I LEFT HUGH, headed toward town, and parked under my favorite shady tree at the club, where I planned to do a quick check on Jimmy.
I entered the building by the grand, double-wide front door, where I intended to turn left and dash up the stairs unseen. Golfers and tennis players were visible outside, but the club doesn’t serve food until eleven-thirty and the building is usually empty except for a few housekeeping staff midmorning. I saw no one, but was surprised to hear a testy exchange coming from the dining room; I could hear, but not see, the two people speaking. Realizing with a slight chill that I recognized the voices, I stopped in the foyer, seized by an irresistible urge to eavesdrop.
“It’s too risky,” said a male voice. “If he finds out that we noticed he was missing, he’ll spiral-slice us like a honey-baked ham.”
“I don’t think we’re in danger—that is, if you will just shut the fuck up!” said a second man’s voice, rising in anger.
“It’s even riskier to stay quiet,” the first voice retorted. “We can’t just hope this all goes away. People are getting seriously hurt. Who knows where this is heading?”
I was certain that the voices belonged to the Colketts. But what and who, exactly, were they discussing? I desperately wanted to know—but more than that, I wanted to sneak upstairs before they saw me. It was one thing to theorize with Bootsie about the spate of local crimes, but this conversation had a far more serious, and scary tone. On tiptoe, I turned toward the locker rooms, but a floorboard squeaked and betrayed me.
“Who’s there?” called out Tom Colkett nervously, poking his head around the doorway and looking relieved when he saw me. “Oh, hi, doll!” he said, beckoning me toward him. “Great to see you. Come say hello!” The florists had set up shop with huge buckets of lilies, roses, and ranunculus, which they were plucking out and skillfully arranging in the club’s collection of Chinese vases.
“We’re doing the flowers here now,” Tim Colkett informed me of the obvious, an apron protecting his well-tailored khakis and polo shirt. “Holly set it up. Love all this paneling and portraits and the old Philly vibe, don’t you? And these ladies who lunch in their vintage Lilly Pulitzer.”
“It’s definitely old world.” I nodded, admiring a profusion of roses they’d just placed on a console table in the hallway. I also noticed a pitcher of Bloody Marys on a silver tray next to the flowers, and two half-full glasses next to it. I guess the Colketts adhere to the same early cocktail schedule as the Binghams and Mrs. Delaney, who, predictably, has a needlepoint pillow embroidered with the words “It’s five o’clock somewhere!” in her living room.
The Colketts looked as uncomfortable as I did, so I turned to leave. I’d overheard enough to know that the Colketts were involved with something unpleasant and potentially dangerous.
“Well, I should go!” I said, aiming for a breezy tone. “I just was stopping in for a quick second. Better get to the store!”
“Want a drink, Kristin?” asked Tom Colkett, who seemed as eager to project nonchalance as I was. “We always find a quick Bloody in the morning gets our creative juices flowing. You can imagine how many cocktails we need now that we’re working for Sophie Shields, too. She’s got more statues than the Parthenon. ” He groaned, and I mustered a sympathetic expression.
“Oh, no, thanks,” I told him as he held up the pitcher of drinks and tinkled the ice cubes in it in my direction. “I was at Gianni last night and had a few glasses of wine, but thanks so much. Well, good luck with the flowers!”
I was about to make a break for the door when I turned, and surprising myself, said, “I couldn’t help overhearing you guys a few minutes ago. Do you know something about the chef being pushed down the stairs, or have information about Barclay Shields? Because if you do, you should go talk to Officer Walt. The situation could be pretty dangerous.” I wasn’t sure where my sudden burst of courage had come from, but I was worried about the Colketts. Whether they’d done something illegal themselves, or had witnessed a crime, it would be better for them to own up to it before anything more happened.
The Colketts exchanged glances. And then Tim Colkett wiped his hands on his white apron, and spoke up.
“Listen, Kristin, this isn’t easy. We’re completely baffled about who we can talk to, and we’re honestly scared to tell what we know. But you’re right, it might be worse not to say anything.”
“I think the police are your best bet,” I said. And then, against my better judgment, “But what is it that you know?”
Tim gestured silently toward the door to the lounge, and the three of us walked into the empty room and closed the door behind us. I seated myself on the leather Chesterfield sofa and the Colketts perched on either side of me.
“We sort of lied to you when you asked us about the chef and Barclay when we ran into you at the flea market,” said Tim regretfully. “Sorry about that. The truth is that, as you know, Barclay was attacked on the same night of the restaurant opening, and of course, we were recovering from that incident over the topiaries. After I got hit with the pomegranate that night, we abandoned the flowers and snuck outside to the patio to have a couple of cocktails while the party got into full swing.”
“Needless to say, we’ll never work with pomegranates again,” added Tom.
“So, while we were hiding from the chef on the patio, we came up with a plan where we could give the chef a big discount on his flowers, and we’d halve the cost of the topiaries if he’d put our ‘Flowers by Colkett’ insignia somewhere prominent on his menu. It would be tasteful, of course, a small and elegant logo, maybe right under the Gianni logo. And we’d probably get a ton of new customers from being associated with the hottest restaurant in town.
“Well, at about eight, with the party in full swing, we got up the courage to go talk to the chef about it. We figured by then he’d be in a great mood, with everyone raving about his new place. I mean, all the major socialites in town were there,” said Tim. “So we searched the entire restaurant for Gianni, and we couldn’t find him.
“So then we looked for Jessica to talk to her about our idea. But”—Tim paused for effect—“neither Gianni nor Jessica was there.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Of course they were there. I saw them.”
“Not after eight-fifteen you didn’t,” Tim said definitively. “Because, trust me, we cased the restaurant. No chef, no Jessica.”
Tom, who clearly wanted Tim to shut up, wore a dismayed expression. “Kristin doesn’t want to hear this,” he told Tim. “You’re going to get us into trouble.”
I tried to make sense of what Tim had said about the missing restaurateur and his girlfriend.
“Maybe you just couldn’t find Gianni and Jessica,” I suggested. “It’s a big restaurant, and between the kitchen and the dining room, they could have been anywhere. I mean, why would Gianni leave his own opening party?”
“Listen, we know it’s weird,” insisted Tim urgently. “But we hunted for Gianni for at least half an hour, and we looked everywhere. Jessica gave us a full tour during construction when we first met with Jessica to discuss flowers. We literally cased the joint—went through the wine cellar, the restaurant, the kitchen, patio, and the office upstairs. They weren’t there.”
“Other than the guests and all the waiters, the only staff we could find were a bunch of guys in the kitchen who didn’t know where the chef was,” added Tom, who had evidently decided to jettison his fears and join in the conversation.
“Those kitchen guys are incredibly efficient,” said Tim. “They were in there searing baby lamb chops like nobody’s business, because people were eating them as fast as they could get those hors d’oeuvres out on the platters. But the sous-chef Channing, the one with the muscles—he was missing, too.”
“Also, the chef’s car was gone,” Tom told me. “The Fiat had been parked front and center outside the restaurant, but it wasn’t there when we looked outside.”
I thought back to the night of Gianni’s event. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen much of the chef after the first hour or so of the opening party. If his car had been gone, he must have left the restaurant during the period that the Colketts were describing.
Which was around the time that Barclay Shields was getting his head bashed in.
So Chef Gianni, a certified rageaholic—one who hated Barclay Shields, because Barclay had built him a house so shoddy that it made Barbie’s Dreamhouse look like fine craftsmanship—was not at his own soiree during Barclay’s head-bashing.
“We finally sat down at the bar at about eight-thirty, got Bellinis, and then we noticed Jessica and Channing were back. Channing was carrying more lobster out to the dining room, while Jessica was on the patio, smoking,” said Tim. “We went out to talk to her, and then we saw that the chef’s red Fiat was back, too. You know the car. You can’t miss it. Bright red convertible, license plate reads GR8CHEF.”
“Tacky,” pointed out Tom.
