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  A Design to Die For

  Montauk’s first annual Designer Showhouse was meant to be a collaborative event, so decorator Meg Barrett can only despair at the group of cutthroat designers scheming to sabotage each other on the project, not to mention the oddball collection of ghost hunters slinking around to investigate a supposedly haunted cottage. But when one of the owners of the showhouse is found murdered on the rocky beach below, Meg suddenly finds herself clashing with local police because of evidence that points to her as a prime suspect.

  Desperate to clear her name and track down the real culprit, Meg discovers that many of her fellow designers despised the victim for his unscrupulous business dealings, while others were speculating about his extramarital affairs. And as more secrets emerge about both the deceased and the many outsiders who have come together for the showhouse, Meg realizes she’ll have to decipher a murky pattern of clues to escape the killer’s deadly designs on her . . .

  Title Page

  

  Copyright

  A Design to Die For

  Kathleen Bridge

  Beyond the Page Books

  are published by

  Beyond the Page Publishing

  www.beyondthepagepub.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Kathleen Bridge

  Cover design and illustration by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs

  ISBN: 978-1-950461-56-1

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of both the copyright holder and the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Dedication

  I dedicate this book to my cherished friend and fellow vintage fixer-upper enthusiast, Nancy Schoen. Your generous, loving spirit inspires me not only when it comes to home décor but also in every aspect of my life. This one’s for you . . .

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks, as always, to my wonderful agent, Down Dowdle at Blue Ridge Literary Agency, along with my editor, Bill Harris, and everyone at Beyond the Page Publishing. Once again, thank you to gourmet home chef Lon Otremba, who provided the recipes in the back of this book and all my other cozy mysteries. I hope our collaboration continues for years to come. I’d rather eat at your table than any Michelin Star restaurant. To my family, who has supported my writing career from day one, I love you guys. And to my faithful COZY readers, I wouldn’t be able to live my blissful writer’s life if not for you—you guys are the best! Amy Hueston, author and friend, I so appreciate all your support. A big shout-out to Shelly Colloredo and everyone at Sweet Home Vintage Market in Sebastian, Florida. Thanks for adding Vintage Cottage by the Sea to your happy family of dealers. P.S. Stop by and see us if you are in the area!

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Recipes

  Meg & Elle’s Think Outside the Box Guide to Vintage Decorating

  Books by Kathleen Bridge

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  “There’s nothing like Montauk in the spring,” I said. “Only three weeks until Memorial Day, then the Hamptons hordes descend.”

  “Meg Barrett! That’s a snarky way of looking at it,” Elle said.

  “Not being snarky, just love living here off-season. I’m very possessive of my serenity, especially after . . .”

  “Cole,” my best friend finished for me.

  Before she could grill me about my recent breakup, I asked, “When’s your fiancé coming back to town?”

  Just like me, she avoided the question.

  “Can you please pass the menu?”

  I passed it to her, adding, “Good luck reading it in this pea-soup mist.”

  “Ha-ha, funny,” she said. “How’d you know I was leaning toward the pea soup? Either that or Gwen’s lobster chowder.” Elle pulled the menu closer to her upturned freckled nose. “I can’t read a thing under all this condensation.” Taking her napkin, she swiped it across the menu. “Better.”

  Our outdoor table at the Surfside Lodge faced a fog-shrouded ocean. I’d insisted we eat outdoors. The past week had been nothing but fog and rain. Not that today was any different, but I was tired of being caged inside the teensy four-room cottage my one-woman interior design firm, Cottages by the Sea, had been hired to decorate. Instead of May flowers, as the old ditty went, it looked like we’d inherited April’s showers.

  I glanced down at the menu, deciding on the mussels in garlic and white wine.

  When I looked up, I saw a small-framed female body appear through the miasma at the top of the deck’s steps. Waving, I called out, “Jenna, over here.” Not that it would be hard to find us. We were the only ones dumb enough to sit outdoors.

  As she came toward us, Elle said, “Since when does Jenna need a cane?”

  Newly married Jenna Eastman had once worked with Elle and me at American Home and Garden magazine. When I was at the helm of the magazine, Jenna was my locations editor. After I fled Manhattan and a cheating fiancé to find serenity in Montauk, Jenna took over my spot as editor in chief. Following her marriage to Roland Cahill, Jenna moved to the easternmost tip of Long Island with her husband in order to renovate Jenna’s family home, Enderly Hall. The mansion-sized fishing cottage was said to have been built by the legendary architect Stanford White on five acres of oceanfront land atop the Montauk moors. Just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Montauk Point Lighthouse. Jenna and I were neighbors. However, there was no comparing our two cottages, seeing mine had six rooms and hers twenty-plus.

