by Amy Korman
She paused for a minute, looking frightened. “Barclay and Gianni really do hate each other. Barclay was always threatening to tell all the rich people on the Main Line about Gianni’s real background, and vice versa.”
“I’d keep this to yourself,” Joe advised Jessica. “This sounds like dangerous information to share with anyone else.”
“Okay,” agreed Jessica, looking relieved. She was obviously petrified.
And honestly, I couldn’t have agreed more. Maybe Gianni had whacked the giant Barclay to shut him up about Gianni’s pizza-tossing past. I didn’t even want to imagine what he could do to Jessica with a chef’s knife and a meat mallet. She could end up as veal piccata, too.
“SO, DO YOU believe her?” asked Bootsie, once we were back in the car.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Of course,” said Joe. “It makes perfect sense. I can picture Gianni as mafia pizza guy. And he’d definitely want to keep his past quiet. But whether he was the one who hit Barclay, I don’t know.”
“Maybe Jessica’s lying, and she really was with Gianni that night, helping him attack Barclay instead of getting boned by Channing,” suggested Bootsie.
We all thought about this for a second as Bootsie steered back toward Sophie’s. Then we burst out laughing at the thought of Jessica messing up her Manolos if there wasn’t an orgasm in the offing.
“Yeah, never mind,” said Bootsie. “I guess we know the answer to that.”
“But one thing doesn’t add up,” I mused aloud, after Joe had climbed out at Sophie’s and Bootsie had turned back toward town. “If the chef whacked Sophie’s husband, why did the chef also get one of the warning notes, just like Barclay? And, why would he fall off Sophie’s balcony on purpose—since we know Barclay couldn’t have been the one to push him?”
“To divert suspicion away from himself!” said Bootsie confidently. “Gianni decided to stage the whole thing, and left himself a fake note! A little tumble would be worth it to Gianni, if it meant he could get away with almost-murder. I have a sense for these things.”
I refrained from pointing out that only an hour ago, Bootsie had been certain that Sophie had a hand in the attack, and had also repeatedly named Gerda as her go-to suspect. I also didn’t mention that even during high school, Bootsie’s so-called sixth sense has always been one-hundred-percent faulty. She was always wrongly predicting things like snow days, pop quizzes, and what time someone’s parents would come home from dinner at the club, which resulted in things like all of us being caught mid–tequila shot at age sixteen, getting grounded, and failing chemistry.
“I’m going to drop by and talk to Officer Walt right now,” Bootsie told me. “I’m pretty sure this will sew up the case!”
Ten minutes after I got back to The Striped Awning, my phone rang. “I can’t talk long,” Joe told me, “but Holly needs you to stay over at her house tonight. I didn’t want to say anything in front of Bootsie, but you’ve been neglecting Holly.”
What! There was no way I was doing that. I’d been out late last night, and up at dawn for Bootsie’s horrible tennis drills, then dealt with Jimmy Best, the Colketts, and Jessica . . .
“I can’t tonight,” I moaned. “I’m exhausted.”
“Holly’s lonely!” said Joe sternly. “She’s in the middle of a divorce, and she’s trying to shop her way out of sadness. She’s spent seven thousand dollars on bathing suits since April. She needs you. And what do you go and do? You have a date with some veterinarian”—he pronounced the word as if I’d gone out to dinner with Ted Bundy—“which we had to find out about from Bootsie, and you didn’t even call Holly first about what to wear.”
I felt terrible. I hadn’t spent much time with Holly lately, it was true. Had she really spent seven grand on bikinis? That was scary. And I probably should have consulted with her about the right outfit for my date. “But aren’t you living with her for the summer?” I asked him.
“That doesn’t matter. Just because she’s a gorgeous chicken-nugget heiress with drawers full of Chanel bikinis doesn’t mean she doesn’t have any problems,” Joe informed me. “So you need to make time for us tonight. Holly and I already stopped by your house, got your key from under the flowerpot, and packed a bag for you.”
I nodded, mentally calculating that I’d have plenty of time to sneak home for a nap after work and show up at Holly’s around eight, in time for dinner. Unless I could weasel out of the whole thing.