“Jessica, by the way, looked a little, well, rumpled,” Tim told me, sipping his Bloody Mary and waggling his eyebrows suggestively. “Plus she had a big smile on her face, and you know she never smiles. And I thought I saw grass in her hair. I asked her if she knew where the chef was, and she said she had no idea.
“A minute later, we spied the chef back in the crowd of customers, mingling and looking positively cheerful,” Tim continued. “He acted like nothing was wrong, he didn’t have a care in the world.
“And then the next day, we read about Barclay Shields getting his nut cracked, and, well, what are we supposed to do?” Tim’s face registered fear, consternation, and tipsiness.
“Maybe the chef needed more, um, crème fraîche or something, and ran to the gourmet store in Haverford?” I hazarded. “And brought Jessica and Channing with him.”
The Colketts rolled their eyes. “Come on, Kristin, you have to admit that it’s beyond weird that the chef was missing while Barclay was getting attacked. Anyone on his kitchen staff could have gone to the store if he needed something. Maybe Jessica and Channing were in on the Barclay attack with the chef! The three of them could have put Barclay Shields under the bush where you found him.”
While I could easily envision the chef attacking Barclay, and maybe even picture Channing helping if he had some motive, I struggled to picture Jessica helping drag Barclay Shields across the fields of Sanderson in heels with her cigarette dangling elegantly from her fingers. Didn’t really compute—the only thing I could imagine Jessica dragging was on a Marlboro Light. But the Colketts needed to tell the police what they knew, that much was clear.
“I really think you should call Officer Walt,” I told them. “This sounds pretty important.”
Tom Colkett shook his head. “We’re florists, not crime busters, doll,” he said firmly. “We’re not going to risk getting in trouble with the chef and losing customers over this. Customers don’t like scandal, and if we’re talking to the police, then that puts us right in the middle of a public mess. Plus, if Gianni’s going around trying to kill people, we could end up as veal piccata.”
“Did you notice anything the night that the chef fell over the railing at Sophie’s?” I asked them. “Because he’s convinced he was pushed. Was anyone near him around the time of his fall?” Other than you two, I thought to myself, remembering how quickly they had appeared at the top of the stairs after Gianni’s tumble.
“We didn’t see anything!” Tim insisted.
Tom nodded. “It’s true. We were out front downing a quick vodka, and had just come back into the house when we heard all the ruckus, and then saw him flying off that balcony. We didn’t see anyone else in the kitchen, so he must have just slipped.”
“Anyway, we’d better get back to work,” said Tim. “But please be careful about who you mention this to—we’re honestly scared.” The two gathered up their drinks, and headed back out to work their flower magic. I followed, wondering whether their story was invented to throw suspicion away from themselves, and onto the chef, Channing, and Jessica. Then again, the more I knew of the Colketts, the less I thought they were involved in any of the attacks. I also doubted they would have appeared on the landing if they had pushed the chef off Sophie’s terrace. More likely, they wouldn’t have shown their faces anywhere near the crime scene. I sighed, and made a left into the hallway.
“By the way, Kristin,” said Tim, gazing at my borrowed bauble, “great ring! Love that mega-rock!”
I FOUND JIMMY midway through the Philadelphia newspapers and watching a tennis match from the window seat, drinking coffee in his bathrobe. Again, the jazz was playing and the A.C. blowing, and he looked like he didn’t have a care in the world. The remains of a breakfast sandwich sat on the coffee table, along with a lit cigar in a silver ashtray. Jimmy greeted me in a matter-of-fact manner, and informed me pleasantly enough that there was no fucking way he was going home. So I drove to The Striped Awning and called Bootsie.
“THIS IS GOING to require a surprise attack,” Bootsie said when I reached her at the newspaper and gave her the short version of the Colketts’ confounding tale. “We need to go talk to Jessica right now, and see if she knows whether the chef had anything to do with Barclay’s attack. I’m going to call Joe, too. He’s friendly with Jessica, so he can come with us and convince her to spill the details. And after we talk to Jessica, I’m going to call Louis, Barclay’s lawyer . . .”
Sometimes it’s good to have Bootsie take over. Her plans don’t always make sense, and they often backfire, but at least she always has an idea.
“In the meantime, we just have to hope the chef’s not at the restaurant,” said Bootsie. “We need Jessica alone, and willing to blab.”
We tracked down Joe at Sophie’s house, where he had effected a breakthrough of sorts: He’d finally convinced Sophie to go with a tasteful shade of biscuit in her main rooms, and the painters were priming the walls, so he agreed to take a break. Bootsie swung by the shop, and she and I then zoomed over to Sophie’s to get Joe. He leaped into the backseat of her Range Rover, with Sophie hot on his heels. Joe slammed the car door behind him, but Sophie, today clad in hot-pink spandex leggings and a minuscule pink sports bra, rapped on the car window, which Joe glumly rolled down.
“Hi, Beebee and Kristin!” Sophie said. “Can you bring Joe back ASAP? We got a lotta work to do here. Plus Gerda’s on the warpath. She’s got a major bug up her butt, and I don’t want to be stuck here with her all by myself.”
“It’s true,” confirmed Joe. “Gerda thinks someone’s been fiddling around with the lock to her office, trying to infiltrate her computer. She’s completely paranoid.”
Bootsie and I exchanged glances. “She’s nuts!” said Bootsie, who happens to be an excellent liar.
“Sometimes she really drives me crazy!” said Sophie, nodding. “But anyway, Joe said you have important business and that it might help figure out who clobbered my ex. Trust me, I want whoever did it found—so I can thank them personally!” She giggled for a second. “But seriously,” she added, “I know some people might even think I had something to do with it.”
“Oh no,” we all said at once, in a rush of words.
“No one thinks that!” added Bootsie, in a patently false tone.
“Well, I didn’t,” said Sophie sourly, her mouth smooshed into a sad little moue. “I don’t believe in violence. I believe in big divorce settlements!” She giggled again. “Well, anyway, great to see you, girls. Come over for some champagne when the house is done!”
Joe hit the up button on the window quickly as Bootsie two-wheeled it out of Sophie’s place, and I filled Joe in on what the Colketts had told me about the chef and Jessica.
“Unbelievable,” Joe said. “But, yeah, I could totally see the chef attacking Barclay.”
“And somehow the chef got Channing and Jessica to help him! Probably, anyway,” said Bootsie.
“Did you get any more info about the Colketts’ relationship? Brothers, married couple, cousins?” asked Joe.
I shook my head regretfully. “Nope. I’m starting to think the Colketts’ status is one of life’s mysteries, like Stonehenge,” I told him. “I’m not even sure I want to know.”
Bootsie steered us into the gravel driveway at Gianni, and we all trooped inside to look for Jessica. A hostess stood at her station up front, organizing the menus for the lunch crowd and adjusting her glossy dark hair.
“Is Gianni here?” I asked her, sotto voce, hoping against hope that he wasn’t.
“Chef Gianni’s at physical therapy for his broken ankle,” said the hostess nonchalantly. “He has it for two hours a day for the next four months. And boy, is he pissed about it.” She snickered to herself at that, proving again that the chef was not a beloved boss. It seems that threatening your busboys and regularly excoriating the staff as hopeless losers doesn’t do a lot for employee morale.
“And Jessssicaaa, is she here?” Bootsie hissed in a loud whisper.
“Outside,” said the hostess, looking bored and pointing to the patio.
Jessica was sitting at one of the small outdoor tables, sketching what appeared to be a furniture layout for a residential client, in the shade of a big sycamore tree. She had on jeans and sandals, and no makeup. Actually, she looked even prettier than usual without her usual Manolos and glossy façade of makeup. She had a slight tan, and, something I’d never realized before, a few adorable freckles on her elegant nose. She greeted Joe in a friendly manner, and was amiable enough to me and Bootsie when he introduced us.
