Trolls in the Hamptons (29 page)

“He wore them the last time he came to New York. If you can't find them, he most likely hid them for safe-keeping when he went to the hospital.”

“He went from the golf course. Without a toothbrush, even. There are grass stains on his shirt.”

“Stains come out. The cuff links are safe. You could ask him where they are, you know.”

“What, and have him think I am stealing his belongings while he's sick? Or picking out clothes for his casket? What kind of vote of confidence do you think that will be?”

“Right, Mom. Anyway, those words and some others we can't read are what's on the back of the necklace you gave me. The one made out of your wedding ring.”

She sniffed. “And the old coot told me it said ‘I love you.' No one could read it well enough to prove anything else. Your father never told the truth about anything. That's why—”

I was not going to listen to her rant about his affairs. I'd heard them a zillion times, and his denials, too. “That government agent I told you about, the guy from England? He brought over another expert. They figured it out, most of it anyway. It's really old.”

“Your father swears it's lucky.”

Well, I certainly got lucky last night. “I haven't taken it off.”

“Good. But you don't need to wear it to the book party. It won't match.”

“What book party, Mom? That's the first I heard about it.”

“Nonsense. I told you on the phone.”

I would remember a book signing.

“And it's written on my calendar.”

Why would I read my mother's calendar?

“My friend Dawn wrote a book and they're throwing her a pub party in a tent behind the East Hampton Library tonight.”

“Tonight? Saturday?”

“I do know the days of the week, dear. It will be good for your career to be seen with the literary crowd. Maybe they'll throw you a party for your next book.”

Trolls in the Hamptons
? That was its new name. I didn't think so. “My career is doing just fine, Mom. You know how I hate those things.”

Are all mothers selectively deaf or is it just mine? I wonder if anyone's ever done a survey.

She went on as if I hadn't spoken. As if she didn't know I hated crowds, literary snobs, and most of East Hampton. “You're supposed to dress up as your favorite literary character, but don't worry. I have a Dr. Doolittle costume in my closet.”

“What?”

“You heard me. I need you to go in my place. I thought you could carry Napoleon.”

“His name is Little Red, and he bites, in case you don't remember. He's sure to be a big hit at some tent gathering. If he doesn't lift his leg on everyone's feet.”

“Sarcasm is unbecoming, especially in one's daughter. I have a tiny muzzle for him. You'll carry him. He'll make the costume.”

“You never told me about a muzzle or I mightn't have been bitten ten times. And I am not going. Red is not going.”

“I already told Dawn you'd be there.”

“Well, you are just going to have to tell her differently. And stop managing my life. I am doing enough, aren't I, staying with the poodles, toting a feral fou-fou dog around with me?”

She snorted this time. “If I managed your life, I would have shipped you off to high school in England. I would have made sure you went to Royce Institute, as my mother insisted, and met the men they hoped to match you with. If I were managing your life, I'd have grandchildren by now. I'd have—”

“I am not going. I am not dressing as any character, but if I did it would be Lizzie Borden. You know, who gave her mother forty whacks?”

I could see the pursed lips, the narrowed eyes, right through the telephone line. “The party is for charity, for all the animal shelters on the North and South Forks of Long Island. Dawn's book is called
Rescue Me
, and not only has she taken in a dozen of the dogs I've rehabbed, but she's donated thousands of dollars to ARF and other local nonprofit, no-kill shelters.”

“Great. She's rich, likes dogs, and found someone to publish her book. Congratulate her for me on her success. She doesn't need one more moron in a stupid outfit.”

“The book is dedicated to me.”

Oh, boy. “What time tonight?”

 

How could I sit down to write after that? Where was the open, uncluttered mind that I needed to be creative? Wearing a Dr. Doolittle costume in hell, I suppose. Sitting at the computer was no help. I had nothing in my head but a headache. The glow of after-sex, of Grant's tenderness, was long gone. One of the dogs shredded his towel crane anyway. Fafhrd didn't scare me anymore. Cocktails with the glitterati did.

I'd wear my black dress, I decided, and I'd drag Susan with me. No, she was cooking at the restaurant every night. Grant wouldn't be back. That left Kenneth and Colin. They were here to protect me, weren't they? They could protect me from making an ass of myself under a tent.

They said no when I walked down to ask. The word was not much could happen for another week, until the full moon when psi connections were stronger. So they were going back to Manhattan this morning to help locate the nanny's murderer and see if any of the ghost whisperers had arrived to talk to her at the morgue.

Maybe they wouldn't be such great escorts anyway, looking for lost souls at a library book signing.

I decided getting my hair done might make me feel better about being the stand-in Tate. Janie had an open appointment at the salon in her house. She also had stars in her eyes about Mom having a book dedicated to her.

“Of course you did one. But you're her daughter. That doesn't count.”

A nasty part of me wanted to know if her friend Dawn had to pay to get her book published. There was a lot of that going around these days. Or her publisher might be one of those new small presses that sold two thousand copies, if that. My books counted. They won awards, got great reviews, and paid royalties. My dedicatees were proud to be named in the front of them. And I hated having to sit and listen to the small-town gossip while I waited for Janie to wind my hair in silver foil. I didn't remember half the people they mentioned, or care about how the Patchens' third daughter was finally getting married at the church Sunday morning, with the reception up at a converted estate. I certainly did not want to hear about how a native Harborite badass had returned to the neighborhood, on a yacht, no less, docked in Montauk.

