by Amy Korman
Maybe Barclay had been lured to Sanderson by Gerda—as Bootsie had suggested all along.
Or possibly Sophie was just playing dumb . . . and had paid Gerda to attack Barclay? Sophie could have promised to share some of the seven million big ones from Barclay’s life insurance with Gerda. Gerda could then buy her own basement bunker somewhere.
“Sophie, are you sure you get nothing if Barclay dies before the divorce papers are signed?” I asked tentatively. “Isn’t there, uh, insurance or something in place?”
“I’m pretty sure my lawyer tried to work that out, but got stonewalled by Barclay,” Sophie said, looking disappointed. “Although sometimes I can’t understand what the hell my lawyer’s talking about, but I’m almost positive I don’t get any money from Barclay until our divorce is done. Which better be soon, because I really don’t think I can go back into the cement business. Cinnaminson is nice and all, but it’s not like Bryn Mawr with all these big trees and farms around here.”
Joe and I exchanged glances. It was impossible to figure out if Sophie was as clueless as she seemed. With millions at stake, could she really not know her financial situation vis-à-vis her divorce?
“Of course, Gerda says the United States is even worse than Europe these days when it comes to ruining the environment!” added Sophie. “She keeps talking about the importance of land and about people needing open space. Bores the crap outta me!”
“Oh, great,” said Joe wryly. “An Austrian dictator who’s looking for more open space. It’s 1939 all over again.”
“What?” asked Sophie, looking at us blankly. “What happened in Austria in 1939?”
AFTER JOE HAD given Sophie a basic account of Hitler’s atrocities and a fundamental explanation of World War II, she looked upset. “I didn’t listen much in high school. I never knew all that. That’s terrible,” she said. “But Gerda isn’t that bad. She’s just weird about things like meat and forests. I don’t think she’s pure evil.”
Just then, my cell phone rang: Bootsie. Normally, I wouldn’t pick up a Bootsie call at eight at night, because her calls tend to be lengthy and very tiring, but since Sophie showed no sign of leaving, it seemed a good time to answer. “Hi, Bootsie,” I said, excusing myself and going into the kitchen to put Waffles’s plate in the dishwasher. “What’s up?” I asked, wiping a stray strand of linguine off Holly’s perfect white marble kitchen floor.
“Gerda’s up,” Bootsie told me, hollering into the phone over a lot of noise in the background. “Up and on the bar at the Bryn Mawr Pub. Will and I just ran over to get a quick burger, since the boys are at my mom’s for the night. And the first thing we saw when we came in was Gerda. She was chugging beer and doing shots of schnapps with the guys from the firehouse. She’s completely bombed and just ordered a bucket of wings.”
“I thought she didn’t drink!” I said, shocked. “Or eat meat.”
“Well, she’s drinking now,” Bootsie informed me. “Do you know how to get in touch with Sophie? She should probably come pick up Gerda. This isn’t going in a good direction.”
Over the din of the pub—the clatter of glasses clinking, voices chatting, Neil Diamond on the sound system—I head a deafening thud over my cell phone, the distinctive thump of a body making contact with sticky, beer-splashed tile. All bar chatter ceased for a moment.
“That wasn’t . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
“Yup, that was Gerda,” Bootsie confirmed.
“Sophie’s here,” I told her. “I’ll send her over.” I hung up and went back into the living room.
“Gerda’s on a bender,” I told Sophie, Joe, and Holly. “It sounds like she’s going to need a ride home.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, we all piled out of the Escalade and into the pub, where at first glance things looked relatively normal for a bar on a Wednesday night: beer flowing, Van Morrison blasting, Phillies game on the flat-screen TV. Bootsie and Will were waiting for us in the front booth.
“She’s back there,” Bootsie said, pointing to Gerda, who was laid atop a pool table near the back of the bar, an empty shot glass clutched in her hand. A couple of men in Bryn Mawr Fire Department T-shirts stood next to her looking concerned.
“Sorry,” said one. “She looked like she could handle her booze. She said she took a cab here, so we figured she wouldn’t have to worry about driving home.”
