past two years, Chris Harding. The love of her life. Her soulmate. Her forever guy. The thought that the two would ever break up was unfathomable. What was even more startling was the calm with which Mooney was taking it.

  “When? And more importantly, why?”

  “Last week, but you know, we’ve been drifting for a while. He doesn’t want kids, and you know me. Kids have always been in my equation. I want babies! I thought it was something that would change, but it hasn’t. And it won’t. I had to face it and make a clean cut.”

  “Mooney, I am so sorry. Here I am blubbering about my mess, and you’ve got your own pain to deal with.”

  “Honey, it hurts, but I know it was what I needed to do. You are hurting because of the lack of closure…and you’re going to keep hurting until you get the answers that allow you to move on.”

  “I hear you, but where do I go for answers? Hell, sometimes I am so confused, I don’t even know what the questions are anymore.” Finley laughed. “I just need to redirect my energy back into work, focus on making partner, and then decide my life’s direction.” She shrugged. “Maybe I need to stay away from men until I figure out what I want. I thought I knew with Grant, and that clearly wasn’t the case. And then, with Max.”

  Grant had been Finley’s first husband. They had married straight out of law school, coming to New York with big dreams and a lot of plans. The problem had been that the dreams led in different directions and, eventually, to tears. He had imagined them building careers until it was time to build a family. Then, they would follow the traditional path to Darien or Larchmont, and she would do volunteer work while she raised the family and he took the train to and from the city for work.

  Finley, on the other hand, imagined life as an expat, traveling the world, doing good work while doing well. She had made the switch from law to consulting because it offered so many international opportunities, ones that could mesh with Grant’s more traditional path. But in time, she realized that for each to get what they wanted, they had to divorce. Thankfully,
there hadn’t been children to complicate things.

  “It’ll work out, kid.” Mooney stood and kissed her friend’s cheek. “For both of us.”

  ***

  Finley’s heart raced when drove up and she saw the police cars in the Jameson house driveway. Had something happened to Mama? Or Whitt? Whatever could the police want with them? Maybe they were looking for Jameson.

  “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” Mooney asked breathlessly as they pulled into the drive.

  Mama met them at the top of the sloped pathway. “There you are. Where did you get off to? And don’t you answer your phone anymore?”

  “Sorry, Mama. Are you okay? Whitt? What’s going on?” Finley could see her sister on the deck talking to a couple of policemen when she and Mooney entered the foyer.

  “The police say the preliminary toxicology report indicates that Mike was poisoned. By nicotine, no less.”

  “Nicotine poisoning? That’s hard to do accidentally, isn’t it? So, they are saying it’s murder?”

  “I don’t know what they are saying. They just pulled up out front and asked for you and your sister, as if you have anything to do with this sordid affair.”

  “Mama, calm down. They are just trying to get as much information as they can. I’ll let them know that I am back.”

  Finley left Mooney in the kitchen to settle Mama’s nerves with a glass of wine. Who cared whether it was sundowner time? It was five o’clock somewhere. Besides, this was medicinal. She walked onto the deck and approached the two officers who immediate met her gaze expectantly.

  “Hello, officers. I’m Finley Blake. I understand that you were looking for me. How may I help you?” She moved to stand beside her sister, who sat facing the two officers who towered over her.

  “Afternoon, ma’am. I am Officer Stephens, with the Montauk Police Department. Sorry to bother you, but we need you and your sister to accompany us over to the spa to go over the events of this morning.” The officer had the demeanor of an acolyte. He was at least six foot three inches tall and even with his head bowed in deference to the ladies, he seemed gigantic, but his soft-spoken manner countered his size to make him approachable.