by Amy Korman
I climbed into the car, determined not to look back at Mike. This was better than walking home in heels—probably—so who cared what he thought. “I like your jacket,” I told Hugh, trying to make conversation. “It’s very cheerful.”
Hugh had on old, well-pressed khakis, a white-and-blue striped shirt (slightly frayed), that pink sport coat circa 1968, and a silk ascot. He did look very gentlemanly, with his white hair combed back and his good posture. He had an appealing, courtly quality. And Hugh struck me as the type who hated to stay out past 8 p.m., just like me.
“And may I say, your dress is very attractive,” said Hugh gallantly, as we pulled out onto Dark Hollow Road. “This was quite an interesting evening.”
“That’s for sure,” I agreed.
“Actually, we don’t really support the symphony financially as much as we used to,” Hugh told me, looking a little embarrassed. “We, er, would, but our investments are down a little this year, so Eula Morris invited me and my brother as her guests.”
“I don’t support it, either!” I told him. “I’m only going because the hostess, Mrs. Shields, bought a lot of things at my store the other day, and she invited me.”
“Interesting decision, moving the party to the Shields residence,” Hugh said chattily, steering the old car carefully. “I’d originally planned to walk over to Sanderson for this fete, but then when all that happened”—he made a vague gesture toward the crime scene tape at Sanderson, which we were just passing—“I got a call from Eula about the change of venue. My brother had been planning to go, but when he heard at was at this Shields woman’s house, he ‘shit-canned’ the idea, as he put it. He doesn’t approve of flashy people. I, on the other hand, am open to new things and ideas.”
We turned into the Bests’ driveway next to mine, the car huffing and puffing up the little hill to their house, belching smoke. I noticed the last inspection sticker on the windshield was dated 1989, so I guess Hugh’s interest in modernity didn’t include keeping current with state car inspections.
The Best house was about as different from Sophie’s as you could get, though it was nearly as big. The brothers had lived in the beautiful white stucco Georgian, half hidden by hedges and old rose gardens, their whole lives. As the years went on and family members had died off, only Hugh and his brother were left. They occasionally appeared on the lawn to pull weeds and trim shrubs, but for the most part, I heard them bickering on their back porch more often than I actually saw them these days. They also listened to a lot of big band music, and songs by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong often floated over the fence along with cigar smoke.
After Hugh’s confiding that he’d been at the party as a fellow freebie, it seemed clear that the Bests’ fortunes had indeed declined over the past couple of decades. No wonder their house was looking a little more rickety every year.
They belonged to the country club, too, and I always stopped to say hello if I spied them on the club porch or in the bar. My grandparents had been friendly with the brothers at one time, until Jimmy had had too many Scotches one night at the club and groped Grandma as she passed him en route to the ladies’ room, which had resulted in Grandpa temporarily banning the Bests from their house. Grandma had laughed it off—she had always been gorgeous, and continued to be so into her seventies, but Grandpa apparently hadn’t found it all that funny.
Hmm. I guess I was lucky that Hugh was driving me home, and not Jimmy the groper.
I thanked Hugh as I emerged from the Volvo, went in my gate, and opened my back door to Waffles, who’d heard the car pull up and was waiting like a Thoroughbred penned in the starting gate. He trampled me, Pamplona style, and dashed out the door, ears flying. I dusted off Holly’s dress, grabbed a leash, and went outside to find him. Apparently, I hadn’t latched the gate properly when I came in, because Waffles was out and tearing across the driveway toward the Bests’ front door, hot on the scent of Hugh, who’d already gone inside.
Waffles galloped up the front stairs to their screen door, and started scratching the door frame with his freckled paws and howling into the Bests’ dim foyer. “No!” I hissed at the dog, dashing through the holly hedge to grab his collar and drag him home.
“Back already?” I heard a voice yell from somewhere deep in the old house. “You freeloading bastard!” It was Jimmy, lambasting his brother. This was really embarrassing. Once again, Waffles had landed me exactly where I didn’t want to be.
“Waffles!” I shrieked, while the dog ignored me. I really should have sprung for that obedience class at PetSmart, I thought, racing up the short flight of porch steps to get my wayward hound.
