JOHN DROVE TO the old firehouse, where I was reasonably sure I wouldn’t run into Holly, Joe, or Bootsie. I knew Holly wouldn’t eat anything on Gianni’s carb-and-meat-laden menu, and Joe was likely too weary to go out after his day of redesigning with Sophie. I was fairly sure that Bootsie was still trolling the club for someone to drink with.
However, everyone else in Bryn Mawr seemed to be at Gianni tonight: The bar was packed, and nearly every table was full, too. Wow, this was the suburbs on a Tuesday night?
There restaurant buzzed with a Tuscany-meets-Beverly-Hills vibe. The place smelled heavenly, and a well-dressed crowd was eating pasta with the gusto of dockhands, happily sucking down red wine and pinot grigio. I had to hand it to Chef Gianni: Even though he was still stuck in the hospital, his restaurant was doing really well.
As the hostess walked us through the crowded restaurant to a table on the shaded patio, I noticed that she was about twenty-four years old and had an enviable Olivia Munn–style body in her tight all-black outfit that would leave most forty-year-old men with their tongues unfurling from their mouths. But John, I noted approvingly, merely followed her through the dining area. Okay, he shot her one quick glance, but honestly, what guy wouldn’t? He looked great, I thought, in his sport-coat-over-a-polo-shirt outfit, and the light-colored jacket in a subtle check set off his great tan and his blue eyes. He turned to smile at me as we walked along behind the Olivia Munn look-alike.
Just then, a woman at a table in the center of the restaurant clutched my arm with a coral-manicured paw. “Kristin,” she sang out. “How are you, dear?”
Uh-oh. It was Bootsie’s mom, Kitty Delaney, who was wearing a shocking-lime-green shift dress with pink ribbon trim, and a pink headband on her graying bob. Kitty is a nice woman, but it’s from her side of the family that Bootsie inherited her insatiable taste for gossip. Kitty’s base of gossip-erations is the porch off their house, over near their tennis court. She has an old green telephone out there, set up on a table with the vodka and mixers, and spends all day chatting and sharing information with her extensive network of bridge-playing friends, before they all meet up for cocktail hour at the club.
Bootsie’s dad, Henry, who doesn’t talk much, gave me a friendly grunt while he continued to eat what looked like delicious gnocchi.
“And who’s your charming friend?” Kitty pressed on, her eyes gleaming with unbridled curiosity and a slight Stoli haze at John. I made some hasty introductions, and we continued loping after the hostess to our table.
Well, that was that, I thought, smiling in what I hoped was a relaxed and carefree way at John as we walked out onto the patio and reached our white-clothed table. As we sat down, my mind raced through the ramifications of a Kitty Delaney run-in. Bootsie had known I was interested in the vet, but I hadn’t told her we had an actual date tonight. I was going to have to tell Bootsie everything about my date in painful detail tomorrow (or tonight, if Bootsie could reach me on my cell phone, which was currently on silent).
I glanced back over my shoulder at Kitty, who had produced her own cell phone and was furiously punching buttons on it. Was she texting? Bootsie must have finally convinced her mom that she needed to be able to receive and dispense information wherever she went. In fact, I’d be lucky if Bootsie didn’t show up in the next fifteen minutes, and bribe the waitress into giving her and her husband, Will, the table next to ours.
“I hear the tagliatelle is great here. Even though the chef’s not here tonight, he’s got a couple of guys who trained in Italy who make it by hand,” John was saying amiably as he took off his sport coat and hung it over the back of his chair. Wow! I screamed inwardly, checking out his arms under his white polo shirt.
While we unfolded our starched white napkins, I noticed two people lurking at the end of the large terrace. The pair was behind some potted ficus trees that the Colketts had banked at the end of the patio to camouflage a kitchen door. I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke coming from that direction.
