I BLINKED, MY stomach churning with surprise.
“I have bookends like that at my store,” I told Walt. “I just bought three of them last Saturday at Stoltzfus’s, the flea market out in Lancaster County. After Barclay was attacked,” I added hastily. “Just so you know, I didn’t hit Barclay. I didn’t even have the bookends last Thursday.”
“That’s okay. I don’t think you did it,” said Walt. “There are a lot of these acorn bookends floating around town, since a lot of people received them as graduation gifts over the years. In fact, I’m headed over to Bryn Mawr Prep right after I leave here, to figure out how many of the things were given out, and to which graduating classes.”
Walt told us that his best guess was that older Prep alumni hadn’t necessarily held on to their bookends. People who’d retired to condos in Florida, or moved into smaller town houses after their children left home, could have donated them to the thrift shop over at the hospital or sold them at garage sales. It wasn’t out of the question that Gerda or Sophie Shields, or the Colketts, could have gotten hold of one of the acorns.
But Honey Potts, a proud Bryn Mawr Prep alumna, had definitely gotten a pair of acorn bookends at graduation. Honey had freely admitted this when Walt had stopped by her house yesterday to tell her about the police dog finding the acorn in her field. Honey had, in fact, invited Walt into her library to show him her own pair of bookends.
But when they walked into the paneled room, the acorns weren’t there in their usual place on the bookshelf.
“Mrs. Potts looked genuinely shocked that they were missing,” Walt told us. “And I tend to believe her.” He added that Honey said she’d cleaned out a bunch of stuff in her house the previous spring. She said she’d boxed up some items and put them in the attic at Sanderson, and gave others away to relatives and friends. “She couldn’t remember whether the acorns had been donated or given away as part of her cleanout, or if she’d stashed them upstairs.”
By this time, Holly had come out to the driveway, listening breathlessly to the description of the weapon used to attack Barclay.
“Mrs. Potts was going to look in her attic last night to see if she can find the bookends,” Walt said. “So I have to get over there today, too. First, though, I have to tape off your driveway and your patio, Holly,” Walt finished.
“Crime scene tape?” said Holly happily. “That’s fantastic! Everyone’s going to doubly want to come to party next week if there’s crime scene tape here. You can come, too, Walt. You too, Jared.”
“Okay, thanks, great,” said Walt, looking happy about the invitation as he unfurled his yellow tape, the one good thing going on for him in his life at the moment. Jared looked dumbstruck.
“The detectives from the city should be here in a few minutes,” Walt added.
“Perfect!” Holly sang out. “I’m picturing Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman as the detectives. And I’ve decided I’m going to help you, Walt,” she added. “I’m going to become Honey’s new best friend. Even if she didn’t hit him herself, she must know something about what happened to Barclay Shields; I mean, it happened at her house. And I’m going to find out everything Honey knows.”
At this, Walt and Jared looked doubtfully at Holly, who didn’t inspire a ton of confidence, to be honest. She didn’t look like she could pull off a Miss Marple–style investigation. Currently attired in four-inch heels and a caftan, airily applying lip gloss, Holly looked more like she was headed to the beach in Mustique than a woman on a crime-solving mission.
I pictured Honey’s makeup-less face, her loafers, and her leathery hide developed from years spent in the fields with her beloved cows, and then tried to imagine Holly and Honey as a seriously miscast Cagney and Lacey.
No one else looked convinced, but I knew that Holly could befriend Honey in no time. Underneath her Gucci façade, Holly’s very determined.
“As soon as the detectives interview me, I’m off to Neiman Marcus,” Holly said, screwing on the cap of her lip gloss. “I can’t become Honey’s new best friend without the right outfit.”
IT WAS 11:15 a.m. when Jared dropped me and Waffles off at The Striped Awning—not all that late to be opening up the shop, considering that we’d already witnessed a shooting this morning. I unlocked, turned on the lights, and booted up my computer, first checking on the acorn bookends, which were just as I’d left them. All three of them sat there, looking benign. Not at all like attempted-murder weapons, really. I picked each one up again, feeling their considerable heft, and read the inscription: “From this acorn grows a mighty oak.”
