Death on West End Road Read online

  “Hmmm . . . one of those seventies names . . .”

  “I think it was Scott,” said Penny. She was known for her sharp memory.

  “Yes, you’re right. Scott. He was at the club for years. I remember back then he drove one of those light blue convertible Cabriolets. Always had surfboards in the back . . . well, something happened and maybe he was fired from the Dune Club? Or quit? I believe there was some scandal. But he continued to live in the Framinghams’ guesthouse. I don’t know what he did for a living after that. He was all washed up. I heard he was frequenting Cavagnaro’s and McKendry’s at all hours, downing vodka tonics.”

  “He was so handsome, but then alcohol really took its toll,” Penny confirmed.

  “And it was such a switch. There he was, this good-looking young man, blond hair, always tanned and energized, a smile on his face . . .”

  “Called everyone ‘dude,’” interjected Penny.

  “Yes, he did. He was a Valley Person. Isn’t that what they called everyone at that time? Valley People?”

  “I believe it was Valley Girls,” Antonia said.

  “Oh, yes, that’s correct. But he was casual and sweet. Just a relaxed fellow. But after that summer he was quite dissipated.”

  “You think he was hiding a secret?” prompted Antonia.

  “I think something sent him over the edge,” Ruth confirmed.

  “Maybe he was just upset that Susie was murdered?” Antonia suggested.

  “Perhaps,” Ruth conceded. “Or perhaps he murdered her.”

  “Nonsense!” Penny said. “Ruthie, I guarantee it was Pauline. Always a cold little fish. Everyone at the club apparently detested her. Zero sportsmanship. And she was known for her questionable line calls in tennis.”

  “That doesn’t mean she was a murderer,” Ruth protested.

  “I don’t know. I think it says a lot about a person’s character if they cheat at recreational sports.”

  As the ladies continued their banter, Antonia’s mind wandered to Pauline Framingham. She was an intriguing woman, clearly smart and sophisticated. And yet definitely bossy and used to getting her own way, although Antonia felt that could describe her as well. Was Pauline a murderer? Surely she couldn’t be if she had asked Antonia to reopen the case and find the true killer. Unless it was a ruse and she wanted to exonerate herself after living under the cloud of suspicion for decades. Whatever happened was so long ago and much of the world had changed. Antonia tried to conjure up an image of East Hampton in 1990. She’d seen pictures, of course, but she had been living in California at the time. A lot had changed since then.

  But the truth hadn’t. And the fact was, a young girl had been murdered, and her killer had never been brought to justice. And now her mother was dying and needed closure. Suddenly Antonia felt a chill, as if the ghosts of the past were upon her. She glanced around and saw the gauzy white curtains of an open window blowing in the wind. It was as if someone had just passed through, and the thought made Antonia feel restless. Pauline Framingham was right about one thing: Antonia was going to solve this crime.

  3

  Dinner service, which normally went off as seamlessly as a well-choreographed ballet, was a beat behind that evening. The reason was Kendra, Antonia’s sous chef. Kendra was always a bit slower and more intellectual in her manner of cooking than Antonia or her executive chef Marty, though her colleagues were usually able to accommodate that when service started. The more recent delay was due to the fact that Kendra had entered some sort of Instagram cooking competition and was determined to photograph every one of her dishes before they left the kitchen. This made Antonia somewhat stressed and Marty, never one for holding back, downright irate.

  “Listen you fat ginger, take your goddamn pictures on your own time,” he snapped at her in his flat, gravelly voice as he shook the shallots in the hot oiled pan.

  “I love you too, Marty,” Kendra replied in a singsong tone. She snapped one more photo of her tomato basil chèvre tart before passing it on to an impatient waiter.

  “I don’t need your love, baby,” said Marty. “I need you to stop playing with the phone and start making love to your soigné dish and making me some more sea bass crudos because I have three on deck.”

