Trophy House Read Online Free PDF Page A

the Truro area and a pair of expensive binoculars. Maybe I’ve seen too many movies, but I’m sure this guy is up to no good.”
    â€œAnd what does this all add up to?” I said. I couldn’t buy the idea that Raymie’s bed-and-breakfast might be the launching pad for someone up to no good. I couldn’t share her uneasiness even as I recognized that this person sounded fishy to me as well.
    Before we left, I asked Raymie what she was going to do. “I think maybe I’ll just give Pete a call, give him a heads-up. Not that anything’s happened—yet.” Peter Savage was the man in charge of solving crimes in Provincetown and catching perps. “He knows I have a lively imagination,” Raymie said. “But he’ll make a note of it. He’s very obsessive about things like that, keeping track of phone calls and writing things down that might be useful sometime.”

Chapter
2
    D URING THE DRIVE back to our house Beth said she thought Raymie was being theatrical. “Why does she have to turn everything into a melodrama?”
    If Beth expected me to dump on Raymie, she was going to be disappointed because I wouldn’t have even if I agreed with her—which I didn’t. “That’s just Raymie’s style. She needs to give her imagination free rein; that’s one of the reasons we get along so well. And besides, this guy apparently was weird,” I said. “Give the woman a break. She works hard, she owes big money to the bank. Can you see yourself being chatty and cheerful with strangers early in the morning every day of your life? One of her guests broke an antique pitcher worth hundreds last summer. So she just lied about it and told the woman, who probably couldn’t have cared less, not to worry, that it was something she’d bought for two bucks at the flea market. I think I’d go nuts if I had to run a B & B.”
    â€œDon’t worry, Mom, I like Raymie,” Beth said. I patted her left thigh and she smiled.
    â€œDad’s here.” Beth saw his Camry first.
    Tom came out of the house. He’d had time to change into shorts and a polo shirt despite a furtive chill in the air. He looked pretty good to me. “Where have you two been?” he said, putting his arm across his daughter’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “How’s my girl?”
    â€œYour girl is okay,” Beth said. But I could see she was on the verge of tears.
    â€œI hear the boyfriend took a hike.” Tom sometimes has a way of being quite frontal. It didn’t go over too well—as it often doesn’t—but Beth managed not to lose her cool.
    â€œWhat’s for dinner?” Tom said. “I’m starving.” He gave me a kiss on the mouth; he tasted sweet. Tom and I were apart almost as much as we were together. But he sometimes remembered to ask what I wanted; my friends tell me this is rare in a husband—and it’s easy to believe, if you pay attention to all those jokes online, portraying men as stupid, lazy, self-absorbed, beer-swilling, tits-obsessed louts. I’m pretty sure Tom wasn’t like that. We used to play games all the time, games we made up, like picking a spot up the beach, a house or a stairway up the dune, and guess how many steps it would take us to reach it. The one who got closest won. The prize varied. Sometimes it was an “immediate obedience,” sometimes it was nothing more than a gesture of defeat, accompanied by a rueful smile.
    â€œWe hoped you’d be here so we got a butterflied lamb leg,” I said. “Enough for three with some left over for the doggie.”
    We cooked the meat on the grill outside but ate indoors because of the chill, the dining table now cleared of the last trace of my art things, everything washed and tucked away in the hall closet. Beth seemed glad to see her father, who, having been prompted by me, did not ask her anything