The Summer Without You (48 page)

‘I know you wouldn’t.’

There was a silence.

‘But?’ she demanded. ‘There’s definitely a “but” coming.’ Her cheeks were flaming, indignation building up inside her because anything he said after the
‘but’ was going to undermine her and Matt. She already knew that. That was what ‘buts’ did.

He looked at her for a long moment. ‘Look, Big Foot, you need to wake up and smell the coffee. You know you love Matt. I know you love Matt. Bobbi does not know you love Matt, but she
wouldn’t know love if it punched her in the face, so . . .’ He made a dismissive gesture with his hands. ‘But you’ve lived with me long enough now to know I’m the
freaking king of seduction. I
know
chemistry when I see it and there’s something between you two.’

‘Yes, and it’s called suspicion!’ she blurted out, unable to keep the words down any longer. She couldn’t let him say those things. ‘I’m not attracted to him,
Hump. I’m almost frightened of him!’ She was nearly shouting, her breath coming in shallow sips as the words tumbled out of her – all the fears and misapprehensions that
she’d kept to herself finally breaking free.

‘Frightened of him?’ Hump echoed.

‘Yes.’

‘You’re frightened of
him
?’ His eyes moved pointedly to the frozen image on her computer screen of Ted sleeping with his baby son on his chest.

Her mouth dropped open. Admittedly, Ted Connor did not look remotely worrisome at that moment in time.

The phone rang on his desk and he shook his head, a small smile on his lips. ‘Nuh, you’re not frightened of him.’ He picked up the phone, cupping his hand over the receiver.
‘You’re frightened of how he makes you feel.’

He winked, swivelling away from her in his chair as he began talking with his newest advertiser.

Ro glared at his back from across the room, mute with rage. Scared of an attraction? To Ted Connor?

She’d never heard of anything so bloody stupid.

‘Knock, knock.’ Ro poked her head round the door to find Bobbi sitting on the bed, staring at the wall. ‘Hey.’

Bobbi turned at the sound, but her eyes were vacant.

Ro sat down softly on the bed beside her, squeezing her shoulder lightly. She was wearing a black suit that three weeks earlier had been vixen-tight on her, but now hung loosely on her hips, a
string of pearls round her neck, flat shoes instead of her signature heels. Ro guessed she was going to find putting one foot in front of the other a struggle today.

A tiny, white scale model of the ‘stepped’ house she had designed for Kevin – the job on which they’d met – was on the dormer’s deep windowsill. Ro studied it
from the bed. Now that the plot was laid out for Ro to see, she realized how compromised it was and how ingenious Bobbi’s solution had been. The house complied with regulations, looked
beautiful and accommodated everything Kevin had wanted. The girl had talent. But had her ambition meant she’d overreached this time? In trying to secure the deal, she’d crossed lines
she had no business dancing near. She’d gambled and lost, and everything she cared about was on the line.

‘The car’s here. Are you ready?’ Hump had ordered a black Chrysler to take them to the church. Turning up to a funeral in a bright yellow Defender didn’t seem
appropriate, even to a maverick like him.

‘I just keep trying to figure out
why
,’ Bobbi murmured, as though she hadn’t heard Ro.

‘Bobbi, that’s something for the police to discover. You need to focus on looking after you.’

‘But maybe he said something . . . maybe he tried to warn me. Do you think he might have? I could have missed it.’

Ro paused, knowing better than try to get Bobbi to do something she didn’t want to do. And right now, she wanted to talk. ‘Well, did you ever get the impression he was frightened or
being threatened? Maybe he was nervous or agitated? Couldn’t sleep, eat?’

Bobbi shook her head.

‘There you go, then. And even if he had known he was in trouble, he probably went out of his way to act normal around you. He wouldn’t have wanted you to worry, or to have become
involved.’

‘Unless he didn’t know he was in trouble.’

‘In which case, that would have been a blessing,’ Ro murmured.

‘He was just so . . . so relaxed that night. I’ve been over it, like, a million times in my head, wondering whether I forgot to tell the police one thing, one detail that might make
all the difference.’

‘They’re trained in interview techniques, Bobbi. They know how to get all the information they possibly can out of people. Whatever you know, they now know.’

