“No,” she said, lowering her voice and looking pointedly at something behind me, “jealousy.”
I turned and saw a dark woman walking down the dock. She had a towel wrapped around her head and a terry cloth bathrobe that would have fit her if she’d been half as tall.
“Excuse me,” I said to her. “Do you know John Churchman?”
She stopped abruptly, and unlike Elaine Brooks, collected the neck of her robe and gained greater purchase on a clear bag filled with bathing paraphernalia. She didn’t know whether to look suspicious or smug.
“Funny you should ask.” She looked toward her neighbor, who’d already ducked out of sight. “I’m staying with him. Who would be inquiring?”
“I’m a friend of Bobby Dobson, the one renting John’s house off Vedders Pond.”
“Johnny’s still in the shower. Exfoliating. He’ll be by in a sec.”
She moved on down the dock with the kind of sliding gait that made you think of high heels and tight skirts. I followed her.
She stepped nervously across a short gangplank and into the cockpit of a modern sailboat, all clean rounded fiberglass and chrome, not a splinter of teak anywhere. She was halfway down the companionway before she saw me walking on the dock. She waved as she descended down into the boat.
“I’d invite you in, but I lack the authority. He’ll be along soon.”
I said something inanely apologetic and sat down on a plastic storage bin chained to the fence that ran along the dock. As predicted, Churchman showed up soon after, wearing a towel and the self-possession of a crown prince.
He had a lot of hair on his chest, but you could still see it was sculpted and fat free, and well represented by his posture, which was somewhere on the extreme end of ramrod. When I stood up from the bin and stepped in front of him a smile erupted on his face that would have been all perfectly straight, brilliant white teeth if it weren’t for the cheerful lines sketched on his cheeks and around his eyes.
“John Churchman?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he said, thrusting out his hand.
His grip was a shade tighter than it needed to be, so I squeezed back before letting go. I expected him to be startled by that, but instead he looked impressed.
“I’m Sam Acquillo. I found the dead girl in your house.”
“How shitty was that?” he said, his face shifting smoothly into sympathy mode.
“Very. Can I bother you for a few minutes?”
“I already gave my statement.”
“I’m not a cop. The thing’s just got me bugged and I thought you might be able to help.”
He nodded, smile back in place.
“Absolutely,” he said for the second time. “Let me get decent and we’ll chitchat.” He looked at his boat. “Wait’ll you meet Brigitte. A one-woman babe-a-thon.”
“We met.”
“Lucky you. Come on.”
It took a while for him to get decent. I suppose that involved moisturizing, achieving a razor-sharp part in his straight brown hair and picking out the right outfit—a soft rayon shirt tucked with precision into a pair of pleated trousers. Brigitte came up the companionway directly behind him and put her arm around his waist. Her dress looked like it was made from the same material as his shirt, in a contrasting but nicely coordinated color. They stood there for a moment so I could take it all in.
“We’re about to have our evening drinkies,” said Brigitte. “Care to join?”
“If you got vodka and ice, sure,” I said.
Churchman patted her on the rump when she turned to go back down the companionway.
“Ever windsurf?” he asked me, after sitting down on the cushioned cockpit seat across from me.
I said no. “I like a boat around me.”
He looked disappointed.
“Too bad. I was going to suggest you move up to para-surfing. Learned it down in Cancun. Much bigger rush. I’m going out tomorrow if the wind kicks up like it’s supposed to.”
“So you live here during the season?”
He shook his head with another expansive smile, giving me a chance to see what teeth can look like under the proper management.
“Year-round when I’m in the country. Just do a short haul in the spring to paint the bottom. Usually while I’m staying at my apartment in Montmartre.”
“You a local?” he asked.
“My grandparents were from the
“I meant Southampton.”
“Yeah. Up in North Sea. So Bobby Dobson rents Vedders Pond full time?”
Brigitte called to him to help her with a tray piled with wine, cheese and bread, and my vodka on the rocks. He swept it out of her hand and slid it onto the cockpit table without a pause or clink of glass.
“Great tenant. Marvelous. Doesn’t know which end of a screwdriver drives the screw, but that’s what landlords are for.”
“So you don’t mind the subletting.”
“I choose to call them guests, and who cares as long as the rent is paid and there’re no problems?”
“Like a woman getting murdered?”
He wasn’t sure if I meant it as a joke, but he kept the grin when he pointed his finger at me.
“You make an excellent observation. Murder was not part of the lease.”
Brigitte used two fingers to tap his thigh, in a parody of an actual swat.
“Heavens, John. How awful.”
“You’re right,” he said, putting his arm around her as she sat down next to him. “It’s not funny.”
“John likes to laugh in the face of death,” said Brigitte. “Jumping out of planes, skiing down mountains— occasionally at the same time.”
“It’s a bad habit.”
“So no opinions on what happened?” I asked him. “No ideas?”
He looked at Brigitte as if to help him remember.
“Not really. I stay pretty clear of the place during the high season and never met the Japanese girl. One of the cops said he went to the house on a complaint and found her drunk with the music blasting and bawling like a fountain. Don’t the Japanese like to commit hari-kari when they’re bumming over something?”
Brigitte looked like she wanted to say “How awful” again, but instead she took a big sip of her white wine.
“It wasn’t suicide. The body was moved from the rear patio to a bedroom in the basement. Don’t worry. No blood. The killer was unusually tidy.”
“Then I could use him to clean up when the cops let me back into the house. They left a mighty mess.”
“How well do you know Robert Dobson?” I asked.
“I do his taxes. And the old man’s. I’ll always know if they can afford the rent.”
“Dad pays?”
“Oh, yeah. Bobby’s a bit of a disappointment financially, but he’s their kid, you know?”
Brigitte nodded briskly at this, as if she’d asserted the same position herself just that morning.
“It must be quite a responsibility knowing everybody’s dirty secrets,” I said, finishing what little vodka Brigitte fit into the thick-walled glass. A clear example of false advertising.
“Why does everyone assume there’re dirty secrets?” Churchman asked. “What’s wrong with slightly soiled?”
“What’re Bobby’s?”
“Tish-tish. I wouldn’t even tell that to the cops. Not without a court order.”
I toasted him with my glass full of ice.
“Do you believe in coincidence?” I asked him.
“Accountants don’t like statistical improbabilities.”