  “We need to eighty-six the crudos. All out of sea bass,” replied Kendra calmly. To “eighty-six” a dish meant to take it off the menu because the kitchen had run out. It was not an ideal situation.

  Marty turned and gave Kendra a hostile look. “Now you tell me? Jesus, we are in the goddamn weeds here because of you! Then fire up shrimp scampi à la minute. No one wants to see your stupid pictures anyway. Who even looks at these things?”

  Marty was in his late fifties and a restaurant lifer. Since the age of sixteen he had moved from one kitchen to another, climbing up the ladder from dishwasher to line cook to prep cook to sous chef and now executive chef. He was such a pro that Antonia often felt her presence in the kitchen was redundant. Marty lived and breathed the kitchen and had little knowledge of or interest in anything outside of the culinary world or Major League Baseball. He was tough as nails—a wiry little whippet with a thin gray ponytail—but he actually had a heart of gold.

  That said, Marty was often extremely politically incorrect, and if Kendra were not so thick-skinned, Antonia would be worried that the inn would have some sort of harassment lawsuit coming at it. Fortunately, Kendra was tough, similar to most women who worked in restaurant kitchens. You had to give as good as you got, and Kendra, despite her soft features, could dish it out.

  “Let’s take it down a notch,” Antonia advised. She often had to play the role of mother hen, chiding her chickens to keep in line.

  Glen, the maître d’ and manager of the restaurant, swept briskly into the kitchen. He was in his mid-thirties, tall and handsome, albeit borderline cheesy with gelled dark hair and a propensity for shiny fabrics and tight-fitting shirts. (Marty called him “metrosexual.”) He took his role as gatekeeper to Antonia very seriously. With his mood swings and need for constant recognition, he could be demanding, but he was adept at his job and charmed ladies (and sometimes gentlemen) of all ages.

  “Antonia, your friend Larry Lipper has finished his dinner. He said that you agreed to comp him for it and to tell you that you, and I quote, ‘better haul your butt in here if you want to ask him your questions because he has a life to lead,’” said Glen in his strong Long Island accent, before adding, “Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just relaying his message.”

  “Well, that certainly sounds like Larry,” Antonia said, wiping her hands on her dish towel. “Thanks, Glen.”

  “I assume he’s doing his usual routine and you had no idea he was coming or that you had to buy him dinner,” Glen said with certainty.

  “Actually, this time he’s not lying,” Antonia corrected. “I texted him earlier. I do need to ask him something, and the only way I could coerce him here on short notice was through his stomach.”

  Glen snorted his disapproval and left out the swinging door.

  “Gonna go see your boyfriend?” teased Marty.

  Antonia bristled. “Good grief, you of all people should know that I find Larry Lipper to be one of the least attractive men on the planet.”

  “Ya know I’m kidding. No one would be hot for that troll,” Marty said as he flipped a pair of pork chops onto the flame. “But he sure is hot for you.”

  “The man is hot for any woman with a pulse!”

  “He never hit on me,” Kendra said, taking a picture of lobster tarragon risotto.

  “Because look at all those tattoos—yuck!” shrieked Marty.

  “Pot calling the kettle black!” retorted Kendra.

  “I served my country. That’s what servicemen do, get tattoos when we’re not dodging bullets and defending our borders.”

  “You were a cook in the army for about five minutes.” />
  “It’s more than you did.”

  Antonia was happy to leave them to it in the kitchen as she wandered out to the dining room to see Larry. Sometimes she thought Marty and Kendra should take their routine to a sitcom. They had that ongoing bickering repartee like Sam and Diane from Cheers, minus the good looks and inevitable romance.

  * * * * *

  The eggshell and navy dining room had been designed with a mixture of contemporary and traditional elements. While Antonia had gone for a formal look for the rest of the inn, painstakingly scouring the Hamptons and the Internet for antiques, she had decided to make the dining room sleeker and more modern. Abstract art by local artist Dave Demers decorated the walls, and the walnut floor was stained dark, unadorned by the Oriental carpets that ran throughout the rest of the inn. The restaurant, with a cluster of freestanding tables and booths, sat sixty-five people in the most comfortable upholstered chairs Antonia could find. (She discovered that if you had comfortable chairs, men were willing to stay longer and then they ordered more booze.) In the front of the room, there was a lacquered bar with eight button-tufted high-backed bar stools studded with pewter nail head trim.