More like “From this acorn, a mighty head injury is inflicted,” I thought to myself.
It seemed frivolous after such a scary event that morning, but as I checked my e-mail, I couldn’t help wondering whether John would call me. He’d probably already reconciled with Lilly the Beautiful Tennis Player, I thought morosely. My own tennis lesson the day before seemed like it had happened a million years ago.
The rest of the morning was uneventful, and George arrived looking spiffy in a blue blazer over a Lacoste shirt after Waffles and I had shared a bagel with cream cheese for lunch. We chatted briefly about the chef getting shot, since George had listened to the incident over Holly’s cell phone, and then got right down to business over the Bests’ ring.
I carefully removed the bauble from my right ring finger, and laid it in its velvet-lined black leather box, which I handed across my desk to George. He donned a pair of glasses and carefully picked up the piece of jewelry. He was quiet for a few minutes as he turned it around and examined it from all angles, then looked at the little crown insignia in the box’s lid. Then he quietly and gingerly put the ring back in its little slot in the velvet, where it glittered elegantly in the light from the store’s front windows.
“Let me get this straight,” George said finally. “Your neighbors inherited this very beautiful piece of jewelry from their mother, and they don’t know where she got it. And it’s been sitting in that tumbledown house next to yours for the last five decades.”
“That’s pretty much it,” I agreed.
“And you’ve been wearing it around town for the past few days, including this morning, when you were at Holly’s and Chef Gianni got shot.”
“Yup.”
“So you’ve had the ring on while doing errands, walking the dog, cleaning the store, picking up dog doo,” he asked in a neutral tone.
I nodded. If I wasn’t mistaken, I was beginning to sense a hint of negativity. “Is that wrong?” I asked, trying not to sound defensive. “I could put it in the store safe.”
“You have a safe?” said George, his voice cracking.
He looked dubiously at the store’s front door, which, as noted by Gerda, is flimsy and ancient. Then he glanced at the tall front windows, which I sometimes forget to close before I leave. “And where is this ‘safe’?” he asked, making air quotes with his fingers as he said it.
“It’s in the back room!” I told him. “Hidden away, behind the cleaning supplies.”
He sighed.
“Am I correct in guessing that the safe is a vintage item?”
“It’s an older safe, yes,” I conceded. I could tell that George was mentally cataloging the ease of a thief breaking into the store, grabbing the safe, and hightailing it out the door lugging the old metal strongbox. It’s true that the safe isn’t too big, and doesn’t weigh all that much, maybe forty pounds. Since some of the window locks in The Striped Awning are missing (I keep meaning to replace those), and the deadbolts date back to about 1928, I guess someone could bust in overnight if they put their mind to it. I mean, if Bootsie can break into liquor cabinets and basement bunkers, who knows what kind of people might be out looking to burgle my store? Then again, The Striped Awning doesn’t usually have much worth stealing in it.
Meanwhile, George had gotten up, walked over to the front door, and was inspecting the lock in a supercilious manner (which was uncalled for, if you ask me).
“George, that ring’s been sitting in the Bests’ house for decades, and no one’s tried to steal it,” I told him airily.
“Well, the Bests haven’t been going around town wearing it, now, have they?” George asked. “Kristin, I think it might be better if I take the ring out of the store. And I don’t think you should be wearing it around town without some kind of insurance.”
That seemed like a good idea. George could take it back to his new, state-of-the-art safe at the Sotheby’s offices over in Haverford, or straight to New York. If anything happened to the ring, I’d feel terrible, even if it wasn’t worth more than the few hundred dollars that the Bests believed its value to be.
“Do you want to take it back to your office?” I asked hopefully.
“I can hold the ring for a few hours in the safe at the office in Haverford,” George said, “but I’d need the owners’ signature to take it to New York. Can you get your neighbors to sign a form that releases the item to Sotheby’s until we can have an expert look it over and figure out what’s what?”
“Sure,” I told him. “I can get the brothers to sign it today, I’m almost positive. Probably by early evening.”
