the most active singles beach scene in the Hamptons, full of gym-toned bodies looking for true love—or a weekend simulation of same.
Obviously Treat had preferred to seduce a succession of young women in close proximity to one another, bedding each one while pretending he could keep them all from finding out. It was the sort of pattern set by a guy who obviously got off on high-risk living, maybe even thrived on a situation that could, at any time, blow up in his face.
If that were the case, I wondered: were there other parts of his life that were just as high-risk? So high-risk that someone would want him dead? Had the shooter hit the right target after all?
Graydon interrupted my thoughts with a sudden sigh of agitation. Running a strong hand through his blond streaked buzz cut, he self-consciously announced, “You guys, I barely knew Treat. I mean, I’m sorry for what happened to the dude, but I don’t know anything that can help and I really…I’m really wrecked. I’d like to go home and hit the sack. Is that okay?”
Suzi again waved a dismissive hand. “You just want to catch your waves at the crack of yawn.”
“So?” Graydon folded his arms. “I said I was sorry about the dude, but do you really think he’s in a position to care one way or the other?”
Suzi looked away.
Colleen began to cry again.
“There, there,” said Madame, reaching across the table to pat Colleen’s hand. “You know Ms. Tuttle may not have said it in the kindest way, but I do believe you’ve shed enough tears for the boy upstairs. Take it from a woman who’s been around the block a few times, my dear, men are like buses—one may throw you off unexpectedly, but there’ll always be a new one coming right behind you, inviting you to climb aboard.”
For a second there, we all stared at Madame, a little shocked at her suggestive phrasing. She simply blinked at us, either completely oblivious to the unintentional double entendre or appalled at our provincial reaction to it.
“What?” she finally snapped. “What did I say?”
Joy put an arm around Colleen. “My grandmother’s right. In fact, how’s this for something to cheer up about. I’ve got Keith Judd’s phone number, and I’ll bet we could both party with him—”
“What?” I interrupted with alarm. “Joy, you’re kidding, right? That actor didn’t actually give you his phone number.”
Joy nodded excitedly. “He did. Look.”
From the pocket of her khaki skirt, my daughter pulled out a cocktail napkin.
“Let me see that,” I said.
She handed it over, sliding it across the kitchen table as she explained, “He gave it to me after I brought him your café pousson.”
I examined the napkin. On it, the slick, forty-year-old Hollywood actor had scrawled his name. Below it was a cell phone number. I stood up, tore the napkin in two, pushed the autograph back toward my twenty-one-year-old daughter and shoved the piece with the man’s phone number down the garbage disposal.
“Mom!” she cried. “What are you doing?!”
With the determination of a mother on a mission, I flipped on the disposal. “Sorry, honey.”
Joy leaped to her feet and banged the table with her fist. “I can’t believe you did that!”
“Believe it.”
“You had no right!”
I could see she was just getting started.
It wasn’t the first time she and I had faced off. The entire reason Joy was out here was because of my playing protective mom.
Less than a year before, I’d caught her doing cocaine with her friends in the bathroom stall of an infamous nightclub. (I know, I know—what was I, myself, doing in an infamous nightclub, right? Trust me, there was a good reason, and when I stumbled upon Joy, she had insisted what she was doing was none of my business. But I begged to differ.) I asked her father to have a long talk with her. God knows I’d had enough of them with her when she was in high school, but now she was a young woman, living with a roommate her age. I knew she needed to hear some straight talk from the horse’s mouth (so to speak—and I’m being kind). Matteo Allegro had become an addict during our marriage and it was one of the reasons our wedded bliss ended long before our ten-year union did. (It was also the reason I used to refer to Matt as a “horse’s other end”).
Matt well knew what could happen to a person who thought he or she could handle