THE NEXT MORNING, after Sophie Shields bought everything in The Striped Awning and after Bootsie finally left, I packed up every damn thing in the store. This tedious task took a little over seven hours, but I was happy to do it. I bubble-wrapped and carefully placed items in a dozen moving boxes; I carefully folded paper around the crystals adorning the Palm Beach chandelier, wound tarps around the legs of a maple hall table and the vanity in the front window, and polished silver candlesticks and a tea set (leaving a little patina on the tea set, since I figured if Sophie had live-in Pilates help, she had people to polish silver for her).
Luckily, I had a fair amount of furniture and accessories in the back room of The Striped Awning with which I could restock the store once I delivered Sophie’s loot to her. “This is a ton of stuff!” I told Waffles, who wagged back at me.
Between all the silverware and wineglasses, pillows and prints, several pages of the yellow legal pad I was using to keep track of Sophie’s purchases filled up rapidly. There were old glass decanters, a needlepoint stool, and a set of blue-and-white Chinese export dessert plates, all things that I had loved when I’d bought them at flea markets and estate sales, which is important in the antiques business: You have to believe in what you’re selling. I loved them even more at the moment, since they were going to help me pay my mortgage and keep the store open. I even apologized to the chair I’d yelled at the day before.
For packing music, I turned up the country-music station on the radio, and occasionally thought about cute Mike Woodford, distracted by visions of his tan forearms and dark-stubbled jaw. I also thought about Barclay Shields, wondering how he was doing with his head injury, and shuddered at the image of his extra-wide Ferragamos under the bush last night. Then I sternly ordered myself to focus.
Occasionally, I’d pause to calculate the subtotal as I worked my way through the store, singing out, “We just made another four hundred dollars!” and “Mirror: two hundred!” until I finally reached the back of the small store and the grand total: seven thousand, five hundred, and seventy dollars. Minus rent and my AmEx bill, this meant The Striped Awning was in business for at least another few months. At three, I called Mr. Webster to tell him I’d be dropping off a check for this month as soon as Sophie’s Visa payment went through, probably by Tuesday. He sounded like he thought this was bullshit, but accepted my promise of payment.
Finally, at five-thirty, I went into the store’s tiny black-and-white-striped powder room, washed my dusty face and hands, put on new mascara and lipstick, pulled my hair out of its ponytail, and shook it down around my shoulders. I attempted to shake the wrinkles out of my dress (Gap outlet, black cotton, thirty-nine dollars) and spritzed on some of Grandma’s YSL perfume, circa 1970, which sits on a little shelf in the bathroom and, by some miracle, still smells fantastic. I hoped the YSL drowned out some of my current scent, which was a combination of dust, old furniture, silver polish, and basset hound.
Waffles was giving me a significant look at the back door of the store, so we went outside, where he did his daily double in the grass behind the store. I pooper-scooped, went back inside, filled up his water bowl, and threw a handful of kibble into a dish. By the time I’d grabbed my keys to leave, he’d inhaled his dinner and was back on his bed, asleep. That’s one of the great things about Waffles. He sleeps about twenty hours a day, the bulk of them snoring on his bed in the store. The downside of this is that the four hours he’s awake, he’s incredibly energetic and steals all my food. He’d grabbed the chicken salad I’d bought for lunch today, as a matter of fact, while I briefly turned my back to answer the phone. He gave me Sad Eyes and looked convincingly guilty after he ate it, though I’m not sure that was the case.
“I’ll be back in twenty minutes—one quick drink!” I promised the sleeping dog, then locked up and rushed to the club to meet Holly and Joe.
“Seven thousand, five hundred, and seventy dollars. Seven thousand, five hundred, and seventy dollars,” I sang good-humoredly to the tune of “Happy Birthday to You,” as I drove down Lancaster Avenue, the main drag in town, where The Striped Awning sits along with the luncheonette, a few boutiques, a bakery, and the (very popular) liquor store. Then I turned left onto shady Montgomery Lane, and after a quarter mile, into the rosebush-lined entrance of Bryn Mawr Country Club.
The cars in the parking lot were a mix that closely resembled the members—some new and glossy, some old and dusty. My own slightly dented old Subaru looked even seedier than usual, I noticed, parked next to a gleaming Jaguar convertible in a nice, cool, shady spot under a two-hundred-year-old oak.
“Uh-oh,” I said aloud to myself a minute later, peering around the corner of the club’s wide porch from behind a wide pillar. I could see Honey Potts and Mariellen Merriwether at the other end of the porch, seated at one of the wrought-iron dining tables and watching a tennis match on the club’s grass courts. Honey was eating a plate of fried oysters and drinking her trusty Stoli. Mariellen was in her pearls, smoking a Virginia Slim. Just in front of me were Holly and Joe.
Phew—I could sneak up the side steps of the porch to Holly and Joe’s table unnoticed. There were a dozen tables crowded with preppy members between us, and Honey and Mariellen would never see me. I was pretty sure Honey hadn’t taken much notice of me last night in the dark while she’d been talking to the police, but on the off chance that she had, I was intent on avoiding her.
I had noticed her eyeing Waffles, though, last night when she’d been standing there in her white cotton nightshirt—oh, that I could erase the image of Mrs. Potts in her sleep garb from my brain—since his short legs and massive ears make him kind of hard to ignore. In her mind, I was sure, not only had Waffles and I recklessly trespassed on the hallowed grounds of Sanderson last night, we’d been instrumental in discovering a crime scene that had forever tarnished the property. Eventually someone would have found Mr. Shields, but I didn’t think Honey had considered that. I breathed deep yoga breaths for a moment (I don’t do yoga, but I’ve heard the breathing is good), and gazed around at the club grounds to calm myself.
