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landline phone. She would be waiting for a report on Byron Hughes.
    â€œSo, he was gorgeous and rescued a damsel in distress,” Elle said.
    â€œWell, I wouldn’t go that far. Although, he did have a certain charm. He even brought me gifts.” I remembered my first impression this morning of Byron as a knight in armor, and the ground shifted from all the nineteenth-century suffragettes rolling in their graves.
    â€œHe’s a catch. Be extra nice to him and maybe he’ll do the job for free.”
    â€œBefore you pimp me out, I don’t think I stand a chance with him. Out of my league. And the only reason I got lucky enough to pay in the low thousands for blueprints was because it’s October, not March.”
    â€œHe’s not out of your league! You were engaged to Michael. His pedigree wasn’t chopped liver.”
    â€œMichael was a user. He would’ve never made it as editor in chief of
American Home and Garden
without his ex-wife’s publishing connections.” Michael was my former fiancé and boss, whom I’d found in bed with his ex-wife, a.k.a. Paige Whitney, of Whitney Publications fame. Michael was also the reason for my escape from Manhattan to Montauk. Even though I had to leave behind my dream job at the magazine, it was the best decision I’d ever made.
    â€œThe whole gull thing is disgusting. I think you should tell the police,” Elle said.
    â€œCrime is pretty rare in the Hamptons, but I don’t think a dead seagull will make the police blotter in the
Montauk Journal
. Do you?”
    â€œMaybe not, but be careful. Between this and the skeleton at Sandringham, you’d better take things as a warning. I dreamt last night I couldn’t fit into my Edith Head dress from
The Birds
. An omen, don’t you think?”
    â€œYou told me about that dream months ago. And, you also told me the dress was from
Vertigo
.”
    â€œSemantics. It’s a Hitchcock movie, for God’s sake.”
    Elle’s great-aunt Mabel had been an assistant to the famous movie costume designer Edith Head. Aunt Mabel willed Elle many items from classic ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s movies, along with a few hundred pieces of costume jewelry, and an entire store filled with antiques and vintage. Lucky girl.
    I said, “Let’s talk tomorrow afternoon, when we meet at your place with our finds.”
    â€œSounds good. By the way, I called Sandringham and talked to Uncle Harry for a whole two minutes before Celia grabbed the phone and told me, in no uncertain terms, the discovery in the bungalow was to be kept top secret. As if I’d upset my great-uncle.”
    â€œCelia didn’t seem like the caring type when we saw her at the estate, chastising your great-uncle like a child. I hope you’ve got Detective Shoner on call to let you know when they ID the body.”
    â€œWhy would I?”
    â€œTime to step up that relationship. We need an inside track to the investigation.”
    â€œOh no, you don’t! You almost got murdered last spring.”
    I looked at the base of my landline phone. Elle’s words filled the screen at such a fast pace, I could hardly keep up.Most of my home time was spent hearing-aid-less: no feedback, and as tiny as they were, they still irritated my outer ear canal. My house phone transposed everything into words, like the captions on foreign movies. Occasionally, things got spelled incorrectly, like Elle’s last sentence. It read, “You almost got merlot last spring.” I wish. In fact, I had an open bottle in the fridge. But I always stuck to my after-five drinking curfew.
    â€œIt can’t hurt to know what’s going on in case it involves your family. I doubt there’s any danger. That skeleton had been sitting there for a long time.”
    After I hung up with Elle, I spent the next three hours working on a proposal for a potential Cottages by the Sea client. My rates were