Клео Коул - Murder Most Frothy

“I understand, Mr. Mintzer.” O’Rourke nodded. I promise you we’ll proceed with great discretion.”

“Thank you,” said David. “Now let me take you upstairs and give you my version of what happened last evening.”

As they spoke, David steered O’Rourke and Melchior out of the kitchen and presumably toward the bathroom where Treat had been shot. I peered out the tall kitchen windows at the uniformed officers still pacing the dunes. When I turned around again, Madame was in front of me.

“David was certainly adamant in his denial,” she remarked quietly.

“He protested too much,” I replied, rubbing my forehead.

“You still think he was the assassin’s target?”

“Now more than ever.”

David appeared thirty minutes later. I braced myself, ready for him to unleash another wave of righteous outrage. Instead, he took my arm and steered me back toward the kitchen table.

“Listen, Clare. I’m sorry about doing that to you in front of the authorities, but you have to understand my position.”

I might have been humiliated but I wasn’t stupid. “You’re more concerned with bad publicity than the fact that someone may be trying to murder you, is that it?”

David sighed. “Please, Clare. No one is trying to murder me. But even if someone wanted me dead, I could never admit it publicly. I have multiple businesses. Partnerships all over the world. I frankly loathe the comparison, but, like Ms. Stewart, I am my companies. They do not function without me. I can’t afford for anyone—not my associates, not my partners, investors, customers, or clients—to entertain the notion that I’m involved in something shady enough to invite a murder attempt. Millions of dollars and thousands of employees livelihoods are at stake. I have responsibilities.”

I wanted to speak, but bit my lip and nodded instead. “I understand.”

David slumped down in a seat in front of the table. “In any case, there are obviously gaps in my home security system—”

“Didn’t I tell you that the first day I came?”

“Indeed you did. That you were right about, Clare.”

“It’s time you got a serious alarm system,” I told him, “installed outdoor lighting—”

“I shall make the call just as soon as the police leave my house.”

“Not just alarms and motion detectors, okay?” I said. “Real security guards, around the clock. You don’t have to hire Spielberg’s ex-Masaad agents, but for god’s sake get some Pinkertons, at least until Treat’s murder is solved and the murderer caught.”

David smiled. “Very well, but on one condition.”

“Yes?”

“I want you to drop the notion that I’m the real target for murder—pronto.”

After a beat I nodded. “Okay. Agreed.”

“Good.” David rose. “Now I’ll rejoin those detectives, before there’s any more damage done to my imported Italian marble bathroom.”

Cuppa J was a short ride from David Mintzer’s beach house, but, typical of a sunny summer day in the Hamptons, traffic was horrendous.

Democratic, too.

Late model BMWs, Ferraris, Mercedes, and Jaguars inched along with the same egalitarian sluggishness as my lowly Honda. A ten-minute drive became forty minutes of start-and-stop frustration.

When I finally left “Leisure with Dignity” around eleven-fifteen, the Suffolk County police were still going over details of the shot in the dark. I could tell David was losing patience in discussing details of the party, what he knew of Treat’s background, how it might be related to his fellow employees or David’s guest list. Through it all, David’s facade probably appeared as charming as ever. But I had gotten to know him pretty well by now, and I recognized the cracks forming at his edges.

I’d promised him that I’d stay out of it…but how could I keep my promise? While I tried to tell myself that the police were on the case and that was enough, in my gut I knew they were on the wrong case. And what good would that do David?

In the bumper-to-bumper traffic, I contemplated what O’Rourke and Melchior would do next. They’d probably want to know the results of the autopsy and whether the bullet in Treat’s skull actually matched up with the shells I’d found. I’d bet a forty-pound bag of Jamaica Blue Mountain that they would.

They’d also be conducting interviews with people who knew Treat, trying to dig up some significant vendetta or grudge. But it was the people around David who needed to be interviewed as far as I could see.

Well , I thought, at least they’re going to talk to Marjorie Bright.

Certainly, she was at the top of my suspect list. But as I inched along in traffic, I rethought the theory I’d hastily blurted out to the Suffolk County detectives. Cringing, I realized there were holes in my hypothesis through which I could probably drive a Hummer (much like the bright yellow one hogging part of the shoulder in front of me).

For one thing, why would Ms. Bright have fouled up her alibi by hanging around the crime scene? Unless she fell into that category Mike Quinn had once mentioned—pathologically wanting to see the results of her bought and-paid-for crime—which I myself didn’t wholly buy.

And for another, if a paid assassin had been involved in the crime, then why did I find bullet casings? A true professional would not have left shells behind. It smacked of amateurish carelessness…so…did that mean the shooter was actually an amateur?

“Clare! Hey, there, Clare!”

I peered out my open window to find Edna Miller waving at me from her roadside farm stand. Around her, wicker baskets displayed the colors of summer—red tomatoes, green-husked corn, plump white cauliflower, purple eggplant, and quarts and quarts of those lush, Long Island strawberries.

“Hi, Edna!” I called back.

My first week in the South Fork, I had befriended Edna and her husband, Bob, with a two-pound bag of Kona, that sweet, smooth coffee with buttery characteristics and hints of cinnamon and cloves, grown in the volcanic soil of Hawaii. (Many coffee roasters offer Kona blends, but for my money the single-origin experience is the way to go.)

The Millers had been running this farm stand of impossibly fresh vegetables and fruits every summer for the last twenty odd years—and before that, Bob’s father had run it. They were “Bonackers,” part of the local families that had been living out here for generations.

(At one time, “Bonacker” had been a pejorative term like hick or bumpkin. Its etymology was Native American, from the word “Accobonac,” which roughly means “place where groundnuts are gathered.” Such was the naming of nearby Accobonac Harbor and, consequently, the people who lived around it. These days people wore the name with pride. The East Hampton High School sport teams had even adopted it as their nickname.)

The Miller’s land was located on the unfashionable side of the highway—the side away from the ocean—yet they’d been able to sell off just a portion of it for a small fortune. They’d kept the rest in the family and continued to farm it, just as they had for hundreds of years.

“You want anything today?” Edna called, striding quickly out to the road. She was in her usual worn jeans and large tee-shirt, a half-apron wrapped around her waist.

“No, I’m heading over to work at the moment,” I replied, as the car inched along. “Did you have a nice Fourth?”

“Yes, but what’s this I hear about yours?” Edna was pacing the Honda now, slowly moving along the shoulder of the road as I rolled along.

“My Fourth?”

No way , I thought. There’s no way she could possibly be referring to the shooting. All of the guests left before I discovered the body. So who could have told her?