“We heard something that we wanted to ask you about, Jessica,” said Joe hesitantly. “It’s kind of awkward—but did you know the chef was missing for something like thirty minutes during the opening party last week? Friends of ours noticed he was gone, and they tried to find him all over the restaurant, but then they noticed his Fiat wasn’t parked behind the restaurant.”
Jessica sat up straighter and looked at us, but appeared unconcerned. “You know what, I didn’t know he left the party,” she admitted. “But I had to go run an errand myself that night, so I didn’t really keep track of Gianni after the first fifteen minutes or so of the party.”
“An errand?” asked Joe, pulling up a chair and sitting down at Jessica’s table. “What kind of errand are we talking about?”
Jessica, a girl not easily fazed, turned pink, and a small, goofy smile came over her face.
“Were you off schtupping that hot guy Channing that night?” blurted out Bootsie. “Because we heard you were both missing during the party, and that you had grass in your hair after you got back!”
There was a moment of shocked silence as we all stared at Bootsie, and then at Jessica.
“Um-hmm,” Jessica confirmed. “You know what, I’m not gonna lie to you. I was with Channing that night.”
“I knew it!” cried Bootsie. She and I both sat down at Jessica’s table, too.
“We’ve been having a fling for about a month now,” said Jessica proudly, after looking around to make sure none of the restaurant staff was listening in. “It started out as just a one-night thing, but during the opening party, somehow I found myself back in the kitchen, sneaking out the back door with Channing. There was something about that night—I guess it was the vodka, and the crowd, and the warm weather—that just put me in the mood!”
“Where’d you go?” Joe asked. “Did you do it in your car?”
“No, we took Channing’s truck over to the fields at Sanderson and did it behind a haystack,” confided Jessica. It seemed that once Jessica started talking about sleeping with Channing, she couldn’t stop. She’d been bottling it up for weeks, and now the floodgates had opened.
“Channing is the best sex of my life!” she told us breathlessly. “I’m not usually the outdoorsy type, but since Channing used to work at Sanderson and loves trees and cows and all that crap, I’m trying to get more interested in, you know, nature.”
“What time did you go?” Bootsie asked Jessica. “You never realized the chef was gone?”
“We left right around eight,” said Jessica. “I checked the time, because I knew we couldn’t be gone more than half an hour, or Gianni might realize we were both missing. And we were back here by eight-thirty—maybe a few minutes earlier, even.”
“You went all the way over to Sanderson, did it, and got back here in less than thirty minutes?” I said, impressed.
“What do you think?” said Jessica, gesturing with her thin, tanned hand toward the firehouse-turned-restaurant behind her, where Channing had just appeared from a side door.
We all looked over. Channing was picking up a case of wine from a liquor truck that had just pulled up to carry it inside. He had on a white T-shirt, jeans, and a day’s growth of beard over his male-model jaw. His muscles rippled in the sunshine, and he sizzled a grin our way.
“Yeah, that works,” said Bootsie. “Drive over, find a spot behind some hay bales, boom, then drive back. It might not even take me half an hour!”
“Why does this even matter?” asked Jessica, frowning a little in the sun. She shielded her eyes as she looked over at us. “I mean, I know it wasn’t very nice to cheat with Channing behind Gianni’s back. But all Gianni does is work, and then go home and watch the Food Network. He’s obsessed with getting his own show by the time he turns forty.” She paused. I noticed Joe’s eyes widen at this piece of information. Joe’s ambition is to get a design show on TV, but he only admits this after he’s had a lot of tequila.
“I promised myself I’d tell Gianni about Channing as soon as the restaurant was up and running, but then the timing was bad after he fell and injured himself. I’m going to break up with Gianni, though.” Jessica looked distinctly nervous as she said this, and we all imagined the apocalyptic tantrum that her news would unleash.
“Well, I might not tell Gianni about Channing right away,” Jessica amended, “but I am going to end it with him. I did have feelings for Gianni when we first got together, but I just can’t take his temper anymore. Plus all I can think about is Channing.”
The beefcake that is Channing reappeared from the side door to heft more pinot noir into the restaurant. Jessica smiled girlishly and shrugged.
“Did you notice whether Gianni’s car was here when you and Channing left to go, uh, get your freak on the night of the opening?” Joe asked Jessica.
“I never looked,” she said. “Gianni parks that stupid red Fiat right in front of the restaurant so everyone can see it, but, honestly, Channing and I took off so fast that night that I never even noticed Gianni’s car. I guess it could have been gone.” Jessica paused, and stared at us curiously.
“Why are you asking about Gianni? Do you think Gianni was stalking us that night?” she said breathlessly. “Does he know about me and Channing?”
“That’s not what we’re worried about,” Joe reassured her. As we all got up to leave, he turned back thoughtfully toward her. “Jessica, considering the chef’s temper, maybe you should wait a few more days to break up with him. Just till the end of the week, okay?”
“You don’t have to spell it out for me,” said Jessica, who seemed to be in the mood to let out a Hoover Dam’s worth of information. “In fact, and I’m only telling you this because I’m planning on getting the hell out of town ASAP, people don’t even know Gianni’s real story! He tells everyone he came here from some fancy town in Tuscany just a few years ago, but that’s bullshit. He originally came over to the U.S. from the not-so-scenic part of Sicily, and his first restaurant was a pizza parlor in Newark!”
“You mean, like actual greasy, cheesy, comes-delivered-in-a-box pizza?” said Bootsie.
“Oh yeah,” Jessica said. “We’re talking sixteen-inch sausage-and-pepperoni pies served on Formica countertops. Gianni knew Barclay Shields then, too! That’s when their feud started. Barclay was named Beppe when they were back in Newark, and he had a stake in Gianni’s first pizzeria. When Gianni decided to reinvent himself, he had to pay off a bunch of guys in Jersey before he could launch Palazzo. Some of the guys were upset that Gianni got a fancy new life.”
She paused for a minute, looking frightened. “Barclay and Gianni really do hate each other. Barclay was always threatening to tell all the rich people on the Main Line about Gianni’s real background, and vice versa.”
“I’d keep this to yourself,” Joe advised Jessica. “This sounds like dangerous information to share with anyone else.”
“Okay,” agreed Jessica, looking relieved. She was obviously petrified.
And honestly, I couldn’t have agreed more. Maybe Gianni had whacked the giant Barclay to shut him up about Gianni’s pizza-tossing past. I didn’t even want to imagine what he could do to Jessica with a chef’s knife and a meat mallet. She could end up as veal piccata, too.
“SO, DO YOU believe her?” asked Bootsie, once we were back in the car.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Of course,” said Joe. “It makes perfect sense. I can picture Gianni as mafia pizza guy. And he’d definitely want to keep his past quiet. But whether he was the one who hit Barclay, I don’t know.”
“Maybe Jessica’s lying, and she really was with Gianni that night, helping him attack Barclay instead of getting boned by Channing,” suggested Bootsie.
We all thought about this for a second as Bootsie steered back toward Sophie’s. Then we burst out laughing at the thought of Jessica messing up her Manolos if there wasn’t an orgasm in the offing.
“Yeah, never mind,” said Bootsie. “I guess we know the answer to that.”
“But one thing doesn’t add up,” I mused aloud, after Joe had climbed out at Sophie’s and Bootsie had turned back toward town. “If the chef whacked Sophie’s husband, why did the chef also get one of the warning notes, just like Barclay? And, why would he fall off Sophie’s balcony on purpose—since we know Barclay couldn’t have been the one to push him?”
“To divert suspicion away from himself!” said Bootsie confidently. “Gianni decided to stage the whole thing, and left himself a fake note! A little tumble would be worth it to Gianni, if it meant he could get away with almost-murder. I have a sense for these things.”
I refrained from pointing out that only an hour ago, Bootsie had been certain that Sophie had a hand in the attack, and had also repeatedly named Gerda as her go-to suspect. I also didn’t mention that even during high school, Bootsie’s so-called sixth sense has always been one-hundred-percent faulty. She was always wrongly predicting things like snow days, pop quizzes, and what time someone’s parents would come home from dinner at the club, which resulted in things like all of us being caught mid–tequila shot at age sixteen, getting grounded, and failing chemistry.
