Killer Summer by Lynda Curnyn (e book reading free .txt) 📗

was empty. Not empty, I realized when I slid it open farther and saw a clear plastic bag, which not only contained something that looked rather pink and girly, but was still tagged by none other than the S.C.P.D.

Bingo!

I glanced back at Tom, who was still sound asleep, wondering briefly why he hadn’t thrown this up in the attic with the rest of her things, then realized he had probably gotten it after he did his closet clean-out.

But why save it? I wondered, holding the bag before me and realizing there was a gold watch, a pink wallet and a cell phone in there, too. Maybe he hadn’t even opened it. Maybe he’d just tossed it in there, knowing he’d have to deal with it at some point. Whatever, I was glad he did.

I slid the drawer closed, then took my find back to my bedroom for a closer look.

Once I had dumped the contents out on my bed, I realized I had hit the jackpot. I held up the dress, which was pink and girly, yes, but also a little on the sexy side. Not over-the-top sexy, but then, from what I knew of Maggie, neither was she. If she was having an affair, surely there would be some evidence of that in her wallet or cell phone, right? At least, that’s the way it was on all those detective shows I had seen. But her wallet held only a couple of receipts from gourmet markets near her apartment on the Upper East Side, a collection of credit cards and a photo of Janis Joplin as a puppy.

Pretty cute. But who carried a photo of their dog in their wallet?

I picked up the cell phone next, pressing the on button, feeling relief when the screen lit up and a brief melody played. At least it still worked.

Clicking on to voice mail, I was relieved when I was connected right away. I guess Tom hadn’t gotten around to shutting her service off.

“One old message,” the mechanized voice informed me, causing me to suck in a breath. Then I blew that breath right out when I heard my own voice echoing back to me. “Hi, umm, Maggie. I just wanted to tell you that I got the coriander, but I, uh, missed the ferry…”

I almost hung up on myself, embarrassed anew at my pathetic excuses, but I waited through my whole weary explanation for the time-and-date stamp.“June 12th, 7:37 p.m.,” the mechanized voice informed me.

I hung up. That sounded about right. I had just gotten back from the market and was on my way to Penn Station to catch the next train.

Clicking on the call history, 1 was given a choice of “outgoing calls” and “incoming calls.” I hit incoming calls and got a neat little list of names, none of which I recognized except for the two listings for Edge and one for Tom’s Long Island office, which I only knew because it was listed as Landon, LI office, followed by my own number. I began checking times and dates, starting with Landon, LI office.

June 12th, 5:06 p.m.

Why was someone calling Maggie from the Long Island office on a Saturday?

I checked the two listings before, both to the Luxe office. One was made Thursday, the other Wednesday. That made sense, since it was during the business week. Probably Tom.

I clicked on outgoing calls, located my own number, which was followed by a listing for a number with a 631 area code. The one after that said Donnie and Amanda—beach.

Now that was interesting. Area code 631 was Suffolk County, which could mean Fire Island. And Donnie and Amanda were definitely Fire Island.

But who was this 631 number? Clearly it wasn’t in her address book, since it didn’t have a name listed beside it.

I clicked on it and was about to dial it, until I realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to be making calls from a dead woman’s cell phone.

Grabbing my own cell phone from the nightstand, I dialed the number, prefaced by *67. In case this was my murderer, I certainly didn’t want him to have my number.

After about four rings, a machine picked up.“You have reached Fair Harbor Market. The market is now closed…”

Well, that proved one theory. Maggie had called the market. I checked the time of the call.June 12th, 7:20 p.m. The market had been closed by then, which meant she never had any intention of going there, despite what she’d told Tom.

My eye fell upon the listing for Donnie and Amanda—beach and I clicked on it to get the date and time. June 12th, 7:24 p.m.

It seemed Donnie and Amanda were the last people Maggie called that night. And if my guess was right, I was betting it was Donnie she wanted to speak to. He might even have been Maggie’s last incoming call, since he worked from the Long Island office.

My eye fell upon the soft pink dress and the back of my neck prickled. Son of a bitch.

I think I just found Maggie’s lover.

Chapter Thirty-three

Maggie

No woman is an island unto herself.

My friend Amanda used to joke that you could take the girl out of Long Island, but you couldn’t take Long Island out of the girl. We laughed about it often enough, boning up on our accents to great hilarity in the privacy of the two-bedroom we shared when we first moved to Manhattan, or over drinks at the bars we frequented when we were young.

But when I married Tom, a subtle shift occurred between Amanda and me, making the laughter a little less easy to share. Maybe it was because I had ascended to the throne Amanda coveted. Not that Amanda wanted Tom, but she wanted what he represented. Money, yes, but that wasn’t all of it. Mostly, I think, it was that Tom came from a world far from the barren strip malls Amanda and I roamed restlessly through as teenagers. Tom’s