“Great. You get the old guys to sign the release, and I’ll meet you at the club at six,” George said, opening his briefcase, carefully placing the ring in its black leather box inside it, and snapping the case shut. “I’ll take this right over to my office.”
That’d work. I could close the shop at five, take Waffles home, get Hugh’s signature, then get Jimmy to sign the Sotheby’s consignment document as well.
That is, if both brothers were willing to let George take the ring to New York. I couldn’t see why not. It hadn’t been doing them any good moldering away in their house, and they had nothing to lose.
“I’m glad you and Holly didn’t get hurt today when Chef Gianni got shot,” said George, getting up to leave, then turning around with a serious expression on his handsome face. He added, “Be careful. Lot of weird stuff happening around here. Bryn Mawr’s starting to make New York look quiet and uneventful. This town’s full of nut jobs, but who around here is nuts enough to try to kill someone in broad daylight?”
“NUTS?” ASKED JIMMY Best, handing me a bowl of tired-looking peanuts up in his third-floor club apartment. George wanted to head back to New York tonight, and I had only a few minutes to get Jimmy to sign the release and hand it off to George. As expected, Hugh Best had been pleased to hear of Sotheby’s interest in his family jewels (so to speak), and had already signed the document.
Also, just as important, I needed to convince Jimmy to go home, because the club staff was about to evict him. I hadn’t quite figured out how to pry Jimmy out of his secret hideaway, but I was thinking of going with a blunt approach.
I sighed as I gazed into the little dish of nuts. All the cashews and almonds had been picked out. Why bother?
I had been dashing toward the club’s staircase with the Sotheby’s papers in my purse when I bumped into Ronnie on my way upstairs. Usually, Ronnie’s perfectly groomed, but today his eyes were bleary, his shoulders slumped, and his white shirt was rumpled. He looked like a man beaten down by life as he carried a rack of wineglasses down the hallway from the kitchen, headed outdoors to where a couple of staffers were setting up an outside bar by the tennis courts.
“Kristin!” Ronnie said. “Wait a second, please.”
The tennis courts were packed on this sunny late afternoon. There was a tournament going on, which meant that John was probably out there somewhere, I thought with a little thrill. I couldn’t see his lean form anywhere on the first four courts, closest to the porch. But wasn’t that Mariellen Merriwether’s ramrod-straight back I noticed on a bench outside Court 3? I could see pearls gleaming around the woman’s perfectly groomed neck, so it had to be her. I’d done a mental shiver and refocused on Ronnie.
“Are you headed up to see the old man?” Ronnie had asked, pausing to balance the rack of glasses on the banister of the club’s grand front stairs, jerking his thumb in the direction of the third floor. I nodded.
Ronnie, normally so solid and upbeat, reached out and grasped my elbow, with a glazed look in his brown eyes.
“Kristin, please—Jimmy’s gotta go,” he had whispered desperately. “He’s driving us crazy. The constant calls down to the bar. The snacks. The late-night bowling and the ass pinching. Not my ass, the waitresses,” he clarified. “Plus the members are starting to ask questions about weird noises coming from the third floor. I think he sings along to the radio after the Scotch kicks in.”
“I’ll do my best to get him out,” I’d promised Ronnie.
“If he doesn’t leave willingly tomorrow, we’re throwing him out.”
Now that I was up in Jimmy’s apartment, I understood why Ronnie was at his breaking point: Things were deteriorating quickly. The apartment had taken on a distinctively depressing scent of stale smoke and Scotch. It was cocktail hour and Jimmy was still in his bathrobe, the bed was unmade, and his lunch tray hadn’t been picked up yet. Clearly, the staff wasn’t being quite as attentive on day four of Jimmy’s stay as they’d been initially, and Jimmy’s cute-old-man gimmick was wearing thin.
Jimmy himself didn’t seem all that thrilled to be here anymore, either, to be honest. He wore the slightly manic, overtired look of a kid who’s been sent to stay with fun, rule-free relatives while his parents are off in Europe—a kid who can’t wait to get home to boring old Mom and Dad after a week of staying up too late watching TV and eating candy for dinner.