“I’m going to drop by and talk to Officer Walt right now,” Bootsie told me. “I’m pretty sure this will sew up the case!”
Ten minutes after I got back to The Striped Awning, my phone rang. “I can’t talk long,” Joe told me, “but Holly needs you to stay over at her house tonight. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Bootsie, but you’ve been neglecting Holly.”
What! There was no way I was doing that. I’d been out late last night, and up at dawn for Bootsie’s horrible tennis drills, then dealt with Jimmy Best, the Colketts, and Jessica . . .
“I can’t tonight,” I moaned. “I’m exhausted.”
“Holly’s lonely!” said Joe sternly. “She’s in the middle of a divorce, and she’s trying to shop her way out of sadness. She’s spent seven thousand dollars on bathing suits since April. She needs you. And what do you go and do? You have a date with some veterinarian”—he pronounced the word as if I’d gone out to dinner with Ted Bundy—“which we had to find out about from Bootsie, and you didn’t even call Holly first about what to wear.”
I felt terrible. I hadn’t spent much time with Holly lately, it was true. Had she really spent seven grand on bikinis? That was scary. And I probably should have consulted with her about the right outfit for my date. “But aren’t you living with her for the summer?” I asked him.
“That doesn’t matter. Just because she’s a gorgeous chicken-nugget heiress with drawers full of Chanel bikinis doesn’t mean she doesn’t have any problems,” Joe informed me. “So you need to make time for us tonight. Holly and I already stopped by your house, got your key from under the flowerpot, and packed a bag for you.”
I nodded, mentally calculating that I’d have plenty of time to sneak home for a nap after work and show up at Holly’s around eight, in time for dinner. Unless I could weasel out of the whole thing.
“And you can forget sneaking home before you come over, because you’ll fall asleep and never make it over,” said Joe, whose powers of intuition are way better than Bootsie’s. “I’m picking you up there at six. You can leave your car behind the shop tonight.”
“But what about—”
Joe knew where I was headed, and cut me right off.
“That mutt can come, too.”
ALL DAY, I’D been determined not to wonder whether the cute vet would ever call me again, and since by 5:45 p.m. he hadn’t, I decided it was a good thing that I was going to Holly’s. I could hopefully discuss her relationship with Howard during a quiet moment. Truthfully, I was feeling a little discouraged about the vet being married to Lilly Merriwether, and Joe and Holly are my closest friends: If you can’t count on a chicken-nugget heiress and her decorator to be there for you through thick and thin, who can you count on?
I never heard back from Bootsie about what Officer Walt had to say about the chef, Jessica, and Channing being AWOL during Gianni’s opening party, which was just as well. I could use a night off from that whole mess.
As Waffles, Joe, and I got to Holly’s, a torrential storm exploded over Bryn Mawr. Sheets of rain were drenching the tented roof of Holly’s fabulous outdoor living room, and blowing sideways onto her weatherproof white furniture, so we moved the party into Holly’s indoor living room.
The painters’ tarps had been removed, and the result was amazing. As Martha brought out a massive platter of shrimp, I surveyed the room: There were three modern white couches, a giant gilded antique mirror, and a sleek, pale gray rug. The coffee table was a slab of beige marble, and over by the entrance to the kitchen, a simple white table was loaded with buckets of ice, bottles of wine, and a huge arrangement of calla lilies in a silver vase. It was all very simple and totally chic.
I had to admire the snacks Martha had set up: olives, shrimp, and some fragrant cheese, with beautiful little plates and linen cocktail napkins at the ready. You never just get, say, a Snapple at Holly’s house.
The only eyesore was Waffles, who tromped in ecstatically, drenched in rain and gazing hopefully at one of the white sofas. Luckily, he flopped down on the floor near Joe’s feet. This modern decor was amazing, but not exactly dog-friendly. The Binghams would need some extra white zinfandel when they saw this, I thought.
“This is gorgeous!” I told Holly and Joe.
“I know,” said Holly, popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. “It’s totally Architectural Digest, in a Bianca Jagger kind of way.”
Despite her customary air of fabulousness, Holly did look a little down. Her outfit was on the conservative side for her—okay, the blue and purple Pucci jumpsuit she had on wasn’t all that conservative, but her only jewelry was a Cartier watch, and she wasn’t even wearing heels. I started to feel concerned: Holly always swans around with such bravado that sometimes even I forget that under her carefully honed exterior is a girl who was teased in high school for wealth accrued by breaded poultry. Ah, cruel youth.
“So why didn’t you tell us about your date last night?” Holly asked sadly, passing around the champagne glasses and tucking her feet underneath her on a sofa. “Bootsie knew. Are you hiding something from us?”
I still hadn’t told them about Mike Woodford, either, but since I was already getting scolded for not mentioning the veterinarian, this seemed like the wrong time to bring up Mike.
“Well, I didn’t really tell anyone, because the date was kind of a last-minute thing,” I said. “And I guess I was afraid that you’d tell me that he wasn’t the right kind of guy, or that I was wearing the wrong thing . . .”
“What did you wear?” asked Joe, with a pained glance at my shorts and wedge sandals.
“I wore that white linen dress Holly gave me with the ruffle down the front,” I told them.
“That’s all wrong for a first date,” Holly said, shaking her head.
“Bootsie also told us that the vet is married to Lilly Merriwether,” added Joe ominously.
“But I didn’t know that when he asked me out!” I protested. “And he’s legally separated from Lilly.”
“Separated is still married,” Joe noted.
“One time my mother beat Mariellen Merriwether in bridge at the club. Mariellen wouldn’t speak to her for two years, and then tried to get her blackballed from the Symphony Women’s Board. What you did last night is basically throw down the gauntlet to one of the oldest families in Philadelphia,” Holly told me in an infuriatingly wise manner, as if she were suddenly the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of local societal mores. “I mean, to go out to dinner with a Merriwether husband . . .”
“It’s not like that at all!” I shrieked. “I didn’t know he was a husband when I agreed to dinner!”
One thing I’m not is a gauntlet thrower. Especially not with pearl-wearing, patrician ladies I’m terrified of, like Mariellen. “You see, this is why I didn’t tell you guys! Because I would never—”
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Joe soothingly. “If you’re comfortable going out on a limb like that, more power to you. I kind of like that you’ve got the balls to stand up to the most prominent matriarch on the Main Line.”
“I don’t have the balls! That’s not what I’m doing!”
Ding-dong chimed the front doorbell. Joe got up, peered through the window, and said, “Oh boy.”
He opened the door and Sophie scrambled over the doorstep, looking like a Yorkie who’d gotten drenched in the rain. She was clutching a brown paper bag in one hand and an enormous Gucci handbag in the other. Her outfit was purple from head to toe, including a pair of purple Versace jeans and a tight purple shirt with the Chanel logo stamped all over it, and mud was sadly caked on her bejeweled shoes. She looked disheveled, drippy, and slightly frantic.
“Thanks!” she bleated to Joe. Sophie paused to wipe her shoes on a beige mat in Holly’s Carrera marble front hallway, then appeared in the living room behind Joe, and shrieked, “I hope you don’t mind me coming over here like this, but I just can’t take it anymore.”
She paused for emphasis, and then in her tiny squeak, erupted: “You know what? Fuck Gerda!”
Sophie was dripping on the newly refinished living room floor, and since Holly seemed frozen in her position on the couch—her champagne glass was halfway to her lips, and she seemed incapable of getting the glass all the way there, or of putting it down—I went into the kitchen to get a towel so Sophie could mop herself dry. I rooted around in the modern white cabinets—which was difficult because there were no handles; apparently having handles isn’t chic at the moment—and came up with a couple of fancy white dish towels from a drawer in the marble kitchen island. The tags were still on them: eighty-five dollars. Each. Handmade in Italy, from Neiman Marcus. For dish towels?
