THE NEXT MORNING, feeling upbeat after my impromptu date with John, I parked in back of The Striped Awning. When Waffles and I got inside and turned on the lights, I noticed the familiar form of Bootsie looming at the front door, waiting to chat, her tanned face flushed pink with excitement.
Not this again, I thought. My first guess was that she’d somehow learned I’d been at John’s condo the night before. Given the breadth of Bootsie’s network, she probably had at least one friend or relative living in John’s rental complex, and who might have spied me entering the grounds, or even seen us kissing on his back patio. I steeled myself for an interrogation.
Truly, not all that much had happened between John and me the night before; I’d only stayed for dinner. We were still just in making-out mode. Even though he’d said he was one-hundred-percent not going work things out with Lilly, I wanted to be careful. What if he decided that having cocktails with his mother-in-law (and her horse) most nights wasn’t all that bad, after all, and moved back in with Lilly? You never know with men.
“Update from Walt,” Bootsie said breathlessly, after I unlocked the door, sat down at my desk, and turned on my computer.
Phew, I thought, realizing she was back in crime-fighting mode, and wasn’t focused on my dating life. She took her customary seat in the in front of my desk, and tried to wave away Waffles, who was in his customary position of amiably licking her ankles.
“The acorn was definitely the weapon used to hit Barclay. The blood on it matches. Also, the chef is on bed rest for a few days, but he’s home already. The bullet just grazed his foot, thanks to the cast,” she informed me.
“The real news is that Channing doesn’t have much of an alibi for yesterday morning when the chef was shot. He went to the gym at eight, and then left a little before nine, got a coffee from the Starbucks drive-through, and headed to work. He got to the restaurant fifteen minutes later, and you know the gym and Starbucks are less than five minutes away from Holly’s. So he definitely could have swung into Holly’s driveway, shot the chef, and then gone to work.” Bootsie paused to take a breath and frowned. “Still, though, he just doesn’t seem guilty to me. Why would Channing risk going to prison when he’s busy having lots of inappropriate sex with Jessica?”
I nodded in agreement. Their hot affair had to be preferable to a stint at Graterford.
“Sophie and Gerda are still in the running as suspects, because they don’t have much of an alibi for yesterday morning—only each other. If they have access to guns, they could have definitely done the shooting.”
“I can’t figure Sophie out,” I said, shaking my head. “It doesn’t seem possible that she could be as dumb as she seems, but then again, it seems more implausible that she’s secretly smart.”
“I agree,” Bootsie said. “I’m starting to think Sophie’s just what she seems to be. So I’m ruling her out, at least for now. Also, she has a motive against Barclay, but none that we know of for shooting Gianni.”
“Great,” I told her. “I like Sophie, at least when she’s not talking about her and Barclay’s sex life.”
“Walt’s pretty sure it wasn’t Honey Potts who took the shot at the chef yesterday, but he can’t completely clear her yet,” Bootsie told me as I made a quick trip to the back room for my favorite Swiffer, some paper towels, and a bottle of Windex, and started to spruce up the store in hopes of foot traffic. I was listening to Bootsie, but also thinking that I really need to get customers in again, since Sophie’s windfall won’t last forever. Maybe I could go ahead with my mojito happy hour, or I could serve hors d’oeuvres on Friday afternoons at the store to lure in buyers, I thought hopefully.
“What do you think about me offering wine and cheese on Fridays here at the store?” I asked Bootsie.
“Kristin, focus!” she said impatiently. “This is important. As I was saying, the chef was shot at 9 a.m. yesterday. Or a few minutes before nine, since you and Holly didn’t note the exact time.” She shot me an accusatory glance.
“A shot was fired six feet from us,” I told her. “It was distracting.”
“Honey’s alibi is a little shaky, too. She had a 9 a.m. tee time at the club yesterday, where she was meeting Mariellen Merriwether,” Bootsie continued. “The caddies said they’re pretty sure that Honey picked up a golf cart right around nine, and they saw her and Mariellen teeing off not long after. Of course, those caddies are always stoned, so they have no concept of time.”
“They get stoned that early?” I asked, surprised.
“They’re college guys who just got home on summer break,” Bootsie told me. “Anyway, I’m sure Honey isn’t involved in the shooting”—her tone implied that Bootsie was actually thinking there was a big chance Honey was involved—“but there’s one other thing I got out of Walt: They sent the bullet they pried out of the chef down to a lab in Philly, and it was fired from an old pistol that dates back to the 1930s or 1940s, and the bullet was also from that era.
“And here’s the interesting part: Honey admits that there are old guns stored at Sanderson,” Bootsie continued. “Her father used to host foxhunts at Sanderson, and they had quite a few weapons, including shotguns and pistols. They kept hounds, served sherry, played bugles, the whole bit. And the guns are still there, stored in the barn!”
Mike Woodford flashed into my mind when Bootsie mentioned the Sanderson barn. I’d been positive that he wasn’t involved with any of the crimes, but he did work in the barn. The barn with the guns.
But I dismissed the thought of Mike shooting Gianni as unlikely—for one thing, I was pretty sure he didn’t know where Holly lived, and possibly didn’t even know who she was. And how would Mike know the chef was going to be at Holly’s?
Plus I’d tried and failed to think of a reason why he would want to go after Barclay or Chef Gianni. Of course, if the guns were sitting around the barn, Channing would have seen them, too, when he worked at Sanderson. Maybe Channing had borrowed a gun from Sanderson to mow down the chef?
“Honey used to foxhunt, too, back in the sixties, before people gave up hunting around here!” Bootsie finished. “She’s said to be a crack shot!”
We looked at each other, both of us thinking: That did make Honey sound guilty.
“Anyway, I do think you should have wine and cheese here on Friday afternoons,” Bootsie told me, gathering up her stuff to leave. “I’ll come. And if there’s free food, you might even get Barclay as a regular customer, once he gets sprung from the hospital, which I hear is going to be very soon.” I was about to remind Bootsie about Barclay’s attitude toward antiques when I noticed a petite figure had just entered the store.
“Barclay is out of the hospital!” the customer squeaked. “Has been since yesterday morning!”
It was Sophie, of course, who’d just parked her Escalade illegally in front of the fire hydrant outside, and swung into The Striped Awning in a yellow silk top, miniskirt, and strappy sandals. With her blond hair and the yellow outfit, she reminded one of a very tiny stick of butter. I got hold of Waffles’s collar, since he had a frisky look in his brown eyes that foretold tackling Sophie again.
“You gals might think it was Honey Potts who shot the chef,” Sophie shrieked, “but I know it wasn’t. It was Barclay!”
“Barclay got out yesterday morning?” asked Bootsie excitedly, sitting back down in her chair. “I have a great source at the hospital, and she didn’t say a word. What time was he checked out?”
“Early. Like eight!” said Sophie. She whipped off a pair of enormous sunglasses that made her face look even smaller than usual. Underneath them, she was as well-groomed as ever, her blond hair perfectly blown out, full makeup and manicure in place, but she also had a slightly wild-eyed look this morning. “So he could have totally driven over to get a gun at his condo, and then gone to Holly’s place to shoot the chef by nine!