Bobbi dropped her head in her hands. ‘I shouldn’t have let him go that morning. I’d tried talking him out of it the night before. I wanted us to have a whole weekend together,
but I was so sleepy when he got up. I hadn’t slept well and . . . well, he said he’d come back. He wanted to meet you all.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t even open my
eyes when he kissed me goodbye.’ Her voice – her strong, bossy, don’t-mess Manhattan voice – was thin and reedy, climbing higher.

‘Bobbi, you couldn’t possibly have known. There was nothing you could have done. The police don’t think it was either opportunistic or manslaughter. Whoever did this knew they
were going to do it. They had planned it. And if it hadn’t happened then, it would have happened elsewhere. He was a marked man, Bobbi.’

Bobbi was quiet for a few moments, her eyes fixed on a hairline crack at the top of the wall. ‘The police still think it was someone he knew through his business.’

‘I know.’ The local papers were feeding off titbits, anything to keep the story on their front page every day. Murder simply didn’t happen in the Hamptons.

‘So then maybe I knew him. I’m in the same business. Kinda.’

‘No! Now you listen to me. You’ll only frighten yourself talking like that,’ Ro said forcefully, remembering her own fear as Florence had asked her if she’d thought the
murderer had seen
her
at the window. ‘You’re a creative. He was a wheeler-dealer realtor. There’s very little overlap in what you do other than you’re both trading in
bricks and mortar. Besides, from what the papers are saying, I wouldn’t be surprised if the police already have a good idea of possible suspects. Did you read the piece in the
Montauk
Herald
?’

Bobbi shook her head, focusing intently on Ro’s words.

‘Oh.’ Dammit. She didn’t want to say too much, risk upsetting Bobbi now of all times.

‘What did it say? Tell me.’

‘Well . . . it’s come out that Kevin upset a lot of people with his tactics when it came to getting commissions.’

‘How?’ A trace of irritation lined Bobbi’s voice.

‘It seems he didn’t simply wait for people to come to him wanting to sell; he liked to be more proactive. Apparently he was known to the regulators for trying to “induce”
people to sell. But after Sandy, he became a whole lot more productive than that: he spent the first weeks in the immediate aftermath in the area, convincing the worst hit in the Montauk Harbor
wharves to sell to him. He told them he knew Senator McClusky and that the senator had told him, in confidence, he was reporting back to Congress that Montauk – under the terms of local
policy for strategic retreat –
shouldn’t
qualify for federal aid for redevelopment.’

‘What? But he’s all over the media saying the opposite.’

‘I know, and the senator’s madly disputing this conversation ever took place, but . . .’ She shrugged. ‘That was what Kevin told those people. It’s how he got them
to sell. He said their businesses and homes were worthless and were to be left to the ocean, but that he alone would help them – he’d buy them out as a philanthropic gesture.’

‘
Why
would he do that? He didn’t have that kind of money.’

Ro shrugged. ‘Well, that’s what everyone’s asking, now that it’s all coming out. You see, no one knew that he was going round saying the same thing to everyone. He made
every vendor sign a confidentiality agreement: each one thought he was doing them – and them alone – a favour.’ She watched Bobbi’s expression carefully, knowing that this
wasn’t painting her boyfriend in a flattering light. ‘He bought up the entire area, paying peanuts for every premises, while they all thought he was the good Samaritan.’

‘So? He was enterprising,’ Bobbi said defiantly, her dark eyes shining. ‘Even if he did stretch the truth, those business owners were probably all more than happy to take the
money and run; they’re on a hiding to nothing out there on that point. I don’t see how that justifies his being
murdered
.’

‘No. Of course not! There’s never justification for murder. I’m just saying . . .’ Ro sighed, trying to tread lightly. ‘He was an unscrupulous businessman, a man
with enemies. Those people in Montauk may just be the thin end of the wedge, the ones we know about. Who else did he swindle?’

They sat quietly together, Bobbi absorbing Kevin’s underhand tactics that made her ambition – dating a client! – look positively bucolic.

Bobbi looked at her, a look of unbearable sadness written across her face. ‘I just can’t shake the feeling that I know.’

Ro put her arm around Bobbi’s shoulder. ‘You don’t, sweetie. You’re just very emotionally involved in a tragic situation. It’s normal to feel like you could have
prevented it or done more. But the die was cast long before you and Kevin hooked up.’ Downstairs, she heard Hump coughing ‘discreetly’ in the hall. Ro squeezed her lightly.
‘And we really have to go.’

