Killer WASPs

by Amy Korman

  Then a police car pulled up, Officer Walt got out accompanied by a teenager wearing jeans and a T-­shirt, and that’s when things started heating up in the investigation of who wanted Barclay Shields and Chef Gianni maimed, dead, or, preferably, both maimed and dead.

  “WALT, I CAN totally help you with this investigation,” Holly told Officer Walt five minutes later. “You too, Jared.”

  Jared, the teenager who’d accompanied Walt to our crime scene, was a senior at Bryn Mawr Prep, winding up a six-­week internship at the police department. He had an earring, no facial hair, and smelled strongly of Axe body spray. He looked more like he was fourteen.

  An ambulance manned by the same EMTs from Sophie’s party had arrived. Once again, Gianni was ladled onto a gurney, and the emergency workers prepared to take him out the French doors, speaking to the chef cheerfully as his vital signs were checked. “Hey, man, good to see you again!” said the youthful medic to Gianni.

  “Vaffanculo,” the chef told him.

  “Looks like you took the bullet right in that same ankle—­bummer. Let’s cut this cast off out in the ambulance see what’s what,” added the other medic in an upbeat tone, ignoring the invitation to go fuck himself.

  Gianni gave him the finger as he was wheeled out across the patio. They took off for Bryn Mawr Hospital, Jessica following nervously in the red Fiat. Officer Walt, in over his head, called the Philadelphia Police Department for assistance, and detectives were dispatched. Walt then came inside to the kitchen and pulled out a little black spiral notebook to write down what we knew. Jared, the intern, meanwhile stared adoringly at Holly, his mouth hanging open.

  “Jessica—­that’s the chef’s girlfriend—­was inside my house when he got shot,” Holly explained as we all perched on the white bar stools around her kitchen counter. “So at least we know she didn’t shoot him. The shot came from the front yard or driveway. But just so you know, Walt, there’s a lot of gossip going on around town about the chef, and Jessica, and Barclay Shields, and I’m going to help you get it all down in that notebook of yours.”

  Walt dutifully poised pen over notebook. Jared, sitting on a counter stool nibbling at a plate of fruit, appeared utterly useless. He continued to stare at Holly, his mouth agape. He was wearing a retainer, I noticed.

  Truthfully, I felt for Officer Walt. For three hundred years, Bryn Mawr’s been one of the more peaceful places on earth, where most troubles are along the lines of a failed soufflé or a sand-­trapped golf ball. How was one thirtyish policeman with a seventeen-­year-­old intern in late-­stage puberty supposed to solve all this?

  “Walt, it turns out that Gianni and Barclay both had some ties to what sounds a lot like the mafia,” Holly told the officer. “I don’t know much about organized crime, but apparently they both had a lot of uncles from New Jersey.”

  “We have all that info,” Walt said, surprising me. “I’m working with teams in Philly and from Newark, and we’ve been able to piece together a lot about Barclay and Gianni’s past. The drive-­by shooting is a surprise, actually. We’re told the guys in Jersey don’t have any issues with Chef Gianni. Apparently, he paid off all his debts when he sold his pizza joint.”

  “The chef’s girlfriend Jessica is having an affair with one of Gianni’s assistants,” Holly informed Walt.

  “Right, Bootsie McElvoy told me about that.” The policeman nodded. “Guy named Channing.”

  “So maybe you should check to see what Channing was doing twenty minutes ago when my patio was shot at!” suggested Holly.

  I was having a hard time thinking of Channing in the role of homicidal maniac. When you’re as gorgeous as a young Richard Gere with a little Jake Gyllenhall thrown into the awesome-­genetic blender, why would you kill someone? There’s nothing to be angry about, if you look like Channing.

  But maybe Channing was getting impatient waiting for Jessica to break up with the chef, and figured he could get rid of Gianni via one quick shot and have Jessica all to himself?

  “I could see a possible motive for Channing to shoot Gianni,” I said, “but attacking Barclay? What would Channing possibly gain from that, if we’re assuming that the same person is after both Barclay and Gianni?”

  “Bootsie told me that Channing once worked at Sanderson, right?” said Walt, rifling through his notes. “Maybe he had some grudge against Barclay for wanting to buy part of the estate.” He sighed.

  “We also need to discuss the Colkett Florists. They hate the chef, so maybe they shot him this morning!” Holly continued to Walt. “I love the Colketts, but they could have pushed Gianni off Sophie Shields’s balcony. They were in the house when it happened, and were right by the stairs right after he fell!”

  Walt sighed. “I know Tim Colkett pretty well. He did the flowers for my wedding, and gave us a big discount, since he said he wanted to support law enforcement and knows it’s not a high-­paying field.” He sighed again. “But I did hear about the chef making a scene and humiliating those two at his opening. So I had Jared do some Internet research on the Colketts.”

