HOLLY��S DIVORCE HOUSE is a mile away from my place, just around the corner from the Shields residence. It sits far back from the road, down a driveway shaded by old white birches and banked with irises and hostas. A stately old stone house built in the 1920s, with French doors and high ceilings and pretty moldings, it started out as your basic beautiful, classic home. But with the help of Howard the Mogul’s money and Holly’s chicken-nugget royalties, she and Joe are making it even more spectacular by the day.
Trucks rumble in and out of the driveway all the time, filled with topiary boxwoods, French sofas, Lucite tables, and toilets with heated seats. I never feel jealous of Holly, though, because she’s just lucky that way. Style, money, and cool things pop up around her as a matter of course. If she gasses up her car at the Sunoco station, she’s the millionth customer and wins free unleaded fuel for a year. If she stops into Saks for a new bathing suit, she wanders into a Calvin Klein trunk show, and Francisco Costa pronounces her fabulous and invites her to his beach house in Brazil. I don’t think she’s ever paid for a glass of wine in her life, because as soon as she sits down at a bar, flutes of Moët and goblets of cabernet start arriving from men all around the room. It’s just the way it is with Holly. I’ve learned to accept it, and even enjoy it. Anyway, the only reason she’d moved back to Bryn Mawr from downtown Philly was because of her divorce from Howard, so I hoped her house was giving her some comfort and distraction.
Joe, who owns a small apartment in downtown Philly, is living in one of Holly’s guest rooms for the spring while he helps her decorate the house, so she won’t get too lonely during her divorce negotiations. (The sunny guest room overlooking the pool, the free meals and cocktails, plus having all his laundry done by Martha, Holly’s housekeeper, were added perks.) Plus Joe is currently single. Being straight and a decorator, he meets a lot of women, but they’re mostly married to wealthy men. He also meets a lot of gay fabric reps. The upshot of this is that he doesn’t date much.
I admired the property as I parked in the circular drive: The house called to mind the set of an old Cary Grant movie, with its crisp, elegant white façade in classic Main Line style. An American flag flapped in the breeze from the pediment above her front door, which was flanked by enormous potted rosebushes in full bloom.
Since I had run out on Holly and Joe last night, I offered to bring over coffee this morning. I’d decided not to mention my barn make out, since I knew Mike Woodford was another bad relationship prospect. Plus I had the date with John the vet set up for tonight. This was progress! Waffles and I trotted around the side of the house to Holly’s new outdoor living room, where even though it was barely nine in the morning, a festive, partylike atmosphere ruled the day. Reggae percolated from her new outdoor speakers, and about forty new rosebushes had been installed in a hedge along Holly’s patio/outdoor lounge. Holly was lying flat on her back on a chaise longue, clad in black workout garb, with a tasteful sheen of sweat on her forehead.
“I just got back from Booty Camp,” Holly told me, smoothing her running shorts and tank top. “I have to finish four hundred sit-ups by noon. They make you sign a contract.”
Joe groaned from the sofa, looking hung over. He had on a bathrobe, sunglasses, and a straw hat, resembling a more youthful Thurston Howell III as he lay back on white cushions, sipping what I hoped was vodka-free tomato juice. The hat, at least, added a jaunty note—very Dean Martin meets Justin Timberlake. Since Joe moved in with Holly, he’s been dressing in what he calls “cruise wear,” and it really suits him.
And this outdoor living room concept Holly and Joe came up with is honestly genius. It’s located just off her indoor living room, and is perfectly positioned for privacy, but the rose hedges are clipped low enough so Holly can stand up and see who’s coming down the driveway. It’s perfect for all the trucks that arrive with deliveries of sandals handmade in Capri, antique beds from Sweden, and Jean-Michel Frank tables from France.
To create the space, Holly and Joe had expanded a brick terrace adjacent to the long rectangular pool, tented it in white canvas, and had modeled the decor on the pool area of the Cipriani Hotel in Venice. Since the Cipriani is on a lush little island a few thousand yards from St. Mark’s Square in Venice, rather than set in a backyard in suburban Philly, the effect wasn’t exactly the same, but Joe had still done an amazing job, with lots of white lounges and sofas with crisp chocolate-brown piping and potted boxwoods giving it a unique Mediterranean-meets-English-country-house vibe. This was especially impressive considering the fact that the house had previously belonged to the mother of Mr. Bingham, one half of the gossipy, white zinfandel–drinking couple from the club.