“Here’s what happened,” squawked Sophie as I handed her the towels and she started mopping herself off. “I was feeling hormonal this afternoon, and I was starving. And I haven’t eaten anything except tofu and kale in months! So when Gerda went down to her computer room, I snuck over to Chef Gianni’s. I figured the coast was clear, because Gerda’s usually down in her office for hours!”
We all nodded. Holly’s arm had finally unfrozen, and she was gulping her drink. Joe was pouring himself a refill.
“I’ll have some of that, if ya don’t mind!” said Sophie, still dabbing at the hem of her purple pants and pointing at the champagne bottle. “So, anyway, Gianni wasn’t open for dinner yet, but Channing was there, and he packed me up a pasta Bolognese in a take-out carton. And he gave me this little half bottle of merlot . . . which he uncorked for me, thank goodness! So I got home, and I was sitting in my car at the end of my driveway eating my pasta and drinking the wine, because Channing remembered to give me a straw, when Gerda popped up out of nowhere and started banging on the car window!
“And I got out of the car in the rain and started yelling at her, and then she started yelling back at me about toxic American meat. I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I got back in the Escalade, gunned it, and here I am!”
“Did Gerda follow you here?” asked Holly. We all swiveled nervously toward the front door.
“Nope!” said Sophie triumphantly, still standing dramatically just inside the living room, dabbing at her Versace jeans with the dish towel and clutching her various bags and her purse. “She can’t drive when I’m not with her, ’cause she only has a learner’s permit! Plus I took the keys to the convertible, so she’s screwed!”
Waffles, who had been sacked out on the floor, suddenly looked up, sniffed the air, ran over, and tackled Sophie, knocking her off her spiky sandals onto the pearl-gray rug. Somehow, since the first moment he’d seen Sophie, I’d known this was coming.
“I still have some Bolognese in this bag,” said Sophie, who was unhurt and sitting up as I ran over, apologizing. She held up the brown bag, which Waffles was wagging at and nosing furiously. “I guess your dog sniffed it out. Here, doggie, go ahead and eat it. I kinda lost my appetite when Gerda screamed at me.
“By the way, Holly, I love your house!” Sophie added, scrambling up off the rug and looking around as she took a seat on the couch. “Hey, Joe, maybe we could do some of this modern crap at my place!”
In the kitchen, I put the rest of Sophie’s pasta onto a plate, and Waffles hoovered it up. Meanwhile, Holly stared at Sophie with a mixture of exasperation, curiosity, and disbelief that this person was sitting on her white mohair sofa.
“Sophie, where did you come from?” Holly finally demanded.
“I told ya, I just came from my house, and before that, I was at Gianni’s,” said Sophie.
“No. I mean before that. Before you married Barclay,” Holly clarified patiently. She rubbed her temple, as if trying to keep a migraine at bay.
“Oh! I came from Joisey,” said Sophie. “Cinnaminson. It’s not too far away from here, maybe forty-five minutes. Just over the bridge from Philly. I moved here after I met Barclay when I was selling cement. It’s a family business. My parents started it, and me and all my brothers were the salespeople. You might not believe this, but I was really good at the cement biz. Our motto was, ‘We stick with our customers!’ Get it?”
We all nodded dutifully, then Holly disappeared for a moment and then returned with a bottle of aspirin, which she handed around to me and Joe. I looked at my watch, wondering if I could go to bed. Since it wasn’t even seven-thirty yet, I didn’t think so. Maybe Gerda would show and up and force Sophie to return to the Shields stronghold.
“It’s kind of a romantic story,” Sophie rattled on, “because Barclay liked me right away. He took one look at me, and told me something was getting hard, and it wasn’t the cement, if you know what I mean. So we had a whirlwind romance. And you know, Barclay was a lot thinner then. He was under two-fifty, which is pretty good, considering he’s big-boned.”
“Did you know Chef Gianni back in his pepperoni days?” Joe asked Sophie.
“You know about Gianni’s pizza parlor?” she shrieked admiringly. “Barclay always told me to keep that quiet. That way, he had some power over Gianni. But really, who cares if Gianni used to run a pizza joint? I’m all for people making something of themselves!”
“And Gerda?” Joe asked. “Why, uh, exactly is she living with you?”
“Gerda saved my life!” said Sophie. “We were on our honeymoon and we went all over Italy—that’s Barclay’s favorite country, for obvious reasons. They have something like three hundred different kinds of pasta there. And that’s where I discovered Versace, my favorite designer, in Rome and Milan.
“So at the end of our trip, we went to Venice, and I was leaning out over one of those canals, because I thought I saw a Versace boutique just across the water, when, boom!—my heel slipped, and I almost went into that really slimy water. It was Gerda who caught me! She was on a vacation with her twin sister, who looks just like her. Honestly, they’re identical! Her name’s Gunilla, the twin.”
We all swigged more champagne, except Holly, who was frozen again at the mention of another Gerda somewhere out in the world, possibly sailing the canals of Venice.
“So we took Gerda and Gunilla out for coffee afterward to thank them, and then Gerda came and gave me a Pilates lesson the next day at the Gritti Palace. Two weeks later, we were home and moving into our house when Gerda showed up in Bryn Mawr! She said her sister was getting married and her parents had both died, and she was alone in the world, so she tracked down our address on the Internet. She took a cab from the airport. I didn’t have the heart to tell her to leave, so she’s been here almost three years,” Sophie finished.
“Why don’t you give her some money and send her back to Austria?” suggested Joe. “Isn’t there some problem with her green card that Barclay threatened her with?”
“I can’t do that to her!” said Sophie. “She did save my life. Plus Barclay can’t stand her, so she helps keep him away from the house. She’s always nagging at him about being overweight. And, over the last year before he moved out, she kept telling him he was ruining the environment with all his housing developments.”
The three of us exchanged glances. Given that Barclay’s warning note had mentioned similar sentiments, could Gerda have been the one who’d gone after Barclay? Sure, earlier in the day, we’d all thought Chef Gianni was the new prime suspect, but now it seemed Gerda was back in the running.
If Gerda was that enraged about Barclay’s environmental crimes, plus his threat to report her to immigration, maybe Gerda had snuck over to Sanderson last Thursday night and waited for him to arrive. Obviously, Gerda’d have had no problem hoisting Barclay and dragging him into the bushes. She could probably bench-press him, if need be.
Maybe Barclay had been lured to Sanderson by Gerda—as Bootsie had suggested all along.
Or possibly Sophie was just playing dumb . . . and had paid Gerda to attack Barclay? Sophie could have promised to share some of the seven million big ones from Barclay’s life insurance with Gerda. Gerda could then buy her own basement bunker somewhere.
“Sophie, are you sure you get nothing if Barclay dies before the divorce papers are signed?” I asked tentatively. “Isn’t there, uh, insurance or something in place?”
“I’m pretty sure my lawyer tried to work that out, but got stonewalled by Barclay,” Sophie said, looking disappointed. “Although sometimes I can’t understand what the hell my lawyer’s talking about, but I’m almost positive I don’t get any money from Barclay until our divorce is done. Which better be soon, because I really don’t think I can go back into the cement business. Cinnaminson is nice and all, but it’s not like Bryn Mawr with all these big trees and farms around here.”
Joe and I exchanged glances. It was impossible to figure out if Sophie was as clueless as she seemed. With millions at stake, could she really not know her financial situation vis-à-vis her divorce?
“Of course, Gerda says the United States is even worse than Europe these days when it comes to ruining the environment!” added Sophie. “She keeps talking about the importance of land and about people needing open space. Bores the crap outta me!”
“Oh, great,” said Joe wryly. “An Austrian dictator who’s looking for more open space. It’s 1939 all over again.”
“What?” asked Sophie, looking at us blankly. “What happened in Austria in 1939?”