“And you can forget sneaking home before you come over, because you’ll fall asleep and never make it over,” said Joe, whose powers of intuition are way better than Bootsie’s. “I’m picking you up there at six. You can leave your car behind the shop tonight.”
“But what about—”
Joe knew where I was headed, and cut me right off.
“That mutt can come, too.”
ALL DAY, I’D been determined not to wonder whether the cute vet would ever call me again, and since by 5:45 p.m. he hadn’t, I decided it was a good thing that I was going to Holly’s. I could hopefully discuss her relationship with Howard during a quiet moment. Truthfully, I was feeling a little discouraged about the vet being married to Lilly Merriwether, and Joe and Holly are my closest friends: If you can’t count on a chicken-nugget heiress and her decorator to be there for you through thick and thin, who can you count on?
I never heard back from Bootsie about what Officer Walt had to say about the chef, Jessica, and Channing being AWOL during Gianni’s opening party, which was just as well. I could use a night off from that whole mess.
As Waffles, Joe, and I got to Holly’s, a torrential storm exploded over Bryn Mawr. Sheets of rain were drenching the tented roof of Holly’s fabulous outdoor living room, and blowing sideways onto her weatherproof white furniture, so we moved the party into Holly’s indoor living room.
The painters’ tarps had been removed, and the result was amazing. As Martha brought out a massive platter of shrimp, I surveyed the room: There were three modern white couches, a giant gilded antique mirror, and a sleek, pale gray rug. The coffee table was a slab of beige marble, and over by the entrance to the kitchen, a simple white table was loaded with buckets of ice, bottles of wine, and a huge arrangement of calla lilies in a silver vase. It was all very simple and totally chic.
I had to admire the snacks Martha had set up: olives, shrimp, and some fragrant cheese, with beautiful little plates and linen cocktail napkins at the ready. You never just get, say, a Snapple at Holly’s house.
The only eyesore was Waffles, who tromped in ecstatically, drenched in rain and gazing hopefully at one of the white sofas. Luckily, he flopped down on the floor near Joe’s feet. This modern decor was amazing, but not exactly dog-friendly. The Binghams would need some extra white zinfandel when they saw this, I thought.
“This is gorgeous!” I told Holly and Joe.
“I know,” said Holly, popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. “It’s totally Architectural Digest, in a Bianca Jagger kind of way.”
Despite her customary air of fabulousness, Holly did look a little down. Her outfit was on the conservative side for her—okay, the blue and purple Pucci jumpsuit she had on wasn’t all that conservative, but her only jewelry was a Cartier watch, and she wasn’t even wearing heels. I started to feel concerned: Holly always swans around with such bravado that sometimes even I forget that under her carefully honed exterior is a girl who was teased in high school for wealth accrued by breaded poultry. Ah, cruel youth.
“So why didn’t you tell us about your date last night?” Holly asked sadly, passing around the champagne glasses and tucking her feet underneath her on a sofa. “Bootsie knew. Are you hiding something from us?”
I still hadn’t told them about Mike Woodford, either, but since I was already getting scolded for not mentioning the veterinarian, this seemed like the wrong time to bring up Mike.
“Well, I didn’t really tell anyone, because the date was kind of a last-
minute thing,” I said. “And I guess I was afraid that you’d tell me that he wasn’t the right kind of guy, or that I was wearing the wrong thing . . .”
“What did you wear?” asked Joe, with a pained glance at my shorts and wedge sandals.
“I wore that white linen dress Holly gave me with the ruffle down the front,” I told them.
“That’s all wrong for a first date,” Holly said, shaking her head.
“Bootsie also told us that the vet is married to Lilly Merriwether,” added Joe ominously.
“But I didn’t know that when he asked me out!” I protested. “And he’s legally separated from Lilly.”
“Separated is still married,” Joe noted.
“One time my mother beat Mariellen Merriwether in bridge at the club. Mariellen wouldn’t speak to her for two years, and then tried to get her blackballed from the Symphony Women’s Board. What you did last night is basically throw down the gauntlet to one of the oldest families in Philadelphia,” Holly told me in an infuriatingly wise manner, as if she were suddenly the Ruth Bader Ginsburg of local societal mores. “I mean, to go out to dinner with a Merriwether husband . . .”