“Barclay didn’t actually get formally released,” Sophie added. “He just ripped out his tubes and left, so the hospital tried to keep it quiet till this morning, but his doctor called me looking for him! And don’t worry, I already called that Officer Walt guy to tell him that Barclay’s out and about,” she informed us.
“Does Barclay have a gun?” I asked her.
“You bet he does!” Sophie shrieked. “He has a bunch of ’em!”
“Does he have any old guns?” asked Bootsie.
“I don’t know what-all he has,” stormed Sophie with a toss of her head, “since he has so many. But he usually won’t buy anything old, so I doubt he has an antique gun. Guns are like flat-screen TVs if you’re from Jersey—everybody wants the newest and biggest. And by the way,” Sophie added, “Barclay stopped by last night to tell me he wants me to move out of the house, so that he can move back in. The house Joe and I are redecorating. Can you believe that?”
“Are you going to move out?” Bootsie asked her.
Sophie stomped her foot. “No fucking way! I just turned a guest room into a shoe room. I got storage in there for two hundred seventy-five pairs, and we got ’em organized by designer and heel height. I just hope Barclay did shoot Gianni. I asked him about it when he came over last night, but he just laughed, and said Gianni got what he deserved.”
Bootsie and I looked at each other again and shrugged. There seemed to be little chance that Barclay, fresh out of Bryn Mawr Hospital, would have been able to track Gianni down at Holly’s house, but who knew?
“What’s up with Barclay’s angioplasty?” asked Bootsie.
“I don’t know, and I don’t care! We’re getting the divorce agreement hammered out next week, if he doesn’t have a heart attack by then,” said Sophie triumphantly. “I think whoever’s trying to whack him should just wait it out. He’s one cheesesteak away from the grave!”
THE REST OF the day at the store was blissfully uneventful, other than three phone calls. The first was from Hugh Best, who reported that Jimmy had safely returned home. I could hear music in the background and the tinkle of ice cubes into glass, and Hugh sounded very upbeat.
I could only imagine the rejoicing and general celebration going on in the kitchen and staff lounge at the club, the hallelujahs chorusing from the waiters and bartenders now that Jimmy was gone.
The next call was from George, who told me that he’d delivered the brothers’ ring to a specialist at Sotheby’s Upper East Side offices in New York.
George said that the woman was immediately able to identify its elegantly tattered black leather and velvet box as vintage Garrard (which, he told me, is Britain’s crown jeweler). If the ring box was original, then the jewel was by Garrard—this remained to be verified, George said, but his colleague, a brilliant French woman in her forties, was locked in her office with her reference books, her computer, a jeweler’s loupe, and the ring, doing a ridiculously thorough job of researching the provenance of the bauble. If it was Garrard, he told me, it definitely had value, much more than a few hundred dollars.
Honestly, I was impressed. Even if it sold for as much as, say, five or ten thousand dollars, it would be a nice windfall for Jimmy and Hugh. They could crank up the heat next winter and dial back on the casseroles. “I wouldn’t say anything to the old guys yet, though,” George suggested. “A lot of times, these things don’t work out the way we hope. I’d hate to get their hopes up.”
At five, the phone rang again.
“Doll!” said a voice speaking in a loud whisper. “Tim Colkett here. Since we already spilled so much info to you, here’s a little more news. We were at Gianni’s restaurant today doing the flowers for the bar, and not that we were eavesdropping or anything like that, but we couldn’t help listening to Jessica and Channing, who weren’t being very careful about keeping their conversation on the QT.
“And I happened to hear Jessica and Channing talking over secret plans to move to Palm Beach.”
“Palm Beach, Florida?” I asked.
“They’re relocating there ASAP,” said Tim. “Opening their own restaurant. Fresh pasta and grilled meats, sidewalk tables, very summer in Amalfi. Jessica’s planning a late-sixties vibe, with glossy orange walls and white leather banquettes and mosaic tiled floors.”
“Interesting,” I murmured, wondering if this was a false lead to take attention away from Tim himself. I still didn’t think Channing was the one who shot Gianni, but if he had, it shouldn’t be too hard for the police to find him in Florida. Palm Beach isn’t all that big.
Actually, moving to Palm Beach sounded like a good idea for him and Jessica. She’d need to get as far away as possible from the chef when he found out about her fling with Channing.
“By the way, not to gossip, but we just had to make a quick stop at the club, and guess who’s here having drinks right now,” added Tim.
“Honey Potts and Holly Jones?” I ventured.
“How did you know that!” screamed Tim.
“Just a lucky guess,” I said.
“Well, you’re right, and what’s more, Honey is wearing a dress,” he said. “A white linen number from Talbots that Holly told us she helped pick out.” Wonders never cease, we agreed, and we ended the call and hung up.
Leaving the shop an hour later, I realized I was ecstatic at the prospect of a night at home with Waffles. There was a light breeze, the sun hadn’t yet started to set, and I rolled down the car windows so Waffles could stick his head out, foot-long ears flying in the breeze, sniffing the yards full of blooming peonies and daylilies as we drove home. Lawnmowers, that classic summer soundtrack, buzzed outside the car, and when I got home and went into the gate, I could smell cigar smoke wafting over the holly bushes from Jimmy’s porch, and the faint sound of what I think was a Dean Martin record.
This was pure bliss, I thought, taking off my shoes to feel the lush grass (which actually needed cutting again), cool and cushiony under my toes. I fed Waffles, got a glass of water, and sat on the back steps with my eyes closed, listening to the birds, who were singing even more loudly than Jimmy’s record, and the wind whooshing through the tall maples up and down Dark Hollow Road. I heard Waffles’s tail thumping, but he wags whenever the black cat who belongs to the neighbors on the other side of Jimmy and Hugh walks by the fence. Then I realized that mingling with the good scents of the early evening—flowers, grass, cigar smoke, warm dog—there was the scent of soap. Masculine, unfancy soap. I looked up into the black-lashed brown eyes and beard-stubbled face of Mike Woodford.
Mike had just showered with his signature Irish Spring. He was wearing faded jeans and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
As Mike looked down at me, petting Waffles, I remembered John Hall’s fantastic soap smell, which I’d been bowled over by just last night. What kind of person is unable to focus on one great-smelling man for more than twenty-four hours? And John has sincere blue eyes, great arms, makes great salads, and, I’m ninety-nine-percent sure, is getting divorced from his beautiful wife.
Plus I’d sworn off Mike a few days before. Watching him stroll into the pub on his own during Gerda’s bender had just cemented the fact that Mike’s definitely the kind of guy who likes to go out to a bar solo, on the spur of the moment, and not have to answer to some whiny girl about what time he’ll be home. He could never commit to anyone other than a cow. I instinctively knew—from years of dating men who seem perfectly normal at first, and then one day show up in a hand-knit poncho they bartered for in Oaxaca—that Mike was poncho material. I’d bet everything I own that Mike already had a route mapped out for camping along the Andes this summer.
“I thought you might want to come over for some . . . lemonade,” Mike said, reaching out his hand to help me up.
