Summer Squall

Audrey Dawson stood in the doorway to the master bedroom of her sister's house, listening to the combined sound of the surf in the Atlantic Ocean below and the heavy breathing and moaning of the couple on the bed. Transfixed, she watched, if ever so briefly, her own husband doing pushups on top of her sister, Avis Kerney. When the shock of discovery passed, Audrey turned and retreated to the other side of the house, past the dining room table and its pile of small, square packages filled with a white substance, and back to the bedroom where she'd dropped her suitcase and had changed into her bikini before going to see if anyone was home.

It had all been so cleverly planned, this escape from her husband in Toms River, New Jersey, to her sister in Bermuda until Audrey could plan her next step in life. She had skills—she'd worked in New York in public relations off and on far into their twenty-five-year marriage, but she worried about being able to get back into that at the age of forty-eight. It was a good thing she'd kept her looks and a presentable figure—for a woman nearly fifty. Nick had said he was going to Chicago on business of his technical support company, based in Princeton, for defense projects. He was away a lot—Audrey had come to appreciate the time he was away—and he made very good money, enough money to support a divorce. She wasn't blind; she knew he went with other women while he was away. God knew she wasn't on the side of the angels in that department herself.

Imagine her surprise that she had been running to him rather than away from him.

She had arrived this third week in August, the dog days of summer, at her sister's house in Bermuda, on a cliff beside a small community beach with its own boat pier in the Warwick area on the east side of the island. The house had surprised her—it rambled and looked expensive, which it obviously must be to be beachfront in Bermuda—as had the new Mercedes convertible roadster she'd had to maneuver around in the driveway to get to the front door. As with most Bermuda houses, there was little front yard between house and the road. But the house was bigger than most on this street. Avis and Rob obviously were doing all right for themselves.

The front door had been open, so she'd come right in. She'd called out for Avis and Rob before she had, but the surf below the house was quite noisy. If they were out back they probably wouldn't have heard her. She wasn't expected. She'd only been planning the escape since Nick told her three days previously that he was off for Chicago. She decided to drop her suitcase in a guest room in a wing of the house to the right and then go looking for her sister and brother-in-law. In getting there, she'd gone by the dining room table with its pile of suspicious-looking packets of white powder. She wasn't sure she wanted to have any idea what that was about.

While putting her suitcase in a guest room, she decided there was nothing more she wanted to do after the hasty departure and plane ride than to go to the beach and stick her feet in the Atlantic. That's what she did in Toms River when she needed to do deep thinking—she went down to the seafront and stuck her toes in the Atlantic. She changed into a bikini, took a beach towel that was draped over the back of a chair, and went to the back of the house, to the sliding glass doors out onto the terrace, in search of her sister.

When she saw that no one was on the back patio, she went through to the wing on the other side of the house and that's when she saw them—her own husband, Nick, fucking her sister in her sister's bed.

* * * *

The next several minutes were a blur for Audrey. She was leaving Nick because of his philandering, but she'd had no idea that included her sister, Avis—not that the sisters had been all that close, Avis having come twelve years after Audrey. She was in a bikini and flip flops and had a beach towel over her arm, so her instincts told her she was headed to beach. And that must be where she was going, because she found herself on the beach, having some sense of clumping down the twisting wooden staircase from the Kerneys' patio. It registering in her mind that the cabin cruiser Nick had been so proud of was tied up to the community pier. Now she knew why he wanted one that was seaworthy. She bet it wasn't just the sex that had brought Nick here—that the packages of white powder on the dining room table had something to do with that as well.

The sun was out, although there was a line of storm clouds scuttling across the sky on the horizon. Audrey plopped down on her towel, slipped her bikini top off, and leaned back on her elbows. She was well endowed, her whole body being what was called "curvy," and she got an even tan on top whenever she could. She didn't know how long she'd been sitting on the towel on the deserted beach, bound on either side by rock formations, and staring out to sea before she realized that there has another towel laid out on the beach not far from her and that someone was out in the water, swimming laps parallel to the beach.