Old Mrs. Bingham been a dog-loving, embroidery-happy lady who’d sheathed the house in flowered wallpaper that had taken contractors a month to steam off, but the rooms were now resplendent in shades of creamy white. Since Joe’s not finished decorating yet, much of the house and its furniture are draped under tarps, but Holly’s bedroom is already done. Joe installed a Lucite bed and little Lucite tables and glass lamps, with white linens and silk curtains, an antique Swedish daybed over by the window, and an enormous modern painting in shades of pink by Elliott Puckette over the bed. Other than one antique mirror and Swedish chest of drawers, it’s totally minimalist. Holly’s clothes are stashed in a ginormous closet/room with racks and drawers that are also fashioned of Lucite, reminiscent of a Prada boutique.
Martha, the housekeeper of any mere mortal’s dreams, had set up a silver tray with juice, a bowl of glossy grapes, and a plate of sliced mango dressed with lime on the tented porch. There weren’t any muffins or anything, of course, since Holly hasn’t eaten much since she got legally separated, but it was still a great breakfast spread.
“I can’t believe you left last night. That Vegas story was Marquis de Sade meets Fifty Shades!” Holly told me happily, as I handed out the Starbucks coffees. “The girl with Barclay took the Wonder Bread and put it all over—”
“I’m not up for hearing that story!” I interrupted her, alarmed.
“I want to hear that story,” said Bootsie, who’d suddenly appeared from the rose thicket and was listening eagerly while taking in the new and improved patio. She took off her Wayfarers, plopped down on an upholstered pouf, and pulled her iPhone out of a Nantucket basket handbag.
“Forget the Vegas incident!” I told Bootsie. “Sophie got a package of tilapia delivered to her house, and a warning that Barclay would soon be sleeping with the fishes. Even I know what that means.”
“I heard about that,” Bootsie said. “But I guess the Forklift is safe at the hospital. Speaking of which, I just stopped in there to talk to Jeannie the nurse. The chef’s still there for observation after his fall.”
Bootsie explained that because the hospital is quite small, Barclay and the chef had been installed in rooms right next door to each other. While Barclay was still barred from ingesting anything other than chicken broth and his vitamin drip, the chef was allowed to eat whatever he wanted. So to torture Barclay, Gianni had spent most of the previous day having his waiters and sous-chefs delivering incredibly fragrant dishes, making sure that Barclay saw each gorgeous plate of food as it passed by his open door.
The chef’s minions had actually prepared a couple of pasta dishes at Gianni’s bedside using a plug-in stove, including one with a particularly heavenly smelling tomato-and-sausage sauce, then seared a tenderloin in an iron pan with lots of rosemary and garlic until the entire hospital smelled like a Tuscan village. Nurses and orderlies had been given plates of pasta to enjoy, and had happily wandered the halls past Barclay’s room.
“However, I don’t think the chef is the one who knocked Barclay out last week,” continued Bootsie, munching some grapes. “I’ve thought this over, and I don’t think he could have left the restaurant that night and gotten over to Sanderson to hit Barclay, then gotten back in time without anyone noticing he wasn’t at the party. I’m still convinced Gerda hit Barclay that night. And she could have pushed the chef, too.”
“Are you telling me that you haven’t heard about Gerda’s motive for taking out Barclay?” prompted Joe, propping himself up a bit on his settee as a heavenly breeze wafted by, ruffling a clematis arbor.
“I thought you would tell her,” said Holly to me, sipping water and doing stomach crunches simultaneously.
“Apparently, Barclay tried to get Gerda deported,” I relayed to Bootsie. “Sophie told us at the club last night, and Gerda was none too happy about Sophie sharing this tidbit.”
“That’s huge!” Bootsie shrieked. “Now it all makes sense! And Gerda probably went after the chef, too.”
“And that would be why?” asked Joe languidly, sipping his drink.
“Partly because she’s a vegan and a health freak, and the chef is such a bad influence on the whole Main Line, serving all those really fattening pastas and cheeses,” Bootsie said, as if this was obvious. “And pork! I mean, the note that was left for the chef mentioned swine, and there are at least four different dishes that feature prosciutto at Restaurant Gianni. Which is the ultimate pork product!”
