SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

There was no time at Dunes Point. 

Time merely brushed across this stretch of sand and sea-grass and stunted red cedars, blue sky and the endlessness of moving water where the bay ran its curling waves, leaving it as it had always been, a little remote from mankind, linked rather to the roll of the times and the flurry of sand where the wind touched it. The red cedars leaned inward away from the ocean winds, pushed to grotesquerie by the countless gales that lashed them during the years. The tops of the rolling dunes were green with high beach grass, while bits of driftwood marred their ripped surfaces like skeletons tossed on shore by a regurgitating sea. 

Just so might The Point have looked a hundred years ago, or perhaps even on that long-ago day when the first white man had come and stared seaward, telling himself this was the land he had been hunting in his dreams. His name does not matter, though it was Caleb Bingham; what does matter is that he made his claim to The Point and to the land which receded from it on both sides to form the easternmost end of what was now the township of Montansett. In his will he gave The Point to the town to be used as a public playground for the children who might be born to his fellow settlers. 

The years bring change to everything, and Dunes Point was no exception. The township lost its Point in the Depression years to a man with too much money and the whim of self-indulgence. He built a house on the land part of The Point, and put a picture window in the east wall so that as he sat eating his meals or reading a newspaper in his study, he could glance up and see the sea rolling onto the sand and the great blue sky overhead. 

When the millionaire died, his widow sold The Point to a contractor, an Irishman named Higgins, who built a number of beach houses and cottages, renting them during the summer for enough money to make him independently wealthy for the next twenty years. 

Higgins died in time, but he left a corporation. 

The corporation managed Dunes Point now, renting out the houses and cottages for whatever the traffic would bear, pricing them high enough so that they would attract the type of customer with whom the Higgins family liked to do business—the moneyed people. 

Some of these people came back to Dunes Point year after year. A few of them had grown up with it, from childhood into maturity and marriage, with children of their own. There were always newcomers, of course; these furnished the greater bulk of the renters; they brought new blood and fresh life to The Point. They played a little harder and somewhat more recklessly than the old timers. To them, the dunes were new and different and they themselves were strangers and unknown. For that reason they permitted themselves a summer time code of morals, of conduct quite distinct from their own more humdrum life back home. 

Dunes Point was still a playground.

Time touched it with gentle fingers. 

Trevor Whitehead glanced at his desk clock with his black eyes. Almost four o'clock, time for him to leave his law offices and drive to the cottage at The Point. In the summertime he always quit the office at four sharp, allowing nothing to delay him. During the winter months he stayed until five-thirty, a habit acquired while his father had been alive and senior partner in the firm of Whitehead, Weiss and Moore. 

He had done trial work almost exclusively in those earlier years: accident cases, probate of wills, corporation problems, even a few criminal trials, which kept him always from his desk so that when he got back to the office, it was usually after four with little time left in which to do the paperwork built up in his absence. 

His left hand went to the attaché case, contentedly stroking the finely grained cowhide. The case was expensive, and he liked expensive things. 

His thoughts wandered for a moment. There was that new woman at The Point. What was her name? Leona Hume. Her skin looked to be even smoother, it would feel good to his fingers wandering over her body. He smiled faintly. 

He had other things to occupy his time, rather than wondering how Leona Hume might look without her clothes. The Bayberry appeal papers were in the attaché case, waiting for a final reading before being sent to the printer. There were the Hardkampf affidavits in that divorce case, too, that needed his attention. 

Just the same... 

He sighed. He must think of some way to get Leona Hume off by herself, away from her husband. A party, with plenty of drinks? It wouldn't be too hard. If he could con his own wife, somehow, into not paying any attention. 

No. He had to spend time with his work over the weekend. Give him four, five hours of concentrated thought, and he would be through. It was hard to work at The Point, though. He would see women in bikinis on the beach, frolicking in the sun, and he would wonder what the hell he was doing reading about cases when he could be down there with them. 

He thought about his wife, Connie. 

She had been a Perry, of the asbestos corporation Perrys, before he'd married her. Bryn Mawr and a year in Europe at some French school. She spoke French like a native. Secretly he was quite proud of that. He himself had always had difficulty with languages. Some quirk of his mind, he guessed; in other things he'd been an almost brilliant scholar. 

The telephone rang.

“Yes, Madge?” 

"It's George French on the phone." 

Four-twenty-one by his clock. "All right, put him on.” He would give Georgie French eight minutes, no more. By four-thirty he was going to walk out his office door into the hall and along the hall to the reception room. 

“Trev? Listen, Trev. I got trouble.”

Georgie French always had trouble, as if he were a magnet and unpleasantry were iron filings. A wealthy investment broker, he had been married and divorced three times. He was between wives now. He lived in an exclusive apartment in the east Eighties and in Westport, where he maintained a fleet of sports cars as a hobby. A balding man in his early forties, he considered himself a perpetual juvenile. 

"What kind of trouble, George?” Whitehead asked resignedly. 

"Last January I loaned my Corvette to Tom Bentley. You know Tom. He was dating some chorus girl at the time and wanted to make an impression. Well, it seems he took the girl to a motel after loading her with Manhattans, and now she's going to have a baby.” 

Trevor Whitehead closed his eyes. “It isn't your baby, is it, Georgie?” 

“Of course not!” George sputtered indignantly. “But the bitch is suing me all the same. Claims I connived at her seduction—seduction, hah! Can she do that to me, Trev?” 

“I doubt it very much. Very much.”

"I want to know, dammit.”

"What stocks are going up next week, George?” 

"Huh? What the hell—" 

“You can't tell me. Nobody can. I can't tell you what a jury might do. She'd have to prove prior knowledge, show you conspired to have her seduced.” 

"All I did was loan Tom the car. That bastard! The least he could have done was be careful. Why wasn't she taking the Pill, for God's sake? Suing me, the man who only loaned the car. Connived in her seduction! God almighty!” 

"The word is 'conspired,' Georgie.” 

"Connived, conspired, whatever. I wouldn't mind so much if I'd had some of her, but this really galls me.” 

"Have you been served with a summons?” 

“Just as I was going out to get my before-dinner martini. My appetite is ruined, Trev. Tom's no help, either. He laughed like hell when I called him. Stupid bastard." 

Four-twenty-seven and a half. “Bring the summons in Monday. I'll get in touch with the girl's lawyer. What's his name?” 

"Manders.” 

"Maybe we can get you off the hook for a few thousand. Don't loan your cars, Georgie.”. 

"I won't pay her a bloody red cent, Trev. Not a goddamn penny. This is highway robbery, that's what it is. Goddamn modern highway robbery.” 

“You want to fight it in court?" 

The voice hesitated. “Well, no. I suppose not. The publicity and all. Jesus, everybody and his kid cousin will be laughing at me.” 

"Monday, George." 

Trevor Whitehead hung up. Four-twenty-nine exactly. He rose from behind his mahogany desk, lifting his attaché case. 

The hall carpeting was an inch thick; his shoes made no sound as he came into the large reception room that was a masterpiece of interior decorating in pale blue and gray with hidden fluorescent lighting. 

The girl at the reception desk smiled brightly.

“Have a nice weekend, Mister Whitehead," she caroled. 

“Thanks, Madge. I'll try.” 

She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes as he waited for the elevator. Tall and lean, very distinguished, she thought. A little stuffy, somewhat pompous, but maybe that was just an act. 

She wondered what his wife thought of him. 

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