AFTER JOE HAD given Sophie a basic account of Hitler’s atrocities and a fundamental explanation of World War II, she looked upset. “I didn’t listen much in high school. I never knew all that. That’s terrible,” she said. “But Gerda isn’t that bad. She’s just weird about things like meat and forests. I don’t think she’s pure evil.”
Just then, my cell phone rang: Bootsie. Normally, I wouldn’t pick up a Bootsie call at eight at night, because her calls tend to be lengthy and very tiring, but since Sophie showed no sign of leaving, it seemed a good time to answer. “Hi, Bootsie,” I said, excusing myself and going into the kitchen to put Waffles’s plate in the dishwasher. “What’s up?” I asked, wiping a stray strand of linguine off Holly’s perfect white marble kitchen floor.
“Gerda’s up,” Bootsie told me, hollering into the phone over a lot of noise in the background. “Up and on the bar at the Bryn Mawr Pub. Will and I just ran over to get a quick burger, since the boys are at my mom’s for the night. And the first thing we saw when we came in was Gerda. She was chugging beer and doing shots of schnapps with the guys from the firehouse. She’s completely bombed and just ordered a bucket of wings.”
“I thought she didn’t drink!” I said, shocked. “Or eat meat.”
“Well, she’s drinking now,” Bootsie informed me. “Do you know how to get in touch with Sophie? She should probably come pick up Gerda. This isn’t going in a good direction.”
Over the din of the pub—the clatter of glasses clinking, voices chatting, Neil Diamond on the sound system—I head a deafening thud over my cell phone, the distinctive thump of a body making contact with sticky, beer-splashed tile. All bar chatter ceased for a moment.
“That wasn’t . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
“Yup, that was Gerda,” Bootsie confirmed.
“Sophie’s here,” I told her. “I’ll send her over.” I hung up and went back into the living room.
“Gerda’s on a bender,” I told Sophie, Joe, and Holly. “It sounds like she’s going to need a ride home.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, we all piled out of the Escalade and into the pub, where at first glance things looked relatively normal for a bar on a Wednesday night: beer flowing, Van Morrison blasting, Phillies game on the flat-screen TV. Bootsie and Will were waiting for us in the front booth.
“She’s back there,” Bootsie said, pointing to Gerda, who was laid atop a pool table near the back of the bar, an empty shot glass clutched in her hand. A couple of men in Bryn Mawr Fire Department T-shirts stood next to her looking concerned.
“Sorry,” said one. “She looked like she could handle her booze. She said she took a cab here, so we figured she wouldn’t have to worry about driving home.”
“I’m pissed off at Gerda for being such a hypocrite about booze, but I feel kinda guilty!” squeaked Sophie. “Maybe she’s been working too hard.” She rushed back toward Gerda’s supine form.
Three firefighters rolled Gerda’s spandex-clad form onto a giant wooden Heineken sign borrowed from the pub’s back room.
“She’s just drunk,” one of the firemen told us. “No harm done. We’ll load her into your car.”
Most of the bar was staring by now, and not just at Gerda. We didn’t exactly fit in with the casual, jeans-wearing crowd. Sophie was in her purple outfit and teetery, sparkly sandals, Joe was in seersucker, and Holly was still in her Pucci jumpsuit.
Then it got worse. Just as the firefighters passed through the bar, bearing Gerda’s supine form, Mike Woodford came into the pub. He actually held the door for the Gerda cortege, then for Holly, Sophie, and Joe, and then for Bootsie and Will, who went outside to help pack Gerda into the back of the Lincoln. Then he looked at me and raised one eyebrow.
“Don’t ask,” I told him, and left the bar.
“I’M TAKING THE day off from Booty Camp,” Holly announced, as Waffles and I emerged from her guest room the next morning. The dog and I spent the night nestled comfortably on linen sheets hand-embroidered by cloistered nuns. Whatever they’d cost had been worth it, and I could tell Waffles felt the same by the look of pure joy on his soulful, goofy dog face. “Getting Gerda out of the car last night and into Sophie’s house was a workout in itself!” Holly said.
I refrained from pointing out that Holly had done nothing more than open the car door to assist in removing Gerda from the Navigator the night before. I could smell coffee brewing, and it was a beautiful morning, with Holly’s outdoor living room once again open for business. I was just heading outside with Waffles, hoping to find a private hedge behind which he could do what he needed to do when the doorbell rang. Martha opened the front door, and a courier stood there with a giant package wrapped in brown paper, a white silk bow tied around it. It was roughly four feet by six feet in size. Martha signed for the delivery, the courier left, and Holly looked at the slip.
“It’s from Howard,” Holly said bitterly, as she tore away the paper to reveal a painting sheathed in bubble wrap. Even through the plastic bubbles, we could all see that the contents were amazing: It was a huge white canvas, with a bold black swatch of paint swooping over, the black paint forming a sort of giant, abstract wing. I’d studied one very similar to this in college. In fact, was this—could it be?—
“Is that an Ellsworth Kelly?” I asked.
“Probably,” said Holly disinterestedly. “Howard knows he’s my favorite painter, and he thinks expensive gifts will make everything okay. But they don’t!”
I refrained from pointing out that most of her relationship with Howard had been predicated on the belief that expensive gifts did fix all problems.
“Holly, Howard really seems like he wants to patch things up,” I told her. “Why don’t you two sit down without lawyers and try to figure things out? I know he still loves you. Don’t you miss him?”
Holly shrugged, unceremoniously shoved the Ellsworth Kelly into a corner, and headed for her patio, stepping over Waffles—who’d done the bathroom thing outside, returned, and fallen asleep in a sunbeam near the dining room table. Then she noticed the Bests’ ring, which I was still wearing on my right hand.
“Where did you get that?” asked Holly, grabbing my hand and looking at the ornate ring with a practiced eye. “How did I miss that last night?”
“There was a lot going on,” I told her.
Frankly, though I’d wondered the same thing. When at the top of her game, Holly would have spotted the ring the second I’d walked in the door. “My neighbors, the Bests, lent it to me. It’s their mother’s old cocktail ring,” I told her and Joe, who’d appeared from his room and was now toting a coffee mug.
“It’s totally Jackie Kennedy, the Onassis years!” raved Holly, looking more like her old self as she plopped down outside on a huge white upholstered chaise. “It’s so J. Lo meets the Queen of England meets Elizabeth Taylor.”
“I know,” I agreed. “But the Bests had it appraised, and it’s not worth anything, apparently.”
“Those geezers?” scoffed Holly. “They don’t know anything about jewelry. I’m calling George,” she said, and poured herself a glass of water.
Waffles and I followed Holly outside, and I sat back in a comfortable lounge chair, admiring the spectacular setting as an occasional puffy cloud floated by. The rain of the previous evening had left the grass and flowers looking particularly buoyant. A magnificent yellow butterfly floated by on its way to the rosebushes, followed by a robust, furry bumblebee. It’s amazing what money can do. Even the bugs at Holly’s house are well-groomed and attractive. Gosh, I could lie here all day.
My reverie was broken when Holly told me to hold my hand against the white cushions on the lounge chair, so she could snap a quick photo of the Bests’ ring with her iPhone to e-mail to George.
George Fogle is a friend of ours who after high school moved to New York to attend Columbia University. There, he fell in love with a girl named Danielle, then a chef and now an entrepreneur who owns several cool bistros around Manhattan. George, in the meantime, got a master’s degree in art history at Yale, and became an appraiser at Sotheby’s in New York. He also has the sometimes thankless job of working half the week here in Bryn Mawr as the local Sotheby’s liaison.
Basically, that means George keeps in touch with Philly’s wealthiest families, who might be in the market to sell, say, a Thomas Eakins painting they inherited from Granny if they find their trust funds dangerously depleted. He’s also in charge of meeting and greeting newly moneyed people like Sophie and Barclay Shields. New money often decides to start collecting the expensive and beautiful things Sotheby’s sells at auction—say, fine English furniture, or twentieth-century abstract art. (Somehow this didn’t seem likely with Sophie, but you never know.) The best-case scenario for George is someone who gets addicted to buying at auction—like Holly did for a two-month stint the year before she married Howard, until her father called her one day from the chicken plant, and told her that her allowance was on hold until she stopped buying twenty-seven-thousand-dollar French console tables.