Just as I reached Waffles, the dog let out a series of songlike howls that could be heard in Pittsburgh. Jimmy came to the door and opened it to peer out into the dusk. Unfortunately, I could see well enough to notice that Jimmy was nude.
Waffles, wagging, took advantage of the open door, ran inside, sniffed Jimmy in places that I’d rather not remember, then disappeared into the house.
Chapter 10
“WHAT THE FUCK?” said Jimmy.
“I am so sorry,” I said, looking up at the portico, down at the frayed doormat, and at my shoes, anywhere but at the region between Jimmy’s knees and his belly button. Where the hell had Waffles gone? “I’ll just get the dog and go. I’ll wait outside, though . . . while you grab a robe?”
I looked away from the expanse of elderly man-parts. Jimmy was saggy, hairy, skinny, and—I had to get out of there. He had bushy eyebrows, a big nose, a cigar stuck into his mouth, and I’d noticed an amused grin on his face under a graying mustache. Jimmy was a pincher and a grabber, but I’d never seen him wandering around naked before. Maybe he liked to get naked when Hugh went out? Or was he having sex with someone? Could he possibly have a lady friend?
“Ooh, my,” I heard Hugh wheeze from upstairs, and heard a thud that sounded like he’d just been knocked to the ground. “Nice doggie,” I heard him mumble in a cajoling tone.
“Come on in!” growled Jimmy. “I’ll just go put on some shorts, and see if I can locate that hound of yours.” He gestured toward their foyer and the hallway beyond, then trudged up the stairs while I turned and buried my face into some beautiful tea roses that were climbing up the porch pillars. Gosh, these roses were really fragrant and gorgeous, which helped distract me from Jimmy’s rear view, which was no prettier than the front had been.
When Jimmy got upstairs and disappeared around the corner, I came inside to their foyer, and hissed “Waffles!” up the stairs. Naturally, he didn’t appear, but I could hear his paws clicking on the floor upstairs as he checked out all the bedrooms. I’d never been inside the Bests’ house before. It had a lot of charm, with old hunting prints in pretty wooden frames crowding the walls of the red-painted hallway, and a dining room with a long antique table to my right. There was a big living room on the left, with formal satin drapes faded by years of sunlight and needlepoint chairs and sofas in serious need of restoration and a good dusting. But all in all, it was very tasteful, if a little tattered. You’d never know this was the house of a nudist.
I had a horrible thought: What if Jimmy and Hugh came back downstairs and they were both naked? It was like Arsenic and Old Lace over here, but with old naked guys instead of adorable killer aunties. Darn you, Waffles.
“Waffles!” I half shouted again.
There were some very pretty pieces of china in the cabinets surrounding the fireplace, and lots of old leather-bound books, I noticed, as Waffles skidded down the stairs and bounded happily into the living room toward me, drool flying. Jimmy appeared behind him in a smoking jacket worn over a white T-shirt and khakis, with Hugh just behind him. I knelt next to Waffles, spouting apologies as I clipped on his leash and prepared to head for the door.
“Not at all, and I’m sorry about that earlier moment,” said Jimmy, with a bawdy wink. “Just caught me coming out of my bath. Don’t usually wander around naked as the day I wa
s born.”
“Oh, I understand,” I said, pulling the leashed dog toward the front hallway urgently.
“Do stay for a drink!” said Hugh politely. “We’ve got deviled eggs on the porch, if you’re hungry. My brother is very sorry about exposing himself.” He glared at Jimmy and gestured down the hallway, past the staircase toward their back porch.
“Well, I’m not that sorry,” Jimmy said, shrugging, as herded me and Waffles along the hall and out onto the porch, where he went to a little bar stocked with a dozen bottles and glass decanters. “I always take a bath this time of night. And how the hell was I supposed to know an overweight dog was going to come bounding in the door, with Kristin after him? I can’t be fully dressed all the time, you know.”
“I really should go—” I said, but Jimmy sloshed Scotch into a glass over ice cubes and handed it to me as he ushered me toward an old yellow armchair on the screened-in back porch. I didn’t know what else to do, so I sat. Next to me, being uncharacteristically obedient, Waffles sat, too.
