Death Will Extend Your Vacation Read Online Free Page B

autopsy,” Cindy said.
    Stewie shuddered.
    “I don’t like to think about that.”
    “Still, we’ll probably feel a lot better once we know one way or the other.”
    “The cops aren’t interested in our feelings,” Jeannette said. “And why should they tell us anything?”
    “Do you think they’ll keep coming back?” Stephanie hunched her shoulders and shivered like a pixie in a snowstorm.
    “If they find evidence of a homicide, they will,” Cindy said. “If they determined she drowned by accident, they’ll drop the investigation, and we won’t see much more of them.”
    “So what was Clea like?” Barbara asked. “Can you imagine anyone having a reason to kill her?”
    “She was a free spirit,” Stewie said. “I knew her in the city— she’s the one who told me about this house. Actually I met her a few summers ago when she came out to visit my old group house in the Pines. We used to go shopping together, and we both loved to cook.” He lifted a few curly strands of pasta with his fork and let them slide slowly back down onto his plate. “I used her special sun-dried tomato and fresh basil sauce recipe tonight. And we always used fusilli for the pasta. We used to joke that it was like her hair.”
    I got the feeling this guy wasn’t going to be my rival for Cindy’s affections.
    “The Pines is in Fire Island, right?” Barbara said. “So you switched to be with Clea.”
    “Not exactly,” Stewie said. “When I got into SCA, my sponsor thought I’d better stay away from people, places, and things, you know?”
    Everybody else seemed to know what SCA was. I didn’t want to ask, so I puzzled it out. Sexual Compulsives Anonymous. Don’t drink, go to meetings, and, in Stewie’s case, sleep with me on his vacation. I wondered what straight sexual compulsives did to avoid people, places, and things that triggered their addiction. Hang out in gay bars? Spend the summer in the Pines?
    “So Clea never threatened anyone,” Jimmy said.
    Stephanie looked at Karen. Karen and Lewis looked away from each other. Jeannette looked down at her plate.
    “She was a doll,” Stewie said. No one chimed in.
    “She was a very determined person,” Karen said. “She wanted what she wanted, and she liked to get her way.”
    “She was a journalist,” Lewis said. “Did you know?”
    Barbara, Jimmy, Cindy, and I shook our heads.
    “She could have ticked someone off,” Stephanie said, “in an article or something. She liked to nose around. She said that’s what journalists do.”
    “She was a bit of a crusader,” Karen said.
    “She drowned!” Jeannette pushed back her chair. It clattered and almost fell as she blundered into the kitchen. Did this conversation upset her more than the rest of us? Or did she simply want her dessert? She came back to the table in a minute, a pie in either hand.
    “Strawberry rhubarb and lemon tart,” she announced. “Mrs. Dowling made them, the farmer’s wife down the road.”
    “She’s kind of a lemon tart herself,” Karen said.
    “A tart?” I asked, intrigued in spite of myself.
    “More of a lemon. American Gothic. But she makes a great pie.”
    Barbara wasn’t ready to let it go.
    “Is there any chance Clea could have killed herself?” she asked. “People do swim out to sea sometimes.”
    “No way.”
    “Absolutely not.”
    “Clea? Never in a million years.”
    Besides, I thought, if she’d swum out far enough to have no choice about getting back, she wouldn’t have been washed back to shore right where she’d left her clothes and gone in. We’d been only an hour or two behind her. If she’d drowned well out to sea, would she have washed ashore at all by the time we’d found her?
    “So everybody here knew her,” Cindy said, “except me?”
    “I knew her from meetings,” Karen said, “and she was in Oscar’s house before.”
    “We didn’t,” Barbara said. “Jimmy and Bruce and me. It’s our first time in Dedhampton.”
    “Mine too,”