I wasn’t sure how prosciutto rated on the scale of pig-related delicacies, but that’s not surprising given that my main source of nutrition is canned soup.
“But really I think Gerda hates the chef because he’s Italian, and Italian and German people hate each other!”
“They do?” said Holly, puzzled. Honestly, this sounded like bullshit to me.
“Also, I was wondering why Gerda would keep all her desk drawers locked,” Bootsie told us, “and I realized she could be the one leaving those threatening notes for the chef and Mr. Shields. So I went to the stationery store in Haverford yesterday afternoon, which is the only place people buy notepaper around here, and asked if anyone had bought any cream-colored stationery recently.
“Well, actually I asked at the shop if Gerda, Sophie Shields, or Honey Potts had bought any cards in that off-white shade recently,” Bootsie clarified, “and Eric’s not sure about Sophie, but he’s pretty positive Gerda bought some note cards, and he thinks they were off-white! Or at least, they might have been!”
“Bootsie, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. And it doesn’t prove anything. Tons of people buy white note cards,” Joe said, pushing his hat back and rubbing his temples. “You can get them online, or pretty much anywhere.”
“Cream-colored cards,” corrected Bootsie. Joe put on his sunglasses, sighed, and appeared to fall asleep.
“I’m going over to the police station right after I leave here to talk to Officer Walt,” mused Bootsie. “He needs to know that Barclay wanted to deport Gerda. And he obviously should hear about the tilapia incident.”
“You’d think Walt would have found that out,” said Joe.
“He’s overwhelmed,” explained Bootsie, adding importantly, “which is why I’m helping him out.
“I can’t believe Gianni serves all those dishes made with ham,” complained Holly, toweling off her angular shoulders. “No one I know eats anything in the pig family.”
“I do,” said Joe.
“I would, if I could afford to go there,” I said.
“Oh, please, everyone loves the pork dishes at Gianni!” said Bootsie. “And the other meats are amazing there, too. I mean, who doesn’t like shaved Parma ham, and then there’s the short-rib ravioli, the pounded veal, the Bolognese . . . you know what, I’m starving just thinking about it,” she finished. “I think I’ll go to the Hoagie Hut and get an egg sandwich on my way to see Walt.”
With this, Bootsie got up and left. Thankfully, her attention-span problem had kicked in.
“I never got to tell her the story about Sophie and Barclay and the hookers in Las Vegas,” said Holly, eating a grape. I decided I could tell them about my upcoming date with the vet later. If I stayed here too long, I feared I’d get sucked into a sofa and a vortex of island music, champagne at noon, and maybe miss meeting John at the club.
“I’ve got to get to work,” I said. “Aren’t you on decorating detail at Sophie’s today?” I asked Joe.
“I told her I’d be there at ten.”
“Yoo-hoo!” came a yodel from around the front of the house. “Holly, are you here? I can’t see very well with all these new bushes you planted!”
There was rustling of shrubbery, and footsteps in the not-so-distant distance.
“Shit,” said Holly desperately, sitting up. “That’s the Binghams. And I have a horrible cramp in my stomach from all those fucking sit-ups.”
“I can’t believe what you’ve done with Mother’s house!” said Mrs. Bingham, popping around the corner, followed by her husband. La Bingham eyeballed the scene around her, clearly appalled, yet fascinated. “What are you all doing over here, having a party? At nine-thirty in the morning?”
Joe got up, muttered, “Late to work!” and disappeared inside, his bathrobe sash trailing behind him in the sunshine.
“When am I going to get that tour inside the house, dear?” Mrs. Bingham sang out hopefully to Holly.
“Soon,” promised Holly politely. “But I can’t let you see inside today, because it’s not perfect yet. Let me get you something to drink!”
She grabbed my sleeve and we went inside, Waffles trotting along behind us. Holly shut the door firmly behind us, while the Binghams peered unabashedly through the windows, their noses flat against the glass.
“What can I give them? All they drink is that fucking zinfandel,” Holly hissed tragically. “They’re here every other day, hounding me to get a look around the house. I had a bottle of pink wine for them, but it’s all gone. Usually if I give them a drink, they leave and go to the club.”
“They want wine this early?” I said, checking the time on the clock on her glossy new stainless range. It was 9:40 a.m. I needed to get to work.
“Of course,” Holly said, looking at me as if I was nuts. “It’s the Binghams.”