You can’t beat the club for sheer old-fashioned loveliness and stateliness, especially at this time of day, with the late-afternoon sun turning into shade and shadows lengthening around the hulking building. The century-old structure is three stories high, all gables and mullioned windows, with a charming shingled roof above brick walls and the wide wooden porches. Inside is a dining room, rarely used except in the winter, vintage locker rooms with mahogany cabinets for tennis and golf gear, and an incredible old paneled bar, which until the late 1960s had actually been men-only (women had to drink either in the locker rooms, or when seated in the dining room or on the porch, which seemed a little unfair, though there were some nice comfy couches in the locker rooms). Adjacent to the tennis courts are the golf course and putting greens. The grounds are at their best this time of year, too, with rosebushes exploding with buds, and borders of lilies and peonies in fragrant, massive bloom.
Holly and I had both been coming here since childhood—like her family, my grandparents had been members all their lives, long before younger (and richer) people had started to join in the last ten years. The club had needed new members to survive, and opening up membership had been, to my mind, a great thing. The club now attracted people in their thirties and forties, with glossy hair and adorable children, alongside all the eighty-five-year-olds who wore vintage Lilly Pulitzer not because it was chic again, but because they’d been wearing it for fifty years and their closets were filled with the flowered frocks. The place was like Grey Gardens meets a Tommy Hilfiger ad.
One of the rich new members, as a matter of fact, was Holly’s soon-to-be ex-husband, Howard the Garbage and Trucking Mogul, whom Holly had met outside the locker rooms one afternoon three years ago. Howard’s gazillion-plus trash trucks handle the refuse pickup for pretty much every house along the East Coast from Jersey to Florida, and Howard had just personally paid for the club’s new racquetball courts (called, of course, the Howard Jones Racquetball Courts). He’d been standing there with Ronnie, the head bartender and manager, discussing the club’s waste-removal discount, when he’d spied Holly coming out of the locker room in her tennis outfit. Bingo! They’d been married four months later. It’s a fact that Holly, while she rarely plays tennis, looks awesome in her Lacoste tennis whites. She’s big on wearing them to the club even when she has zero intention of picking up a racket, and accessorizes the sporty outfit with some great Van Cleef Alhambra clover necklaces and earrings.
Actually, why I was still a member of the club was something I couldn’t quite understand, since someone who can’t pay their mortgage definitely can’t afford the club dues. I’d asked Ronnie the manager how it was possible that I was still in good standing when I hadn’t paid my membership fee in months (I’d only known I was still a member because the club directory listed me as such when it came out in March), and he’d told me that before they died, my grandparents had paid for a family membership that was good through the end of next year. I had the distinct feeling that this was bullshit, and that Holly had paid my dues.
That was really very sweet of her, I thought warmly, as I walked up the steps and sat down at her table next to Joe, who waved over a waitress and ordered me a rum and tonic.
“Sophie Shields bought out my store!” I told Holly and Joe immediately, dispensing with the formalities. “She took my entire inventory, every single thing.” Holly and I had covered the Barclay Shields incident briefly earlier, on the phone, but I hadn’t had time to tell her about Sophie’s shopping bonanza then, because it was at that exact moment that Waffles had stolen my lunch.
“Everyone knows about Sophie and your store,” said Holly. I sighed. I’d forgotten that Bootsie had witnessed Sophie’s impulsive splurge. There was no way that in the intervening eight hours since Sophie had whipped out her Visa card, Bootsie hadn’t lit up iPhones and BlackBerrys throughout Bryn Mawr and Center City Philly with the news, and likely blown out cell towers as far away as the Jersey Shore and the Delaware beaches.
“Does Bootsie have anything new on Barclay since this morning?” I asked.
“The police met with Barclay this afternoon,” said Joe, as my drink arrived. After all those cocktails the night before, drinking didn’t seem like a great idea, but after all that packing, I reasoned, who wouldn’t be thirsty?
“He’d just ordered in lunch, by the way, when the police came in to talk to him,” said Joe.
“What did he get?” asked Holly, curious.
“Two cheesesteaks and an order of wings from the Hoagie Hut,” said Joe. “The nurses took the wings and one of the steaks away. Anyway, Barclay told the police that the whole chain of events started when he got a note hand-delivered yesterday to his office in Haverford,” Joe said, leaning in toward us, and speaking in a loud whisper.
Between the clanging silverware, the chattering older guests, and the tennis players thwacking balls around, I doubted anyone at the neighboring tables could hear him, despite the fact that his voice definitely carried. A few people were staring at us, but that was because of Holly’s outfit. She’s not in her tennis-whites phase at the moment; instead, she’s been on a kind of retro-supermodel kick, and had on a full-length silk caftan, incredibly high-heeled Gucci sandals that kind of looked like expensive Dr. Scholl’s on stilts, and had added long emerald-colored beads and an Ursula Andress–style flowing hairdo. I’m not sure what to make of her new super-glam style, but she did look pretty, even if her outfit was more appropriate for, say, Club 55 in St. Tropez.
“No one saw who dropped off the note, but it was sitting on his receptionist’s desk when she came back from lunch,” said Joe, forgetting that he was supposed to be whispering. He practically shouted, “And get this: The note was from Honey Potts!”