“Okay,” I said, surprising myself. I found myself unable to look away from his stubble and brown eyes. “I guess I could go for some . . . lemonade.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, I blinked in the subtle light from two brass sconces in the entryway of the Mike’s Sanderson cottage. Waffles and I followed him inside, in a mild state of shock. There was a beautiful old hall table to my right—was that Biedermeier?—and just past it was the door to a small library-style living room. There were two large chocolate-brown sofas, a comfy upholstered chair, and a low table piled with books. Things were arranged in English country-house style, with botanical prints on the walls, big comfortable furniture, and an air of age and good style. This place was totally charming!
No Mexican blankets or camping gear were visible. Also, the house smelled really good. There was the scent of lemon oil used to polish the furniture and that faint, smoky smell that lingers into the summer after you’ve burned logs in your fireplace all winter. I couldn’t even smell the farm through the open window. Not a whiff of cow shit anywhere.
“Have a seat,” said Mike, gesturing to one of the giant puffy sofas.
“Thanks!” I said, squooshing into the cushions. I’ve never been one for huge furniture, but for some reason, it really worked in this small room, making it seem incredibly cozy in a man cave–ish way. Had he hired a decorator? Whatever the case, it was such a relaxing space that if I wasn’t being kept awake by the sexual tension in the room—at least I thought there was sexual tension—I’d have immediately taken a nap. Mike pushed the two window sashes higher to let in the early-evening breeze, while I surreptitiously checked out his forearms. (Okay, a hint of cow blew in along with the fresh air, but mostly it was all lemon oil and Irish Spring in here.)
“Did you decorate this place yourself?” I asked him.
“Honey lent me most of the furniture and a lot of prints and paintings,” he told me. “She has so many antiques handed down over the years, she was happy to move some stuff out here to the cottage. I’ll get the drinks,” he added, and disappeared.
I watched him leave and wondered: Is it possible to have a relationship that’s based entirely on someone’s muscular arms? I think it is. I mean, Holly’s marriage to Howard only came about because of her fabulous legs in a tennis skirt.
Waffles launched himself off his back legs and landed beside me on the giant couch. I tried to shove him over, but he lay there like a sunbathing manatee. This wasn’t too romantic.
Actually, though, Waffles looked really good in this old-English, clubby setting. It was very basset-friendly, perfect for a portly brown and white dog with floppy ears. The room was a little masculine for my taste, but if I wasn’t possessed of the knowledge that Mike had a predilection for exotic camping trips, I could see myself living here. And if people asked where I lived, I could answer airily: “Sanderson.”
And they’d say, “You do? What’s it like with the ballroom and the greenhouse and the fourteen bedrooms and the dining room that’s hosted several presidents at the Regency dining table that seats twenty-four?”
That’s when I’d have to admit that I lived in a cottage down by the cow barn, but that’s still pretty good. And so was this cottage, which spoke of stability and comfort. Questions were whizzing around in my head, and chief among them was the worry: Was I wrong about Mike? Was he really a guy who couldn’t be counted on for more than sexy groping in a barn?
Maybe it was just Honey’s heirlooms and antiques that were making that statement, but was it possible there was a more permanent side to Mike? Since I’d never really spent much time talking to him, it was possible I was selling him short.
We’d met under such strange circumstances, and given all the crimes around Bryn Mawr lately and my precarious financial situation—not to mention meeting John Hall—I’d really never spent more than an hour at a time with him, had a meal with him, gone for a walk with him that didn’t end up with a crime scene.
“Lemonade, as promised,” Mike said, returning with two glasses and some hastily folded up paper towels as coasters.
Well, Mike definitely wasn’t gay. Only a straight guy would have no napkins. “Want some vodka in that?” He held up a bottle with some Russian lettering and a red label on it.
“Sure!” I said. Phew—for a minute there, I’d been afraid Mike was actually going to serve plain old lemonade. He glugged some vodka into our glasses, sat down next to me in the overstuffed chair, and kissed me. This went on for a few amazing minutes, with me telling myself that this was the last time I’d be doing this, so I might as well get as much of those muscular arms as I could. Come to think of it, his thigh muscles, pressed up against my legs, were pretty fantastic, too . . . the low lighting in this room was really very romantic . . . I liked his sunburned nose and dark brown eyes . . .
In a pleasant fog of vodka and pheromones, I was considering ripping off Mike’s white shirt when I suddenly noticed Waffles had gotten up and was standing a few feet away in front of a door that led from Mike’s living room out into his small backyard. He was wagging and giving me his I-gotta-go look.
“He’s got to go out,” I told Mike.
“I’ll take him,” said Mike.
“Thanks!” I said gratefully, smoothing down my hair.
“C’mon, Waffles,” he said, leading the dog outside into the dark under the trees. “Be right back,” he said.
While they contemplated some azalea bushes, I got up to look at the bookshelves the flanked the fireplace, which held a mix of old classics, books on cows and horses, and a few coffee-table tomes about Ireland and England. WASP classics, courtesy of Honey. Then I spied it, between the Field Guide to Cattle and a collected works of P.G. Wodehouse.
Mike owned The Lonely Planet Guide to Thailand!
Regret coursed through my veins, mingling with the vodka to make for a depressing cocktail of despair. What was I doing here, anyway? Muscular arms or not, I was done with Mike, I thought, furious with myself. As he and Waffles came back through the back door, I glared at Mike and grabbed the dog’s leash, but neither one of them noticed my irked mood.
“More vodka?” asked Mike, in a friendly manner.
“No, thanks,” I said frostily. “I’m—”
“Did someone say vodka?” boomed a voice through the open window next to the front door. “You home, Mikey?”
Honey Potts! I’d know her Charlton-Heston-meets-Kathleen-Turner intonation anywhere.
Mike uttered something under his breath and went to the front door, Waffles got up and ran happily out to the front hallway, and I frantically plumped up the rumpled couch cushions.
“Hi, Honey,” I heard Mike say to his boss.
“Is that Waffles?” said a shocked, more feminine voice. I knew the voice: It went with tanned legs, long blond hair, blue eyes, and overpriced YSL caftans. It was a voice that had been expensively educated and had traveled the world, thanks to tons of chicken nuggets being eaten all around our great country. A voice that was music to the ears of salespeople at Saks, Neiman’s, and Chanel boutiques around the globe . . .
“Do you know Holly Jones?” growled Honey to Mike in the foyer. “She’s a new friend of mine. Holly, meet Mike Woodford.” I could hear Waffles’s tail thumping against the wood floor.
Holly! I was in complete shock. Not only was Holly about to catch me in flagrante make out with Mike, I was struggling to absorb the fact that she actually knew Waffles’s name. I would’ve bet ten bucks that Holly had no idea what the dog was called.
I busied myself getting more glasses from the shelves while the three of them and Waffles came into the living room. “Kristin, our neighbor across the street, and I were just having drinks,” explained Mike, while Honey gave me a suspicious look. For her part, Holly appeared to be semi-angry with me for never having told her I knew Mike, but she also looked like she was struggling not to giggle.
If I hadn’t been so mad about the Lonely Planet Guide, I would have laughed, too. Holly clearly had taken in the whole situation, and raised her eyebrows at me while Mike handed around drinks. Holly understands make-out interruptus, having been involved in quite a few such sessions herself in her pre-Howard days.
