Death Will Extend Your Vacation
Read Death Will Extend Your Vacation Online
Authors: Elizabeth Zelvin
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery, #Retail, #Suspense
Death Will Extend Your Vacation
“Will keep readers guessing until the end.”
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Crime Fiction Examiner
“Zelvin brings [her characters] to life. A good plot, and action to keep readers glued to the pages. Good reading for the summer or anytime.”
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Mysterical-E
“Zelvin has mastered the male voice in a series that doesn’t shy away from serious interpersonal issues. She has a natural ear for efficiently melodic prose.”
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Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
“Readers will enjoy the good-natured humor of the characters as well as some keen social satire.”
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Booklist
“Read for her well-developed characters.”
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Kirkus
“Just the thing for an enjoyable beach read.”
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Gloria Feit, Midwest Book Review
“A perfect vacation book! Full of heart, full of humor—this honest and believable mystery put its straight-talking characters into a page-turner of a plot. Suspense plus insight plus compassion—equals a great read!”
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Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha, Anthony and Macavity winner
“Empathetic and insightful, Elizabeth Zelvin celebrates the power of recovery against the backdrop of a holiday in the Hamptons. Well-drawn characters written with verve. Zelvin knows the human heart and all its struggles.”
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Carolyn Hart, Malice Domestic Lifetime Achievement honoree
“The Hamptons plus a juicy murder, with the added twist of addiction and recovery—what more could the intelligent mystery reader want?”
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Rhys Bowen, multiple Anthony, Macavity, and Agatha winner
Death Will Extend Your Vacation
By Elizabeth Zelvin
booksBnimble Publishing
New Orleans, La.
Death Will Extend Your Vacation
Copyright © 2012 by Elizabeth Zelvin
Cover by Andy Brown
ISBN: 9781625172082
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First booksBnimble Publishing electronic publication: July 2013
eBook editions by eBooks By Barb for
booknook.biz
Chapter One
“I’ll fry!” My best friend Jimmy cast an apprehensive glance at the cloudless sky.
“You couldn’t fry an egg on the beach at this hour.” His girlfriend Barbara went on slathering sun block across his broad, freckled back.
“It’s the crack of dawn,” Jimmy said. “I want to be asleep. I want to be back in Manhattan in my air conditioned apartment.”
“You know, most people consider a summer share in the Hamptons a treat,” Barbara said, “not an ordeal. If we don’t get a move on, half the day will be gone.” She wiped goo off her hands along the sides of his arms and stepped back to contemplate her work.
“Very artistic,” I said.
Mistake. She turned on me.
“Bruce, put the rest of that coffee in the thermos, don’t tank up on it.”
“You wanted me awake, didn’t you?” I chugged the last half inch of java. The cup had a ceramic frog in the bottom. Group house decorating. “Okay, okay, I’ll make more. One picnic breakfast on the beach, coming up.”
“Want me to do your back too?” Barbara waggled the big tube of sun block.
“Save it for Jimmy.” I skipped away from her. Jimmy can turn as red as a lobster in a pot of boiling water in about the same time as it takes the lobster.
Twenty minutes later, Barbara had us loaded up like Sherpas. You’d think we were about to scale K2. Bounding out onto the deck like a mountain goat, she raised both arms to the sun. She took a deep lungful of air, then exhaled with a loud “Ahhhhhh!” in case we missed the point. The house smelled of mildew to me. Outside, I admit the mix of salt and flowers beat the stink of the city back home. We trailed her down the winding path, crunching gravel and broken shells underfoot.
Barbara reached the car and started it up so she could roll all the windows down. She popped the trunk as we arrived. Jimmy and I began to divest. Beach chairs, umbrella, tatty old bedspread for a blanket. Towels. Bulging insulated food carrier the size of a duffel bag.
“Sand castle molds?” Jimmy held up a net bag filled with crenellated towers and sections of defensive wall in neon plastic.
“They were in the house,” Barbara said. “I thought you’d like them, Jimmy. You love medieval military stuff.”
“Did you also think we’d like these?” I held up a couple of industrial-strength buckets and hummed a bar or two of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. “Which one of us is Mickey Mouse?”
“Throw them in the trunk,” Barbara ordered. “I’ll drive. I got directions from Clea.”
I slid into the rear of the Toyota. I tried to avoid the death seat when Barbara drove. It wasn’t her driving so much as the way she used both hands in conversation.
“I haven’t sorted all our housemates out yet.” We’d only arrived in Dedhampton the day before. “Which one is Clea?”
“Have a bagel,” Barbara said. “Very tall and thin. Streaky blonde not quite kinky long hair and gorgeous skin the color of a ginger snap. I figure either interesting ethnic genes or a world class tan and a great hairdresser.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, “the Botticelli Venus.” The one I had watched more closely the night before at dinner than I was ready to admit to Barbara or Jimmy.
“Thank her for the bagels,” Barbara mumbled through a full mouth. “She runs. She said she’d pick them up early, drop them off, and head for the beach.”
I looked out the window. We emerged into farmland from the scrub oak and pine that surrounded the group house. Mist rose gently in the nippy air from fields of corn and potatoes. A couple of teenagers on horses ambled along the grassy side of the road. In the yards of weathered gray cedar houses, a few straw-hatted gardeners crouched among the flowers, weeding in the cool of the day. Now and then I caught a sparkling glimpse of the bay. As we neared the ocean, the landscape changed to wetlands, then to dunes.
“Jimmy, look for a sandy road to the right,” Barbara said. “That’ll be Dedhampton Beach. There’s no sign. I heard somebody changed it to Deadhampton, D-E-A-D, and the sign got stolen in less than a week.”
