Hearse and Gardens

Hidden treasure . . .

Behind the bookcase was a knobless door.

Elle stepped back. “On second thought, maybe we should leave it alone. I had a bad feeling about coming here. All morning my unlucky number kept turning up. Did you know there are rumors this bungalow is haunted by an Andy Warhol groupie who OD'd in the bedroom?”

The former compound of Andy Warhol sat next to Uncle Harry's, and by “next to” I mean a couple of acres away. Back in the day, Harrison Falks handled a good share of Andy's and other famous local artists' works.

“Why in the world would you have an unlucky number? Now who's the sissy?”

I bent down and peered through the hole in the doorplate.

A human skull propped on a small table grinned back at me. Its head bone wasn't connected to its neck bone—or any bone, for that matter. “Oh my God!”

“I was right! There is treasure!” Elle shoved me aside, took a screwdriver from her back pocket, stuck it in the hole, and turned. Then she kicked the door with her boots and charged in.

The scream that followed could have woken the dead.

Or maybe not.

Perhaps there was something to an
un
lucky number?

BETTER HOMES AND CORPSES

HEARS
E AND GARDENS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

HEARSE AND GARDENS

A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2016 by Kathleen Bridge.

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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.

eBook ISBN: 9780698171077

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / May 2016

Cover illustration by Marjorie Muns.

Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

Hamptons map by Lee Goldstein.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

Marc, this one's for you. May we share many more Montauk sunrises and
sunsets.

To my friends on social media, my readers, bookstores, and the mystery community, thank you for embracing me with open arms.

Thanks to everyone behind the scenes: Joshua Evan, Lindsey Taylor, Judy and John Drawe, Ellen Broder, Michelle Mason Otremba, Ann Costigan, Lee Goldstein and everyone at Backstreet Antiques.

A special thank you to Victor Caputo, the Director of the Wm. Cullen Bryant Library in Roslyn, Long Island, for supporting authors, especially this one.

And again, thanks to Lon Otremba for sharing more fabulous recipes from his secret vault.

To the best agent ever, Dawn Dowdle at the Blue Ridge Literary Agency for your commitment, encouragement, and guidance. My editor, Robin Barletta, thank you for believing in me and Meg Barrett. My publicist, Danielle Dill, you do a stellar job of getting the word out and it's much appreciated.

Last but not least, MONTAUK, you are the END and the
BEGINNING.

“You have been served.” Four words you never want to hear.

Last April, I was on the dilapidated porch of 221 Surfside Drive, ready to begin renovations on my cottage in Montauk, when a sweet little old lady in a hand-crocheted beanie and scarf sprinted toward me. She had one hand in her pocket—I swear I saw the outline of a gun—and used the other to shove a subpoena in my gut. Then she flew down the steps to her granny-mobile, like Bambi escaping a forest fire.

An heir of my cottage's former owner had crawled out of the woodwork to lay claim to my precious little parcel of land. Six months later, the will remained in probate and the hearings kept getting postponed, thanks to Justin Marguilles, Hamptons real estate lawyer extraordinaire and a shark with a rep close to the one in
Jaws
.

So, here I was, still in my four-room rental, yellow tape barring the entrance to my dream home in true crime scene fashion. Not that I was complaining. I still got to wake up every morning in a cozy beachfront cottage with the mighty Atlantic only steps away.

A horn honked. I grabbed my handbag from my newest purchase, an antique pie safe with its original milk paint. My old pine breakfront had been scarred with bullet holes. Salvageable, but too chilling a reminder of how short life can be. On my way out, I remembered to set the alarm and lock the top lock—a safety measure I'd added after last spring's nightmare.

An October sun painted the ocean with silvery white brushstrokes. The shadow of a harvest moon hung in the afternoon sky.

“Get a move on Meg Barrett. We have junk to excavate!” A feather from Elle's hat escaped the truck's window and danced on the crisp ocean breeze. “Hurry, or Uncle Harry might reconsider his generosity.”

Elle Warner was a friend and former coworker from my days in Manhattan as managing editor of
American Home and Garden
magazine. She owned a thriving antiques shop in nearby Sag Harbor and also did freelance work for insurance companies in the Hamptons area, occasionally calling me in to assist. In turn, I sometimes asked her to help with my fledgling interior design business, Cottages by the Sea.

Elle's great-uncle Harry was none other than Harrison Falks, one of the most revered art brokers of the twentieth century. Ninety-one-year-old Uncle Harry owned a compound in Montauk valued in the multimillions. His main
house sat on a cliff six miles away from the Montauk Point Lighthouse and a few miles up from my oceanfront rental.

The house was named Sandringham after the ancestral home of English royalty. It was a slightly smaller version of Queen Victoria's “informal” holiday retreat, with a red brick facade, gables, and turrets. Today, Elle and I were rescuing, free of charge, furniture and knickknacks from one of the beach bungalows on the compound.

