James Patterson - The Beach House

I filled a huge mug and took it outside to the back porch, where Pauline sat beside me on the top wooden step. After my long night, her unexpected presence felt almost angelic, and she looked so starkly beautiful in her Crunch T-shirt, cutoffs, and red Converse sneakers, I had to remind myself not to gawk.

"Here's to working for the good guys. Hope it isn't a huge mistake on my part."

Pauline pulled out two pieces of paper with a long list on each. "This is everyone who attended the Memorial Day weekend Beach House party," she said about the slightly longer one. "And this is everyone who worked there.

A third of the way down the second list was "Peter Mullen – valet" and our phone number. "How'd you manage to get these?" I asked her. "I've been trying, and striking out. There's a lot of paranoia right now."

"I've got a friend who's a very talented and unscrupulous hacker. All he needed was the party planner's e-mail address and the name of her web site."

There was an awkward pause. Despite my best efforts not to, I was gawking at Pauline.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I guess I'm a little surprised you decided to do this," I said.

"Me, too. So let's not look a gift investigator in the mouth."

"LET'S START WITH THE HELP," Pauline suggested. "The ones you haven't already spoken to, anyway."

The first phone call to bear fruit was to one of Peter's fellow car parkers, Christian Sorenson, whose fed-up girlfriend picked up after a dozen rings. "According to Christian, he's at the Clam Bar washing dishes," she said, sulking over the phone. "That means he's probably somewhere else."

The Clam Bar is a pretentiously unpretentious little shack right on 27, halfway between Montauk and Amagansett. The service is minimal and the decor nonexistent, but something about the vibe and the old classic reggae tapes they play has turned it into an institution. In August you can wait an hour to spend forty dollars for lunch.

Pauline and I were lucky to find seats at the counter, and we ordered a couple of bowls of chowder. It almost felt like a date.

I spotted Sorenson bent over the sink, and he eventually came out of the kitchen in a sodden apron and latex gloves.

"I don't think you want to shake my hand," he said.

I introduced Pauline, and she explained that we were trying to find out a little more about what happened to Peter that night at the party. Christian was glad to help. "I was working the party all night. I was a little surprised the police never called."

"That's part of the reason we're here," I told him. "They're treating the whole thing like an accident-suicide."

"No way," said Christian, "but maybe the cops are afraid someone heavy is involved with whatever happened to Rabbit."

"Well, if the police had called," asked Pauline, "what would you have told them?"

Sorenson folded his muscular arms and told his story. This was where it got interesting.

"First of all, Peter got there late as usual, so the rest of us were kind of ticked at him. But, as usual, he worked his ass off, so we weren't. Then, just before he disappeared, I saw Billy Collins, who was a waiter that night, slip him a note."

"How do you know it was a note?" asked Pauline.

"Because I saw him open it and read it."

"Ever ask Billy Collins about it?" she asked.

"I've been meaning to, but I haven't run into him."

"You know where we could find him?"

"The last I heard he was an assistant pro at Maidstone. He's supposed to be a stud golfer, trying to play the mini-tour or something, and basically I think they just let him practice."

"Sounds like a pretty good deal," I said.

"Not half as sweet as this," he said, holding up ten rubber fingers.

"Thanks a lot, Christian," said Pauline, "and by the way, your girl sends her love."

"Really?"

"I'M IMPRESSED," I said as Pauline and I made our way outside to her car.

"It's what I do, Jack. And sometimes even pros get lucky. There were eight guys parking cars that night. We just happened to find the one who saw something. So where's Maid-stone? Am I dressed for the joint?"

I'd lived out there my whole life, but until that afternoon I'd never set foot on the hallowed grounds of the Maidstone Country Club. Then again, I wasn't alone. The Maidstone, built on the Atlantic and laid out like an old British links course, isn't exactly a community outreach program.

As snooty as Maidstone can be, it's an easy party to crash. No rent-a-cop out front. Not even a gate. A couple of visitors in a twenty-year-old Volkswagen can putter right up to the huge stone clubhouse, park their own car, and start walking toward the driving range. And if you carry yourself as though you've got a God-given right to be there, no one will say boo.

I don't know if you've ever been to a country club like Maidstone, but there's this feeling of medicated calm, as if the whole place, from the well-seeded sod to the cloudless sky, has taken a Vicodin, then washed it down with a martini. I could get used to it.

Billy Collins was easy to spot. He was the one hitting one perfect five-iron shot after another. He was also the only golfer on the range.

"Hey, Jack. Can you believe this place?" he said, still gripping the club and pointing at the idyllic landscape with his elbows before sending another ball sailing out over it.

"This is one of the best tracks on Long Island, but so many of the members are ancient, or have other vacation houses, that the course is empty half the time."

"So how's your game?" I asked.

"Shite," said Collins, striping another perfect iron.

Pauline purposely stepped a little closer to Collins so he had to stop hitting balls. "We want to talk to you because Christian Sorenson said he saw you hand Peter a note. It was just before he disappeared that night at the Neubauers'." I liked the way Pauline talked to people. She didn't try to act tough, or falsely flirtatious. She didn't act at all.

"There was definitely something weird about it," said Collins, putting down his club.

"What do you mean?"

"The note was pink and perfumed, but it was given to me by a guy who was hanging with another guy."

"You know them?"

"Nope. Based on their physiques, I thought they might have been Neubauer's personal trainers. But they didn't have the perfect posture, the bouncy energy. And they weren't working the room, trying to hustle up a couple of zillionaire clients. Plus, they were old. Maybe forty."

"Why didn't you call the police?" Pauline asked.

"The day Peter's body was found, I called Frank Volpi three times. But he never returned my calls."

DUSK SOFTENED THE SKY as we pulled out of Maidstone and drove down Further Lane, one of the town's toniest addresses. It's the kind of street where a $5 million house stands out for its modesty. Only West End Road, with Georgica Pond and estates like Quelle Barn and Grey Gardens, rivals it.

"Outside Detroit," said Pauline, "in Birmingham and Auburn Hills, there are some posh enclaves where the auto execs and Pistons and Red Wings live, but it's nothing compared with this. When I was a kid, we used to go out to Birmingham to look at the Christmas lights."

"Nobody has any idea how over the top and ridiculous it gets out here. These people buy ten-million-dollar houses and then tear them down."

One mansion blended into the next, and as tasteful as the homes were, there was something odd about the neighborhood. It looked colorized, a very upscale suburbia, with Ferraris instead of station wagons, and every messy trace of children airbrushed out.

"Strange times we live in," I said. "Everyone believes they're just a couple of breaks from being rich. I think it's something they put in the water."