Holly perched on a small chair by the window, crossed her elegant legs, sipped her drink, and said, “Guess what, Kristin? One of Mrs. Potts’s cows, Blossom, is giving birth tonight.” Holly was winking at me and raising her eyebrows in a significant manner. “So she just called her veterinarian.”
Uh-oh.
“I called John Hall and he’s meeting us at the barn in twenty minutes,” Honey told Mike, settling herself into one of the sofas and sipping her drink. Time to go home! blinked like neon in my mind while Holly’s cell phone began to vibrate.
“Oh boy,” Holly said, eyeing her caller ID. “Sophie Shields.”
She answered and listened for a minute. “Okay, hold on.” Holly paused for a second and looked at Mike. “Is it okay if our friend Sophie comes over? She has something important to tell me, and she insists she needs to do it in person.”
“Why not?” Mike said, looking defeated. “Invite anyone you want.”
“Sophie, turn into the driveway at Sanderson. Yes, the place your ex got whacked. Go straight past the barn to the little stone house. You’ll see my car parked right out front,” Holly told her, and hung up.
“Actually, knowing Sophie, she might miss it,” Holly added to the three of us, while checking her manicure.
“Why’s that dingbat coming over?” growled Honey, who, I noted, really did look nice in her white linen Talbots dress. Was that lipstick I noticed on her sun-baked lips, too?
“She has something urgent to tell me. Actually, she’s not that bad,” said Holly. “She’s trying to reinvent herself.”
A car squealed into the gravel road outside, heels rat-a-tatted up the steps, and Waffles and Mike went to the door. Sophie clacked in and Holly made the necessary introductions. That done, Sophie greeted us all amiably, and plopped her small Cavalli-clad frame into a chair, while Honey stared at her, perplexed.
“Nice piece a property you got here!” Sophie said to Honey Potts. “I can see why my ex tried to buy it off you. Not that I think you should sell to him, because I don’t!”
She looked at Mike, and recognition dawned in her Bambi eyes.
“Hey, I remember you,” Sophie said to him. “You came with Honey to my symphony party. Anyway, do you have any champagne?” she asked as Mike poured her a vodka lemonade. “ ’Cause vodka and I don’t get along, if you know what I mean. And also, I have an announcement to make. Champagne would help.”
“I’ll check,” said Mike heading to the kitchen. He returned with a bottle of sparkling wine, popped the cork, and passed us all some wineglasses. We all waited to take a sip while Sophie got to her feet, put her hands on her narrow hips, and told us dramatically:
“Well, girls, and, um, you, the hot guy with the cute scruff and the champagne, I’m in love. I’m in love with a man who wants to paint my whole house beige. I’m in love with Joe!”
My jaw dropped, Holly’s eyes widened in shock, Mike looked confused, and Honey asked, “Who the hell is Joe?”
“He’s my decorator!” Sophie replied. “Holly and Kristin’s friend. Incredibly handsome and I’m nuts about him!”
“Is he straight?” asked Mike.
“Yup,” said Sophie proudly. “I checked.”
For the next five minutes, I had an out-of-body experience listening to Sophie tell us all about how she’d finally realized her true feelings for Joe at the Benjamin Moore paint store the day before. Anyone who cared that much about her house, she reasoned, and was willing to stand up to her preference for purple and gold, was a man she could count on. And she knew that he would never treat her with the callousness that Barclay had. There would be no need to hire PIs to follow Joe around.
I wondered distractedly if Joe could possibly have feelings for Sophie. She was pretty and sweet enough, but she and Joe were as different as Chippendale and Ikea, as diametrically opposed as Campari and Coors. They had absolutely nothing in common. Then again, who knows? Maybe it was time for Joe to move out of Holly’s guest room and get on with his life.
“Listen, girl,” said Honey to Sophie. “I don’t know you. You don’t seem all that smart. And you married Barclay Shields, so your judgment can’t be all that great. But most of us marry a horse’s ass at some point.”
“I did,” agreed Holly.
“I did, too,” said Honey. “And I spent a lot of time being miserable about it. I should’ve picked myself up and gone on with my life, and married someone else. And that’s what you should do, too, Sophie. Go tell this Joe that you love him. Maybe it will all work out.” We all looked at Honey in surprise, but just then a cow bellowed from the barn.
“Blossom!” barked Honey, worriedly. She and Mike got up and zoomed out the front door toward the barn, leaving me, Holly, and Sophie with our cocktails. It seemed Blossom was now in full-on labor, and while I felt badly for the poor cow, it didn’t make me any less sure that Mike was definitely not a potential long-term relationship prospect.
“Let’s go, Holly,” I said. She yawned and agreed.
“I better get going, too,” Sophie piped up.
“I’m exhausted,” Holly moaned. “Just getting Honey to try on clothes at Talbots was a huge ordeal. But I’ve made a lot of headway in our new friendship, and I’m eighty-seven-percent sure she didn’t try to kill Barclay or the chef.”
“I just need to excuse myself for a second, and then I’m ready,” I told her and Sophie. “Be right back.”
Mike’s powder room was snazzy, in an English country house kind of way. The walls were painted a pretty dark red, and there was an old white porcelain sink and a Venetian mirror that was blurry with age. There was a print of a handsome cow on the wall opposite the door, and some books on a shelf above the commode. It was a very cute bathroom. Whatever—so Mike had good taste. As soon as I washed my hands, which were covered with dog hair, I was out of here, and I never wanted to see Mike or his Lonely Planet Guide again.
Then I froze.
At one end of the little bookshelf above the toilet was a silver acorn bookend.
Only one acorn bookend.
I knew this didn’t necessarily implicate Mike, since Walt had told me there were any number of the acorn figurines floating around Bryn Mawr, but, still—one of the acorns? Right here, on the grounds of Sanderson, where a heavy, sharp, bloodied acorn bookend had been found just days before? I felt a shiver of fear run down my spine. Why did I always find myself in these situations lately?
I threw open the door into the small front hallway, noticing in the dim light from the sconces that directly opposite the powder room door, above a small oil painting of a constipated-looking old woman in a bonnet, a gun was mounted on the wall.
It was a glossy, attractive, antique gun made of gleaming wood and elegantly tarnished metal, unmistakably a vintage piece. I don’t know the first thing about firearms, but unless I was very much mistaken, this one was old. Who keeps a gun in their front hallway?
People who go around shooting chefs with antique guns, that’s who! Mike had to be the attacker of both Barclay Shields and Chef Gianni. Why he had gone after the two men, I wasn’t sure, but maybe he was trying to keep Barclay from taking land away from his precious herd of cows. Who knows why he’d target Gianni, but if Mike was a hothead, possibly he just thought the chef, being your basic jackass, was worth shooting.
Mike had been at Sophie’s Symphony party, too, so he could have been the one to push Gianni. When I thought back, I hadn’t seen him among the crowd who’d immediately gathered around the fallen chef. Had he gone inside and pushed Gianni?
“Yikes,” I whispered, petrified. I’d been making out with a murderer. Well, attempted murderer. This was a new low.
I wheeled around to leave the bathroom and went back to the living room to grab Holly and Sophie.
“Look!” I whispered, dragging them into the hallway and pointing toward the gun.