“I’m pissed off at Gerda for being such a hypocrite about booze, but I feel kinda guilty!” squeaked Sophie. “Maybe she’s been working too hard.” She rushed back toward Gerda’s supine form.
Three firefighters rolled Gerda’s spandex-clad form onto a giant wooden Heineken sign borrowed from the pub’s back room.
“She’s just drunk,” one of the firemen told us. “No harm done. We’ll load her into your car.”
Most of the bar was staring by now, and not just at Gerda. We didn’t exactly fit in with the casual, jeans-wearing crowd. Sophie was in her purple outfit and teetery, sparkly sandals, Joe was in seersucker, and Holly was still in her Pucci jumpsuit.
Then it got worse. Just as the firefighters passed through the bar, bearing Gerda’s supine form, Mike Woodford came into the pub. He actually held the door for the Gerda cortege, then for Holly, Sophie, and Joe, and then for Bootsie and Will, who went outside to help pack Gerda into the back of the Lincoln. Then he looked at me and raised one eyebrow.
“Don’t ask,” I told him, and left the bar.
“I’M TAKING THE day off from Booty Camp,” Holly announced, as Waffles and I emerged from her guest room the next morning. The dog and I spent the night nestled comfortably on linen sheets hand-embroidered by cloistered nuns. Whatever they’d cost had been worth it, and I could tell Waffles felt the same by the look of pure joy on his soulful, goofy dog face. “Getting Gerda out of the car last night and into Sophie’s house was a workout in itself!” Holly said.
I refrained from pointing out that Holly had done nothing more than open the car door to assist in removing Gerda from the Navigator the night before. I could smell coffee brewing, and it was a beautiful morning, with Holly’s outdoor living room once again open for business. I was just heading outside with Waffles, hoping to find a private hedge behind which he could do what he needed to do when the doorbell rang. Martha opened the front door, and a courier stood there with a giant package wrapped in brown paper, a white silk bow tied around it. It was roughly four feet by six feet in size. Martha signed for the delivery, the courier left, and Holly looked at the slip.
“It’s from Howard,” Holly said bitterly, as she tore away the paper to reveal a painting sheathed in bubble wrap. Even through the plastic bubbles, we could all see that the contents were amazing: It was a huge white canvas, with a bold black swatch of paint swooping over, the black paint forming a sort of giant, abstract wing. I’d studied one very similar to this in college. In fact, was this—could it be?—
“Is that an Ellsworth Kelly?” I asked.
“Probably,” said Holly disinterestedly. “Howard knows he’s my favorite painter, and he thinks expensive gifts will make everything okay. But they don’t!”
I refrained from pointing out that most of her relationship with Howard had been predicated on the belief that expensive gifts did fix all problems.
“Holly, Howard really seems like he wants to patch things up,” I told her. “Why don’t you two sit down without lawyers and try to figure things out? I know he still loves you. Don’t you miss him?”
Holly shrugged, unceremoniously shoved the Ellsworth Kelly into a corner, and headed for her patio, stepping over Waffles—who’d done the bathroom thing outside, returned, and fallen asleep in a sunbeam near the dining room table. Then she noticed the Bests’ ring, which I was still wearing on my right hand.
“Where did you get that?” asked Holly, grabbing my hand and looking at the ornate ring with a practiced eye. “How did I miss that last night?”
“There was a lot going on,�
� I told her.
Frankly, though I’d wondered the same thing. When at the top of her game, Holly would have spotted the ring the second I’d walked in the door. “My neighbors, the Bests, lent it to me. It’s their mother’s old cocktail ring,” I told her and Joe, who’d appeared from his room and was now toting a coffee mug.
“It’s totally Jackie Kennedy, the Onassis years!” raved Holly, looking more like her old self as she plopped down outside on a huge white upholstered chaise. “It’s so J. Lo meets the Queen of England meets Elizabeth Taylor.”
“I know,” I agreed. “But the Bests had it appraised, and it’s not worth anything, apparently.”
“Those geezers?” scoffed Holly. “They don’t know anything about jewelry. I’m calling George,” she said, and poured herself a glass of water.