I realized the smoker was a petite blonde in towering heels, who was huddled in close conversation with a tall guy in chef’s whites: Jessica, the young and gorgeous girlfriend of Gianni, and Channing, the muscular cook, I realized. Were they kissing between puffs of her cigarette?
Flustered and having flashbacks to my high school days watching The Young and the Restless, I nodded when John asked me if I liked Italian wine. As he ordered a Montepulciano, a collective murmur came from inside the restaurant. All of us on the patio turned to stare through the screened doors toward the hostess desk, where a tattooed, muscular man in a hospital gown and Crocs had just limped in.
“I am back!” announced Chef Gianni, brandishing his crutch triumphantly. “Gianni’s enemies cannot keep Gianni away from his restaurant!”
As the dining room broke out in admiring applause, the ficus trees parted, and Jessica rocketed from behind the hedge and back into the restaurant, where she silently appeared next to Gianni, taking his arm supportively while grinding out her Marlboro Light on a passing waiter’s tray.
Meanwhile, Channing hotfooted it around the side of the building toward the side entrance to the kitchen. I wondered if John noticed any of this, but his back had been to them and he seemed oblivious. He good-naturedly joined in the applause, then asked me in an upbeat way, “So, how do you feel about gnocchi?”
FORTY MINUTES LATER, I took a bite of homemade spaghetti pomodoro. I’m pretty sure it was the best thing I’ve ever tasted. This isn’t saying all that much because I don’t cook, and the menu at the club, where I usually dine out, hasn’t varied in the last thirty years. It’s basically limited to Reubens, prime rib, and crab salads. But this pasta was a revelation.
And, actually, so was the hot vet. It turned out that he asked about the gnocchi because he wanted to order something that I liked, so he could share it with me. He put a generous little pile of gnocchi on my bread plate before he even tasted his dinner (light, buttery sauce with herbs and feather-light pasta), and was telling me about his job as a vet. It turned out that most of his work these days was out in Lancaster County, with all its farms, since Bryn Mawr was getting too crowded with people and houses to leave much room for cows.
“There’s still a herd at Sanderson, of course,” John said. “You know the property, right?”
“I live right across the street.” I nodded, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t bring up the Barclay Shields incident. He didn’t, but what came next was even worse.
“Honey Potts is lucky. She has a great guy who manages her place, and it’s hard to find that these days,” John continued. “Mike Woodford. Have you ever met him?”
I choked on a gnocchi, gulped water, and while John patted my back, I croaked, “I’m okay!” and took a gulp of Montepulciano.
“Is there any, um, pepper on the table?” I added in a desperate non sequitur. John hailed a passing waiter, who ground pepper industriously over my plate for a moment and then disappeared. “So yeah,” John said, “Mike Woodford is Honey’s—”
A pair of muscular shoulders and beautifully gleaming teeth flashed in front of us. “Hey, Doc Hall! It’s me, Channing,” said the sous-chef, smiling at us in all his tanned Armani-model gorgeousness. “I thought I saw you out here. How’s your pasta, dude?” he said to John, and then noticed me.
“Hey, I know you!” he said to me, recognition dawning in his dimwitted but dreamy navy-blue eyes. “Met you at Mrs. Shields’s place!”
“Nice to see you,” I said, which was true.
“Great pasta,” John told him.
“Dude, thanks,” Channing said. “The secret is to make the gnocchi fresh throughout the night. Can’t be more than ten minutes from rolling pin to boiling water.
“Anyway,” concluded Channing cheerfully, “I gotta get back in the kitchen. The chef’s got that bum ankle, so he can’t stay on his feet all night. See ya.” He made his way inside toward the kitchen door, women in the restaurant suddenly abandoning their forks and craning their necks to watch his broad-shouldered handsomeness as he passed.
“Channing used to work for Honey Potts, too,” John explained to me. “While he was attending culinary school, he helped out part-time at Sanderson.”
Was there anyone in Bryn Mawr not connected to Sanderson? I wondered. Everyone either lived near it or wanted to visit it. And those who didn’t wanted to buy up some of Sanderson.