  Elle, Jenna and I were around the same age, in our early thirties, and we shared a passion for interior design and junk pickin’. Elle and Jenna were independently wealthy, so they did their treasure hunting for sport. I, on the other hand, not so much for sport, more for survival and a means to continue my blissful stress-free existence in my cozy Montauk cottage.

  Jen
na came toward us like she’d just stepped, more like limped, out of the Creature from the Black Lagoon’s lagoon. Her long auburn hair was plastered against her pale heart-shaped face. One of her hair extensions had come loose and was draped across her shoulder like a scarf. She wasn’t wearing a jacket in the cool fifty-degree weather, just a long, open-weave sweater that made her look like she’d been snared in a fisherman’s net.

  If Jenna was anything, she was always buffed and coifed.

  Not today.

  I got up and pulled out a chair that Jenna slunk into. “I think my husband, soon-to-be ex-husband, is trying to kill me,” she moaned, her saucer-like moss green eyes showing fear.

  At a loss for words, I let Elle pose the billion-dollar question—because that was almost what Jenna Eastman was worth after the passing of her father.

  “Jenna! Why would you think Roland is trying to kill you?” Elle asked, picking up the cane that had slipped from Jenna’s grip. “And what happened to your ankle?”

  “Yesterday,” Jenna said, “I was doing my usual jog down Old Montauk Highway when a car came barreling down on me at high speed. I leapt to the shoulder and went flying into a ditch. If a bush hadn’t stopped me, I would have fallen onto the rocky beach below.” She must have noticed my skeptical gaze, and continued, “The car was a silver Mercedes sedan, just like Roland’s. Luckily, another car came by, saw my reflective vest and took me to urgent care. My ankle is only sprained, but it could have been worse. Much worse.” She took her pointer finger with its long French-manicured nail and swiped it across her throat like it was a knife’s blade.

  “Maybe we should go inside and chat by the fire,” I interjected, glancing at Jenna’s shivering form. I was also having a hard time hearing her low speaking voice over the crash of the waves. My hearing aids were in, but I hadn’t set them to keep the background noise out and reading lips was near impossible in the fog. I leaned in until I was inches from Jenna’s face.

  “Noooo,” she answered. “I don’t want anyone to overhear.” I shoved my cup of chai tea toward her. As she drank, I took a moment to soak it all in before I formed my next question. Jenna had a flair for the dramatic; a light sprinkle was a downpour, her glass was never half empty, it was bone-dry. “Jenna, what reason would your husband have to kill you?”

  “Two days ago, I asked him for a divorce, then this hit-and-run happened.” She extended her left ankle, then pulled up her pant leg, exposing bandages that went well above her knee. I could tell that the clinic probably provided the section of bandage at her ankle. The one continuing over her knee was in a completely different shade. Knowing Jenna, she’d probably bought a second bandage from Green’s Department Store, wanting to make her injury look worse than it was. Jenna might be the most pessimistic person I knew, and the biggest hypochondriac, but she was also the most generous and kindhearted. In all the years I’d known her, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her as angry as she was now.

  “I wish I’d never thought of the idea of having Enderly Hall as a designer showhouse,” she whimpered. “Roland’s completely taken over. He’s not the man I thought he was.”

  Now that the exterior and interior construction were completed, Enderly Hall was scheduled to become the first annual Montauk Designer Showhouse, with most of the proceeds going to the Montauk Volunteer Fire Department, commencing with Saturday night’s invitation-only cocktail party. Sunday would be the first day Enderly Hall would be open for public viewing. Jenna had strategically coordinated the showhouse’s opening with the festivities for Montauk Point Lighthouse Week.

  Glancing at Jenna’s hunched form, it was hard to believe this was the same lovestruck woman who’d told us six months ago how happy she was after returning from her South of France honeymoon. I wasn’t a big fan of Jenna’s husband, Roland, but it was still hard to picture him wanting to murder her. For one thing, I remembered the stink Roland had given Jenna about the prenup agreement before their wedding. What would be his motive?

  Roland was new to the Hamptons scene. Per Jenna, he was the former owner of a Queens, New York–based construction business. He’d recently partnered with a top East Hampton architectural firm in nearby Amagansett, Klein and Associates. Since then, he’d been off to the races, trying to make his mark on the Hamptons social hierarchy with millionairess Jenna at his side. There was a big age gap between the pair. Roland was in his early fifties and was an expert at giving out backhanded compliments, walking around the estate like he was a rooster and the other decorators, including his wife, his bevy of chicks. Based on the few times I’d been around him when working at Enderly Hall and judging by the way he demeaned Jenna and the other three female decorators, including myself, I believed Roland was a first-class chauvinistic jerk.

  Up until today, I’d given him a hall pass, thinking he and Jenna were passionately in love. If that had once been the case, it sure didn’t seem to be so now.