Waffles and I followed Holly outside, and I sat back in a comfortable lounge chair, admiring the spectacular setting as an occasional puffy cloud floated by. The rain of the previous evening had left the grass and flowers looking particularly buoyant. A magnificent yellow butterfly floated by on its way to the rosebushes, followed by a robust, furry bumblebee. It’s amazing what money can do. Even the bugs at Holly’s house are well-groomed and attractive. Gosh, I could lie here all day.
My reverie was broken when Holly told me to hold my hand against the white cushions on the lounge chair, so she could snap a quick photo of the Bests’ ring with her iPhone to e-mail to George.
George Fogle is a friend of ours who after high school moved to New York to attend Columbia University. There, he fell in love with a girl named Danielle, then a chef and now an entrepreneur who owns several cool bistros around Manhattan. George, in the meantime, got a master’s degree in art history at Yale, and became an appraiser at Sotheby’s in New York. He also has the sometimes thankless job of working half the week here in Bryn Mawr as the local Sotheby’s liaison.
Basically, that means George keeps in touch with Philly’s wealthiest families, who might be in the market to sell, say, a Thomas Eakins painting they inherited from Granny if they find their trust funds dangerously depleted. He’s also in charge of meeting and greeting newly moneyed people like Sophie and Barclay Shields. New money often decides to start collecting the expensive and beautiful things Sotheby’s sells at auction—say, fine English furniture, or twentieth-century abstract art. (Somehow this didn’t seem likely with Sophie, but you never know.) The best-case scenario for George is someone who gets addicted to buying at auction—like Holly did for a two-month stint the year before she married Howard, until her father called her one day from the chicken plant, and told her that her allowance was on hold until she stopped buying twenty-seven-thousand-dollar French console tables.
So nowadays George spends two days week in Bryn Mawr, and the rest of his time in Manhattan, which is less than two hours away by train or via the Jersey Turnpike. Handsome in a slightly goofy way, with reddish hair and a dusting of preppy freckles, he’s an all-around good guy who sometimes stops into The Striped Awning when he’s in town to say hi and look around, because, as he says, you never know when I might have a piece that’s actually “worth something.” So far, that hasn’t been the case, but it’s always nice to see him.
“George?” sang Holly into her cell phone a minute later. “You need to get together with Kristin ASAP. She has a ring on that deserves its own reality series on Bravo. I just sent you a picture of it. It belongs to those Jurassic neighbors of hers, the Bests, and it’s the size of your eyeball!”
Holly’s voice was temporarily drowned out by the sound of an engine gunning into her driveway.
“George, hold on a second, someone’s just pulling up,” said Holly, peering from her sofa over the rose hedge.
“Chef Gianni,” she announced. “He’s here to talk about the menu for a party I’ve decided to throw in honor of myself and my new house.”
“Chef Gianni?” I said, getting up and taking a peek. It was indeed the chef unfolding himself from the Fiat, bitching loudly in a combination of English and Italian about his heavy cast as he climbed out of the car. Jessica, who apparently had heeded the advice to hold off on dumping the chef, patiently held his crutch, rearranged her hair, and lit a Marlboro Ultra Light all in the same motion as she waited for him to get into limping position.
“Bastardo!” said the chef, addressing his crutch angrily.
“Why did you hire him?” I whispered to Holly. “I thought you hated Gianni.”
“Of course I hate him,” Holly told me. “Everyone does. But I can’t have my housewarming party without Gianni cooking the dinner. I mean, how would it look if I didn’t have Gianni? Even I love his food, and I barely eat. People wouldn’t come if his gnocchi wasn’t on the menu. It’s going to have its own Wikipedia entry soon.”
“Oh, fuck,” said Joe, who’d just appeared on the patio in his pajamas. He froze for a moment when he spied the chef, Jessica, and her plume of cigarette smoke rounding the rosebushes. “It’s too early to deal with those two.” He took off toward his bedroom.
“My darleeng!” said the chef, hopping on his crutch to Holly, and leaning over to kiss her twice on each cheek and several times on her hand and forearm, a gesture that hasn’t been seen since Errol Flynn movies went out of production. The chef’s cologne, a heavy, musky cloud of fragrance, drowned out the roses’ mild scent. Holly and I both coughed uncontrollably for a minute, while Waffles sniffed the air, whined, and lay down over by a planter filled with geraniums.
