Amazingly, he was still standing there when I opened the door again a few seconds later. “It’s just an expression,” he said. But I had the distinct impression he’d already done a detailed inventory of what I was—and wasn’t—wearing.
“That’s some dress,” Daniel said, helping me into the truck—no mean feat considering the strictures of the aforementioned dress.
I tugged at the shoulder seams, hoping to reposition my cleavage, but the matter was pretty hopeless. I would just have to remember my mother’s lifelong directions and try to “sit up straight” all night.
“Is it too much?” I asked anxiously.
“Not for me,” he said.
“But for the Ardsley Park Supper Club? I don’t want them to think I’m some kind of tart or something.”
He started the truck’s engine. “You said you didn’t even want to go to this thing tonight. So why do you care what these people think?”
“Because,” I said, “I care. You probably won’t understand this, because you’ve traveled and moved away before coming back, but I’ve lived in Savannah my whole life. My parents and grandparents lived here their whole lives. It matters, what people think. Anyway, it’s different for a man. You can say or do anything you want, within reason, and people will admire you for being ballsy. But if you’re a woman, just try and get away with anything in this town.”
“Ignore it,” Daniel said. “I would.”
I shook my head and stared out the window. “This whole thing at Beaulieu is a nightmare. You have no idea how it feels, having people gossiping about you. Total strangers are convinced I’m some kind of homicidal maniac. You want to know why I’m going tonight? I’ll tell you just how pathetic I am. Merijoy Rucker is the first person in two weeks who has gone out of her way to be nice to me. So yes, I’ll admit it. I want people to like me. That’s what everybody wants.”
“Not me,” Daniel said, his jaw tightening. “I don’t give a damn what people think about me.” He winked. “Or about you.”
“Easy for you to say,” I retorted. “You’re the hottest chef at the hottest restaurant in town. BeBe says every woman who comes in Guale wants to jump you. You don’t have a clue what it’s like—being a pariah.”
“I don’t?”
“No,” I said, wriggling around in the seat while trying to pull my skirt down. “And quit looking at me like that. I’m already nervous. You’re making it worse.”
“I’m not looking at you,” Daniel said. “I’m looking at the Ruckers’ house. Not too shabby.”
Merijoy and Randy Rucker lived in the swellest house on the swellest block in Ardsley Park, a huge redbrick Tudor Revival mansion.
The neighborhood was developed around the turn of the century as the city’s first true suburb—a new address for the city’s emerging class of captains of industry and their families.
Unlike the narrow eighteenth-and nineteenth-century townhouses in the downtown historic district, homes in Ardsley Park were built as big sprawling affairs on roomy lots, complete with large gardens and verandas and terraces—and garages and driveways to accommodate the biggest fad of the new century: the automobile.
Daniel parked the truck at the curb, skillfully piloting it into a slot between a maroon Jaguar and a silver Mercedes.
“All set?” he asked.
I swallowed hard. “Will you do something for me?”
“Maybe.”
I bit my lip. “I told you I’m nervous. I think I might throw up or something.”
“Not in my truck, you’re not.”
I opened the passenger door. “I’ll try not to splatter.” Another deep breath of that soupy evening air and I felt a bit better. I kept my back turned away from him.
“Look,” I said. “This is my first, sort of, well, it’s the first time I’ve been out. Since Tal. I know this is not a real date, and you’re only doing this because BeBe’s your boss. But if you could, just, I don’t know. Act like you like me. Could you?”
He slid across the seat of the truck and put his lips so close to my ear it tickled. And he whispered, very softly, “I do like you, Weezie Foley. I always have.”
“Eloise!” Merijoy said, beaming and handing me an ice-beaded glass of what looked like gin and tonic. “You’re here. I’m so delighted. I was afraid you might cancel on me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said. I turned to Daniel. “And I understand you already know my friend Daniel Stipanek.”
“Know him?” Merijoy laughed. “Randy and I would starve to death if it wasn’t for Daniel. We eat at Guale at least once a week, and lots of times Randy stops on the way home to get a take-out order of that divine salmon tartare of his.”
