“I CAN’T BELIEVE I’m saying this, but thank goodness for Lilly Merriwether,” I told Holly and Joe that night at Holly’s house.
It was a warm night with candles lit on the patio and drinks flowing, but even with a sweater on and chubby, snuggly Waffles next to me on Holly’s enormous chaise longue, I was still shivering. “If she hadn’t shown up with Norman, Waffles and I and the Bests would be fish food right now,” I told them.
“There’d probably be nothing left of you. Your bones would be picked as clean as a Thanksgiving turkey,” agreed Joe. “I had a client once whose terrier fell into her koi pond, and whoosh—before she could grab the dog, it was a feeding frenzy! The fish gobbled the pooch alive in like fifteen seconds.”
“That’s disgusting!” Holly told him, frowning. “And very insensitive.”
“Sorry,” said Joe, looking apologetic. “I just could never get that image out of my mind. You and the dog would probably be the ones the fish would eat first,” he added to me, reflecting on this with some interest, “since the Bests are really old and wouldn’t taste all that good. Too stringy. The dog would probably the best meal of the four of you, to be honest.” He eyed Waffles approvingly.
I was about to beg him to change the subject when my cell phone rang. Bootsie, for about the seventy-fifth time that night. I’d taken her first six calls, and then was too tired to talk to her anymore. I hit ignore, figuring that Bootsie would probably just show up at Holly’s soon anyway.
The past five hours had been beyond exhausting. Thankfully, when Lilly Merriwether saw her mother pointing a gun at the four of us, she had calmly taken in the situation, then walked into her mother’s library and convinced Mariellen to give her the weapon. Mariellen was so crazy (literally) about Lilly that it took her daughter less than a minute to convince Mariellen that what she was doing “wasn’t a very good idea,” as Lilly told her.
Mariellen was led upstairs to take an aspirin and lie down, and Lilly hadn’t objected when Jimmy had immediately called the police. Within twenty minutes of Officer Walt’s arrival, it had been decided that Mariellen needed to be hospitalized, rather than spend time in a jail cell while awaiting a hearing with a judge; Walt and Lilly had driven Mariellen over to the hospital, where she was currently under psychiatric care.
It turned out that Lilly had already had her suspicions about her mother’s mental health, but had been feeling helpless as to what to do about them.
I felt terrible about all of this, but was happy that Mariellen was getting help, rather than sitting in jail with no toilet seats, polyester jumpsuits, and instant mashed potatoes. That didn’t seem right for her, even though she’d attempted to murder an innocent doggie (and me, and the Bests). I couldn’t believe all this had happened today, and here we were back on Holly’s patio as if it was a typical early-summer evening. I shivered again despite the warm night.
“It’s George calling,” said Holly, as her cell phone buzzed. “Uh-huh,” she said to George. “Um-hmm. That’s interesting. Very interesting. Wow!”
Holly hung up and stared at us, her sky-blue eyes huge. “It turns out that Hugh and Jimmy’s ring is part of a set of diamond-and-ruby jewels that was made in London for someone named the Countess of Cascott in 1884.
“Their jewelry department just got the confirmation from Garrard this afternoon that the ring is part of the Countess of Cascott jewels, and”—Holly paused dramatically—“the rest of the Cascott rubies, a necklace and a pair of earrings, sold a couple of years ago for almost five million dollars. And the ring has the biggest, rarest ruby of the whole set!”
As we sat there trying to absorb this information, wheels crunched on the driveway, and Sophie Shields popped around the hedge, waving.
“Hiya Kristin!” she said. “I heard you almost got killed today. I can’t believe it!”
“I can’t, either,” I told her. I was glad Sophie wasn’t a wannabe killer, after all, though I didn’t mention that to her.
“It turns out it was Barclay’s fake cousins from Jersey had come to slap him around a little last Thursday, and followed him over to that Sanderson place.”
“I heard,” I told her.
“The Jersey guys said Barclay owed them fifty grand from some construction company they owned together back in the late nineties, and he was cheaping out on paying it. Barclay called and told me he settled up with them this week, so they’re not after him anymore,” Sophie added. “Not that it changes anything between me and him. I’m still getting divorced, I’m still fighting for my shoe closet, and I’m still crazy about that one right there.” She pointed at Joe and winked at him, making “mwah” kissing noises in his direction.
Just as Sophie wriggled herself into the sofa next to an embarrassed-looking Joe, John appeared around the hedge of rosebushes. “I went to your house, but your neighbors said you were here,” he said, walking over and sitting down next to me and gently taking my hand. “I’m so sorry about all this. Can I give you a ride home?”
I DECIDED TO take the next day off work to celebrate not being killed by Mariellen, and because I’d stayed up late the night before with John, who had been very reassuring. Even if his ex-mother-in-law hadn’t tried to kill me, he told me, he was ready to start over, and he was happy that his divorce from Lilly had come through. He felt terrible about Mariellen’s mental breakdown, which obviously wasn’t his fault.