“What?” said Sophie, staring at the rendering of the woman in the bonnet. “Not to be negative, but that painting’s ugly as sin. This lady looks like she hasn’t taken a crap for a week. Did I tell you that always happens to Barclay when we travel? One time when we went to Atlantic City—”
“No, above the painting,” I squeaked, pointing above the small painting. “The old gun. And in here, in the powder room”—I threw open the door and gestured wildly—“the acorn bookend. He’s got all the weapons that have been used over the past week in the attacks on Gianni and Barclay.”
Sophie’s jaw dropped, and Holly looked stunned. She stared at me with comprehension, then clutched my wrist and Sophie’s, one in each hand. Sophie also appeared to put two and two together, and I was pretty sure I saw a light bulb pop on inside her head.
“I know what we’d do in Joisey if we thought we were inside the house of a guy who’s probably a wannabe murderer,” she shrieked.
“What?” asked Holly, looking slightly hysterical.
“Run!” said Sophie.
I grabbed Waffles’s leash, and Sophie ran for her convertible, while Waffles and I got into Holly’s car. I could see that John’s SUV was already parked over at the barn, but there was no sign of him, Mike, or Honey, who all seemed to be inside the brightly lit barn. We sped out up the long driveway of Sanderson toward the road.
“I can’t believe you’ve been kissing a murderer!” Holly said, shooting me a glance as she hit fifty, gravel flying. “Even I have never done that.” She seemed a little envious. “You didn’t have sex with him, did you?”
“Nope,” I told her, truthfully.
“Oh well.” She looked disappointed. “Where did you make out? Was it always at his house?” she asked, pulling into my driveway across the street from the Sanderson gates.
“No, not at all. Once out by my fence, and one other time in the Sanderson barn,” I admitted.
“Against a fence and in a barn?” Holly breathed. She looked impressed. “That’s so . . . so . . . Kenny Chesney, in a good way.”
“That was before I knew about Mike’s crazed-murderer secret,” I explained.
“I’ll call you in the morning and we’ll talk about everything,” I promised, getting out of the car and running into my house like a spooked rabbit, Waffles following me.
“Lock yourself in,” Holly called after me. “You never know if he’ll get that acorn bookend out tonight and smash it into your skull—right after he talks his way into your house and has his way with you on your kitchen floor! Which honestly sounds kind of hot. Except for the skull-smashing part.”
Holly backed out of the driveway and I bolted all the doors, latched all the first-floor windows, and closed the kitchen curtains. Then I ran upstairs, brushed my teeth, and got into bed, frantically clutching the blanket and Waffles, who blew out a sigh and gave me a look that implied I needed to pull myself together—the equivalent of a dog eye roll—before he curled up and went to sleep.
As I calmed down, breathed, and began to think more logically, I started to doubt my freak-out. The bookend wasn’t proof of anything. Walt had said that Bryn Mawr was full of the acorn bookends; lots of people had been given them by Bryn Mawr Prep School, and had passed them along to family members or given them away.
But the acorn and the gun, both within a few feet of each other at Mike’s house, and on the grounds of Sanderson, scene of the acorn crime? It was just too coincidental. I pulled the covers up higher around my ears, retrieved my cell phone from my bedside table, and tucked it under my pillow, wondering if I should call Officer Walt. He struck me as the early-to-bed type, though, and Bootsie had tortured him so much the past week that I hesitated to bother him again. It popped into my mind just before I fell into an exhausted sleep that the bonneted woman in the painting at Mike’s house bore a strong resemblance to Honey. It must be a Potts ancestor that Honey couldn’t stand looking at, since it was basically an ominous predictor of exactly how she was going to look in a few years—it was like the opposite of The Picture of Dorian Gray.
THE NEXT MORNING in the light of day, my terror had turned into a confused headache. I wasn’t feeling too perky when I got to the shop, despite the fact that I’d spent five extra minutes under the shower, and had loaded up my biggest insulated coffee to-go cup at home.
I knew I had to call Officer Walt, but it could wait until after I finished my coffee and dusted.
Or did I really need to tell Walt about the acorn and gun we’d seen last night at Mike’s? Would I sound like a paranoid nut job? And truthfully, even though I now really liked John, I’d harbored a pretty serious crush on Mike (unless, of course, he was a deranged killer, then my crush would immediately and retroactively become null and void). I didn’t want to think badly of Mike.
It seemed a little unfair to call Walt and blab about my suspicions about Mike. Or was it insane not to call Walt? This was awful.
I looked out at the blue skies over Lancaster Avenue in hopes of finding an answer. I considered calling Bootsie and asking her advice, but if I did that, I might as well open a Twitter account, tweet it to CNN, and try to get Anderson Cooper to weigh in. As I ran a dust cloth over some Royal Doulton serving dishes near the front of the store, I realized that the only people I could really talk to about this were Holly and Joe. I knew Holly would have already discussed the discoveries of the gun and bookend at length with Joe, and they’d give me sound advice about whether or not to call Walt.
What I wasn’t sure about was how Joe would react to the news that Sophie Shields was desperately enamored with him. But while this was a major development, it would have to take a backseat to the potentially murderous cowhand.
“People are complicated, Waffles,” I said to the dog, who was happily panting at passersby near the front door. He turned and wagged, his rawhide bone poking sideways out of his mouth in a ridiculous way. I noticed his barrel-shaped body was indeed turning into a round mound of hound. Gerda was right. I sighed. I’d been so distracted lately that we hadn’t been going on our usual long walks.
As I straightened up the shop, I vowed to myself that starting today, I was going to get my life back on track. It was officially Time to Get Motivated. I was going to end—well, severely limit—my time at the club drinking wine with Holly and Joe, sipping coffee and gossiping with Bootsie, and gulping aspirin and listening to Sophie Shields. I needed to hit the flea markets this weekend, because when the shop’s not fully stocked, it’s not an alluring prospect for shoppers. The shop should look full, bursting with adorable accessories and statement-making furniture, which it most definitely didn’t at the moment. This Saturday I’d go on a buying run to Lancaster County, organize the shop, mow my lawn, weed the perennial beds, and clean the house. I’d book a trip to visit my parents in Winkelman. I might even go jogging.
“And I won’t be spending the weekend obsessing over anyone, including Mike, who I’m thinking this morning isn’t a crazed killer,” I told Waffles.
As I was about to dial Holly, I noticed there was a message on my cell phone. I checked the call log and saw that John had been the message leaver; he must have called last night or early this morning, while my phone had been set on silent. I dialed voice mail and listened to John’s message.
He said that he’d like to take me to dinner that night, maybe somewhere downtown.
“Or we can go to the club,” he said, sounding happy, “because my divorce came through yesterday. It’s official. And both Lilly and I are happy about it. She’s in love with a guy she met in Connecticut at a tennis tournament last summer, and she’s finally free to move up there, which she’s been hoping to do.”
The wind was knocked out of me, honestly. I put my cell phone down on my desk, sat down, and took a sip of coffee.
A moment later, belching clouds of smoke in front of the shop announced the arrival of Jimmy and Hugh Best. They clambered in the front door accompanied by the scent of cigars and Old Spice.
“Good news!” said Hugh, who was looking dapper today in a faded Nantucket-red sport coat. “Your friend from New York called us this morning to tell us that the Frenchwoman appraising the ring has ascertained it is a Garrard design.” He beamed, and Jimmy cracked a smile.