The dunes didn’t leave much of a road. Jimmy gave a yelp as we passed it. Barbara made a wide U-turn and aimed the car between stands of tall grasses and reeds so close their fuzzy heads thrust through the window. A fat tuft tickled my nose. I sneezed.
“
Gesundheit
,” Barbara said. “And here we are.” She swung the wheel with a flourish. The car stopped with its nose in a dune.
“Where’s the ocean?” I said.
“No boardwalk?” Jimmy said.
“We’re in the country.” Barbara flung up the lid of the trunk and loaded us up again.
“Why do Irish mothers pray for sons, Mr. Jones?” Jimmy asked.
“Because we make such good pack animals, Mr. Bones.”
“Here, give me that.” Barbara snatched up the only thing I really wanted, the thermos of coffee, from the top of Jimmy’s pile. “Come on!” She danced away, slipping a little on the hill of sand.
“No cars in the parking lot,” Jimmy observed as we trudged after her. “We’re the only fools not still asleep at this hour.”
“What about the ginger snap?” I asked.
“Surely she wouldn’t come all this way on foot,” he said. Jimmy emerges from behind his computer only after prolonged prodding. He says walking is for Luddites.
“I told you,” Barbara said, “she’s a runner. It’s only about four miles.” She crested the dune and stood backlit with the edges of her frizzy dark hair glowing like a halo. “Oh, wow, look— it’s so beautiful!”
We reached the top right behind her, Jimmy breathing heavily and me pretending not to. I looked where she was looking.
Okay, it was beautiful. The deserted beach stretched right and left, with the jade Atlantic beyond it. The sun, still low over the water, turned the sand to a warm pink. A ruffle of dark seaweed and scattered shells marked the high tide line. Below it, the beach looked perfect for running if you liked strenuous. I wouldn’t mind a stroll on it myself. The flat, wet surface picked up the robin’s egg blue of the sky. The surf was no big deal, baby swells that pushed a swathe of creamy bubbles up onto the beach and then ran out again with a whisper.
Barbara clutched at Jimmy’s arm for balance as she shook her sandals off her feet. She wiggled her toes in the sand.
“Ooooh, that feels good. Let’s go.” She frisked around us like a puppy as we made our way toward the water. “Here, this is good— a front row view of the ocean, but the sand is still soft. No, don’t park the stuff near the seaweed— that’s where the flies will be.”
Jimmy threw his head up like a shying horse. She hadn’t mentioned flies when she talked us into this beach house share.
Jimmy and I set up the chairs, dug in the pole of the umbrella, and flapped the blanket. Barbara went and paddled in the water. Cheerful screams announced the temperature: too cold for me. She splashed around till we’d done all the work. Then she trotted back to us.
“It’s not cold once you get used to it. Come and wade. It’s great!”
“You’re out of your mind,” Jimmy said. “I’m not so much as rolling up my pants.”
“Then come for a walk. It’s really hard packed, practically like a sidewalk.”
“Have a heart, pumpkin,” Jimmy said. “I need to catch my breath.”
“Let’s have breakfast first,” I said.
I located the coffee and the Styrofoam cups, poured out two shots, and handed one to Jimmy.
“Give me another bagel,” Barbara said. “I can’t sit still. I’m going to take a little jog. See way down the beach? There.” She pointed to the left. “About halfway to where it gets misty, above the waterline. It looks like a driftwood log. It won’t take long to run up to it and back.”
Holding the bagel in her teeth, she stripped off her shorts and T-shirt. She wore a bathing suit underneath, a serviceable black tank. Jimmy and I hadn’t even taken off our sweatshirts, much less our long pants.
“Where do you plan to put the bagel?” I inquired. “You’re not going to run the whole way with it in your mouth, are you?”
Barbara shook her head. She plucked the bagel from her mouth and tucked it into her cleavage. “Back in twenty minutes or so.”
“Have fun.”
We drank our coffee and watched her skim along the hard sand with an occasional leap like an exuberant gazelle.
We had just about finished our coffee when we heard Barbara yell. She came racing toward us like a steam engine. We heard the urgency in her cries before we could make out words. We ran down the beach to meet her.
“It wasn’t a log,” she panted. She bent over from the waist, trembling on stiff legs and trying to catch her breath. “It was Clea, and she’s dead.”
“She had seaweed in her hair,” Barbara said. Her teeth clattered like castanets.
“Hang on, peanut.” Jimmy enveloped her in his arms. “You’re in shock.”
Barbara burrowed into his chest.
“I think you’re right. Look.” She stuck an arm out of the meld. We could see her fingers tremble. “You know how a dead fish looks, with the gray belly and the glassy eyes? I’ll never think of mermaids as romantic again.”
“Shh, it’s all right. It’s going to be all right,” Jimmy crooned as he rocked her. The only other sounds were the waves breaking on the beach. I turned away.
“Her mouth was filled with sand,” Barbara said. “I threw up.”
“Jim, we’d better go,” I said. “The tide is coming in.”
Barbara shook herself out of Jimmy’s embrace and stepped back.
“I’m okay.” She shook out her shoulders, sniffed, and dragged her arm across her nostrils. “Let’s go.”
We jogged back along the beach, Barbara in the lead. The shallow waves crept up the beach, spent their foam, and retreated, washing away Barbara’s footprints as she ran. As we approached the crumpled body, I scanned the immediate area for any clue to what had happened. Unidentified footprints around the high tide line. A weapon. A suicide note. I also checked underfoot for vomit, but Barbara had made it to the water to upchuck.