Bobbi sighed, her shoulders rolled forward, her back humped, all her yoga poise and Pilates control and New York fighting spirit gone. She stood up, wobbly on her coltish legs, pale beneath her
tan, and Ro hooked her arm through Bobbi’s and led her down to where Hump was waiting for them. Ro had never even said hello to the man, but it was time to say goodbye.

Florence was outside the bookstore the following evening, just as she’d said she’d be, at 7 p.m. sharp. She was talking animatedly with another couple, her short
white hair swept back from her face, her grey eyes vibrant and dancing as she made her point with extravagant hand gestures, her anthracite linen tunic swaying with her movements. No one passing
would believe that she’d been – just a few days earlier – recuperating in hospital from a near-fatal accident (although Ro still believed there’d been nothing accidental
about it no matter what Ted had said).

Melodie was standing a short distance away, with a separate group, all hanging on to her every word. Ro quickly checked out her hair.

‘Rowena!’ Florence called her over, and as she approached, she overheard her saying to her companions, ‘This is the girl I was telling you about.’

They all shook hands and made small talk, the group quickly swelling to almost twenty people, until Melodie checked her watch and clapped her hands quietly and they obediently followed her
towards the first gallery: Robert Ingermann’s, in a studio behind Starbucks, off Main Street, which specialized in graffitied collages. Ro walked slowly along with Florence at the back of the
group, insisting Florence held on to her arm. She was feeling energetic and bullish in spirit, but several weeks of almost complete bed rest, Ro knew, would have taken more strength from her than
she yet realized.

As forewarned, Brook was already in there, wearing cream trousers and a panama, drinking the first glass of vintage champagne and holding forth with Robert on prices for Pollock. Ro hoped he
would give Florence a wide berth tonight and not corner her with town politics. Florence needed a night out and a night off.

Not that Brook stood much chance of getting anywhere near her. They had no sooner stopped walking than Florence was encircled by a group of mature-student women gardeners, all eager to hear more
about her guerrilla seed-bombing of the dunes.

‘I’ll get us some drinks,’ Ro said to Florence, who smiled back apologetically.

Ro wandered to the drinks table and took a couple of glasses of rosé, stopping in front of a giant canvas that had ‘Ecstasy’ spelled out in newspaper print and overlaid on a
blue and white striped background. She wasn’t quite sure what to make of it; personally, she preferred a pretty watercolour landscape that made her daydream.

Handing Florence her drink – over the heads of the faithful – Ro wandered around the room, one hand soothingly holding on to the straps of the camera round her neck. It seemed to her
that everything was ludicrously overpriced, and she was sure she could have achieved the same results herself with a newspaper and a tube of Pritt stick. She walked around slowly, finishing her
drink slightly too quickly – nerves – and getting a refill, reading every information card that had been positioned beside each piece and occasionally checking her brochure as though
she was considering paying for one of them.

She stopped in front of a giant mural of a 1960s likeness of Audrey Hepburn, her back to the viewer, dressed only in neon-pink knickers, with the line ‘The sexiest curve on a woman is her
smile.’

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

That voice. Ro didn’t need to turn her head to know that Melodie had come to stand beside her. Thank God. She had been standing here on her own for almost twenty minutes – although,
she was surprised to realize that it didn’t bother her as it once would have done.

Ro laughed. ‘Yeah, right!’

The laughter gurgled in her throat as she took in Melodie’s expression.

‘Oh God, you were being serious. I’m so sorry. I . . .’ She swallowed, mortified. ‘I . . . uh . . . It’s just not really my thing, But I can see, maybe, how . . .
uh . . .’ Audrey Hepburn in pink knickers? That cheesy line? Was she
kidding
? First the hair, now this . . . Ro felt the foundations of her world begin to shake.

Until Melodie winked.

‘Oh God! Melodie! You cow,’ Ro hissed, slapping an arm over her body and folding over with laughter. ‘I so thought you were serious. You totally had me.’

‘I know. I’m good, right?’

‘The best. Bloody hell, I was dying on my feet.’

Melodie leaned in, lowering her voice. ‘We only stop by here because Robert’s one of Brook’s biggest cohorts. He’s loaded and wants to put his money where Brook’s
mouth is. He keeps urging Brook to run for senator next term.’ She rolled her eyes dramatically.