“George tells us that this Frenchie has a theory about the ring,” Jimmy added, plunking himself down on the deco bench, while Hugh took Bootsie’s customary Queen Anne chair and petted Waffles. “It could be part of a set of what he calls ‘important jewels.’ Which means—ka-ching!” he said with devilish glee. “Bring on the twenty-five-year-old Macallan and illegally imported Cohibas. Out with the cheap shit, and in with the good stuff!”
“George said there’s a small chance that it’s a significant piece of jewelry,” pointed out Hugh, “and not to expect much.” Hugh clearly was steeling himself against disappointment, and I didn’t blame him.
“That’s wonderful,” I told them happily. “You deserve all the good fortune in the world.”
“Well, we’re very grateful to you and your friend Holly for putting us in touch with Sotheby’s,” said Hugh, sweetly. “This could be our ticket to a comfortable old age.”
“I’m even starting to think we should sell our decrepit old house,” agreed Jimmy, surprising me. “Hugh’s got me half convinced to give in to Barclay Shields; get some fast cash for the old place, and start over. Get a condo where the oven works, there’s no mold in the basement, and the heat doesn’t thump and ping all night.”
“I don’t think that sounds like a very good idea at all,” said a frosty feminine voice from the front of the store.
We all swiveled toward the coolly elegant voice; the sleigh bells I keep on the door handle jingled as the door closed behind Mariellen Merriwether, who stood there in a tasteful pale green linen frock, a beige handbag, and beige low-heeled pumps, her right hand caressing her ever-present pearls.
“I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to find you alone,” Mariellen said to me in a low tone that threatened me more than an out-and-out hissy fit would have. Her Caribbean-blue eyes flashed demonically, and I had a sudden vision of her in a coat made of sewn-together Dalmatian puppy hides.
“Er—you have?” I said nervously.
“Well, she ain’t alone, Mariellen,” offered Jimmy jocularly. “Obviously. May I say, that dress makes you look positively fetching. Reminds me of our old school dances back in the sixties when I was dating Honey and you were going steady with Martin.”
“This young woman never seems to be without one of her drunken cronies during the day, or at night,” Mariellen observed, ignoring him. “Too busy trying to sleep with all the men in this town.”
“I haven’t slept with any of the men!” I protested, shocked. “At least, not lately. If you mean your daughter’s ex-husband, I’ve barely even kissed him.”
“Husband,” she corrected me. “Her current husband. They are still married.”
I didn’t think this was the appropriate time to tell her that this was no longer the case, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Mariellen, be reasonable,” said Jimmy, who was twirling an unlit cigar in his left hand. “You’re being a bit rude, my dear. From what I hear at the club, your daughter dumped her hubby more than a year ago for some Andre Agassi type in Connecticut. You can’t expect the fellow she’s divorcing to stay single forever.”
“I’m being rude?” sniffed Mariellen, still standing in the front of the store like a statue while Waffles sniffed her ankles happily, perhaps catching a whiff of Norman. “I don’t think so at all.
“I’m merely being direct, and unlike everyone else in this town, I’m disciplined, and focused on getting things done,” Mariellen continued, using her beige pump to give Waffles a swift kick in the neck. Shocked, he whimpered and ran over to his dog bed.
Nothing like that has ever happened to Waffles before. I was aghast, but I was so stunned that I didn’t say anything for fear of setting her off even more.
“For instance,” she went on, “I am determined to halt the awful, hideous, destructive spread of tacky new houses all over this town, and so I took a stand against that Shields person.
“And I’m equally against our town becoming the sort of glitzed-up, celebrity-chef-worshipping, restaurant-obsessed place where people blab on about rare taleggio cheeses and which pig in Parma their prosciutto came from!” she ranted furiously. “People like Mr. Shields and that hideous chef are ruining Bryn Mawr!”
What exactly was Mariellen saying?
“Uh, Mariellen, are you angry about cheese?” said Hugh, confused and astonished at this geyser of rage.
“She’s angry that Bryn Mawr is changing, and that she can’t stop change,” said Jimmy simply. “And so she tried to kill Mr. Shields and the Italian chef to send a message.”
Mariellen nodded. “This is a cheddar and Triscuits town, not some fancy Neiman Marcus place with frou-frou pastas and overpriced wine. I get my chardonnay at the Wine Stop for six dollars a bottle, and that’s good enough for me.” She seemed to calm down for second while talking about her bargain wine, but then dialed up her nutty-rage factor again as she turned on the Bests.
“And you two, letting go of a house that’s been in your family for two centuries. The idea of selling out to Barclay Shields!” she yelled at Hugh and Jimmy, incensed.
“The heat doesn’t work,” Jimmy told her. “Freeze my tuchus off all winter, Mariellen. We don’t all have the millions of dollars in a trust fund that you enjoy. But we haven’t sold the house. You’re misinformed.”
“I don’t have time for this pointless debate,” she said, more calmly, striding toward us. That’s when I saw she was holding a small, but nonetheless very scary, antique gun.
She had a firm grip on the gun, which was tarnished with age, but clearly a finely made handgun from decades back. If I had to make a guess, I realized, this gun was the same vintage as the one used to shoot the chef.
Mariellen’s spine was straight as a NASA laser as she held the gun with a practiced hand.
“I thought I saw a gun in your handbag when you pulled out your cigarettes the other day,” Jimmy told her. “Was up in the attic at the club, and had some old binoculars out. Told myself my eyes were playing tricks on me. Something glinted in your handbag, and it looked the right shape, but I didn’t want to believe it of you.”
Mariellen ignored him.
“If you try to scream or run, I’ll shoot your dog,” she told me. My heart plummeted, and I felt nauseated and numb. Why hadn’t I grabbed my cell phone from my desk when she’d first walked in?
“Out the door, all of you, and get into my car. Anyone have a cell phone?” she asked.
I pointed sadly toward mine, sitting uselessly on the desk, while Jimmy and Hugh explained they didn’t believe in cell phones, and in addition, why would they pay forty dollars a month for such an unnecessary device.
“I hope you know what you’re doing with that gun, Mariellen,” Jimmy barked at her.
“Of course I know what I’m doing,” she retorted. “I’ve been around guns my whole life, rode in all the hunts at Sanderson in the old days, and had target practice with Papa every Saturday. How else do you think I shot that Italian chef from two hundred yards away with Papa’s old shotgun? Not this gun, of course,” she said, waving her pistol. “The shotgun has a much longer range. I could have killed him, but I was fairly sure that another warning note combined with shooting him in the foot would convince him to close the old firehouse and go back to the city. I left the note for him today, warning him that next time I won’t aim low.”
Jimmy, Hugh, and I exchanged glances, with Hugh looking as shaky as I felt, and Jimmy wearing an expression of true surprise. Well, it was official. Mariellen had shot the chef, and now she was prepared to shoot the three of us. I could feel my bones turning to mayonnaise as we all marched toward the door.
Including Waffles, who’d forgotten about getting kicked in the neck and was now galloping happily after the four of us, thinking we were going somewhere fun—maybe on a walk!—and he’d be missing out.
