Jo heard a burst of laughter above their heads. With a hand raised to shield her eyes from the sun, she looked up to see several men with glasses in their hands on the roof deck, leaning drunkenly over the railing.
“I really wish they wouldn’t ogle the lifeguards like that.” The unfamiliar voice oozed with frustration. It clearly wasn’t the first time its owner had observed such behavior, and it certainly would not be the last. “It’s hard enough to get young women to visit the Pointe these days.”
A woman had come out of the house to stand beside them. Pixieish and petite, she wore a simple white T-shirt and a pair of black shorts. Her black bob was pinned away from her face with a butterfly clip. Her brow unknitted when she saw Jo was listening, and a mischievous smile replaced her frown. “Hi, I’m Claude,” she said.
“I’m Jo. This is Harriett. Are you here for the party?”
“You could say that.” Claude’s laugh made Jo want to laugh along, though she had no idea what was funny. “I organized it.”
“You did a great job.” Jo knew how much work must have gone into planning an event of this size. “It looks just like the beach scene from To Catch a Thief.”
“That was my inspiration!” Claude exclaimed with delight. “You’re the first to notice. Jackson only cares if the booze is cold and the ladies are half naked.” Her fingers flew to her lips and she grimaced at her indiscretion. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. He’s probably a friend of yours.”
“Nope,” Jo assured her. “We’re just here to drink his cold booze.”
“So you work for Jackson?” Harriett seemed to have caught a whiff of something. “Do you spend a lot of time on the Pointe?”
“I spend my summers here,” Claude confirmed. “But I try to avoid Jackson as much as possible. I come out to stay with my partner and wait for his fancy friends to throw business my way. I arranged to have the entire cast of the Frozen musical flown in next week for an eight-year-old’s birthday.”
“Wow. That couldn’t have been easy,” Jo said.
“You wouldn’t believe. The negotiations were brutal. A couple of the women had heard about that murder down by Danskammer Beach. I had to hire a dozen extra security guards, which was totally unnecessary. The president himself couldn’t get through the Culling Pointe gate without a written invitation.”
Jo had been wondering how she and Harriett would turn the conversation to murder. She felt grateful that the woman had done their work for them.
“Were you out here on the Pointe when the body was found?” Harriett inquired.
Claude nodded grimly. “Yeah, it was my first day getting things together for the party. What a tragedy. Have they found the guy who did it yet? I’ve been so busy I haven’t been able to keep up with the news.”
“They’d have to search for the killer in order to find him,” Harriett said. “The cops don’t seem to think it’s worth their time.”
“I wish I could say I’m shocked,” Claude responded grimly. “My partner has a charity that builds schools for kids all over the world. In a lot of the places we travel, women are nothing but baby machines. Girls disappear all the time, and no one ever bothers to look. We like to think that things are different here. But they’re not. Not really.”
“Your partner runs a charity?” Jo asked.
“That’s how we met. I planned an event for him years ago. To be honest, I think he fell in love with my food. The man never met an amuse-bouche he didn’t like. That’s him right there.”
Claude pointed down toward the ocean where a middle-aged man with curly gray hair was horsing around with a group of kids. They were all lined up at the water’s edge, trying to leap over the waves as they arrived onshore.