And I couldn’t help thinking that if Channing was a former Sanderson employee, he’d definitely know his way around the place, and was certainly strong enough to have dragged Barclay under the hydrangea bush.
But then, what would Channing gain by attacking Barclay Shields? I turned my attention back to the vet and his chiseled features and friendly eyes. Let the police figure out what happened to Barclay—I was on a date.
Over the wine, John told me about his love of traveling to Italy, his summer weekends spent fishing in the Chesapeake Bay, his herb garden, and his new hobby of cooking. He didn’t take himself too seriously, admitting that he’d recently made a lasagna so bad that he’d offered it to his dogs, but they had steered clear of it.
“None of them would eat it,” John was saying after he’d paid the check and we walked to the car. “I’ve seen them eat deer shit, so I was a little insulted.”
As we were about to get into John’s car, I saw a huge SUV pull in, and a tall girl with a blond bob launch herself athletically out of the driver’s seat. Bootsie. It was dark out, of course, since it was close to nine o’clock, but there were several lanterns illuminating the restaurant’s gravel parking area, and my date and I were directly in front of one of them. Luckily, Bootsie’s gaze was fixed for the moment on the entrance, but I knew she’d scan the parking area before she went in.
As John beeped open his car door, I rushed over, yanked the passenger door open, and jumped in before Bootsie could spot me. Looking quizzical, John quickly slid into the car and shot me a glance. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Anything wrong?”
“No—just tired!” I said, crouching down a little in the front seat. He smiled at me, with an expression that I interpreted as his thinking I’d had too much Montepulciano.
“I’ll drive you home,” he said. “Do you want me to pick you up tomorrow morning and drive you to the club to pick up your car?”
“I can walk to the club to get my car tomorrow, but thanks. It’s only half a mile,” I assured him.
Several minutes later, the vet dropped me off at home, where he walked me to the backyard gate, leaned down, and gave me a sweet, avuncular peck on the cheek. Luckily, the bulb on my porch light had burned out, so at least John couldn’t see how badly the house needed painting, I thought, as I considered this ill-fated farewell. There’s nothing worse than a cheek kiss at the end of a first date. It’s literally the kiss of death for future dates. Obviously, the vet would never call again, which I told myself was okay. I didn’t need any more toxic stares from Mariellen Merriwether. Feeling downcast, I jumped into bed, where I found some comfort in the presence of a snoring Waffles at the foot of the mattress. Before my head hit the pillow, I removed the huge cocktail ring and dropped it on a tray on my dresser.
The ring was too glamorous for me, and so was John. Clearly he was destined for Merriwethers, not girls who sold antiques and were obsessed with a basset hound.
THE TENNIS LESSON was horrible.
At seven the next morning, Waffles and I trotted the short distance to the club to pick up my car. In khaki shorts and sneakers, I zoomed over to Bootsie’s parents’ house, with its roomy yard and clay court, where Bootsie was waiting in full tennis regalia.
“I thought you said you were going back to The Striped Awning last night,” she said, glaring at me. “Then Mummy texted that you were at Gianni with that vet! But when I went to join Mummy and Dad for dessert you were gone.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll tell you all about it while we play,” I told her. I figured I’d combine the misery of the tennis and her interrogation. Faster that way.
For the next forty-five minutes, Bootsie ran me like Louis Gossett Jr. in An Officer and a Gentleman. While we did drills, sprints, and rallies, she grilled me mercilessly about my date, lobbing Wilson balls and questions at me with equal vigor. I told her the truth—that once I’d learned about John’s first marriage, the date seemed like an exercise in futility, which is why I hadn’t mentioned it to her.
Bootsie, undeterred, continued to question me about what we’d eaten, about Gianni’s dramatic mid-meal arrival, and whether John had brought up the fact that he was still legally married to Lilly.
“No, he didn’t,” I admitted ruefully. “It just didn’t come up, and it seemed too awkward to ask him.”
