Free A Hamptons Christmas by James Brady Page A

sort. Ocelot? I wondered but didn’t ask. She shook her head.
    â€œNo. Well, a bit. Just the wind, actually. As I told your friend Mr. White about Père Lachaise, I like graveyards. The one up at Scarborough in Yorkshire is wonderful. Ever so many Brontes. Going there and walking between the stones, looking at the names, the dates, it’s like carrying a small, leather-bound book of your favorite poems, and reading them aloud when you’re all alone and not at all self-conscious, because no one’s listening.”
    I slung an arm around her furred shoulder and hugged her close.
    â€œThat, too, is nice, Beecher. Both the Brontes and you.”
    â€œYou can share me with the Brontes anytime.”
    She kissed me lightly. But very well. Then, brightly, “Do show me where Mr. Marley is, the chap whose bones they’re always stealing. Do they just leave an empty hole or what?”
    I remembered it was a mausoleum but had no idea where they’d sited it, nor was there any sort of rational layout that I knew of. But the Old Churchyard isn’t very big, and there were only three or four aboveground structures, so we found Mean Jake without much trouble.
    â€œCarrara marble,” Alix said with some assurance, “you can always
tell good Carrara. It’s the bluish gray tint, y’know. Leonardo insisted on it, they say. No matter how distant the Tuscan quarry.”
    â€œOh?” I’m not much on tombstones or marble. Though if it were good enough for Leonardo … But I recognize fresh hardware when I see it.
    â€œJake must be back. They wouldn’t have put on a new deadbolt and lock if he weren’t.”
    â€œI wouldn’t think so,” she agreed removing a sheepskin-lined glove to run a hand lightly over the lettering. Then, “I always like the stone to be a bit softened by age. You know, the way a good saddle doesn’t feel precisely right until it’s been ridden a bit.”
    Not being a rider I limited myself to, “I’m sure.” And then, both of us feeling the chill, we got out of there and made our way back to the Hummer.
    â€œWill there be snow?” Alix asked, regarding the gray sky.
    â€œNot according to the Weather Channel, not yet. But sooner or later, sure. We always get snow out here.”
    â€œOh, good. I do love snow.”
    Snow, the Brontes, graveyards, and me. To say nothing of Carrara marble. Alix had her enthusiasms. I looked over, enjoying and admiring her profile as she drove. God, she had a lovely face. Sensing my look, she half turned her head and smiled.
    â€œAlmost no one else takes me to graveyards the way you do, Beecher. I do love you for it.”
    â€œAlmost” no one? “Almost”? Now what the hell did that mean?

Chapter Eleven
    â€œThats’s the honey wagon. John K. Ott’s cesspool service …”
    Back in Manhattan, the summer people and subscribers to New York magazine are sure there’s naught going on out here in the Hamptons in winter. Or, being contrarian, they imagine it’s all very picturesque, precious even, the “nobs” roughing it in the cold.
    And they’re both wrong. They don’t know about bodies being stolen out of churchyards or about the Bronte sisters or strange kids like Susannah le Blanc using pseudonyms or about Willie Morris’s dog, Pete, or my old man playing speed chess and doing card tricks even without all his fingers. In our winters, much like the Season itself, people are born and die, they fall in love, go to the hospital, contest wills, are arrested for DWI, play the lottery, catch the flu, and get into fights at Wolfie’s Tavern. Kids attend school. Even go to college in Southampton. And now and then there’s a shooting in Montauk. The railroad issues a new timetable. Last winter two locals were busted for jacklighting deer behind the high school. In the damned parking lot! And local teens beat up a nice old