Death Will Extend Your Vacation Read Online Free PDF Page B

“We got there in the afternoon too.”
    “We weren’t there,” Lewis said. “We drove out to Montauk for the day. We didn’t get back till dinnertime.”
    “Did the cops ask why everybody’s last name was Alcoholic?” Oscar asked.
    “It came up,” I admitted.
    “That’s bad.” Oscar shook his head.
    “Not telling them would have been worse,” Jimmy said.
    I was relieved to hear he thought so.
    “Would you rather they thought we were a bunch of drunken assholes,” Jimmy asked, “who kept a stash of dope in every room and might have drowned poor Clea horsing around?”
    That was more or less what I’d figured when I blew the gaffe.
    “They probably wouldn’t have been surprised to find a stash of dope,” Jimmy said. “I bet nine times out of ten when they get called, it’s a party house.”
    “I could tell you stories,” Oscar said. He sounded awfully cheerful for a guy who’d fielded so many questions and expected the police to come back asking more. I wondered what the strong feelings about Clea that he’d mentioned had been.
    “Well, we’re all clean and sober now,” Corky said. “Barbara found her, right? You couldn’t tell if she drowned?”
    “I tried not to look,” Barbara admitted, “even though I had to.”
    “Bruce and I saw her too,” Jimmy said. “We didn’t see a gunshot wound or a rope around her neck.”
    He shut down his iPad, stood up, shook out his pants, and picked his way around the blanket to where Barbara sat. He lowered himself to a seated position behind her. She leaned back against his legs.
    “So how did you know she was dead? Did you try CPR?”
    “We saw her already lying there before I started down the beach,” Barbara explained. “I thought she was a log.”
    “She had to come back to tell us,” Jimmy added.
    “Didn’t you have a cell phone?”
    “All I was wearing was a bathing suit and a bagel,” Barbara said.
    “Oh! I’m sick of this!” Karen said. She stamped her foot, spraying sand in all directions. “Let’s not talk about Clea anymore.” Lewis reached out to her. She shook his hand off her arm. “I’m going up to the house.” She stalked away toward the dunes, where a flight of wooden steps led up to Oscar’s deck.
    The steady growl of a motor overhead distracted us all. We watched as a small plane, the kind with the wings on top, flew by, low and parallel to the beach. It trailed a banner exhorting us to drink a well-known beer.
    “I knew it well,” I said.
    “Nevermore,” Jimmy said.
    “Oy, have you got the wrong beach,” Barbara said.
    As the plane puttered out of sight, I realized that half the group had left. The rest shook the sand out of towels, applied more sun block, and drank from their water bottles.
    Someone took out a set of beach paddles and the bounceless ball that went with them. The
thock thock thock
of the game provided rhythm beneath the swish of the surf and the cries of gulls. A shadow swept down the beach as a black sheep amid the fleecy clouds blew briefly across the sun. I shivered.
    “Catch.” Barbara flung a T-shirt in my general direction. I made an awkward left-handed catch. “Jimmy and I are going for a walk. Want to come?”
    “No, that’s okay.”
    I wanted a cigarette. Recovering alcoholics used to smoke like chimneys. But like chimneys, most of them no longer smoked. Our house had “Smoke Free Zone” signs posted everywhere, even on the deck. Having a cigarette, like shooting up or jerking off, had become something you snuck away to take care of privately.
    When I stood up, I could feel the kiss of the ocean in the breeze. My lips tasted of salt. I palmed the pack of cigarettes I’d rolled in a towel and added a matchbook. I pulled the T-shirt over my head. Barbara and Jimmy, hand in hand like kids, receded in the distance. I turned the other way. The hard-packed sand close to the water still made the easiest walking. But in this direction and on this tide, it slanted, so I had to gimp