While Jimmy poured us both a drink, I explained to him that George wanted to take the ring up to New York, and that he’d need to sign a release, which Hugh had already done. “Fine, fine,” Jimmy said grumpily, taking the paper and adding his signature. He sat on the window seat and looked outside. “Wouldn’t mind being out there and watching the tennis matches,” he groused. “Getting a little stuffy up here.”
This was all way too Flowers in the Attic, I thought. Time for tough love.
“Jimmy, you have to go home tomorrow,” I told him. “Ronnie said the members are starting to get suspicious,” I added, truthfully, “and he can’t risk getting fired.”
Jimmy looked simultaneously irked and relieved.
“People are too damn nosy around this club,” he complained, straightening the belt on his bathrobe. “If they’d mind their own business, no one would notice anything going on up here. But I wouldn’t want Ronnie to lose his job. And the staff’s slacking off quite a bit, as you can see. So I guess I’ll go home tomorrow.”
“Great!” I told him. “Hugh will be so happy to see you.”
“Rumor has it that our crack local police force finally found the weapon used to hit Barclay Shields?” Jimmy said, sipping his drink.
I tasted mine and winced. Scotch again. Still, I took another gulp. When in Rome, I told myself.
“Ronnie heard it from your friend Bootsie at lunch, and he told me when he brought up my tray,” Jimmy informed me. “The weapon makes Honey Potts look guilty, of course, but I’ve known Honey a long time, and she ain’t the violent type. I used to date her when we were teenagers.”
“You did?” I said, shocked.
“Sure,” he said. “Honey was very attractive, believe it or not. Tall, blond, athletic. She always had a tan, which unfortunately now has the consistency of a boot, but back when she was seventeen, it looked fantastic.”
“So why didn’t you and Honey end up together?” I asked Jimmy.
“We broke up during college, and she married Phil Edwards in 1966. Boring guy. A banker from Chester County,” he said. “I knew she wasn’t all that crazy about him, because she never took his last name and she never moved out of Sanderson to go live with Phil. Made him move in with her and her parents. And later that year, I married Darleen, my first waitress. Darleen was an Angie Dickinson look-alike. Gorgeous girl, very sexy, and one of the first in town to wear miniskirts in the late sixties. Honey was more like Doris Day.”
“What went wrong with Darleen?” I asked.
“She had an affair with Phil Edwards,” Jimmy replied simply.
“She slept with Honey’s husband? That’s terrible,” I said, shocked.
“Well, it wasn’t ideal,” he conceded, snipping the end from a cigar and lighting up, “but I think it was worse for Honey. Embarrassing for her, really. They split up, and she stayed on at Sanderson.”
“What happened to Darleen?”
“We got divorced, after I paid her forty thousand dollars to go away,” he said, then paused to blow a smoke ring. “Which was a lot of money in those days. Between my marriages and Hugh’s useless business ventures, we managed to bankrupt ourselves in the most entertainingly stupid ways possible.”
He glanced out his open window. “Honey was out there earlier,” he said, “watching tennis with that uptight bitch Mariellen Merriwether. Now that’s one woman whose husband couldn’t stay put. Soon as they had their daughter, Lilly, Martin took off for South America and was never seen again. And there were some good reasons why he didn’t want to come back. I’ve been watching Mariellen from up here over the past few days, and she is one tough gal. Overly focused on that daughter of hers.”
“I better get downstairs to meet George,” I said, peering over his shoulder at the grass courts.
There was John Hall!
He was in the middle of a tennis match, hitting the ball at about one hundred miles per hour to his opponent, who looked a lot younger and faster, but was still struggling to return John’s hit. I admired John’s great arms in his white polo shirt for a minute, feeling a pang of regret that I’d never be able to (a) check out his biceps close-up and (b) understand how, or why, people get that good at tennis.
Then I glanced at my watch, and grabbed the Sotheby’s contract from Jimmy’s coffee table.
“So you’re going home tomorrow morning?” I prompted Jimmy.
“Guess so,” he conceded. “I’ll be home in time for one of Hugh’s awful casseroles for lunch. If it’s tuna-noodle, I’m going to hit myself in the head with a bookend.”