“At least you did something right,” Bootsie informed me. “Don’t ask him about his divorce. I’ll find out for you. And look out, here comes my backhand.”
Thwack! A Serena Williams–esque shot from Bootsie narrowly missed knocking my right shoulder out of its socket, and crashed into the wire fence behind me.
“Why shouldn’t I ask him?” I said, running for the next ball and actually making contact with my racket. It sailed over the net to Bootsie, who hammered it back at me.
“Because men hate those kind of questions,” she said sagely. “You just work on your tennis.”
“Okay,” I agreed doubtfully. I wasn’t sure this was good advice, but I was running so hard to return Bootsie’s slams that I couldn’t focus on anything else at the moment. “I really don’t think we’re ever going to go out again, though,” I told her.
The sun had barely been up for an hour, but it seemed to be beating down on me as if we lived in the sub-Sahara. What with the heat and a slight wine hangover, I felt like Ralph Fiennes wandering the desert in The English Patient.
“I called Walt last night to talk over a few things about last Thursday,” said Bootsie, who wasn’t even breathing hard.
“They haven’t totally ruled out Mike Woodford, by the way, as the guy who hit Barclay. Did he seem dangerous to you?”
“In what sense?” I asked, trying in vain to serve, and instead sending a ball into the net.
“In the sense of someone who would hit Barclay Shields on the head!” said Bootsie, exasperated.
“Definitely not,” I told her, with more conviction than I actually felt. I mean, what did I really know about Mike other than that he had great arms and was an excellent kisser?
“Well, he’s one of many on the list, because they haven’t narrowed down the suspects much at all,” conceded Bootsie.
True to form, my aim and ball control were dreadful, so much so that at one point Waffles, after dodging a ball I lobbed dangerously close to his head, whimpered and disappeared under a nice cool azalea bush with just the end of his white tail sticking out.
Thankfully, the lesson ended at eight-thirty. Bootsie had to admit that I was nearly hopeless, but we made another date for tennis the following week.
“How about some orange juice, girls?” shrieked Kitty, Bootsie’s mom, from her perch on the porch, flagging us down as we headed toward our cars. “Or something stronger?” she said, holding up a bottle of Bloody Mary mix.
“Gosh, that’s so nice of you, I have to get to the store!” I said, grabbing Waffles’s leash from the bench and picking up his portable water bowl. He emerged, wagging, from under the bush and trotted after me as I dashed toward the car.
“Did you enjoy your dinner last night with that handsome man, dear?” Kitty shouted loudly enough to be heard in Trenton, forty miles away.
“It was very nice,” I told her. “Thank you!” I slammed my car door shut, but Bootsie tapped on my window and leaned in.
“Sorry about Mummy,” Bootsie whispered. Then she added, with all seriousness, “Sometimes she can be a little nosy.”
AT HOME, I showered, gulped some cold water, put on a pair of linen shorts and wedge sandals, picked up the cardboard box I’d brought back from Jimmy’s rooms at the club, grabbed the Bests’ cocktail ring from my bedside table, and lugged it all over to their house. When I rang his doorbell, Hugh gratefully accepted the large box with the fish forks and other old bric-a-brac. “I know you promised Jimmy not to tell me where he is,” he said. “But do you think he’ll come back tonight?”
“I’m guessing more like tomorrow or Friday,” I told him.
I also handed Hugh his mother’s ring, which I’d put safely back in its black leather box, but he encouraged me to keep it for a few days. “Wear it around for a bit,” he told me. “Lord knows, my brother and I haven’t even looked at it in years. It’ll be nice to see it out and about again. Mother used to wear it to all the parties at the club.”
“Are you sure?” I said. The ring looked just as good this morning as it had the night before, well-aged but still glittery and fabulous. I’d have to show it to Holly, who would love it.
“Absolutely,” said Hugh. He hesitated. “Tell Jimmy I miss him.”