  Jared nodded, his earring bobbing up and down. “Yeah,” he said, pleased to finally make a contribution. “Four years ago, before Tim Colkett hit it big as a florist, he lost a house to foreclosure. And the bank sold the house after that to a developer—­Barclay Shields! And that Shields dude tore the place down. I pieced it all together from the legal notices in the newspaper,” he said proudly. “It was some kind of historic place. Colkett tried to stop the teardown in court, but Barclay went ahead and put up three townhomes on the lot.”

  “So you’re saying Tim Colkett might have had a motive to go after both Gianni and Barclay?” I asked.

  Walt nodded. “Bootsie told me that the Colketts claim that Gianni, Jessica, and Channing were missing from Gianni’s opening. But who’s to say they’re not lying? Maybe they snuck off themselves to go after Barclay.”

  “Did you find out how exactly the Colketts are related?” Holly asked Walt and Jared.

  “That’s out of my area of interest,” Walt told her, and headed out outside to walk the crime scene. The Philly police were due any minute, and Jared was leaving, since he had to be back at school for a calculus quiz at eleven. Officer Walt told me I could go to work, and that Jared could drop me off at The Striped Awning, where I’d left my car the night before. Walt didn’t seem to think I could add much to the investigation, and I was inclined to agree. Meanwhile, Joe had joined us, eating scrambled eggs.

  “I can’t believe I missed seeing the chef get shot,” he complained.

  “I’ve got six messages from Bootsie McElvoy telling me that Gianni is the one who attacked Barclay last Thursday,” said Walt, as he, Jared, Waffles, and I headed out the front door, so as not to disturb the crime scene on the patio. “But a ­couple of days ago, she left me a bunch of voice mails telling me that she thought that Pilates woman who works for Sophie Shields hit Barclay in the head. She also told me she thinks Sophie could have been the mastermind behind the Barclay hit.”

  “Yeah, that is one of Bootsie’s theories, but they change frequently,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve met Gerda, the live-­in Pilates instructor.”

  “Oh yeah,” confirmed Walt. “I’ve met her. After the chef fell off Mrs. Shields’s terrace. Interesting woman, Gerda.”

  “Maybe—­and it pains me to say this—­Bootsie’s right,” mused Joe, who had walked out onto the driveway with us, still forking eggs northward. “Gerda or Sophie could have shot the chef this morning. Gerda’s got to have a killer hangover this morning, but she could still have come over and nailed the chef. Just as an FYI, Walt, the woman doesn’t have a valid driver’s license, so that’s another offense right there.”

  Walt shrugged, closed his notebook, and hesitated over something for a moment. “I’ll look into it,” he promised.

  Then he looked up at each of us and spoke, Jared hovering at his elbow.

  “I’m going to share something with the three of you that hasn�
��t gotten out to the papers yet,” Walt said. “I’m telling you this because no matter what I do, I know Bootsie McElvoy’s going to dig out the information by the end of the day, and it’ll be in the paper tomorrow, so I’ll just tell you now.

  “Yesterday, we found the weapon that was used to hit Barclay,” he told us. “We borrowed a new police dog from Philly to take over to Sanderson in the afternoon. Jared has a dog—­well, his family has a dog—­and he and the dog had gone through Sanderson looking for clues last weekend, but hadn’t had any luck. So we finally brought in a professional sniffer, a German shepherd.”

  Waffles, hearing the word “dog,” wagged his tail. He knows that word.

  “Your dog inspected Sanderson for clues?” Joe asked the teenage intern, giving him a skeptical look. “Is the dog trained for that?”

  “Not exactly,” Jared said. “But usually he has, like, a great nose! He can find a sandwich from a mile away. I’m not shitting you!”

  This was really kind of sad. Bryn Mawr, a wealthy and historic town, used household pets to conduct crime scene investigations. But then again, you wouldn’t expect the Bryn Mawr police to have much in the way of a K–9 force.

  “What kind of dog is it?” Joe asked.

  “It’s a, uh, Labradoodle,” admitted Jared.

  Joe and I broke out in laughter, and Jared and Walt looked uncomfortable. Even Waffles would be better than that, I thought.

  “Yeah, well, I know,” said Walt with a sheepish smile. “So anyway, this German shepherd from the city came out yesterday after the Labradoodle didn’t find anything. Right before the rainstorm yesterday, the police dog found the weapon. It had traces of dried blood on it. We’re testing to see if it’s Barclay’s, but we’re pretty sure this is what the attacker used.”

  “What was the weapon?” Joe asked.

  “It’s a bookend,” said Walt. “Shaped like an acorn. Has an inscription on it, it was given to a graduate of Bryn Mawr Prep.”

  Chapter 18

  I BLINKED, MY stomach churning with surprise.

  “I have bookends like that at my store,” I told Walt. “I just bought three of them last Saturday at Stoltzfus’s, the flea market out in Lancaster County. After Barclay was attacked,” I added hastily. “Just so you know, I didn’t hit Barclay. I didn’t even have the bookends last Thursday.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t think you did it,” said Walt. “There are a lot of these acorn bookends floating around town, since a lot of ­people received them as graduation gifts over the years. In fact, I’m headed over to Bryn Mawr Prep right after I leave here, to figure out how many of the things were given out, and to which graduating classes.”