So nowadays George spends two days week in Bryn Mawr, and the rest of his time in Manhattan, which is less than two hours away by train or via the Jersey Turnpike. Handsome in a slightly goofy way, with reddish hair and a dusting of preppy freckles, he’s an all-around good guy who sometimes stops into The Striped Awning when he’s in town to say hi and look around, because, as he says, you never know when I might have a piece that’s actually “worth something.” So far, that hasn’t been the case, but it’s always nice to see him.
“George?” sang Holly into her cell phone a minute later. “You need to get together with Kristin ASAP. She has a ring on that deserves its own reality series on Bravo. I just sent you a picture of it. It belongs to those Jurassic neighbors of hers, the Bests, and it’s the size of your eyeball!”
Holly’s voice was temporarily drowned out by the sound of an engine gunning into her driveway.
“George, hold on a second, someone’s just pulling up,” said Holly, peering from her sofa over the rose hedge.
“Chef Gianni,” she announced. “He’s here to talk about the menu for a party I’ve decided to throw in honor of myself and my new house.”
“Chef Gianni?” I said, getting up and taking a peek. It was indeed the chef unfolding himself from the Fiat, bitching loudly in a combination of English and Italian about his heavy cast as he climbed out of the car. Jessica, who apparently had heeded the advice to hold off on dumping the chef, patiently held his crutch, rearranged her hair, and lit a Marlboro Ultra Light all in the same motion as she waited for him to get into limping position.
“Bastardo!” said the chef, addressing his crutch angrily.
“Why did you hire him?” I whispered to Holly. “I thought you hated Gianni.”
“Of course I hate him,” Holly told me. “Everyone does. But I can’t have my housewarming party without Gianni cooking the dinner. I mean, how would it look if I didn’t have Gianni? Even I love his food, and I barely eat. People wouldn’t come if his gnocchi wasn’t on the menu. It’s going to have its own Wikipedia entry soon.”
“Oh, fuck,” said Joe, who’d just appeared on the patio in his pajamas. He froze for a moment when he spied the chef, Jessica, and her plume of cigarette smoke rounding the rosebushes. “It’s too early to deal with those two.” He took off toward his bedroom.
“My darleeng!” said the chef, hopping on his crutch to Holly, and leaning over to kiss her twice on each cheek and several times on her hand and forearm, a gesture that hasn’t been seen since Errol Flynn movies went out of production. The chef’s cologne, a heavy, musky cloud of fragrance, drowned out the roses’ mild scent. Holly and I both coughed uncontrollably for a minute, while Waffles sniffed the air, whined, and lay down over by a planter filled with geraniums.
“Gianni, you know Kristin,” said Holly, gesturing politely toward me.
“Oh, sí,” he said by way of greeting, while Jessica nodded at me, looking nervous.
“Holly,” the chef proclaimed, “I go to your kitchen now. I need to see where I work, and to plan in advance.”
“The kitchen’s right through there,” Holly told him, pointing at the French doors.
“So anyway, George,” she said, returning to her phone call as the chef limped in, Jessica sourly clicking along behind him, giving us an eye roll as she passed us, “the ring has a big oval ruby—or a stone that resembles a ruby—surrounded by tiny diamonds, and it’s very old, I think. Did you get the picture I texted you yet? Okay, great! You know someone at your offices in New York who could look at it? Perfect.” She listened for a minute.
“Okay, I’ll tell Kristin you’re coming by her store later. And by the way, George, you have to be here for my party next weekend. It’s going to be all about Chef Gianni’s gnocchi with boatloads of Italian wine, and I’m having the Colketts bring in about three thousand lilies!”
Just then, the chef appeared in the French doors.
“Hollleee,” he shouted. “There is big problem with your kitchen. Not gonna work. I’m gonna need my catering truck for your dinner party. I need to call Channing about this. I’ll get my phone from the Fiat.”
The chef grabbed his crutch, and with surprising speed, started limping around the rosebush hedge toward his car.
Just as he turned onto the walkway that led to the driveway, something tiny, invisible as it passed, whizzed through the rose hedge and, with a metallic ping, lodged itself into the stone exterior of Holly’s house, right next to one of the French doors into her living room.
A millisecond afterward, there was another whizzing sound, then the crunch of man and metal crutch hitting slate walkway. A car at the end of Holly’s driveway screeched into reverse, hit a three-point turn, and squealed away before any of us could get a look over the hedge at the distant vehicle.
“Merda!” screamed Gianni, who’d gone down like a bowling pin.
Holly and I looked at the object lodged into her stone wall, then at the chef, and then at each other with shocked realization.
“George?” said Holly into her phone. “Can I call you back? I think someone just shot the chef.”
Holly, Waffles, and I rushed inside, terrified. Joe was in the shower and Martha was in the kitchen, watching the Today Show at top volume and ironing Holly’s dish towels, oblivious to the chef screaming outside on the walkway. Jessica was also unscathed, but had seen the shooting from just inside the living room. We sat her down and called 911, which told us to stay inside until help came.
We were pretty sure the car that had sped out of the driveway had contained the person who shot at us, so probably it was safe to go outside. So, ignoring the 911 operator’s advice, Holly and I crept outside and dragged the chef back into the living room in a matter of about three seconds, in case the shooter returned to finish the job.
We laid Gianni on the hardwood floor (Holly wasn’t about to risk getting blood on her carpet), where he shouted obscenities and squirmed like an upside-down caterpillar while Jessica fluttered over him uselessly.
Oddly, we couldn’t see any wounds or blood on the chef, but he was screaming in apparent agony. Then we noticed a little black hole in the cast on his right ankle, and a trickle of dark liquid seeping out slowly over his exposed toes at the bottom of the cast.
“Oh, good,” said Holly soothingly. “Look, Chef, the bullet went right through your cast. That’s really lucky!”
“I would not call it lucky!” screamed Gianni.
“Well, it’s better than getting shot in the head,” said Joe, who had come out of his room and was taking in the situation. “That would really hurt.”
“This really hurts!” exploded the chef.
“Maybe a pillow will help,” Holly suggested. She took a silk pillow off the sofa and gingerly put it under the chef’s bald head. She stepped back and eyed him critically, like a sales manager at Pottery Barn who’s just put together a window display, and sees something lacking. Holly nudged the pillow a little straighter with the toe of her sandal, and bent over to adjust his sleeves to show a bit of the tattoo of St. Peter’s Basilica on his muscled arm. “There,” she cooed. “That’s better.”
Then a police car pulled up, Officer Walt got out accompanied by a teenager wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and that’s when things started heating up in the investigation of who wanted Barclay Shields and Chef Gianni maimed, dead, or, preferably, both maimed and dead.
“WALT, I CAN totally help you with this investigation,” Holly told Officer Walt five minutes later. “You too, Jared.”
Jared, the teenager who’d accompanied Walt to our crime scene, was a senior at Bryn Mawr Prep, winding up a six-week internship at the police department. He had an earring, no facial hair, and smelled strongly of Axe body spray. He looked more like he was fourteen.
An ambulance manned by the same EMTs from Sophie’s party had arrived. Once again, Gianni was ladled onto a gurney, and the emergency workers prepared to take him out the French doors, speaking to the chef cheerfully as his vital signs were checked. “Hey, man, good to see you again!” said the youthful medic to Gianni.
“Vaffanculo,” the chef told him.
“Looks like you took the bullet right in that same ankle—bummer. Let’s cut this cast off out in the ambulance see what’s what,” added the other medic in an upbeat tone, ignoring the invitation to go fuck himself.