Merijoy handed Daniel a glass too. “Randy,” she called. “Look who’s here, darlin’, it’s our celebrity of the evening.”
I took a gulp of the gin and tonic. It was icy cold, tart and sweet at the same time. If the Ruckers kept it coming, I thought I might just make it through this evening.
“Well, hello there,” Randy Rucker said, wrapping an arm around Merijoy’s shoulders. I had to look up, way up, to see his face.
He towered over his wife. He was gangly, with thinning brown hair and thick horn-rimmed glasses, and a smile that seemed to radiate genuine gladness to see me.
“It’s nice to meet you, Eloise,” Randy said. “Merijoy’s been talking a blue streak about you ever since you two met up out there at Beaulieu. I hear you’re one of these hysterical preservation types like my bride here.”
Merijoy gave him a playful little punch on the arm. “Don’t let him tease you, Eloise. He’s as interested in preservation as I am. You know, he’s the one who stopped his daddy from tearing down the freight company’s original building over on West Broad, I mean, excuse me, Martin Luther King Boulevard.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said, impressed. I’d seen the Rucker Freight building. It was a Savannah landmark, a huge, Spanish colonial–style stucco garage with four ornate bays and a façade dripping with black wrought-iron lacework.
“Oh yes,” Merijoy said. “Randy’s daddy was ready to bulldoze the place. He had an option on some cheap land over on the South Carolina side of the bridge, where he was going to relocate the company. But Randy did some research and showed him how the family could get development authority money to fix up the old building, and even buy some land behind the original plot, so they could expand.”
“Pretty darn smart,” Daniel said.
“We saved a ton of money in the long run,” Randy said modestly. “And that’s the only reason my daddy agreed to go along with it. He was not the sentimental type. Bricks are bricks as far as he was concerned.”
“But the point is, you saved an important building,” I said.
“Yes,” Merijoy said with a sigh. “We’ve already lost so many wonderful homes and businesses around here. I’m just sick with worry, wondering what’s going to happen to Beaulieu.”
A tiny white-haired woman in a smart blue brocade cocktail suit joined us just then. Her eyes were the same shade of turquoise as the dress, and she wore a single strand of pearls around her neck, and perched in her hair she wore a little scooped-out beaded and feathered cocktail hat. She looked like something out of a 1950s movie.
“Merijoy,” she said, putting a birdlike hand on Merijoy’s own. “What is going to happen to Beaulieu? Can’t the Savannah Preservation League do anything to stop them from putting a paper mill out there?”
“No, Miss Sudie,” Merijoy said sadly. “The plantation’s not in the city limits. It’s completely out of our jurisdiction.”
“Somebody has to put a stop to it,” the older woman said. “It’s sacrilege to even think about touching that wonderful old house, or the land. Why, my mother and grandmother went to school with the Mullinax girls. Mother used to take us out to Miss Anna Ruby’s Christmas tea every year, before she got so feeble. Her cook used to make the most wonderful pecan divinity—the pecans were from Beaulieu’s own trees, of course.”
“It’s a scandal,” Merijoy agreed. “I’m convinced that man, Phipps Mayhew—he’s the president of Coastal Paper Products—I’m convinced there’s something funny about how he managed to get old Miss Anna Ruby to agree to sell. I spent months and months talking to her about deeding the house to the league for a house museum, and then, before you know it—”
“Honey,” Randy interrupted. “Before you go off on a tear about Beaulieu, don’t you want to introduce our guests to these other folks?”
Merijoy looked embarrassed. “Eloise and Daniel, I am so sorry. I just get so mad about this whole thing, I completely forgot my manners.”
She beamed at the old lady. “Miss Sudie McDowell, I’d like for you to meet my old friend Eloise Foley. And her friend, Daniel Stipanek. Did I say that last name right, sugar?”
“Exactly right,” Daniel said, shaking hands with Sudie McDowell.
“Miss Sudie,” Merijoy continued, “Eloise and I were at St. Vincent’s together. She’s in the antiques business. And Daniel here is the chef at Guale. You have eaten there, haven’t you, Sudie?”
“Several times,” Mrs. McDowell said. “I don’t suppose you ever share recipes, do you? My son Jonathan raves about that chilled seafood bisque of yours. He’s addicted, I think.”
