Killer Summer, Lynda Curnyn [books suggested by bill gates .txt] 📗

have easily come to Fire Island that night,” Zoe pressed on. “You know, the night Maggie died.”

“Zoe—”

Vince put his drink down on the bar and finally looked at me. “Is there something I should know about here?”

Before Zoe could stop me, I blurted out, “Zoe has this stupid theory that Maggie’s death wasn’t an accident.”

“Sage—” Zoe began.

Now Vince’s eyes went wide. “You’re not implying that I—”

Zoe looked at him. “I’m not implying anything. Just asking.”

He shook his head. “Tom is my best friend. And Maggie was like a sister to me,” he said.“I can’t believe you’d even suggest such a thing.”

“Vince, I apologize on behalf of my friend,” I said, shooting a look at Zoe.

Vince sighed, smiling slightly at me. “That’s fine, Sage.” Then he looked at Zoe. “The truth is, Zoe, if you really think something like that happened, you probably should go to the police with your findings.”

“I probably should,” Zoe said. “I wonder, though, what they might make of the fact that Maggie received a phone call from the Long Island office on the Saturday she died. Especially in light of the fact that you might have been one of the few people at the office that day.”

Vince stared at Zoe for a minute, then he chuckled, shaking his head.“So that’s what this is all about?” Then he narrowed his gaze at her. “I think I already explained that phone call to the detective who called to follow up. He seemed satisfied with the fact that I had called Maggie on a business matter, if you must know. In addition to being friends, Zoe, Maggie and I did work together.”

“Vince, I’m sorry about—” I began.

He sighed, looking at me. “It’s fine. Look, it was a crazy night. I can’t blame anyone for getting worked up about it. I was pretty worked up myself.”

I took his hand between mine. “Maybe you and I should get out of here. Take a nice walk along the beach. Alone,” I said, throwing a glance at Zoe.

He smiled, his gaze moving to the clock above the bar, before coming to rest on me. “You know, Sage, that sounds wonderful, but it’s pretty late. I still have to pack, close up the house. I probably should go.”

He put his drink down on the bar, reaching into his pocket and throwing a twenty-dollar bill down beside it. “I’ll talk to you next week, Sage.“ Then he turned to Zoe and smiled. ”Good to see you again, Zoe.“

And with that, he left.

Leaving me with Zoe, who I turned on as soon as I saw Vince disappear through the door. “That was the last straw, Zoe.”

“What? Sage, you can’t blame me for—”

I stood up, slamming my glass on the bar as I did. “Oh, I can blame you, all right. And if you just fucked up this thing with Vince, you better believe I will.”

Chapter Thirty-eight

Maggie

The other woman in Tom’s life was not who I expected.

I suppose the worst thing I could say about Sage Daniels was that she saw only what she wanted to see. I guess I can’t really blame her for that. I’ve been guilty of the same.

But blame her I did. How else could I defend myself against the way she looked at me, spoke to me, the way she despised me from the moment I took over the helm at Edge? She saw only a wife who slipped into a ready-made space in her husband’s empire. Not a woman who’d finally found a place to dream.

Yes, it could be argued that I came to Edge driven more by a dream than a solid employment history. I didn’t know much about the garment industry, except for what my husband brought home with him. And though Tom’s work at Luxe often kept him long hours at the office, I accepted it. His ambition was one of the few things I really loved about him. If I didn’t find myself inspired by ladies’ wear for the middle-aged set, I was inspired by Tom’s passion for his business. And on those occasions when he came home buoyant with the triumph of bringing in a new retailer or the successful sell-in of a new design, I remembered what I loved about him when we first met. Though Luxe was well under way by the time I entered Tom’s life, I sometimes saw glimpses of the younger man, the one who had come to New York in search of a dream outside the shadow of his successful father. The man who had built an empire from the ground up. A passionate man.

I guess I hadn’t counted on that being his only passion. After all, there was a time when he’d felt just as inspired by me.

When Edge was born, you could say it changed everything. Edge was the fashion of the street, spawned by music and hip-hop culture. We even had an early success when Missy Elliot sported one of our samples on a music video. And though I had never seen myself as a part of this business, I felt some sense of destiny when Edge came into being. The feeling all my dreams were right in my own backyard. If I wasn’t a rock star, I felt like one when I took the reins of Edge.

Ironically, you could say that, in some ways, Edge gave new life to my marriage just as much as it destroyed it. Tom and I shared a common passion to make Edge a success. Now our nights were filled with strategies about how to take this younger market by storm. Champagne toasts at each success and whispered confidences about how to make it all happen.

Of course, my days at Edge only made me aware of how little I really knew about the industry. Sage never failed to remind me of that deficit. For every idea I had, she had a better one. For every retailer I brought in using Tom’s connections,