“Just slosh together some red wine and chardonnay,” I suggested. “They’ll never know the difference.”
“That’s totally going to work!” Holly said happily.
TEN MINUTES LATER, Waffles and I were at The Striped Awning, where we opened up the store and listened to a message from Hugh Best. He’d called the police, who told him they couldn’t do anything until Jimmy had been missing for at least seventy-two hours, unless he had dementia, which Jimmy didn’t.
I was getting worried myself now. Where could Jimmy be? I called Hugh back and suggested that he go ahead with his only idea, which was calling Hugh’s fraternity brothers from more than fifty years ago at Princeton. I promised to check back in with him later.
By noon, I’d had a few customers, had vacuumed the store, and was thinking about which of my borrowed Holly dresses I could wear on my date with John Hall. I was debating the merits of a white linen sheath with a pretty ruffled neckline (Max Mara, and definitely priced well above my monthly rent on the store) vs. a little black cotton dress (deceptively simple, but made by Prada—which meant I couldn’t even fathom what it had cost), when Bootsie suddenly appeared and plopped down in her usual seat in front of my desk.
“Bad news. Walt said the goons from Jersey haven’t been seen since they stopped by the hospital three days ago, and seafood left on someone’s doorstep isn’t something he has time to investigate. Plus he’d need more information to interview Gerda about being Barclay’s attacker,” she said. She wore a terrierlike expression, and I could only imagine her relentless hounding of poor, part-time Officer Walt. “He said he’d look into her immigration status, but if she has a valid work visa, Barclay was probably just making idle threats to try to get Gerda to leave.” Bootsie sighed, then went on.
“So, after I met with Officer Walt, I went to my office and Googled John Hall, your veterinarian,” Bootsie said.
I was annoyed by this, yet racked with curiosity and kind of grateful. I’d thought of doing the same thing, but had decided Googling was a horrible way to approach a date. Google always brings up weird stuff. There’s a picture of me and Holly from Bootsie’s paper at a charity event that’s very high on the Google search links, and while Holly looks like Alessandra Ambrosio in it, I look like I’d forgotten to put on mascara (I had put on makeup that night, too, but not enough, apparently). After that, I started to listen to Joe more about wearing makeup and flat-ironing my mop of long waves. It turns out the “natural look” isn’t so great after age thirty.
“And . . . John Hall got married three years ago!” Bootsie said with her usual glee at unearthing information, while my heart skipped a beat in horror. How could I have missed the clues . . . He wasn’t wearing a ring, and he seemed so honest . . .
“But, don’t worry, I asked around at the office, and he’s divorced!” Bootsie finished.
I started breathing again. Lots of people get divorced, and while it’s always really sad, it does happen. Actually, most men approaching forty, which was what I guessed John Hall’s age to be, had been married at least once.
“Well, almost divorced,” Bootsie amended. “He’s legally separated.”
My stomach did a swan dive. I didn’t like the sound of “almost divorced.”
“But here’s the really interesting part,” warbled Bootsie. “The woman he’s married to is . . . you won’t believe this . . . it’s someone you know . . . or at least, someone you’ve seen around town!” She looked at me with a merry expression, while I felt a sudden urge to kick her.
“Bootsie, please,” I said. “Don’t do this to me.”
“Okay, okay,” said Bootsie. “It’s Lilly Merriwether! You know, Mariellen’s daughter. The one who wins all the tennis trophies at the club!”
My ears started clanging, and my heart plummeted ankle-ward. Had Bootsie really just said Lilly Merriwether? I clutched my desk so as to not topple off my chair. Luckily, a light breeze blew in the open door, which cooled off my clammy forehead as I gulped some water from the glass I keep on my desk. I’d heard, as had everyone in Bryn Mawr, about Lilly’s epic nuptials a few summers before. But I’d never known the name of the groom, since I hadn’t read the announcement in Bootsie’s newspaper.
Had Bootsie really just told me that the beautiful daughter of Mrs. Perfect Pearls was the former Mrs. Cute Vet?