I spent most of the morning over at the Bests’, where the three of us pored over stories about their mother’s ring in local newspapers. Even the New York Times had a short piece about the amazing discovery of a rare seventeen-carat Burmese ruby once belonging to the Cascott family of Ackworth, England.
“We did have a great-aunt Prunella whose last name was Cascott,” Hugh Best told me, looking dazed as he sat out on the back screened porch, sipping a cup of coffee, his hands shaking.
“Auntie Pru always loaded a lot of jewelry on,” agreed Jimmy. “Most of it she sold over the years, but she was the one who left the ring to our mother. Guess she forgot to tell Mother that it was good stuff, not just the usual costume junk.”
George was quoted in the Times as saying that Sotheby’s was rushing the ring into its summer sale as a last-minute addition on the following Thursday. It was too late for the ring to be included in the catalog, but they were printing a special insert, and he was sure all the media attention would bring in the right buyer. Sotheby’s was indeed publicizing the ring with impressive zeal, calling it a lost treasure of English jewels, found in a “dusty, moldering mansion outside Philadelphia,” which irked Hugh a bit. On a plus note, he and Jimmy were going to be interviewed the following day for the Today Show, and even that bible of excellent news, People, had called them.
At noon, Holly, Joe, and I met outside on the patio at Gianni’s, where Holly shocked me by ordering the Bolognese pasta.
“I’m eating carbs today,” she said, crossing her perfectly tanned legs. “You almost getting killed made me realize that I should eat carbs at least once a week. Plus I need to keep up my strength to follow all the news with the Bests’ ring, and this budding romance between Sophie and Joe, and whatever’s going on with you and that vet. Not to mention Mike Woodford.”
“It’s a lot of information,” I agreed. “But I’m done with Mike. I really like John.”
“I think Mike is really cute,” Holly told us. “And, there’s something that makes him even cuter. I had coffee with Honey this morning, who’s obviously devastated that her best friend is a homicidal maniac.”
Holly paused for effect. “Honey told me that Mike is actually her nephew, which is why he lives in that cottage at Sanderson. And when Honey dies, Mike inherits Sanderson, all three hundred acres and the huge house.”
I WOULDN’T GO so far as to say I actually fainted when Holly told me this, but my vision got blurry and I teetered on the edge of consciousness. Holly didn’t seem to notice, but rattled on about Honey and Mike for a few minutes, while I recovered myself and Joe and I listened raptly to these nuggets of Potts family lore.
It seemed Honey had a younger sister who’d gone away to college in the sixties to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, married her geology professor, an older man named Roger Woodford, and never came back to Sanderson, except for the occasional visit at Thanksgiving, when Honey’s parents would first berate her for marrying an academic, and then for not moving back to the family compound. The sister had one son, Mike, who Honey had always had a soft spot for.
“Honey says that Mike always had the Potts passion for cows,” Holly told me, sipping a frosty glass of wine. “So Honey got him to move up here last year, and she’s grooming him to take over Sanderson one day. Actually, I was thinking of asking Honey if she’d fix me up with Mike,” added Holly casually.
What? I thought my brain would rocket straight out of the top of my head. I’m usually never jealous of Holly, but I’m only human. If she took her closets brimming with Chanel and her Ellsworth Kelly paintings and her piles of jewelry and moved to Sanderson with Mike, this would be truly unfair. She already had a gorgeous house and nice husband. I liked John more than Mike—I was pretty sure—but this was going too far.
“But then I realized that Mike’s more your type,” Holly added serenely to me, twirling her pasta on a silver fork. “He’s got that burly carpenter look you always go for. And he’s kind of hairy. Plus I’m getting back together with Howard. He convinced me that he didn’t have an affair. He took a lie detector test in my lawyer’s office yesterday about whether he slept with that bartender, and he passed.”
My brain unswelled. I felt really happy for Holly, and not just because I didn’t want her to have barn sex with Mike, or marry him and move into Sanderson.
“That’s great!” I told her sincerely. “I’m really happy for you and Howard.”
“Finally!” said Joe, looking relieved. “Howard can move out of the city and in with you. I’m starting to feel like a surly teenager living in your guest room. I’m going back to my own apartment.” He blushed. “At least until I figure out what’s happening with me and Sophie.”
“So are you going to keep making out with Mike, or go for the veterinarian?” Holly asked me. “Mike would be perfect for you. He’s even been to Thailand. Honey told me he loves to travel and has been all over the world. All the guys you date love Thailand.”
“It’s funny you should mention that,” I said, “because I don’t want to date guys who backpack through Thailand anymore, and I think that rules out Mike.”
“Maybe he’s done with his Thai beach fantasy,” Joe said. “People change. Look at me. If you told me a month ago that I’d be interested in the ex-wife of a Mafia guy, I’d have laughed my head off. Truth is, I kind of like Sophie.”
I was happy for Joe, but was feeling more confused than ever. John was so handsome, kind, and reliable that he was doing a great job of making me forget—almost—about Mike’s amazingly good soap smell and great arms. I sighed, and tried to enjoy the great lunch and the pretty patio setting at Gianni’s. I didn’t need to figure this out today. I was just happy to be alive, and nowhere near a koi pond.