“Gianni, you know Kristin,” said Holly, gesturing politely toward me.
“Oh, sí,” he said by way of greeting, while Jessica nodded at me, looking nervous.
“Holly,” the chef proclaimed, “I go to your kitchen now. I need to see where I work, and to plan in advance.”
“The kitchen’s right through there,” Holly told him, pointing at the French doors.
“So anyway, George,” she said, returning to her phone call as the chef limped in, Jessica sourly clicking along behind him, giving us an eye roll as she passed us, “the ring has a big oval ruby—or a stone that resembles a ruby—surrounded by tiny diamonds, and it’s very old, I think. Did you get the picture I texted you yet? Okay, great! You know someone at your offices in New York who could look at it? Perfect.” She listened for a minute.
“Okay, I’ll tell Kristin you’re coming by her store later. And by the way, George, you have to be here for my party next weekend. It’s going to be all about Chef Gianni’s gnocchi with boatloads of Italian wine, and I’m having the Colketts bring in about three thousand lilies!”
Just then, the chef appeared in the French doors.
“Hollleee,” he shouted. “There is big problem with your kitchen. Not gonna work. I’m gonna need my catering truck for your dinner party. I need to call Channing about this. I’ll get my phone from the Fiat.”
The chef grabbed his crutch, and with surprising speed, started limping around the rosebush hedge toward his car.
Just as he turned onto the walkway that led to the driveway, something tiny, invisible as it passed, whizzed through the rose hedge and, with a metallic ping, lodged itself into the stone exterior of Holly’s house, right next to one of the French doors into her living room.
A millisecond afterward, there was another whizzing sound, then the crunch of man and metal crutch hitting slate walkway. A car at the end of Holly’s driveway screeched into reverse, hit a three-point turn, and squealed away before any of us could get a look over the hedge at the distant vehicle.
“Merda!” screamed Gianni, who’d gone down like a bowling pin.
Holly and I looked at the object lodged into her stone wall, then at the chef, and then at each other with shocked realization.
“George?” said Holly into her phone. “Can I call you back? I think someone just shot the chef.”
Holly, Waffles, and I rushed inside, terrified. Joe was in the shower and Martha was in the kitchen, watching the Today Show at
top volume and ironing Holly’s dish towels, oblivious to the chef screaming outside on the walkway. Jessica was also unscathed, but had seen the shooting from just inside the living room. We sat her down and called 911, which told us to stay inside until help came.
We were pretty sure the car that had sped out of the driveway had contained the person who shot at us, so probably it was safe to go outside. So, ignoring the 911 operator’s advice, Holly and I crept outside and dragged the chef back into the living room in a matter of about three seconds, in case the shooter returned to finish the job.
We laid Gianni on the hardwood floor (Holly wasn’t about to risk getting blood on her carpet), where he shouted obscenities and squirmed like an upside-down caterpillar while Jessica fluttered over him uselessly.
Oddly, we couldn’t see any wounds or blood on the chef, but he was screaming in apparent agony. Then we noticed a little black hole in the cast on his right ankle, and a trickle of dark liquid seeping out slowly over his exposed toes at the bottom of the cast.
“Oh, good,” said Holly soothingly. “Look, Chef, the bullet went right through your cast. That’s really lucky!”
“I would not call it lucky!” screamed Gianni.
“Well, it’s better than getting shot in the head,” said Joe, who had come out of his room and was taking in the situation. “That would really hurt.”
“This really hurts!” exploded the chef.
“Maybe a pillow will help,” Holly suggested. She took a silk pillow off the sofa and gingerly put it under the chef’s bald head. She stepped back and eyed him critically, like a sales manager at Pottery Barn who’s just put together a window display, and sees something lacking. Holly nudged the pillow a little straighter with the toe of her sandal, and bent over to adjust his sleeves to show a bit of the tattoo of St. Peter’s Basilica on his muscled arm. “There,” she cooed. “That’s better.”