“In a way, it’s good timing that you popped over,” Jimmy growled, emitting a cloud of cigar smoke as he glugged more Scotch into glasses, and rudely pushed a drink at his brother, “since we’re in the middle of an argument here that you can weigh in on.”
“Don’t drag her into this!” Hugh barked. “The fact is, we’ve been offered a lot of money for this house,” Hugh added primly, sitting down on a yellow-cushioned wicker loveseat. “And we badly need money.”
“So my brother here has come up with the most predictable, bourgeois, and God-awful idea I’ve ever heard in my life,” Jimmy spat out.
“I have a plan—a practical, realistic plan,” said Hugh, trembling a little with indignation. “Deviled egg, dear?” he added, handing me a tray of egg halves dusted with paprika. I wondered how long they’d been sitting out germinating botulism, but took one so I wouldn’t offend him. In a flash, Waffles grabbed it out of my hand and gulped it down. Luckily neither of the Bests noticed, since they were busy arguing.
I took a sip of noxious-tasting Scotch, then gulped some more just to pass the time. I figured staying five minutes was long enough to be polite, and then I’d be out of here.
“Hugh’s plan is that he wants to sell our house and move to Florida.” Jimmy pronounced the word “Florida” like his brother had suggested that they up and move into a giant pile of garbage. Personally, I like Florida, so I wasn’t sure what he was so upset about. “He’s even met with a developer about selling this place off as a teardown.”
“Palm Beach County is a great place to retire!” retorted Hugh. “If we sell now, we’ll have enough money to buy a condo. And I might even get a job down there. I’ve been reading the Palm Beach Post online. Costco is hiring.”
“Costco!” thundered Jimmy, picking up a decanter and sloshing more amber liquid into his glass. “Is that what the Best family has come to? Why not Wal-Mart?”
“This member of the Best family is tired of freezing his nuts off every winter,” Hugh screamed back at his brother. “And this Best wants to enjoy the few years left he has on earth enjoying himself, not huddled under a moth-eaten old quilt in Philadelphia, eating your tuna casseroles!”
This exchange didn’t really bother me, because the Scotch was sloshing through my bloodstream on top of the champagne, and I was suddenly feeling completely bombed. It was too bad that Jimmy and Hugh weren’t getting along, I thought boozily, because their back porch was adorable. A ceiling fan provided a nice little breeze, and a giant old 1960s-era stereo was pumping out jazzy tunes. The porch was painted white with bright green trim, with a screened wall facing a grove of oak trees. At either end of the room were bookshelves loaded with books, old Racing Forms, and picture frames filled with shots of Best ancestors vacationing in WASPy places like Maine and Rhode Island.
Just then, the radio broke into “What a Wonderful World,” which didn’t exactly fit the mood, but the dreamy old song appeared to calm Hugh down a little. He sat down and added in a grannyish way to his brother, “If you hadn’t married that series of waitresses from the club, we wouldn’t be in this position,” then offered me another deviled egg.
I ate one, which was thankfully still cold, and presumably not swimming with E. coli. I knew these deviled eggs. They were from the deli counter at the Buy-Right. The Buy-Right was the oldest supermarket in town, and only the oldest and least progressive families still shopped there now that the glitzier Publix had opened. I had a soft spot for the Buy-Right, having grown up buying our groceries there. Plus my grandparents had often bought these very snacks, and they were really pretty good. I was touched by the fact that Hugh had presented the hors d’oeuvres on a slightly battered silver tray, with some ancient linen cocktail napkins at the ready, even though he hadn’t been expecting guests. He stuck to the old, formal ways.
“They weren’t all waitresses,” said Jimmy airily. “There were some dancers, as well.”
“Strippers from Atlantic City!” protested Hugh. “With giant hooters! Er, sorry, Kristin,” he added.
“There was one stripper,” conceded Jimmy, puffing cigar smoke toward the screened windows. “But your money-management skills haven’t exactly helped matters. Every stock you buy turns to absolute shit. ”
“You can’t keep your pants zipped!” screamed Hugh.