Eventually, the swimmer came out of the water. He was black, tall, muscular—and naked. His body was magnificent—all parts of him. Audrey tried to look away from him, but she kept looking back—she couldn't help herself. To say he interested her would be a gross understatement; even saying he aroused her would be an understatement. As keyed up as she was from what was up at the house, it was a short journey to all-out sexual arousal.

It took the man, who appeared to be in his thirties and to spend a good part of his time in a gym, a few seconds as he came out of the surf to realize that he wasn't alone on the beach. And when he saw Audrey, it became quite evident from his physical response to her topless and voluptuous presence that she was having an effect on him. She grabbed for her bikini top and pressed it to her bosom while he crouched over, scrambled to his towel, and took the towel up and wrapped it around his waist.

They were too close to each other not to acknowledge that they'd seen each other, and it was too obvious to each of them that each had had an arousal response to the other. The man started up the beach, but that took him close by her, and he stopped and spoke.

"I'm sorry. I didn't realize anyone else was out on the beach. I live just up there. I swim when I can for exercise. I'll just—" The voice tone was a honeyed combination of British English and a touch of the Caribbean. Audrey was smitten. She also was angry at both her husband and her sister and primed for pay-back revenge and a declaration of her own worth. This man had hardened up at first seeing her.

Everything was coming together so fast that Audrey couldn't help herself. She reached over and pulled the man's towel from around his waist and, seeing that he was in erection, she leaned over and took him in her mouth. She wasn't a novice at this and she took him completely by surprise. If there was an instinct on his part to draw away from this, she took him beyond that with her soft mouth and her hand cupping and rolling his testicles. He came in closer to her and reached down and took her ample breasts, one after the other, in his hand and kneaded and squeezed them.

In an instant, he was on top of her, slipping her bikini bottoms off her legs and burying his face between her thighs. She lay back, holding his head between her hands, pressing her V up into his face, and moaning her desire. When he moved up her body, they were both beyond control or caring. He entered her strongly and they moved their bodies against each other in a rhythm of need and desire that spoke of long-time lovers.

He was thick and long, more filling and demanding than Nick or any of her other lovers had been. And he was young and virile—and she groaned to exotic sensation of dark chocolate tone of his body—and even darker tone of his hard, thick cock and of his balls—and of the mixed British and Caribbean smooth accent as he murmured how lovely and sexy she was and of what he wanted to do with her—and then did it. She clutched at his plump, firm buttocks, squeezing them and pulling them into her as his thrusts built in strength, depth, and rapidity, until, with an explosion, gasp, and cry from her and a groan from him, he had the presence of mind, to the extent it mattered, to pull out of her and release his seed on her thigh.

It was then, and only then, that they both realized they were in a maelstrom. The clouds that had been scuttling across the horizon had been moving into the beach, not away from it. They were in a squall of nature equal to that of the primeval sex they had been engaging in. They were being blasted by particles of sand whipped up by the wind and pelted with thick raindrops coming in almost horizontally from the ocean.

With a yelp, the man cried out, "We need to get out of this. Come with me." He lifted Audrey from the sand, and, holding her hand, pulled them both up a nearby set of wooden stairs that led to the top of the cliff. A house was there, one that was much smaller and older than Avis's house next door, but one that provided shelter from the storm.

The house had a bathroom and a shower that was almost large enough to hold two people but that did accommodate Audrey and David. When they entered the house he'd identified himself as David Lewiston and Audrey had identified herself. He'd offered the shower and asked Audrey if she wanted to shower first. She laughed at him, took his hand, and asked him which way the bathroom was.

He fucked her in the shower again, with Audrey facing the slick tiled wall, her buttocks jutting out, his hands cupping her breasts, his face buried in the hollow of her throat, and he standing close behind her and thrusting up into her—this time having the presence of mind to be covered with a condom.

Later, in bed, after David had lain on his back and Audrey had straddled his hips and ridden his cock to another completion, they lay side by side, embracing, awakened only by the sound of sirens, which came closer and closer. David made to roll away from Audrey and sit up on the side of the bed, but she pulled him back to her and he didn't resist. The sound of his cell phone going off on the nightstand did, though, set him into motion again and Audrey let him go this time, although, as he sat on the side of the bed, she ran the fingers of both hands over his hard-muscled back and buttocks.