  Most of the dining crowd had thinned out for the evening, leaving just a few stragglers here and there and a cluster of folks at the bar. Antonia waved to a few familiar faces before she spied her friend ensconced in a booth.

  Larry Lipper was the crime reporter for the East Hampton Star. He and Antonia had a love-hate relationship. Well, actually, she had a love-hate relationship with him; he, on the other hand, was totally oblivious to her occasional hatred and mostly loved her. Despite his short stature, he had an incredibly inflated sense of self. Antonia could concede that he was good-looking—full head of dark hair with streaks of gray, nice blue eyes, chiseled jaw—but he was no Adonis, and she could not for the life of her understand why his ego took up the whole of most rooms. Not to mention that he had incredibly bad manners—he was brusque, demanding, totally unfiltered, and narcissistic. But despite how irritating he was, Antonia did know that a good person lurked inside his tiny body (although it pained her to admit it, even to herself). He was also very smart, something that he unfortunately knew all too well.

  She found him reading a smeared copy of the New Yorker and eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles and whipped cream. She sighed; he had very childish taste in food, much to her dismay as a chef.

  “Hey, Larry.”

  He glanced up. “My God, what the hell, Bingham? Don’t you ever get out in the sun? I feel like I’m looking at Caspar the Friendly Ghost. You are translucent.”

  Antonia took a seat across from him. “Nice to see you too, Larry.”

  He put his spoon down in his bowl. “I’m serious. It’s summer. You need to pull your butt out of the kitchen and put a tan on that face. People will think you’re dead.”

  “First off, you know I have no time to go to the beach. Not to mention that until recently I was convalescing after being attacked by a serial killer. And secondly, I have my father’s fair skin. No good comes from me in the sun. I either burn or develop red blotchy marks.”

  “Don’t gross me out.”

  Antonia rolled her eyes. “Blotchy, blotchy, blotchy.”

  “Seriously, Bingham. Try to maintain some of the mystery. I need the aura, I don’t need to know all the down and dirty when you’re trying to seduce me.”

  “Okay, enough. So, what have you got for me?”

  Larry took a large bite of his ice cream. His eyes lit up gleefully as he swallowed. “You know it’s not going to be that easy.”

  “I know, it never is. But were you able to secure a meeting for me with your former colleague?”

  Larry licked the whipped cream off his spoon. “You only texted me this afternoon, you think I can work my magic that fast?”

  Antonia sighed again. “Larry.”

  “All right, all right. Yes. Chester said he would meet with you.”

  “Fantastic! When?”

  “Well, that’s the problem. He’s in Maryland.”

  “He’s in Maryland? For how long?”

  “Dunno. He said he wasn’t sure. A couple of weeks.”

  The disappointment stung. Chester Saunders had held the crime beat at the Star before Larry, and Antonia was certain he would be able to tell her what he knew about Susie’s murder. After all, he was there; he covered it.

  “Maybe I can talk to him by phone?” she asked hopefully.

  Larry plucked the maraschino cherry off his sundae and popped it in his mouth. “Yeah, but he’s going on a boat trip. He said it wasn’t a great time.”

  “Did you tell him it was urgent?”

  Larry gave her a wide-eyed look. “Urgent? This chick has been dead for more than twenty-five years. How is it urgent?”

  Antonia didn’t want to concede that he had a point. “Well, I mean, I want to start . . .”

  “Ah, now that you’re hot on the trail of this cold case, everyone needs to cut short their vacations and stand at attention? Doesn’t work that way, sweetie.”

  “Her mother is dying, Larry. There is a ticking clock here.”