“Lie down, Waffles,” I told the dog shakily, shooing him back toward his bed. “Go play with your bone,” I told him desperately, while he ignored me.
“Bring him,” Mariellen told me flatly. She looped the handles of her purse over her arm, so that her right hand was free to keep a grip on the weapon, and jingled her car keys with her left hand. Waffles trotted even faster after us. He loves the jingle of keys.
“He’s fine here,” I said, trying for a lighthearted tone while I choked back a sob.
“I said, bring that fat mutt.”
I let Waffles out the door, shakily closed and locked the door behind us, then led my trusting hound to her Range Rover. Waffles even wagged at Mariellen when I opened the backseat to the roomy truck, looking around desperately for anyone to flag down on the normally busy street. Of course, there wasn’t a soul in sight.
Why, today of all days, couldn’t Bootsie be out walking Lancaster Avenue, sticking her nose into the café, the hardware store, the post office, and the bakery, hoping to catch a cheating spouse or hear about a drunken escapade at a party, as per her custom? Why wasn’t Holly heading back from Booty Camp, or Joe and Sophie at the paint store a few doors down, debating fifty shades of beige? But there was absolutely no one out on the street at the moment. Even the elderly lady who runs the liquor store, who’s almost always outside puffing on a Parliament, had disappeared.
“You drive,” Mariellen told me, handing me the keys to her large black Mercedes, her gun aimed firmly at Waffles. My hand trembled as I climbed into the driver’s seat and inserted the key into the ignition. Mariellen gestured for Hugh to sit shotgun, and she, Jimmy, and Waffles got into the backseat. A tear rolled down my cheek.
“What in the name of Johnnie Walker are you up to, Mariellen?” complained Jimmy as he buckled his seat belt—an unnecessary precaution, probably, since we all seemed as good as dead. “If you’ve gotten yourself into trouble, we should go discuss it with the police. And maybe a good headshrinker.”
“We’ll discuss it at my house,” she said. “Head toward Sanderson, then take a right on Camellia Lane.”
Mariellen’s estate was only minutes away, in the opposite direction of Sophie Shields’s house. Shady Camellia Lane is one of the prettiest roads in Bryn Mawr, but I didn’t notice its namesake flowers in bloom as I shakily steered the large car into her driveway per Mariellen’s instructions. Her property had no gates, just a small black mailbox set in a bank of irises and lilies. The driveway was lined with oak trees, and the sense of privacy would have been idyllic under different circumstances.
The driveway wound back from Camellia Lane, and as we rounded a curve and the house came into view, even in my panic I couldn’t help noticing that Mariellen’s stone farmhouse oozed good taste. Dogwoods bloomed along the walkway to her dark green front door, and flower boxes filled with hot-pink petunias were mounted on each front window. I guess elegance and insanity aren’t mutually exclusive.
Behind her house was a paddock, and then a barn, painted pristine white, with none of the mud and muck you normally see outside a horse barn. The grass was as lush as that of a golf course, and the pathways were beautifully raked and maintained. To its right was a large pond, covering at least three acres, upon which a pair of geese was swimming; in front of the pond, a gravel lane led off into the woods. “That lane leads over to Lilly’s house,” Mariellen informed us. “The house I bought for her and her husband.” She shot me a significant look as I pulled up and parked to the right of her house.
Mariellen had it made. She lived in one of the most beautiful houses I’d ever seen, inherited along with a large trust fund, making her one extremely lucky woman. She had a devoted daughter, and a schedule filled with cocktail parties, golf, and a beloved horse. Her life appeared to be as flawless as her pearls. How could anyone who lived in such a gorgeous setting be so mean? Even if the rest of Philadelphia was being developed and modernized, she had carved out an island of farmland that seemed frozen in time. She was completely isolated in bucolic perfection.
A whinny pierced the birdsong humming all around us as we climbed out of the car at Mariellen’s direction, the gun aimed steadily at me. I saw Norman’s tall brown head sticking out of his stall, looking around to see what was up.
“Mummy will bring you your alfalfa soon, darling!” cried Mariellen to the horse, who neighed back at her. Waffles sniffed and spied Norman, started wagging, and whined excitedly.
“Inside, please,” said Mariellen frostily.
MARIELLEN’S FOYER WAS painted lime green, and had ornate old woodwork that was exceptionally lovely. In orderly lines along the front hallway hung a dozen pretty framed floral prints by Pierre-Joseph Redouté. A graceful staircase was directly in front of us, and then the hallway led back to a sunroom painted pale yellow and filled with orchids in full bloom. For the house of a psychotic country clubber, this was all very beautiful.
Also, as Bootsie had reported, there was toile and monograms out the yin-yang. On the antique console table in the hall sat lime-green lamps with monogrammed M shades, a silver tray embossed with double Ms, and M-monogrammed cocktail napkins. Flanking the console were two side chairs covered with a riot of green toile, depicting French milkmaids, cows, horses, and birds; the dining room, visible to our right, featured monograms everywhere, including the seats of the dining chairs. I began to feel a twinge of migraine in my left eye. Everything was in perfect order, of course, but the mind boggled at the varying patterns.
“We’ll sit in the library,” Mariellen announced, opening a door off the lime hallway into a pink and white library in which the theme seemed to be horses. Straight ahead was a lovely fireplace, and on either side of it were old-fashioned Dutch doors. The top halves of the horizontally-divided doors were open, with banks of buoyant rosebushes visible beyond them, and then a fenced paddock filled with jade grass. At the right was a pink-toile-covered window seat, and on the walls were several large old English paintings of Norman look-alikes depicted standing in Cotswold meadows. There were silver-framed photos of Norman himself on the glossy antique tables, looking quite regal as he was awarded ribbons at local horse shows, and a few pictures of Lilly were scattered around, too (though she got less play than the horse, I noticed).
However, on the mantel was a wedding picture taken just outside this very house, and I didn’t need to look twice to realize who the couple was. I gulped and vowed to not look at this picture of Lilly and John, turning my attention instead to the coffee table, which featured monogrammed items including coasters, decanters, and glass bowls. The sofas were, naturally, pink toile. My eye began to twitch.
The twitch got worse when I noticed that as Hugh sat nervously in a pink wing chair and Jimmy leaned against a farm door, Waffles was eyeing the plump sofas with a look I knew all too well: The expression in his eyes foretold a flying sofa leap at any second, which I thought might mean instant shooting with Mariellen’s pistol. I grabbed his collar and held tight while I stroked his ears, and tried to keep him from drooling on the pink needlepoint rug embroidered with Norman-style horses.
“Let’s get down to brass tacks, Mariellen,” Jimmy said impatiently as he looked around the room for a bar. His eye landed on a table over by the window with more decanters on it, and he made a beeline for it and poured himself a stiff Scotch. Mariellen kept the gun trained on him, and seated herself, ramrod straight, on the chair that was a twin to Hugh’s.
“You’re the one who banged Shields in the head. Is that what you’re saying?” Jimmy asked her, plunking himself down on the window seat as he swigged his drink.
“Of course I did,” Mariellen said primly. “See the empty spots on my bookshelves?” She pointed to shelves at our left. “That’s where my acorn bookends used to be. I had four of the bookends—two of my own, two from my good-for-nothing former husband, who also went to Bryn Mawr Prep, before he married me and then bolted for some dusty hill town in South America—and I gave them away to the church charity sale last fall. Eula Morris was working at the charity sale that day.