"I've got to go," he said after he heard the message being conveyed on his cell phone.

"Do you really?"

"Yes. Those sirens. They were for the house next door. That was my partner. I've got to go. I'm a cop." He was already off the bed and pulling on his briefs and a pair of jeans.

"A cop? Next door? Which side."

He told her.

"That's my sister's house," Audrey said, rolling over to the other side of the bed, sitting up, and gathering the top sheet around her breasts. She looked around for the terrycloth robe David had given her while they drank coffee at his kitchen counter and chatted about nothing in particular, it now seemed, between the fuck in the shower and the fuck in the bed. "What kind of cop are you? She asked. What's happened over there?"

"You'd better come with me," David said, his tone ominous. "I'm a homicide cop."

"I can't—"

He didn't laugh—Audrey was understandably upset, knowing the police were next door at her sister's and not being sure if, during the moments of rage she couldn't account for, whether or not she had called the police to drop in on her husband and sister in coitus to embarrass them—but he did give a little smile. "I have jeans that should fit you well enough if we roll the legs up a lot. You'll get lost in one of my shirts, but it's the best I can do. But, on second thought, you'd best wear your bikini and go back down to the beach and up that way. We shouldn't go over there from here together."

* * * *

Audrey came up from the beach in her bikini and carrying her beach towel, but she was wearing the terrycloth robe David had lent her as well. As she reached the terrace to her sister's house, two policemen converged on her.

"Sorry, Ma'am, you can't come in here," one said, holding his arms out. "This is a crime scene."

Before Audrey could say anything, though, another man, an older, chunky guy in a tired-looking gray suit came out of the house and said, "It's OK, boys. Mrs. Dawson, I presume?" He was holding Audrey's wallet, open to her New Jersey driver's license, with its photo of her. She, of course, had left her purse in the guestroom when she'd changed into her bikini.

"Yes. This is my sister's house," Audrey said. "I've been at the beach, swimming. Is something wrong, Mr.—I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

"Stafford. Art Stafford. I'm a police lieutenant and this is my partner, Detective David Lewiston." David had just come out onto the terrace and was busy pretending he and Audrey hadn't met and doing what he could not to see the "DL" initials embroidered on the chest pocket of the terrycloth robe Audrey was wearing. "I'm afraid there's been a shooting in the house here. Perhaps you should come in."

"A shooting? I don't understand. How did you—?"

"A man and a woman—in one of the bedrooms," Stafford said. "There's no easy way to say this, Ma'am. Both of them are dead. The cleaning lady found them at about 3:30 this afternoon. She'd arranged to come in the evening today, she says. The man's ID indicates one of them is named Nick Dawson. Is he related to you?"

"Nick? No, that can't be," Audrey responded in a small voice. She staggered to a patio chair and sank into it, covering her face with her hand. David came forward to help her down into the chair and, in the process, managed to turn the lapel of the robe over to hide the initials on the chest pocket.

"Is he your brother, Ma'am?"

"No. My husband," Audrey managed to say while fighting hyperventilation.

A policeman came out of the house and handed Stafford another billfold, opened to an ID.

"And an Avis Kerney. Do you know—?"

"She's my sister," Audrey managed.

Stafford and David Lewiston exchanged meaningful looks, and Stafford said, "Perhaps you should come through to the living room. When you're able, you'll need to answer some questions."

"Perhaps Mrs. Dawson should be permitted to shower and dress before that," David offered. "Emily could pick something out for her and check the hall bath before she changes."

"Do you have clothes here, Mrs. Dawson?" It wasn't that he didn't know there was a suitcase and a purse with her ID in it in one of the bedrooms—it was that he wanted to know what she would admit to.

"Yes. My suitcase is in one of the bedrooms. I arrived right before going down to the beach. I didn't check to see if anyone else was about."

"You had just arrived? From where? How?"

"I came by airport taxi from the airport," Audrey answered.

"You and your husband?"

"No. Just me. I thought my husband was in Chicago—on business. We live in the States. New Jersey. Toms River, New Jersey. I'd just flown in here."

