Death Will Extend Your Vacation Read Online Free Page A

you could identify her. They brought you right back.”
    “Clea’s dead!” Barbara burst out. “Doesn’t anybody care?”
    “Thank you, Barbara!” Stewie, my roommate for the summer, folded his arms across his chest and glared around the table. He had the muscle definition of a body builder. Oiled tan skin and a tank top made the most of it. “We should be celebrating her beautiful spirit, not wallowing in self-centered fear.”
    “Self-centered fear” was an AA tag line. I thought it hit the nail on the head. I had at least one secret I wanted to keep from the cops, and I’d only arrived yesterday. Some of these folks had done shares with Clea before. Did they all agree she had a beautiful spirit? She had been working the room last night. It was possible not everybody read her vibe the same.
    “I was scared.” Skinny little Stephanie ran the tip of her tongue over the braces on her slightly protruding teeth. “They asked a million questions, and they didn’t really say what happened.”
    “Thank you,” Karen said. “I’m tired of pretending I’m not scared.”
    “Asking questions is their job,” Cindy said. “And they don’t know what happened yet. They will, though.”
    “I’m grieving for Clea,” Jeannette said. Her face flushed an even hotter pink. “So much beauty. So much potential for happiness. I’m sad for her and I’m sad for me— for all of us.”
    “‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls’,” Jimmy quoted.
    “That’s what I meant,” Jeannette said. She blotted her face with a fresh napkin, hiding either tears or rivulets of sweat. Maybe both. She hadn’t mentioned Clea’s spirit or claimed that Clea had been happy.
    “If we were a bunch of civilians,” I said, “we’d probably be getting drunk right now and congratulating ourselves on holding a damn fine wake.”
    “You’ve got a point,” Karen said. “When I was drinking, I had one all-purpose response that worked for everything, even death.”
    “Same here,” I said. “‘Fuck it, let’s have a drink.’ Was that your mantra too?”
    “Right before ‘Let’s have another,’” Karen said.
    “Yea and amen,” Lewis said.
    Cindy raised her water glass in a mock toast and tossed it back. I looked around the table. For a split second, I felt as if I knew all of them very, very well. The moment passed when I remembered the murder. If it was a murder. Sure, she could have drowned by accident. But something told me different. Maybe all that yellow crime scene tape. Or the hairs on the back of my neck.
    “Anyhow, don’t worry about the group house,” Lewis said. “We’ve never had a problem, and neither has Oscar.”
    “Oscar?” Barbara asked.
    “The nearest other clean and sober house, down by Dedhampton Beach,” Jeannette explained across the table. “Some of us had shares there last year.”
    “And the year before,” Stephanie said.
    “Oscar owns the house,” Karen said. “They can’t stop him having guests.”
    “Town ordinance puts a limit on how many unrelated people he can have,” Cindy said. Maybe she was a lawyer. “If it’s a clean and sober house, I guess his parties aren’t wild enough to draw police attention. Anyhow, all that happens is the landlord gets a ticket. A big ticket, like fifty thousand bucks.”
    “Oscar has plenty of money,” Karen said. “And his parties were mega wild until he got clean.”
    “So all the program people in the neighborhood knew Clea?” Barbara asked.
    “Oh, yes. Especially anyone who’s stayed at Oscar’s.”
    Silence fell. I could hear a heavy branch that grew too close to the house scrape against a window. The big battery-operated clock over the kitchen sink tocked. The birds outside got ready for bed.
    “Talk about an elephant in the living room,” Lewis said finally.
    “‘Don’t drink and go to meetings’ won’t make a murder go away,” Karen said.
    “Maybe she just drowned,” Stephanie said.
    “We’ll know when they do the