Janie and Mrs. Chemlecki, the judge's wife who was getting a smelly perm, were fascinated about Turley Borsack's resurrection as a rich guy, not that the one-time bay fisherman/suspected drug runner'd made good, but that he had enough nerve to show up back in town after umpteen years. Word had it, I was forced to hear, that his wife ended up dying in a mental hospital somewhere in Europe, where she had family.

Too much sampling the wares, a woman under the dryer shouted to be heard. But he had loved his wife and daughter, so maybe he wasn't all bad. Money covered a lot of crimes. And bought a lot of luxuries, no matter where it came from. No one knew what happened to the pretty, dark-haired daughter.

I decided to get my nails done while I waited for my streaky blonde hair to get a life, in Janie's words. By moving to the other end of the room, I hoped to avoid hearing more about the wages of sin and the pharmaceuticals business than I wanted to know. Pauline the manicurist chewed gum, had sunset-pink hair, and wanted to know all about Grant, Nicky, and my supposed boss, Mr. Parker. The movie mogul was still the most exciting resident of Paumanok Harbor, to Pauline, at least, who knew the exact age of the starlet Parker was currently dating. Young enough to be his daughter by a midlife marriage. Yuck.

I didn't know any of the answers to the million questions Pauline threw at me between blowing bubbles and scraping my cuticles raw.

Agent Grant was chasing a murderer, Nicholas Ryland was still missing, I never heard from the Rosehill renter.

“You will,” Pauline said, turning my hands over to look at my palms. “Next week. But don't get excited. He's not the one.”

“The one who? The one who has Nicky? The one who's my soul mate?” I snatched my hands back. Thank goodness the timer went off and I could get the crap washed out of my hair. Now I didn't have to listen to Marie Somebody's trip to Ireland, suffer Mrs. Noyes's knee replacement, or coo over pictures of Janie's new grandchild.

“There!” the small-town stylist announced, swiveling my chair so I could see the finished product in the mirror.

“There” was an over-the-hill Las Vegas hooker on a bad hair day. Oh, God, it wasn't me. Bright, big, my head looked like a dandelion that got chewed up by the weed whacker.

I exceeded the speed limit back to Rosehill by about three times, praying no one saw me before I could wash my hair. The color wouldn't come out, but at least I got the blonde spikes to lie flat, if not curl. Well, I'd be in disguise at the book party, if not in costume.

There was no way I could settle at the computer, so I gathered the dogs into the Escalade, all of them. The poodles took the backseat, each claiming a window to stick his head out. Red sat in the front, clipped to the seat belt so he couldn't get under my feet, into my lap, or jump out the window.

We went to the beach, which was illegal, according to local rules, after Memorial Day. The sand and salt was bad for the dogs' skin, according to my mother. Tough. I had Baggies, a towel, a bottle of water to share, and a desperate craving for open space.

Sun, sky, sea. Prozac for free, with no side effects. My jaws unclenched, my shoulders unhunched, the line between my eyebrows unpuckered, without the Botox Mrs. Chemlecki recommended.

I spread my towel and sat down, facing the water so I didn't have to see the few other beachgoers. This was the bay, not the ocean that was just fifteen minutes away across Montauk Highway, so there was no surf, no crowds, and not the smoothest sand, either. But the waves lapped in natural order, the sun glistened off the water, and I couldn't see land across the Sound today, so the world was big, endless, eternal. My life was small; my problems were insignificant. Except that Red was missing.

Shit. He must have taken off when I threw sticks for Ben and Jerry. They were panting on the blanket next to me, but the Pom was not in sight. Then I heard his sharp yips and spotted him, down the beach, barking at the waves, stupid little creature that he was, nearly giving me a heart attack.

Maybe Red wasn't so stupid. There was Fafhrd waving back from fifty feet out, his reddish head and chest above water. Maybe Red thought he was a relative. Or were dogs color blind? No matter.

I grabbed Red, told the poodles to stay, and raced back to the car. I pulled out the enlarged design of the back of the ring pendant, and ran back to the beach, at the edge of the water. I held it up.

Fafhrd lowered his prominent brow and squinted. I turned the page upside down. He smiled, showing blunt teeth with wide spaces between them.

“It's from your home,” I shouted, and tried to project mentally, too, whatever that entailed. “You need to be there. Home.”

He shook his head, creating a miniature waterspout.

I tried my other possibility. “One life. One heart.”

Fafhrd patted his chest, where his heart might be. The noise resounded like a rockslide with big boulders.

“Love? Is that why you are here? You love the boy, Nicky?”

He pounded his chest again.

“Do you know where he is?”

Now he slapped at the water angrily, sending waves big enough to surf on. I scurried back to dry sand.

“He's in the water?”

If a troll could shrug, he did. He shook his head in sorrow.

“He's not dead, is he?” I must have shrieked, because all three of the dogs started barking. Fafhrd shook his whole body in vehement denial, making another small tsunami. “Okay. We're looking. We'll help.”

Two kids with boogie boards came running toward the waves. Fafhrd patted his heart again, boom-boom, and disappeared.

Well, at least I could talk to him. I hadn't learned much that would help. But I figured our conversation was more enlightening than any I'd have with the library crowd. And Grant would be happy.

I knew he'd be too busy to take a phone call, so I emailed him:
Loved the crane. Talked to F, N lives. Check with FBI, DUE, local police re. Turley Borsack. Drugs. Yacht. Miss you.

That said it all.

I
KEPT CHECKING MY MESSAGES. At my mother's number, I got three reminders about the coming full moon. Was I supposed to join a coven or dig up Grandma Eve's garlic to ward off werewolves? I also got another of those unwelcome-wagon calls.