  “How long does she have?”

  “Less than a month.”

  “She’s going to the grave without an answer.”

  “Larry!”

  “What? Don’t ‘Larry’ me, Bingham. You really think you can solve this murder in a couple of weeks?”

  “I have no choice. So when is Chester going on the boat trip? Maybe I can talk to him tonight.”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me right away? I could have called him.”

  Larry leaned back against the vinyl banquette. “Bingham, relax. I asked him a few questions myself. Figured we could work this case together.”

  “I would like nothing less.”

  “You flirt!” Larry laughed. “But you know you need me. I mean, it’s pathetic that you just can’t admit it. This woman walks into your inn and asks you to figure out who killed her friend, and the first person you call is me? You need my help, Bingham. And I’m willing to help you. We both know you can’t do it yourself. Plus, you enjoy having me around.”

  He was right; she did need him. If she was going to attempt to run an inn and a restaurant and solve a crime simultaneously, she would require assistance. Due to his profession Larry had a network of contacts with law enforcement and local crime buffs. One spin of his Rolodex could give her access to a number of witnesses. Plus he was pushy, and although Antonia was no shrinking violet she would rather Larry be the pest.

  Antonia sighed heavily.

  “Don’t deny it anymore, just accept it,” Larry said, dabbing his face with his cloth napkin.

  “Just tell me what Chester said.”

  “It’s actually an intriguing case.”

  “Go on,” Antonia prompted. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I can do better than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I recorded my call with Chester. I had him tell me the story. You can listen to it in his own words.”

  “Larry, you know what? Sometimes I do love you.”

  He smiled smugly. “Sometimes, Bingham? Please.”

  4

  The restaurant had emptied out and only Glen remained at the bar, tallying the night’s receipts. The busboys had cleared the discarded dishes and blown out the candles that illuminated the tables. Darkness swept through the room, and Antonia stared intently at Larry’s iPhone, which he had placed between them. They were riveted to Chester Saunders’s husky recorded voice as it came through the phone, describing the crime that had captivated the town a quarter century prior.

  “Do I remember it?” Chester asked after Larry had explained the reason for the call. Chester had the strong Bonacker accent unique to the E
ast End of Long Island; some say it is a derivative of the one found in Cornwall, England, from whence some early East Hampton settlers came. “Of course I remember it. I remember it as if it was yesterday. That was big news back then. We didn’t catch many murders out there—still don’t.”

  “I know, I wish . . .” Larry’s voice interjected, prompting Chester to burst out laughing in a deep bass.

  Antonia rolled her eyes at him.

  “What?” he spat out at her. “I cover the crime beat, for God’s sake. Of course I want crime!”

  She put her fingers to her lips and leaned toward the phone.

  “Murder makes good copy, but it also makes people crazy,” Chester continued.

  “That’s fine by me, I only care about copy,” Larry’s recorded voice said, again inciting laughter from Chester. “But tell me all about it. I won’t interrupt anymore.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s see now . . . it was summer. End of August, I think. Yes, around the twenty-third—my wife’s birthday was that week. Anyhow, of course I had the police scanner, and that’s how I got tipped off to everything that was going on around town. I’m at my desk, it’s around five p.m., give or take, and I pick up the nine-one-one call to seventeen West End Road. I’m thinking, West End Road? Why, that’s right by Steven Spielberg’s house, and, this sounds crazy, but I’m thinking, maybe they’re filming a movie and the caller thought it was real. But of course, that wasn’t the case. So the nine-one-one call says that a girl’s head is cut and she’s bleeding and they need an ambulance right away.”

  “Who made the call?” Larry asked.

  “It was Pauline Framingham. And you know she was real calm, cool as a cucumber. You’d think, you know, your friend is bleeding to death, maybe you’re a little bit hysterical? But no. Not this gal. And that’s how she was the entire investigation. Just cool as a cucumber . . .”

  “You think that’s why they thought she was guilty?”