Lynda Curnyn - Killer Summer

That was true, I thought, looking at Sage now and wondering what she was feeling. She knew Tom and Maggie better than I did. But she wasn’t one to cry either. Her toughness was legendary. It was rumored that she’d barely shed a tear when her kid sister died. I hadn’t known Sage at the time, having moved with my mother to Babylon in my sophomore year of high school, but I had heard the stories, from Nick mostly. Hope had been eleven when she died, and Sage was fourteen, which was pretty young to keep things so bottled up.

“The whole thing just seems weird to me,” I said, remembering how calmly Tom had responded when I had gotten back to the house. Like he was following some guidebook: What To Do In The Event Of Your Wife’s Death. I had run back to the house, and in one breathless burst told him about finding Maggie on the beach. I didn’t say “dead.” I couldn’t. Tom had picked up the telephone and dialed 9-1-1. I think he might even have given the sauce a stir before he threw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and headed down to the beach. Of course, I hadn’t seen his reaction to the sight of his wife. He had insisted I stay at the house and wait for the police to show up so that I could direct them. Though I felt like someone should go with him, I was glad not to be the one. I was spooked enough by the memory of Maggie’s sightless eyes looking up at me, her pale white flesh glowing in the darkness. By the time I led the Marine Bureau cop who showed up down to the beach a short while later, Tom was still under control. I nearly lost it, especially later at the house, when the questioning by the homicide detective began. All of us had to talk to the police—Tom, Nick, Sage and me. I was a bit freaked out by it, especially when I was asked where I had been, what I had been doing. If I had seen anyone else on the beach. I guess Tom got the same questions, and I imagine he answered them with more aplomb than I had managed.

I was startled by the questions, mostly because I had thought of Maggie’s death as an accident.

“They always ask those questions,” Sage had said on the way back to the city early the next morning. “You’ve seen Law and Order.”

“Yeah, but that’s because they’re investigating murder on that show.”

Then Sage calmly explained that accidental deaths or deaths that occur at home are always investigated by the police as a matter of course. I had to take her word for it, Sage was a bit of an authority on accidental death scenes, seeing as her sister’s death had been an accident, too.

If all those questions opened up the doubts in my mind about Tom’s behavior that night, damp from God-knows-what and chopping garlic with barely restrained fury, apparently the police hadn’t been fazed. In fact, that was the thing. Nothing seemed to faze them, I thought, remembering the weary face of the homicide detective who had questioned me, jotting down notes as if I were giving him one of Maggie’s famous recipes rather than filling in the blanks about how she might have wound up floating in the tide. Accidental death by drowning was what the medical examiner came back with. I wish the medical examiner were here to witness this, I thought, watching as a pretty brunette sidled up to Tom, latching herself to his arm.

“Who the hell is that?” I whispered to Sage, nudging her away from the program she had begun to read.

Sage looked up, her green eyes bland as she settled on the brunette in question, then withering once she turned to me. “That’s Francesca, Tom’s daughter.”

“Oh.” Okay, okay. So maybe I was being a bit overdramatic. But what was I supposed to think with Tom over there yucking it up with some woman who was half his age? Especially considering that Maggie was nearly half his age, too. Actually, I was surprised to learn from the dates on the coffin that she was closer to forty than my own thirty. She looked pretty damn good for her age, I thought, watching as Tom merrily greeted a tall blonde. But maybe not good enough, I thought next, as Tom leaned to kiss the blonde, his hands roaming over her back as he hugged her.

“Hey, whatever happened to Tom’s first wife?” I asked.

Sage practically glared at me. “She’s alive and well and living in Boca Raton.”

“I’m just asking.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so worked up about this. The woman drank too much and went for a swim.”

My eyes widened, but I kept my mouth shut. Sage was my best friend, but sometimes she was a total mystery to me. She could be the most generous person in the world—witness that whopping cluster of lilies up at the front of the room that she’d purchased on our behalf. But when it came to things like Maggie’s death, she just closed right up. After a harrowing night of recounting the night’s activities for everyone from the Marine Bureau cop who answered the call, to a detective from the homicide squad at the Suffolk County Police Department, we had ridden the train back to Manhattan the next morning in near silence, Sage lost in her own thoughts and Nick dozing off, only waking periodically to clutch his cell phone in his lap with a look of alarm, as if he’d just missed an important call. Tom had stayed behind, of course, and though at first I assumed he was under arrest, I later learned he had gone back to the house to secure it before leaving the beach. And to pick up Janis Joplin, who likely had to be sedated if the state I’d seen her in last was any indication.

“Where’s Nick?” I asked now.

“He had some sort of a business meeting,” Sage said, finally looking me in the eye again. I knew that look. She was wondering, like I often did, how a man who barely earned a living managed to have so many “business meetings.” “He’s supposed to be here by now,” she continued, her gaze moving to the door. “Holy shit.”

I swung my head around, fully expecting to find Tom in a new tryst with some willing female—for a married man, he sure knew a lot of hot, young things judging by the crowd that had showed up—and I was surprised to see him enveloped in a hug with a man.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Good question. He’s fucking hot,” Sage said. Then, running a hand over her tousled, blond-streaked hair, which she’d just barely tamed into a French twist, she said, “C’mon. Let’s go see how Tom is doing.”

If I had wondered about my best friend before, I was positively dumbstruck when I found myself standing next to her as she smiled up at Tom, who immediately wrapped one arm around her slender shoulders, pulling her close. “Sage, sweetie, how are you doing? You know Vince Trifelli, right? Our VP of manufacturing?”

I saw Sage’s eyes widen. “The Vince Trifelli? I think we must have spoken on the phone a few times, but I don’t think we’ve ever actually met.”

“It was Vince here who convinced me to get into leather goods in the first place,” Tom told us all with a smile. “And then leather outerwear. But I can’t give him all the credit for being the brains behind Edge, because Sage here deserves some, too.” Tom waggled his brows at Sage. “Funny you guys haven’t met,” he said with a frown. “But I guess Vince has been on the road a lot. Poor guy has been suffering over in Italy for the past few weeks—all for the sake of Edge.”

“I spend most of my time in China, Tom,” Vince said. “Let’s not forget that. And you know China is no picnic.”

“Hey, if I could give you Italy all year round, buddy, you know I would,” Tom said. He turned to Sage. “Sage has been making her own kind of magic for Edge. She’s my best sales rep.” Tom gazed fondly down at her, pulling her in tighter. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“Ah, Sage,” Vince said, his dark eyes roaming over her appreciatively. “Yes, I do believe we have spoken a few times. A pleasure to finally meet you.”