"Flight?"

Audrey told him.

"Can you remember what time you arrived at the house?"

Audrey told him that too. "Just after 2:30 this afternoon, I think."

Stafford called out for an Emily, and a policewoman appeared at the sliding glass doors into the living room, received instructions, and helped Audrey into the house. Before they went, Stafford said to the policewoman, "After you've helped Mrs. Dawson, please get onto the airport taxi company and track down the particulars on Mrs. Dawson being driven here. And while she's in the shower, you know what to do."

When Audrey had showered and changed, she was escorted back to the living room. En route she passed an elderly woman hunched over in a chair at the dining room and holding a handkerchief to her face. That must be the cleaning lady who found them, Audrey thought. When she entered the living room she saw that Stafford looked a little less friendly than he had been on the terrace; David Lewiston looked concerned.

"Have a seat over here, if you will, Mrs. Dawson."

"May . . . may I see them? Where were they—?" she asked in a halting voice.

"I don't think that would be wise," Stafford answer, all business. "I don't think there's any way to sugarcoat this. They were both in the bed in what appears to be the master bedroom. They were naked. I'm afraid—"

"Oh, Lord. Nick wasn't even supposed to be here."

"And you didn't see either one of them when you arrived?"

"No, certainly not. I wouldn't have just gone off for a swim if I had," she retorted. "My husband is supposed to be in Chicago." She looked up at David, who was standing behind the chair where Stafford was seated, but his face was a blank mask.

"But you don't seem to be all that surprised—that we found them together. You're just surprised he is here rather than Chicago."

"No, I'm not all that surprised," Audrey said. "There had been signs." Her mind was racing. She, in fact, had been surprised as hell. She knew Nick was sleeping about, but she didn't have an inkling that he and Avis had anything going. She sensed, though, that she needed to establish that she hadn't been as surprised and angry as she had been at seeing them together.

"Do you own a gun, Mrs. Dawson?"

"No, of course not," she answered. Then she froze, remembering. She shot a look at the police lieutenant and then David and realized they had seen the change in her response. "But I did happen upon one in the guestroom while I was changing," she said. "I opened the nightstand drawer in search of a tissue, and there was a gun there. I may even have touched it."

"Yes, a gun was found there. There would have been four shots. You say you were on the beach just below the house. But you didn't hear any gunshots?"

"No, I didn't," Audrey answered. "But of course there was a storm that went through. I doubt I could have heard anything above the noise from that."

"I didn't hear shots either, and I was next door. Between the wind and the surf, the squall that came in was quite loud," David Lewiston interjected.

"Yes, well, we'll have to test the gun we found here for firing and prints, of course," Stafford said.

"Yes, do," Audrey said. "You may find I'd touched it; I don't think you'll find I held it in a firing position. And if it's been fired recently, it certainly wasn't by me. I don't handle guns." On second thought, perhaps that was saying too much, she thought, in panic. She did have a gun back in New Jersey. She had taken lessons in learning to fire it. Was there any way for them to check that? Would they go to the lengths of doing that? In any event, she realized she needed to be more circumspect. She didn't want to be dragged into this.

"Are you saying that I may need a lawyer, Lieutenant?" she asked.

"Do you feel you need a lawyer, Mrs. Dawson?" And then, as if he was afraid she would say yes, he chugged on. "When we arrived, one of our men noticed a residue of white powder on the dining room table. The medical examiner tells us it's cocaine. Do you know anything about that?"

"Drugs? Of course I don't know anything about that. I arrived hot and tired. It's summer on a tropical island. It was sticky-weather summer in New Jersey when I left. All I could think about when no one answered my call—the front door was open—was getting into a swim suit and hitting the beach. Do you thinking I would have been down on the beach if I'd known that my husband was in bed with my sister here in the house?"

"I don't think you'd been very pleased to see that, Mrs. Dawson. Don't you see—?"

But then a policeman was at the door of the living room. "Excuse me, Lieutenant, but you said you wanted to know when it was verified. Both of the autos in the drive are registered to a Mr. Rob Kerney."