“I knew Eula would remember that I’d given four bookends, since she’s such a busybody,” Mariellen continued, pleased with herself. “If anyone ever suspects me—which they won’t—I could simply tell them to check with Eula and she’d confirm that I’d given away all four acorns months before Mr. Shields was hit.
“But during the church sale, while Eula was inside trying to hit up Honey for money to restore the stage at the symphony,” Mariellen told us, “I quietly put one bookend back in the trunk of my car. Then, while I was manning the lemonade stand, two horrible hippie women came by in a van that reeked of marijuana, and bought the other three.”
Annie and Jenny, I thought to myself, who couldn’t remember where they’d gotten the bookends. They must have been high, and forgotten attending the church sale where they’d bought the acorns. Not that it mattered now. It was ironic that I’d ended up with Mariellen’s acorns, but I didn’t think this was a good time to bring that up.
“I saved the fourth bookend just for Mr. Shields,” Mariellen said, pleased. “A man like that needs to be literally hit in the head with something to understand it. And I thought the acorn was a fitting symbol of what this area used to be: tasteful and modest.”
Honestly, her house with its vast paddocks, barn, and ornate decorating wasn’t all that modest, but I kept this to myself.
“So I set up a fake meeting for Mr. Shields and Honey ten days ago,” she continued, crossing her slim legs as a light breeze blew in through the picturesque farm doors. “I knew he’d be positively chomping at the bit to buy some of Sanderson’s acreage. When Honey dropped me off here at home after that disgusting party at the old firehouse, I simply slipped the bookend in my saddlebag, jumped on Norman, and rode over to Sanderson to meet Mr. Shields. Takes me a matter of minutes to ride there, as you know; it’s just through the woods. A beautiful trail runs over that way. I tied Norman to a tree just past the barn and out of sight of the house, and then walked over and hit the despicable man right on his head. He was knocking so hard on the front door and cursing a blue streak about no one answering, that he never heard me coming.”
Jimmy, Hugh, and I exchanged glances, with Hugh approximating the terrified, bulging eyes I once saw on a Pomeranian that Waffles once tried to befriend at the pet store over in Haverford. Jimmy put up a better front of bravado, and honestly didn’t seem scared.
“Did Honey help you hide Shields after he was knocked out?” he asked. “How the hell did you move that big fat man into the bushes?”
“I didn’t,” Mariellen informed him, lighting a Virginia Slim.
“As a matter of fact, I left him right there on Honey’s front doorstep. I took the bookend and went out to the pasture, where I tossed the bookend into a briar patch. Naturally, since I wear riding gloves, there weren’t any fingerprints on the bookend.” She paused and took an elegant puff on her cigarette. “Then the oddest thing happened. I was at least a quarter of a mile away, and just getting ready to ride Norman home, when two men came walking down Honey’s driveway. I could just see them in the light over Honey’s front door; they wore horrible leather jackets and jeans, and they grabbed Barclay by the feet and dragged him away from the house.” She shrugged. “I didn’t wait to see what happened after that.”
“What are the chances!” hooted Jimmy, leaning back on the window seat cushions. “It must have been those mafia guys who’ve been looking for Shields. You got the job started for them, Mariellen.” For someone who might be killed at any second, Jimmy seemed totally at ease. The only logical conclusion I could make was that Mariellen was intent on permanently silencing all of us, because why else would she be telling us all this? Hugh, on the other hand, appeared to be catatonic with fear, which was closer to my own state of mind. Maybe Jimmy thought Mariellen wouldn’t really shoot him.
Personally, I really did think she’d shoot me.
“And when the chef fell at the symphony party—you pushed him off Sophie Shields’s balcony?” I asked.
“Easily,” said Mariellen proudly, twisting her pearls. “When that dreadful Sophie was showing us around the house, which I knew she’d be dying to do, I lingered behind in the kitchen for a few minutes and saw that there was a large pantry closet I could easily conceal myself in. Later, when the cooks all took a cigarette break and Honey was in the powder room—she takes forever in the bathroom, honestly—I simply slipped into the pantry, waited till the chef was outside on the landing, and gave him a good hard shove.”
I was kind of impressed by this. Mariellen didn’t screw around.
“If people still had the gumption we had back in the 1960s, we’d all be a lot better off!” Mariellen added. “That was a time when this area was serene and unspoiled. It’s all been downhill from there, and in my own small way, I’ve been trying to stem the tide.”
Mariellen had taken nostalgia to a psychotic level, I realized. In a strange way, I could understand her longing for the past, if not the extreme measures she’d taken toward trying to preserve it. We all mourn for things that are lost, of course, but hopefully we can put the losses in perspective. I always felt sad when I’d see one of the quirky old shops along Lancaster Avenue close, like the place that only sold antique trains, and then the musty old Irish sweater place, because they reminded me of my childhood. But truthfully, I’d never set foot in either of the shops. It was indeed awful to see chainsaws cutting down Bryn Mawr’s ancient towering trees to make room for house upon new house, but change is inevitable, and, on a more positive note, if nothing ever changed, no one would have invented Starbucks. In her quest to maintain a bygone way of life, Mariellen had, to put it in clinical terms, gone cuckoo.
“And by the way, John, my son-in-law, is going to be a member of this family till the day he dies,” Mariellen said to me. “Now, hand me that dog’s leash.”
Another tear trickled down my cheek as Waffles wagged, confused, and I clutched his collar more tightly.
“What are you going to do with him?” I whispered.
“I’m going to march all four of you over to the pond, and I think you can figure out what comes next,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette in an Hermès ashtray. “My pond is enormous, and very deep, and the koi fish and trout will gobble up your corpses in no time. I’m a member of one of the oldest families in Bryn Mawr, darling. The police would never dare question me, let alone even consider me as a suspect, or think to look anywhere on my property for your sad selves. If anyone saw us get into my car—which they didn’t—I’ll say I dropped you all at the club, and no one will doubt a word I say.
“So let’s all get up and start walking, shall we?”
I’ve always had a strange antipathy toward koi fish, with their huge mouths and chubby fish bodies. I felt like I’d gone into a coma of fear, when we suddenly heard a familiar whinny outside, accompanied by the clip-clop of hooves on the slate pathway just outside the library.
Norman stuck his long, gleaming, brown neck in through the open top of the farm door and neighed at Mariellen inquisitively, while Waffles woofed at the horse.
“Norman, how did you get out of your stall?” Mariellen asked the horse, irritated.
“Who is this horse, Mr. Ed?” demanded Jimmy.
“I let Norman out, Mummy,” we heard a girly voice call out from some twenty yards away, just behind Norman in the sunshine. “I came back from early from Greenwich, and thought I’d turn him out in the paddock and come say hi to you. Do you have friends over? And was that a dog I heard in there?”
Lilly!
Lilly’s beautiful face appeared next to Norman’s, and she peered into the pink library. Her eyes widened in shock as she took in the scene around her. “Mummy! And the Best brothers? Why do you all look so serious . . . and, Mummy, what are you doing holding that gun?”