“It’s not like that at all!” I shrieked. “I didn’t know he was a husband when I agreed to dinner!”
One thing I’m not is a gauntlet thrower. Especially not with pearl-wearing, patrician ladies I’m terrified of, like Mariellen. “You see, this is why I didn’t tell you guys! Because I would never—”
“Don’t get me wrong,” said Joe soothingly. “If you’re comfortable going out on a limb like that, more power to you. I kind of like that you’ve got the balls to stand up to the most prominent matriarch on the Main Line.”
“I don’t have the balls! That’s not what I’m doing!”
Ding-dong chimed the front doorbell. Joe got up, peered through the window, and said, “Oh boy.”
He opened the door and Sophie scrambled over the doorstep, looking like a Yorkie who’d gotten drenched in the rain. She was clutching a brown paper bag in one hand and an enormous Gucci handbag in the other. Her outfit was purple from head to toe, including a pair of purple Versace jeans and a tight purple shirt with the Chanel logo stamped all over it, and mud was sadly caked on her bejeweled shoes. She looked disheveled, drippy, and slightly frantic.
“Thanks!” she bleated to Joe. Sophie paused to wipe her shoes on a beige mat in Holly’s Carrera marble front hallway, then appeared in the living room behind Joe, and shrieked, “I hope you don’t mind me coming over here like this, but I just can’t take it anymore.”
She paused for emphasis, and then in her tiny squeak, erupted: “You know what? Fuck Gerda!”
Sophie was dripping on the newly refinished living room floor, and since Holly seemed frozen in her position on the couch—her champagne glass was halfway to her lips, and she seemed incapable of getting the glass all the way there, or of putting it down—I went into the kitchen to get a towel so Sophie could mop herself dry. I rooted around in the modern white cabinets—which was difficult because there were no handles; apparently having handles isn’t chic at the moment—and came up with a couple of fancy white dish towels from a drawer in the marble kitchen island. The tags were still on them: eighty-five dollars. Each. Handmade in Italy, from Neiman Marcus. For dish towels?
“Here’s what happened,” squawked Sophie as I handed her the towels and she started mopping herself off. “I was feeling hormonal this afternoon, and I was starving. And I haven’t eaten anything except tofu and kale in months! So when Gerda went down to her computer room, I snuck over to Chef Gianni’s. I figured the coast was clear, because Gerda’s usually down in her office for hours!”
We all nodded. Holly’s arm had finally unfrozen, and she was gulping her drink. Joe was pouring himself a refill.
“I’ll have some of that, if ya don’t mind!” said Sophie, still dabbing at the hem of her purple pants and pointing at the champagne bottle. “So, anyway, Gianni wasn’t open for dinner yet, but Channing was there, and he packed me up a pasta Bolognese in a take-out carton. And he gave me this little half bottle of merlot . . . which he uncorked for me, thank goodness! So I got home, and I was sitting in my car at the end of my driveway eating my pasta and drinking the wine, because Channing remembered to give me a straw, when Gerda popped up out of nowhere and started banging on the car window!
“And I got out of the car in the rain and started yelling at her, and then she started yelling back at me about toxic American meat. I just couldn’t take it anymore. So I got back in the Escalade, gunned it, and here I am!”
“Did Gerda follow you here?” asked Holly. We all swiveled nervously toward the front door.
“Nope!” said Sophie triumphantly, still standing dramatically just inside the living room, dabbing at her Versace jeans with the dish towel and clutching her various bags and her purse. “She can’t drive when I’m not with her, ’cause she only has a learner’s permit! Plus I took the keys to the convertible, so she’s screwed!”
Waffles, who had been sacked out on the floor, suddenly looked up, sniffed the air, ran over, and tackled Sophie, knocking her off her spiky sandals onto the pearl-gray rug. Somehow, since the first moment he’d seen Sophie, I’d known this was coming.
“I still have some Bolognese in this bag,” said Sophie, who was unhurt and sitting up as I ran over, apologizing. She held up the brown bag, which Waffles was wagging at and nosing furiously. “I guess your dog sniffed it out. Here, doggie, go ahead and eat it. I kinda lost my appetite when Gerda screamed at me.
“By the way, Holly, I love your house!” Sophie added, scrambling up off the rug and looking around as she took a seat on the couch. “Hey, Joe, maybe we could do some of this modern crap at my place!”