“I’d be honored to share it with you,” Daniel said, making a courtly little bow.
“Sudie was the first neighbor I met after we moved to Ardsley Park,” Merijoy said. “The night we moved in she brought over a bowl of raspberry trifle and a bottle of wine, and we’ve been fast friends ever since. She and her son Jonathan are charter members of the supper club. You’ll meet the other members in a little bit.”
“I love your hat, Miss Sudie,” I said. “Is it vintage?”
“Why yes.” She was beaming. “The suit too. I’ve never thrown any of Mother’s old things away. I get a lot of pleasure wearing them. And to tell you the truth, I never feel really dressed unless I’m wearing a hat.”
“It’s her trademark, Eloise,” Merijoy said. “Sudie, Eloise likes vintage clothes too. She had on a darling dress a couple weeks ago.”
“Jonathan,” Mrs. McDowell called, spotting her son in deep conversation with a woman I’d never seen before. “Come over here, will you, dear? I want you to meet Merijoy’s friends.”
Jonathan McDowell hurried over. He had that young Jack Kennedy look—sailor’s tan, tousled sun-bleached hair, button nose, and his mother’s turquoise eyes. He wore the summer Savannah uniform—men’s division—of khaki slacks, navy sport coat and yellow dress shirt. No socks.
“Eloise Foley,” Mrs. McDowell said, “meet my son Jonathan.”
“Foley?” Jonathan said. He had a funny look on his face. “Are you kin to James Foley?”
“He’s my uncle,” I said. “I’m his godchild. How do you know James?”
“Oh,” he waved his hand in a vague gesture. “From around. You know, we lawyers are thick as thieves in this town.”
“Jonathan is chief assistant district attorney,” Mrs. McDowell said.
“Oh.” The word was left hanging there.
Now Jonathan seemed distinctly uncomfortable. No doubt he knew my arrest record. Why shouldn’t he? Everybody else did.
“Jonathan,” Merijoy said, giving him a peck on the cheek. “Good. You’ve met Eloise and Daniel.”
“Weezie,” I said.
“I want Jonathan to do something about this awful situation you’re in Weezie,” Merijoy said. “He practically runs the district attorney’s office.”
“Don’t believe her,” Jonathan said quickly. “If you know Merijoy, you know she’s prone to exaggeration. Especially where old friends are concerned.”
“Be serious, Jon,” Merijoy said. “Did you know the police arrested Weezie just because she was the one who found that woman’s body out at Beaulieu? She even had to spend the night in jail. And they still might charge her with murder.”
“Good heavens,” Sudie McDowell said. “Jonathan, do you know anything about this?”
Jonathan tugged at his shirt collar and cleared his throat. “Mother, you know I can’t discuss active cases,” he said gently.
“Well, I can,” Merijoy said.
Randy Rucker came to the rescue. “Listen y’all,” he said. “I think we better get this show on the road if we expect to have dessert before midnight. Now, who brought the starter?”
“I did,” Jonathan said quickly. “Or, rather, Mother and I did.”
“He did all the work,” Sudie said. “I never knew a man so crazy about cooking. He certainly doesn’t take after his father. Why, Hudson McDowell couldn’t even boil water for tea. The man was completely helpless in the kitchen.”
Randy picked up a crystal goblet from a group of them massed on a silver tray atop a mahogany sideboard. He tapped the goblet with a teaspoon.
“All right, everybody, let’s head into the garden. That’s right, isn’t it, Jon?”
Jonathan McDowell was hurrying toward the kitchen, his mother in tow.
“I hope y’all came hungry,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ve got crawfish cakes with remoulade sauce, on a bed of watercress.”
“And I’ve brought the wine,” Sudie added. “A pinot gris. Jonathan said we needed something buttery to stand up to all that spicy stuff he put in the crawfish cakes.”
“Honey, did you put the dishes of Rolaids on the table?” Randy joked, poking his wife in the side. “You know how crazy Jon goes with that hot sauce of his.”
“Randy, you’re awful,” Merijoy said. But she stood on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his chin.