THE PHONE RANG at seven the next morning. Waffles and I both were startled by the early call, and I cleared my throat, trying not to sound sleepy as I picked up the phone on my bedside table. It was Saturday, so I didn’t think it was a credit card company calling—but then again, maybe they’d started rousting past-due customers at the crack of dawn. I hoped it wasn’t the police with new questions about Barclay, or worse, Bootsie with her own interrogation.
More likely it was Holly, on one of her early-morning exercise kicks. Her fitness obsessions are rare, but they erupt semi-annually, and consist of her forcing me to go with her to a horrible gym called Booty Camp over by the library, where pudgy lawyers and doctors and incredibly fit housewives work out at 6 a.m. under the slightly insane eyes of a tattooed former marine. The women are all in great shape and barely break a sweat (except for me and Holly, who are drenched and pleading for mercy), but the accountant types invariably throw up after the four-mile jog and hundreds of squats and pushups.
“Is this Kristin? The Striped Awning girl?” bleated a small, nasal voice. “Did I wake ya up?” Sophie Shields.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Shields,” I said as brightly as I could, sitting up in bed. Sunlight was streaming in through my linen curtains, and a breeze was stirring the leaves outside the open window. “How are you? Gosh, um, how did you get my home number?”
“Gerda got it off the computer,” squeaked Sophie triumphantly. “She’s good at all that stuff. She can, like, get anyone’s personal information and check all your bank balances!” This was not good news. I pictured Gerda in a darkened corner of Sophie’s house in front of an enormous Mac, gleefully reading personal e-mails, studying bank balances, and learning every embarrassing secret floating around Bryn Mawr.
“She told me it’s good that we bought all your stuff.” Sophie giggled. “She said you’re kinda broke.”
“I really appreciate it,” I said, feeling resentful that Gerda knew the details of every bag of dog food and seventy-five-percent-off pair of jeans I’d ever charged. I was also terrified that Sophie had somehow changed her mind about buying out the store. Please, please, please don’t be calling to cancel the sale. . .
“Hey, I wasn’t always as obscenely rich as I am now!” said Sophie, rather kindly. “Don’t worry about it. The only thing is, I was calling because I can’t take delivery today on all that crap from your shop. I mean, the antiques. I gotta reschedule it for Monday.”
“Oh, that’s fine! No problem,” I said, thrilled, jumping out of bed as Waffles hauled his big stomach off the comforter and started rolling over toward the edge of the bed. Sometimes he’s too lazy to jump down, so he just rolls off the mattress.
“Yeah, it’s crazy over here today,” Sophie rattled on. She was sucking deafeningly on something through a straw. “Sorry, I got some fresh-squeezed orange-kale juice here that Gerda made.”
How was anyone so chatty at this time of day? Maybe it was all the Pilates.
“I got a call last night from Eula Morris, the lady who runs the Symphony Women’s Board.” I knew of Eula, though I’d never actually met her. She was a tiny but mighty battleship of a woman in her thirties, invariably dressed in swoopy beige dresses and large necklaces, who was excellent at raising money by fear and intimidation. “And guess what, there was supposed to be a big party benefitting the symphony tomorrow at Sanderson, but the police said that the place is still a crime scene because of Old Fatass”—I guessed she was referencing her husband—“getting his head bashed in there. So they can’t do the event over there.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” I said, wondering where this was going. I brushed my teeth as silently as I could, holding the phone away from the brushing noise, since it’s definitely not good manners to talk through a mouthful of Ultra Brite, even this early.
“And guess what,” said Sophie triumphantly.
I was rinsing out my mouth, so I made a “Hmm?” sound indicating interest.
“I’m gonna have the party here!” Sophie shrieked.
I was shocked. First of all, the Symphony Women’s Board is one of the stuffiest old-Philadelphia organizations around, and tends to attract supporters whose average age is about ninety-seven. As a whole, the group smells of mothballs and L’Air du Temps, and they wear a lot of retro gowns not because they’re stylish, like the Holly types who buy vintage Pucci dresses at overpriced boutiques, but because that’s what’s in their closets. Eula and her aging supporters only occasionally added younger trustees.
Sophie, with her Joisey accent and precariously high heels, would stand out like a disco ball in a chintz drawing room amid the Symphony Women’s sea of classic navy St. John suits. But Eula was no dummy. She must have known that Sophie would be one of the only people around town who’d jump at the chance to host a hundred-person-plus bash on two days’ notice. Plus being associated with the symphony guaranteed you a story in the Bryn Mawr Gazette, which Sophie would love.
I should call Bootsie about Sophie’s shindig, so Bootsie could cover it for the Gazette.
Or maybe I didn’t need to. She had to have heard about the party already.
As if reading my mind, Sophie piped up: “You should come tomorrow night! I’ll put you down as my guest, since I know ya can’t afford the two-hundred-dollar ticket. And you can bring your friend, the one from the store with the flowered shorts!”
As if I could stop Bootsie from coming—she likes to wave her press pass and barge into events. I headed downstairs with Waffles, who launched himself downstairs and out the back door with a clatter. He made a token run at a blue jay on a low branch back by the fence, then ambled over behind the laurel bush where he likes to conduct his morning affairs.