  “Why’d you ask Roland for a divorce?” Elle asked softly, taking Jenna’s hand in hers.

  “I overheard a conversation between him and Vicki . . .” Jenna hesitated for a moment, then looked around to make sure no one could overhear. The only living thing in view was a seagull, who stood patiently on the deck’s railing, waiting for scraps of food. Vicki was Roland’s former stepdaughter and the owner of a struggling Manhattan interior design firm called Veronica’s Interiors. She was also one of the three decorators chosen to do the interior rooms for the showhouse. Continuing, Jenna said, “I heard Roland telling Vicki that after the designer showhouse closed, he planned to put Enderly Hall on the market! My estate! My family home! It hasn’t been inhabited in years. Living there has been a dream of mine since I was a child. My grandfather was a recluse and hoarder. He died without a will. For the past twenty years my father and uncle fought over ownership. Two stubborn idiots. It wasn’t until my father’s recent passing that I was made his heir and the owner of Enderly Hall.”

  “So, what did you do after you overheard all this between your husband and Vicki?” Elle asked impatiently. Jenna was also good at maximizing drama.

  “I confronted Roland. Then I told my treacherous husband that he’d have to kill me before the estate went on the market. I guess that’s what he decided to do.” She glanced down at her ankle. “I also overheard Roland tell Vicki that if he had to, he’d fake the papers proving that Enderly Hall was designed by Stanford White. My father and uncle spent years looking for the renderings that would indisputably prove White was the architect for Enderly Hall. They never found them. If Enderly Hall was ever put up for sale, having proof it is a Stanford White cottage would probably triple its worth.”

  She turned to Elle, then me, her eyes pleading. “Don’t you see? I told Roland, then and there, Enderly Hall would never be sold, and I wanted a divorce a.s.a.p. He tried to play it off that I’d misconstrued his words, saying what he meant was that after we had children and they were grown, then we would sell, so we could retire and live abroad. Like I believe that malarkey. I don’t want a scandal to ruin Enderly Hall’s showhouse unveiling. Now it looks like I’m stuck with Roland for at least the next month and a half. For better or worse.”

  I had a feeling it would be for worse.

  “Do you believe Stanford White was Enderly Hall’s architect?” Elle asked.

  “I do. But I would never forge papers saying so.”

  A waitress had stepped onto the deck carrying a water pitcher. I motioned for her to go back inside. She took one look at Jenna’s bedraggled form and the tears running down her face, then hurried back through the open French doors leading into the restaurant.

  I handed Jenna my napkin. She used it to wipe her face and blow her nose, then said, “My father and uncle were sure that at one time, when they were teenagers, they saw handwritten architectural plans by Stanford White in grandfather’s study. Proof that the same man who erected the second Madison Square Garden, Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village, and the Gilded Age cottage Rosecliff in Newp
ort, Rhode Island, had been the same architect who built Enderly Hall.”

  Most locals knew about Stanford White and his ties to the Hamptons. Dick Cavett had bought Stanford White’s Tick Hall, only a short distance from Enderly Hall. Tick Hall was one of three sister fishing cottages that White had built in Montauk. “If I remember correctly,” I said, “Tick Hall doesn’t have documented architectural renderings by Stanford White. But it’s common knowledge that he’d built it.”

  Jenna moaned, exasperation in her voice when she said, “They have other proof: photographs, receipts that the interior furnishings came from Stanford White’s huge warehouse, along with files found at the firm of McKim, Mead, and White and also at Tick Hall.”

  “So, your father couldn’t find one shred of evidence that Stanford White was Enderly’s architect?” I asked gently, noticing the pink on her cheeks.

  “None,” Jenna said. “Grandfather probably burned everything. Now Roland wants to produce false papers and sell Enderly Hall from under me. It’s ludicrous, just like my grandfather’s last years, when he refused to see either of his sons, or anyone else in the family. Thomas Stanton Eastman died with no will. The only way probate could go through was if my father and uncle sold Enderly Hall and split the profit. They refused, each wanting it for themselves because of the Stanford White lineage. It wasn’t until my uncle died that my father took possession. Six months later, Father died from lung cancer. He was a big smoker. Mother predeceased him by a year. She had breast cancer.”

  “Oh, Jenna,” I said sympathetically, “how tragic.” My own mother had died from the same disease.

  Elle patted her hand. “At least now your parents are reunited.”

  Jenna kept going, her malaise mushrooming to its crescendo. “To top things off,” she said, her eyes narrowing in anger, “there’s a crew of paranormal investigators camped outside our gates. Once the showhouse was announced they must have discovered the link to Shepherds Cottage, the lighthouse ghost and Captain Kidd’s curse. Or maybe it’s my grandfather’s ghost they’ve come looking for.”