Elle parked the pickup in front of Sandringham and we took the sandy path that led to the beach. I'd anticipated the strong ocean wind forecasted by the weather report and had taken out my hearing aids. I wasn't a fan of the high-pitched whistling sound they made if I wore them in blustery offshore winds. I'd explained to Elle, it was like talking to someone on their cell phone while they walked outdoors on a breezy day. The sound heard by the person on the receiving end could be quite irritating.

The bungalow we were looting sat a mere hundred feet from the ocean. It was the last of six that needed to be moved inland by flatbed truck and tucked safely behind deeply rooted sea grass and a cyclone fence. All six bungalows had been sitting unoccupied since the mid-eighties. Unfortunately for Elle and me, the other five's contents had been dumped into a dozen industrial-sized Dumpsters and carted away to parts unknown. What a waste of perfectly recyclable décor.

I looked at the exterior of the bungalow. It had real potential. In my mind, it was a cottage, but I had to admit it followed bungalow criteria: one and a half stories, low pitched roof with broad eaves, a large front porch, and shingled siding. The brick chimney needed some work,
but all in all, even without seeing the interior, I wished the flatbed truck would drop the bungalow at my place.

Elle beat me to the door and rushed in.

I followed her inside, but not before a twister of sand filled my mouth and eyes with briny grit. Bungalows typically opened directly into a living room, and this one looked frozen in time. “This place reminds me of where the Big Kahuna took Gidget, planning to deflower her.”

Elle was already flipping over furniture. “Whoa, baby! Look at this set of chairs. I think we've hit it big!” She used her sleeve to brush away years of grime, uncovering a red paper logo. “It's Eames, the midcentury furniture icon. And by the way, what's a gidget?”

“It's a romantic surfing movie from the
Beach Blanket Bingo
days. A sixties classic. Haven't you ever heard of ‘Moondoggie'?”
Gidget
had been one of my mother's favorites, surprising considering she'd spent her whole life in Detroit and never so much as put her pinkie toe in the ocean; a great lake or two, maybe. Perhaps
Gidget
was the reason salt water ran in my veins and I had no problem watching surfers at Ditch Plains Beach for hours on end.

“Way before my time, and you know I only watch classic mysteries—Great-Aunt Mabel's faves like
The Thin Man, Perry Mason
, and anything Hitchcock.”

I looked at her '60s “après-ski” boots—her words, not mine. “You'd love the movie and the clothing especially, seeing you're the queen of all things vintage. Come over. We'll have a sleepover and watch
Gidget
on my new laptop.”

Elle removed a package of wipes from her bag. “A laptop! Welcome to the new millennium.”

She moved on to the built-in corner cabinet on the
opposite side of the room. Built-ins were another feature of bungalows, along with an open floor plan without hallways to take up needed space.

I started on a wall shelf filled with midcentury art glass. First, I took a picture of the shelf with my cell phone, then bubble-wrapped each piece and placed them in a carton. I took out a Sharpie and transferred the photo number to the top of the carton and sealed it. Elle had taught me well. “All done. What's next?”

“I have to have that mounted fish,” she cooed.

On top of a tall bookcase filled with thick hardcover art books was a huge wooden plaque on an easel. Attached to the plaque was a large fish's head, complete with a dead glassy eye. The body had long disintegrated.

“And why do we want that thing? It's gross.”

Elle was already on the ladder. “The plaque's worth money. Vintage teak is hard to come by. It would sell in a second to a wealthy novice who gets lucky fishing off Montauk Harbor, the sportfishing capital of the world.” She reached up and removed the plaque and handed it to me.

Fish dust trickled down. “Ewww.”

“Sissy. Hey, wait. There's a door behind the bookcase. Come up and see.”

Elle stepped down and I climbed up. Sure enough, there was the outline of a door. “Don't get excited. Probably an old broom closet.”

“Hurry. There might be vintage treasure.”

We stood together on one end of the bookcase and pushed. No good. The bookcase was too heavy. We removed half of the art books, mostly Pop Art, and stacked them on the floor and tried again.

Behind the bookcase was a knobless door.

Elle stepped back. “On second thought, maybe we should leave it alone. I had a bad feeling about coming here. All morning my unlucky number kept turning up. Did you know there are rumors this bungalow is haunted by an Andy Warhol groupie who OD'd in the bedroom?”

The former compound of Andy Warhol sat next to Uncle Harry's, and by “next to,” I mean a couple of acres away. Back in the day, Harrison Falks handled a good share of Andy's and other famous local artists' works.

“Why in the world would you have an unlucky number? Now who's the sissy?”

I bent down and peered through the hole in the doorplate.

A human skull propped on a small table grinned at me. Its head bone wasn't connected to its neck bone—or any bone, for that matter. “Oh My God!”

“I was right! There is treasure!” Elle shoved me aside, took a screwdriver from her back pocket, stuck it in the hole, and turned. Then she kicked the door in with her boots and charged in.

The scream that followed could have woken the dead.

Or maybe not.

Perhaps there was something to an
un
lucky number?