“Thanks so much,” I told Sophie, feeling embarrassed about being a freeloader at her party, but not enough to miss out on free champagne and the chance to see Eula Morris establishing eminent domain over the Shields estate. “I’ll be there.” I scooped ground coffee into the coffeemaker, poured in water, and pressed on, debating whether I should ask about how Barclay was doing. Technically, the two were still married. And Sophie had told us she wanted him alive (purely for financial reasons, true, but still, alive).
But while Sophie rattled on about carved ice swans and an epic shellfish buffet she was planning for her bash, it started to seem a little cold-blooded of Sophie to throw one of the biggest parties of the summer while her husband was in the hospital with a head injury, but then again, I’ve never been divorced. It unleashes a tsunami of anger and vindictiveness that’s basically nuclear in most people.
Take Holly—when she split from Howard six months ago and moved out of the condo she and Howard had lived in downtown, she’d taken all of his custom-made squash rackets and gazillion-dollar golf clubs over the bridge to Jersey, and given them to a YMCA up in Newark. Then she’d donated his Porsche to the Police Athletic League auction, sending out a press release gushing about his generosity to all the Philly newspapers. Howard had been screwed, because what could he do then? He had to pose gamely with some kids at the Police Athletic League ball field for photos, and suck it up.
“How is your, er, Mr. Shields doing?” I ventured to Sophie, adding half and half to my coffee.
“He’s gonna be fine,” replied Sophie unenthusiastically. “I’m not going to visit him, that’s for sure, but I heard from my lawyers that he’s got one of those big head-wrap things on and he’s got some stitches and a concussion. But he’ll be okay, which is good, because we have a meeting with all our lawyers next week, and I need him there with bells on! He can’t die until this divorce is worked out, because suing him after he’s dead would be a real bitch.” She made a little harrumph sound.
“Apparently, no one has a clue about who went after him the other night,” Sophie continued. “Barclay’s lawyers decided to hire a security guard for his room, since obviously somebody wants him on ice.” She loudly slurped at her juice. “And my lawyers got a call from Barclay’s legal guys about one other weird thing happened yesterday afternoon. Two guys showed up at Barclay’s hospital room with a fruit basket the size of a Barcalounger, and told the guard they were there to visit Barclay. They said they were his cousins!”
“Uh-huh,” I said politely. “Well, that was nice of them.”
“Not so much!” Sophie said. “Barclay doesn’t have any cousins. No family at all. Both his parents were only children. It’s a sad story. His mom and dad died in a freak accident eleven years ago at the wedding of a business associate. A Swarovski chandelier that weighed half a ton fell on both a them at a catering hall up near Newark! Flattened them like two chicken cutlets. But at least they died together!”
I wasn’t sure how to respond to this, so I made a sympathetic murmuring noise. Getting crushed by a homicidal light fixture is something you don’t hear much about in Bryn Mawr.
“Yeah, Barclay told me that when he was younger and getting started in the construction biz, he and his parents had relatives out the wazoo. But they weren’t blood relations, they were all family friends. And business associates in the construction biz. I mean, everyone was Uncle Something or Other. Uncle Skinny, Uncle No-Thumbs, Uncle Meatball. There were a lotta nicknames!”
I was getting a bad feeling about the uncles.
“So, and this is just between you and me, Barclay decided to move away from North Joisey a few years after his parents’ accident, and start over! He even got a new name. His real name is Beppe Santino, but he had it legally changed. He had a nickname, too, which he told me one time when he was wasted on lemon martinis at Joe’s Stone Crabs in Miami. Barclay used ta be called the Forklift. Beppe ‘the Forklift’ Santino!”
Sophie giggled merrily for a few moments, while I attempted to absorb this information. The Joe Pesci bar scene from Goodfellas was playing in my head, but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Maybe Barclay (formerly Beppe) had just had an exceptionally close business “family,” with a fondness for nicknames.
“I guess maybe the guys with the fruit basket read in the paper about Barclay’s attack. Or, as they called him, the Forklift! You get the pun, right?” Sophie asked. “He used a forklift at work, plus he’s the size of a forklift. And he likes to lift a fork . . . to his mouth!”
“Oh, I understand,” I said, thinking that maybe the two “cousins” had indeed read about Barclay, whose beat-down had made a few local papers in Philly.
Or maybe the two had attacked Barclay themselves on Thursday night, and had come to the hospital hoping to finish the job.
“So anyway, the party tomorrow. The best part of the whole thing is that Chef Gianni is the caterer for the party! It’s the ultimate screw-you to Barclay!” finished Sophie happily. “My ex hates the symphony, but even more, he hates Chef Gianni!”
Eula must have known this, I realized. She was almost as plugged in as Bootsie, and no doubt knew all the details of Sophie’s divorce and of the feud between Gianni and Barclay. Sophie wouldn’t be able to resist hosting the party, which was guaranteed to enrage her husband.
“I got the Colketts coming today to work on the landscaping. They said for the right money, they can install a whole new garden by tomorrow afternoon and get, like, some great trees for the pool area. And I’m pretty sure Barclay’s going to be stuck in the hospital at least through the weekend. I don’t want him coming over here during my party. But he probably won’t—he’s afraid of Gerda.” Sophie’s Pilates instructor did seem a little scary.
“Speaking of Gerda, I have Pilates now and I gotta choke down the rest of this juice, so I better run,” chirped Sophie. “Anyway, see you tomorrow! Party starts at five. I’ll be the one in Versace!”