Murder Most Frothy

Mike Quinn’s words stayed with me as I closed my cell phone. I’d say your friend David is in danger. I peered through the kitchen window at the shadowy lawn, the white dunes, and the ebony expanse of ocean beyond. Anyone could be lurking out on that shoreline, I realized, lying in wait for David if he were to return home along the beach. Once again he would be an easy target.

I opened the back door and stepped outside. The outer reaches of Long Island were always cooler than Manhattan. Tonight it was almost chilly for a night in early July—temperatures in the middle-seventies, with high humidity, a wet wind off the ocean. Cool and refreshing after long, sweaty hours in the crowded restaurant.

Listening to the dull continuous roar of the incoming surf, I strode across the cedar deck, scanning the grounds for any sign of the guard who’d startled me earlier. The young man must be up front, I concluded, because there was no sign of anyone in the back of the mansion. I followed the stone path down to the shore and crossed the beach. My sneakers were filling with sand, so I kicked them off and hung them over my shoulder by the laces.

Moving along the shoreline, I noticed bright lights farther down the beach. Square paper lanterns the color of fresh blood had been strung along a huge stone patio. They trailed all the way down to the water, lending the pale white sand a reddish hue. In the scarlet glow, I saw knots of people in relaxed poses. The smell of mesquite charcoal drifted toward me on the summer breeze, only to be scattered by a strong cold gust from the ocean. I walked closer and began to hear whiffs of laughter on the air, a tinkling piano.

I turned to scan the beach in the other direction. But all was dark and quiet. This was the only party on the shoreline that I could see, and I concluded this had to be the bash that David was attending.

Yet it didn’t make a lot of sense on the face of it. Unless I was mistaken, this party was taking place on the grounds of The Sandcastle. But Edward Myers Wilson claimed David and Bom Felloes had waged an ugly war over the restaurant space. Since David had never mentioned Bom to me, I assumed things were still chilly between them.

So why was David going to a party at Bom’s home? Was Bom trying to make up with David?…Or was there something more sinister in the invitation?

I was still fairly far from the whirl of activity, and I picked up my pace to get a better view. Apparently, I was not alone in my curiosity. As I drew closer, I heard a sound that was totally out of place. A click of metal on metal, like a rifle being cocked.

I stopped dead, straining my ears.

For a long moment all I heard was the lapping waters and the party’s tinkling piano. I was ready to believe I’d experienced an audio hallucination when a dark silhouette moved out of some high scrub grass on the beach. In the uncertain light, I was sure the figure was wearing a full body wet suit so black it seemed to absorb the night.

The man carried something clutched close to his chest. I could not see his face because he was facing the party. I was pretty sure the stranger had not seen me on the dark beach, but I was too afraid to do more than stare, figuring that if I moved, I might attract his attention. He gripped something in his hands, but because his back was turned to me, I could not see what it was.

For a long time the man just stood there, his broad back to me. Finally he turned away from the bright lights and darted across the beach, toward the lapping water. I watched him dive into the surf, quickly vanishing beneath the dark surface of the churning waters. I hurried to the shoreline. Large finned footprints creased the wet sand.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon had returned.

I scanned the ocean, wondering where the mysterious swimmer was headed. I made out the dull white gleam of a pleasure boat bobbing perhaps fifty yards off shore. There were no lights aboard, even the running lights were dim in what I was certain was a violation of maritime law. In any case, the boat was barely a smudge on the horizon and I was not certain I’d properly judged the distance from the beach. But since I’d been swimming in these same waters for weeks, I didn’t hesitate.

Dropping my sneakers on the sand, I waded into the churning surf until I was waist deep. Then I dived through the middle of a wave and started swimming. The water was chilly, but I generated my own heat, moving with strong strokes that pushed against a mild but persistent undercurrent.

Never one to miss the opportunity for a morbidly inappropriate thought, my mind began to replay the opening of Jaws—the scene where a young girl is eaten alive during a midnight skinny dip—and I began to worry whether there were any dangerous sharks in these waters. On the other hand, considering that I was probably chasing a professional hit man who had killed before, I realized that marine life probably should not have been my primary concern.

It took several minutes, but I was soon approaching the boat, which was anchored and seemingly deserted. Then a head popped out of the water next to the stern ladder, face covered by huge goggles.

Blowing against the waves breaking over my face, I watched the stranger grasp a ladder and drag himself out of the water. Yes, the swimmer was definitely a man, lean and hard-muscled under the form-fitting wet suit. He grasped the brass rail with one hand; in the other he clutched something I still could not see. Once aboard, the man dropped what he’d been carrying and moved toward the superstructure. Then I heard a hatch open and, a moment later, the engine rumbled to life. Finally the running lights came on and a tiny lamp illuminated the pleasure craft. I read the plain black letters on the bow:

Rabbit Run, Hampton Bays, N.Y.

The motor’s rumble became a roar and the boat lurched forward. The roiling waves spilled over me as the craft began to move. In just a few seconds the boat accelerated until it was skipping across the waves, heading south. I bobbed like a cork in its wake, watching its lights fade in the distance.

Before the boat was gone, I began to shiver. I was in fairly deep waters, and the incoming undercurrent was practically frigid. Okay, I thought, now it’s time to worry about sharks—or hypothermia. I suddenly understood why the intruder had worn a wet suit (beyond its obvious camouflage potential) and I wished I’d had one, too.

Treading water, I turned to face the shore. It was a lucky thing for me that the beach party was still in full swing, because it would have been very hard to judge how far away the dark shoreline was otherwise. The only source of light close by was the scarlet glow of the Japanese lanterns, alarmingly tiny in the distance. I struck out, swimming along with the incoming waves for what seemed like a very long time.

Finally I touched soft sand. Battling the sucking surf, I climbed out of the white-capped waves in my bare feet, my wet khaki skirt plastered against my naked legs, my Cuppa J Polo clinging to my cold, clammy flesh. A gust off the ocean whipped against my wet back. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered again. My teeth were actually chattering now, and I was certain my lips had turned the color of a Hamptons’ summer sky.

A dozen or so startled partygoers had watched me emerge from the crashing waves like some kind of bedraggled mermaid. I was vaguely aware that these people looked familiar—they wouldn’t know me, but I knew their faces. A few had been at David’s party. There were sports figures, TV stars, a famous model.

As I moved off the sand, and onto the vast green carpet of lawn, I heard snickers from the men, confused laughter from the women. Someone made a loud joke and pointed to a nearby garden table of wrought iron. Raw oysters and sushi surrounded the centerpiece of a life-size representation of Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus—the iconic fifteenth-century painting of a naked woman emerging from an oyster shell on the shores of the Mediterranean. Here the grace and delicacy of that masterpiece of Renaissance style was rendered in ice.

No, I wasn’t as naked as Venus. Or as beautiful. But the carved-in-ice part—yeah, okay, that was me.

I shivered again and smoothed my clothes, trying to regain a shred of dignity by tugging at the clinging canvas skirt, folding my arms over my wet, skintight Polo. As I continued moving through the crowd on the lawn, a woman touched my arm. She was young and very beautiful, eyes wide on a too-perfect face (possibly sculpted like that chilly statue of Venus, but with a surgeon’s instruments instead of an ice pick). Her blond hair was swept back to reveal a pert nose, high cheekbones, bee-stung lips, and a flawless forehead the color of ivory.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Got bored. Went for a midnight swim.”

The woman blinked vacantly.

The young man at her side looked away, offering me his profile—handsome but boyish, with sideburns so long, they nearly went back in time, to early-seventies muttonchops. He appeared to be waiting for me to recognize him, but I actually didn’t have a clue.