Gianni gave him the finger as he was wheeled out across the patio. They took off for Bryn Mawr Hospital, Jessica following nervously in the red Fiat. Officer Walt, in over his head, called the Philadelphia Police Department for assistance, and detectives were dispatched. Walt then came inside to the kitchen and pulled out a little black spiral notebook to write down what we knew. Jared, the intern, meanwhile stared adoringly at Holly, his mouth hanging open.
“Jessica—that’s the chef’s girlfriend—was inside my house when he got shot,” Holly explained as we all perched on the white bar stools around her kitchen counter. “So at least we know she didn’t shoot him. The shot came from the front yard or driveway. But just so you know, Walt, there’s a lot of gossip going on around town about the chef, and Jessica, and Barclay Shields, and I’m going to help you get it all down in that notebook of yours.”
Walt dutifully poised pen over notebook. Jared, sitting on a counter stool nibbling at a plate of fruit, appeared utterly useless. He continued to stare at Holly, his mouth agape. He was wearing a retainer, I noticed.
Truthfully, I felt for Officer Walt. For three hundred years, Bryn Mawr’s been one of the more peaceful places on earth, where most troubles are along the lines of a failed soufflé or a sand-trapped golf ball. How was one thirtyish policeman with a seventeen-year-old intern in late-stage puberty supposed to solve all this?
“Walt, it turns out that Gianni and Barclay both had some ties to what sounds a lot like the mafia,” Holly told the officer. “I don’t know much about organized crime, but apparently they both had a lot of uncles from New Jersey.”
“We have all that info,” Walt said, surprising me. “I’m working with teams in Philly and from Newark, and we’ve been able to piece together a lot about Barclay and Gianni’s past. The drive-by shooting is a surprise, actually. We’re told the guys in Jersey don’t have any issues with Chef Gianni. Apparently, he paid off all his debts when he sold his pizza joint.”
“The chef’s girlfriend Jessica is having an affair with one of Gianni’s assistants,” Holly informed Walt.
“Right, Bootsie McElvoy told me about that.” The policeman nodded. “Guy named Channing.”
“So maybe you should check to see what Channing was doing twenty minutes ago when my patio was shot at!” suggested Holly.
I was having a hard time thinking of Channing in the role of homicidal maniac. When you’re as gorgeous as a young Richard Gere with a little Jake Gyllenhall thrown into the awesome-genetic blender, why would you kill someone? There’s nothing to be angry about, if you look like Channing.
But maybe Channing was getting impatient waiting for Jessica to break up with the chef, and figured he could get rid of Gianni via one quick shot and have Jessica all to himself?
“I could see a possible motive for Channing to shoot Gianni,” I said, “but attacking Barclay? What would Channing possibly gain from that, if we’re assuming that the same person is after both Barclay and Gianni?”
“Bootsie told me that Channing once worked at Sanderson, right?” said Walt, rifling through his notes. “Maybe he had some grudge against Barclay for wanting to buy part of the estate.” He sighed.
“We also need to discuss the Colkett Florists. They hate the chef, so maybe they shot him this morning!” Holly continued to Walt. “I love the Colketts, but they could have pushed Gianni off Sophie Shields’s balcony. They were in the house when it happened, and were right by the stairs right after he fell!”
Walt sighed. “I know Tim Colkett pretty well. He did the flowers for my wedding, and gave us a big discount, since he said he wanted to support law enforcement and knows it’s not a high-paying field.” He sighed again. “But I did hear about the chef making a scene and humiliating those two at his opening. So I had Jared do some Internet research on the Colketts.”
Jared nodded, his earring bobbing up and down. “Yeah,” he said, pleased to finally make a contribution. “Four years ago, before Tim Colkett hit it big as a florist, he lost a house to foreclosure. And the bank sold the house after that to a developer—Barclay Shields! And that Shields dude tore the place down. I pieced it all together from the legal notices in the newspaper,” he said proudly. “It was some kind of historic place. Colkett tried to stop the teardown in court, but Barclay went ahead and put up three townhomes on the lot.”
“So you’re saying Tim Colkett might have had a motive to go after both Gianni and Barclay?” I asked.
Walt nodded. “Bootsie told me that the Colketts claim that Gianni, Jessica, and Channing were missing from Gianni’s opening. But who’s to say they’re not lying? Maybe they snuck off themselves to go after Barclay.”
“Did you find out how exactly the Colketts are related?” Holly asked Walt and Jared.
“That’s out of my area of interest,” Walt told her, and headed out outside to walk the crime scene. The Philly police were due any minute, and Jared was leaving, since he had to be back at school for a calculus quiz at eleven. Officer Walt told me I could go to work, and that Jared could drop me off at The Striped Awning, where I’d left my car the night before. Walt didn’t seem to think I could add much to the investigation, and I was inclined to agree. Meanwhile, Joe had joined us, eating scrambled eggs.
“I can’t believe I missed seeing the chef get shot,” he complained.
“I’ve got six messages from Bootsie McElvoy telling me that Gianni is the one who attacked Barclay last Thursday,” said Walt, as he, Jared, Waffles, and I headed out the front door, so as not to disturb the crime scene on the patio. “But a couple of days ago, she left me a bunch of voice mails telling me that she thought that Pilates woman who works for Sophie Shields hit Barclay in the head. She also told me she thinks Sophie could have been the mastermind behind the Barclay hit.”
“Yeah, that is one of Bootsie’s theories, but they change frequently,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve met Gerda, the live-in Pilates instructor.”
“Oh yeah,” confirmed Walt. “I’ve met her. After the chef fell off Mrs. Shields’s terrace. Interesting woman, Gerda.”
“Maybe—and it pains me to say this—Bootsie’s right,” mused Joe, who had walked out onto the driveway with us, still forking eggs northward. “Gerda or Sophie could have shot the chef this morning. Gerda’s got to have a killer hangover this morning, but she could still have come over and nailed the chef. Just as an FYI, Walt, the woman doesn’t have a valid driver’s license, so that’s another offense right there.”
Walt shrugged, closed his notebook, and hesitated over something for a moment. “I’ll look into it,” he promised.
Then he looked up at each of us and spoke, Jared hovering at his elbow.
“I’m going to share something with the three of you that hasn’t gotten out to the papers yet,” Walt said. “I’m telling you this because no matter what I do, I know Bootsie McElvoy’s going to dig out the information by the end of the day, and it’ll be in the paper tomorrow, so I’ll just tell you now.
“Yesterday, we found the weapon that was used to hit Barclay,” he told us. “We borrowed a new police dog from Philly to take over to Sanderson in the afternoon. Jared has a dog—well, his family has a dog—and he and the dog had gone through Sanderson looking for clues last weekend, but hadn’t had any luck. So we finally brought in a professional sniffer, a German shepherd.”
Waffles, hearing the word “dog,” wagged his tail. He knows that word.
“Your dog inspected Sanderson for clues?” Joe asked the teenage intern, giving him a skeptical look. “Is the dog trained for that?”
“Not exactly,” Jared said. “But usually he has, like, a great nose! He can find a sandwich from a mile away. I’m not shitting you!”
This was really kind of sad. Bryn Mawr, a wealthy and historic town, used household pets to conduct crime scene investigations. But then again, you wouldn’t expect the Bryn Mawr police to have much in the way of a K–9 force.
“What kind of dog is it?” Joe asked.
“It’s a, uh, Labradoodle,” admitted Jared.
Joe and I broke out in laughter, and Jared and Walt looked uncomfortable. Even Waffles would be better than that, I thought.
“Yeah, well, I know,” said Walt with a sheepish smile. “So anyway, this German shepherd from the city came out yesterday after the Labradoodle didn’t find anything. Right before the rainstorm yesterday, the police dog found the weapon. It had traces of dried blood on it. We’re testing to see if it’s Barclay’s, but we’re pretty sure this is what the attacker used.”
“What was the weapon?” Joe asked.
“It’s a bookend,” said Walt. “Shaped like an acorn. Has an inscription on it, it was given to a graduate of Bryn Mawr Prep.”