In the kitchen, I put the rest of Sophie’s pasta onto a plate, and Waffles hoovered it up. Meanwhile, Holly stared at Sophie with a mixture of exasperation, curiosity, and disbelief that this person was sitting on her white mohair sofa.
“Sophie, where did you come from?” Holly finally demanded.
“I told ya, I just came from my house, and before that, I was at Gianni’s,” said Sophie.
“No. I mean before that. Before you married Barclay,” Holly clarified patiently. She rubbed her temple, as if trying to keep a migraine at bay.
“Oh! I came from Joisey,” said Sophie. “Cinnaminson. It’s not too far away from here, maybe forty-five minutes. Just over the bridge from Philly. I moved here after I met Barclay when I was selling cement. It’s a family business. My parents started it, and me and all my brothers were the salespeople. You might not believe this, but I was really good at the cement biz. Our motto was, ‘We stick with our customers!’ Get it?”
We all nodded dutifully, then Holly disappeared for a moment and then returned with a bottle of aspirin, which she handed around to me and Joe. I looked at my watch, wondering if I could go to bed. Since it wasn’t even seven-thirty yet, I didn’t think so. Maybe Gerda would show and up and force Sophie to return to the Shields stronghold.
“It’s kind of a romantic story,” Sophie rattled on, “because Barclay liked me right away. He took one look at me, and told me something was getting hard, and it wasn’t the cement, if you know what I mean. So we had a whirlwind romance. And you know, Barclay was a lot thinner then. He was under two-fifty, which is pretty good, considering he’s big-boned.”
“Did you know Chef Gianni back in his pepperoni days?” Joe asked Sophie.
“You know about Gianni’s pizza parlor?” she shrieked admiringly. “Barclay always told me to keep that quiet. That way, he had some power over Gianni. But really, who cares if Gianni used to run a pizza joint? I’m all for people making something of themselves!”
“And Gerda?” Joe asked. “Why, uh, exactly is she living with you?”
“Gerda saved my life!” said Sophie. “We were on our honeymoon and we went all over Italy—that’s Barclay’s favorite country, for obvious reasons. They ha
ve something like three hundred different kinds of pasta there. And that’s where I discovered Versace, my favorite designer, in Rome and Milan.
“So at the end of our trip, we went to Venice, and I was leaning out over one of those canals, because I thought I saw a Versace boutique just across the water, when, boom!—my heel slipped, and I almost went into that really slimy water. It was Gerda who caught me! She was on a vacation with her twin sister, who looks just like her. Honestly, they’re identical! Her name’s Gunilla, the twin.”
We all swigged more champagne, except Holly, who was frozen again at the mention of another Gerda somewhere out in the world, possibly sailing the canals of Venice.
“So we took Gerda and Gunilla out for coffee afterward to thank them, and then Gerda came and gave me a Pilates lesson the next day at the Gritti Palace. Two weeks later, we were home and moving into our house when Gerda showed up in Bryn Mawr! She said her sister was getting married and her parents had both died, and she was alone in the world, so she tracked down our address on the Internet. She took a cab from the airport. I didn’t have the heart to tell her to leave, so she’s been here almost three years,” Sophie finished.
“Why don’t you give her some money and send her back to Austria?” suggested Joe. “Isn’t there some problem with her green card that Barclay threatened her with?”
“I can’t do that to her!” said Sophie. “She did save my life. Plus Barclay can’t stand her, so she helps keep him away from the house. She’s always nagging at him about being overweight. And, over the last year before he moved out, she kept telling him he was ruining the environment with all his housing developments.”
The three of us exchanged glances. Given that Barclay’s warning note had mentioned similar sentiments, could Gerda have been the one who’d gone after Barclay? Sure, earlier in the day, we’d all thought Chef Gianni was the new prime suspect, but now it seemed Gerda was back in the running.
If Gerda was that enraged about Barclay’s environmental crimes, plus his threat to report her to immigration, maybe Gerda had snuck over to Sanderson last Thursday night and waited for him to arrive. Obviously, Gerda’d have had no problem hoisting Barclay and dragging him into the bushes. She could probably bench-press him, if need be.
