Death Will Extend Your Vacation by Elizabeth Zelvin Page A

so fine I had to peer closely to see the links. The shell had ridges and grooves that swirled around to a flourish at the tip. Something had lived and squirmed in there, but not recently. On either side hung a much smaller translucent half shell, one pale yellow, the other a light peach color.
    “Did you make it?” Barbara asked. “It’s so delicate, I’m amazed the shells didn’t break when the holes were bored.”
    “Oh, no, I got it like this— that is, I bought the chain. The shells were on the kind of filament you put beads on.”
    “Is that scungilli? I live back to back with an Italian restaurant,” I explained to Jeannette.
    “The big one is. It’s a whelk. They come in all sizes, I guess depending on how old they are. You can find them on the beach after a high tide, sometimes even at the bay, but it’s hard to find an unbroken one. The seagulls catch them live and drop them from way up in the air to crack them open.”
    “The little pastel pearly ones are so pretty,” Barbara said.
    “Jingle shells,” Jeannette said. “The bay beach is covered with them, in among the rocks.”
    “Well, it’s beautiful,” Barbara said. “Did you buy it? Where can I get one?”
    “N-no.” Jeannette snatched up a dish towel and dabbed at her forehead and the damp pink back of her neck. “It’s hot in here. If you want, you can get one of those bowls of strawberries out of the fridge. You can put them in dessert dishes, and we’ll pour the cream over them and maybe a little whipped cream on top.”
    “I can’t get a necklace like that anywhere?”
    “It was a beach thing a couple of years ago,” Jeannette said. “Well, actually, Oscar collects the shells. But I don’t think he’s making any now.” She took the bowl of strawberries from Barbara’s hands. Setting it on the table, she began to line up glass dessert bowls.
    “I’d love to have one,” Barbara persisted. “I can ask him, can’t I?”
    “Not a good idea,” Jeannette said.
    “Why not?”
    Jeannette shrugged.
    What was the big deal? Barbara looked disappointed. She could string her own seashells if she wanted. But I could tell she felt Jeannette’s rebuff.
    “Didn’t Clea have one too?” Barbara bounced back and took the subject up from another angle. “That first night at dinner, I noticed some of the others had them. I thought it was a house thing.”
    Jeannette switched off the burner and gave the cream a final stir, frowning in concentration.
    “She didn’t have it on when we found her,” I said. I could see her on the beach, her jaw lax and skin already dingy. I’d checked her neck for signs of bruising and seen only a blackish coil of seaweed and a stray tendril of wet, sandy hair. “Maybe it broke and washed away.”
    “I don’t think she’d run with it,” Barbara said. She started dealing strawberries into the bowls. “We could search her room again. Maybe it fell behind the dresser or something. And if nobody wants it— I hope this doesn’t sound too awful— but maybe there’s someone who would get her jewelry. Jeannette, you’ve known her for what, three years? Did she talk about her family? Did she have any sisters?”
    Jeannette’s lips tightened. She scooped up a ladle full of cream and poured it slowly over a mound of berries.
    “Clea didn’t bond with women very well.”
    “How do you mean?”
    Before Jeannette could respond, Stephanie came in, banged open the refrigerator door, snatched up a can of Diet Coke, popped it open, and answered for her.
    “She was sexually competitive.”
    Jeannette kept her eyes lowered as she evened out the mounds of berries in cream.
    “Don’t exaggerate, Steph.”
    “Come off it, Jeannie,” Stephanie said. She tilted her chin up and poured down a slug of Coke. A little soda dribbled down her chin. She wiped it off with the palm of her hand. “As the beach got more crowded, Clea’s bikinis got skimpier and skimpier. She never joined a group of women sitting