“Not true. I haven’t tried anything on this one, and she’s been next door for some time now,” said Jimmy, waving his cigar at me. “Sorry, darling, you’re not my type. I like a little more up top than you’ve got. And I’m partial to blondes.”
“That’s okay,” I said. That’s pretty much the case with all men. I figured I could leave now, so I headed toward the front door. “Well, thanks,” I said to Jimmy, who gave me an affable grunt, and went back to reading his Racing Form as Hugh walked me out while Waffles trailed happily behind us.
“By the way,” I asked Hugh, as Waffles and I exited onto his front porch. “Which developer did you meet with about selling your house?”
“Shields,” said Hugh. “Fellow who got knocked on the head the other night.”
He looked embarrassed. “When it came right down to it, his offer was awfully low. Couldn’t find it in me to take so little for our family home.”
I STUMBLED OUT of the house, clutching Waffles’s leash and feeling a little woozy from the Scotch. I was also digesting the news that Barclay had tried to wrest the Bests’ house out from under them. Barclay really was incredibly ambitious. No wonder people got murderously angry at him. Could Jimmy Best have gotten so mad at Barclay about the low offer that he’d attacked the developer? It seemed far-fetched, but then again, Jimmy is an unpredictable, angry old dude. Hugh had displayed a surprisingly bad temper tonight, and I’d thought of him as a passive fellow all these years, but maybe there was a geyser of rage lurking under his colorful sport coats and black socks.
I’d hate to see Hugh and Jimmy’s house torn down, but I could see Hugh’s argument for Florida, too. Philly in winter is dark, grim, gray, and grimy. Every January, I consider the notion of grabbing Waffles, piling into the car, and driving until we reach Key West, where I’d get find a job at a taco stand and never come back.
Still, it’s hard to leave a place you love. Too bad they didn’t have enough money for Hugh, at least, to go to Florida for the winter. It seemed like the brothers could use a little time apart.
Waffles and I trotted through the holly hedge and, boom!—there was Mike Woodford, who was lounging against my fence, sipping a bottle of Corona and looking at me in a friendly manner. He’d taken off his blue blazer, and his nice white shirt looked fresh and clean in the early-evening air.
“What were you doing over there?” he said, patting Waffles on his brown head, as Waffles in turn sniffed his knees happily.
“Drinking Scotch with my neighbors,” I told him.
“You look kind of bombed,” he said. He walked closer to me and looked at me curiously. “Do
you normally drink Scotch?”
I shook my head. “It was an unusual situation. Trust me, you would have been drinking, too. One of the Bests was naked for a while. He got dressed, just not right away.”
“That old guy who drove you home got naked?” he asked.
“No, it was the other one,” I said wearily, too tired to explain the whole thing to him. Then I added, “And it turns out that Barclay Shields tried to buy the Bests’ house, which didn’t go over too well with one of them. So now I have to worry about whether one of the Best brothers tried to kill Barclay.” In addition to wondering about whether you did it, I added to myself.
However, I was mostly focusing on Mike’s beard stubble, which not two hours before had been grazing my ear.
“I wouldn’t worry about the old guys trying to kill Barclay,” he said. “They seem pretty harmless.”
After this, Mike took Waffles’s leash from me, shoved me back toward the fence, took hold of my shoulders, and kissed me senseless in the dusk under a rising moon. This up-against-a-fence twilight make-out scenario was fantastic until Waffles started pawing my leg, at which point I remembered that I had a few questions for Mike.
“What were you doing at that symphony party?” I asked him.
“What were you doing there?” he countered.
“I was invited by Sophie Shields!” I told him.
“I was invited by Honey Potts,” he replied, leaning back with a grin.
I guess he’d one-upped me on that one. “Have you always been a Gucci-loafer wearer?” I asked, glancing down at his shoes.
“Birthday present from my mom,” he told me. “Years ago, when she was trying to make me into a respectable business type or a lawyer.”
I tried to imagine his origins, and a mom who’d hoped he’d be a lawyer or banker, and instead raised a cow farmer. “Where are you from?” I asked him.
“Maryland,” he said. “Outside D.C.” He paused for a minute, and ran a hand along my spine in a shivery and awesome way. “Well, I gotta go.” With that, he took off down the dark driveway.