WHEN I REGAINED my composure, I realized I could easily picture John and Lilly zinging tennis balls around with matching golden tans and pristine white outfits, Lilly no doubt wearing a strand identical to her mother’s South Seas pearls around her slim neck. “Good game, darling!” Lilly would coo to John Hall in her Grace Kelly lockjaw accent, as they clinked frosty vodka tonics at the end of a match, sitting on chaise longues with monogrammed cushions. Mariellen would look on proudly, clad in a cool linen sheath, nodding as she took a puff of her Virginia Slim and blew a smoke ring.
“When you say ‘almost divorced,’ ” I asked Bootsie in my best effort at a neutral tone, “do you mean that the vet and Lilly are definitely headed for divorce?”
“I’m working on confirming that,” Bootsie told me. “I know they’ve been separated for about a year, but I’m not sure where the divorce stands. I’m sure you heard Lilly had a huge and fabulous wedding at Mariellen’s house with two tents and an orchestra. I looked up the wedding announcement in our archive, and Lilly rode into the ceremony on Norman the horse, and at midnight there were forty minutes of fireworks, and then the next day there was a tennis brunch at the club . . .”
I stopped listening at this point. How could I, with my Gap and J. Crew outlet wardrobe, long wavy brown hair, sorry-ass forehand, and weird devotion to a basset hound, ever compete with Lilly Merriwether? John must have been desperate for dinner companionship to ask me out. He was used to utter blond perfection, round-the-clock tennis, and the manicured grounds of the Merriwether house.
I looked around my slightly battered shop, which until I’d heard this, I’d considered charming, and my gaze paused at Waffles, who was sprawled on his bed, drooling, looking incredibly portly. One ear was stuck to the floor, encrusted with remnants of his rawhide bone. And there was a distinctly funky smell floating from over his way—he’d just farted. This was the final indignity.
I’d go ahead and meet John as planned tonight, since it was too late to cancel. And then after that, I’d forget about him, and move on.
“Anyway, I think the vet would be a good person to date, if you can be sure that Lilly’s out of the picture,” Bootsie said.
“Um-hmm,” I answered listlessly.
“Anyway, after the Googling, I stopped by Louis the lawyer’s office to see if any news had come in,” Bootsie continued, changing subjects. “And it had. Including one huge lie Sophie Shields told us!”
I listened with mild interest, too depressed about the vet and Lilly Merriwether to get excited about this development vis-à-vis Sophie.
“Remember when Sophie said that she needed Barclay alive to get her divorce settlement?” Bootsie asked. I nodded. Sophie had told us that within five minutes of meeting us, actually. And in the days since the attack, it had served to rule her out as a possible attempted murderess.
“Well, it’s bullshit!” Bootsie crowed happily. “If Barclay dies, Sophie gets seven million in a life insurance policy that Barclay can’t cancel until they’re one-hundred-percent divorced. Louis explained the whole thing to me. He and Sophie’s lawyers agreed to the insurance policy staying in place until they work out the divorce agreement. Apparently, it’s pretty common to have a deal like this when a couple is splitting up and there’s significant wealth at stake.”
I tore my mind away from Lilly and John, and thought about what Bootsie was telling me. Sophie had a motive to kill Barclay, after all.
“But how much is Sophie likely to get in her divorce settlement from Barclay if he doesn’t die?” I wondered aloud, secretly hoping there was so much money at stake that Sophie couldn’t logically be the attacker of her ex. Sophie was starting to grow on me. “More than seven million?”
“Undetermined!” Bootsie said. “She’ll get a lot, of course, since I doubt she’d marry a refrigerator like Barclay if there wasn’t some major cash in the offing. Louis can’t comment, of course, since he’s Barclay’s attorney, and it’s privileged information.”
I rolled my eyes. Louis had obviously breached a ton of legal ethics already by telling Bootsie about the insurance policy, and numerous other details. Why stop now?
“But I got the distinct feeling that the Shieldses’ pre-nup would give Sophie less than the insurance policy,” said Bootsie, with an air of knowledgeable self-satisfaction. “Louis hinted that Sophie would get more out of Barclay being dead than if he lived to sign the divorce agreement.”
This was bad news, because along with Sophie’s passion for statues, she had an upbeat, hopeful personality and an appealing, up-for-anything attitude. Hopefully her go-getter attitude didn’t include trying to kill her Sub-Zero-size husband.
Bootsie rattled on about how Sophie and Gerda could have carried out the attack on Barclay in tandem, but I had stopped listening.
“Bootsie,” I asked her suddenly, “do you think you could give me some tennis lessons?”