  Walt told us that his best guess was that older Prep alumni hadn’t necessarily held on to their bookends. ­People who’d retired to condos in Florida, or moved into smaller town houses after their children left home, could have donated them to the thrift shop over at the hospital or sold them at garage sales. It wasn’t out of the question that Gerda or Sophie Shields, or the Colketts, could have gotten hold of one of the acorns.

  But Honey Potts, a proud Bryn Mawr Prep alumna, had definitely gotten a pair of acorn bookends at graduation. Honey had freely admitted this when Walt had stopped by her house yesterday to tell her about the police dog finding the acorn in her field. Honey had, in fact, invited Walt into her library to show him her own pair of bookends.

  But when they walked into the paneled room, the acorns weren’t there in their usual place on the bookshelf.

  “Mrs. Potts looked genuinely shocked that they were missing,” Walt told us. “And I tend to believe her.” He added that Honey said she’d cleaned out a bunch of stuff in her house the previous spring. She said she’d boxed up some items and put them in the attic at Sanderson, and gave others away to relatives and friends. “She couldn’t remember whether the acorns had been donated or given away as part of her cleanout, or if she’d stashed them upstairs.”

  By this time, Holly had come out to the driveway, listening breathlessly to the description of the weapon used to attack Barclay.

  “Mrs. Potts was going to look in her attic last night to see if she can find the bookends,” Walt said. “So I have to get over there today, too. First, though, I have to tape off your driveway and your patio, Holly,” Walt finished.

  “Crime scene tape?” said Holly happily. “That’s fantastic! Everyone’s going to doubly want to come to party next week if there’s crime scene tape here. You can come, too, Walt. You too, Jared.”

  “Okay, thanks, great,” said Walt, looking happy about the invitation as he unfurled his yellow tape, the one good thing going on for him in his life at the moment. Jared looked dumbstruck.

  “The detectives from the city should be here in a few minutes,” Walt added.

  “Perfect!” Holly sang out. “I’m picturing Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman as the detectives. And I’ve decided I’m going to help you, Walt,” she added. “I’m going to become Honey’s new best friend. Even if she didn’t hit him herself, she must know something about what happened to Barclay Shields; I mean, it happened at her house. And I’m going to find out everything Honey knows.”

  At this, Walt and Jared looked doubtfully at Holly, who didn’t inspire a ton of confidence, to be honest. She didn’t look like she could pull off a Miss Marple–style investigation. Currently attired in four-­inch heels and a caftan, airily applying lip gloss, Holly looked more like she was headed to the beach in Mustique than a woman on a crime-­solving mission.

  I pictured Honey’s makeup-­less face, her loafers, and her leathery hide developed from years spent in the fields with her beloved cows, and then tried to imagine Holly and Honey as a seriously miscast Cagney and Lacey.

  No one else looked convinced, but I knew that Holly could befriend Honey in no time. Underneath her Gucci façade, Holly’s very determined.

  “As soon as the detectives interview me, I’m off to Neiman Marcus,” Holly said, screwing on the cap of her lip gloss. “I can’t become Honey’s new best friend without the right outfit.”

  IT WAS 11:15 a.m. when Jared dropped me and Waffles off at The Striped Awning—­not all that late to be opening up the shop, considering that we’d already witnessed a shooting this morning. I unlocked, turned on the lights, and booted up my computer, first checking on the acorn bookends, which were just as I’d left them. All three of them sat there, looking benign. Not at all like attempted-­murder weapons, really. I picked each one up again, feeling their considerable heft, and read the inscription: “From this acorn grows a mighty oak.”

  More like “From this acorn, a mighty head injury is inflicted,” I thought to myself.

  It seemed frivolous after such a scary event that morning, but as I checked my e-­mail, I couldn’t help wondering whether John would call me. He’d probably already reconciled with Lilly the Beautiful Tennis Player, I thought morosely. My own tennis lesson the day before seemed like it had happened a million years ago.

  The rest of the morning was uneventful, and George arrived looking spiffy in a blue blazer over a Lacoste shirt after Waffles and I had shared a bagel with cream cheese for lunch. We chatted briefly about the chef getting shot, since George had listened to the incident over Holly’s cell phone, and then got right down to business over the Bests’ ring.

  I carefully removed the bauble from my right ring finger, and laid it in its velvet-­lined black leather box, which I handed across my desk to George. He donned a pair of glasses and carefully picked up the piece of jewelry. He was quiet for a few minutes as he turned it around and examined it from all angles, then looked at the little crown insignia in the box’s lid. Then he quietly and gingerly put the ring back in its little slot in the velvet, where it glittered elegantly in the light from the store’s front windows.

  “Let me get this straight,” George said finally. “Your neighbors inherited this very beautiful piece of jewelry from their mother, and they don’t know where she got it. And it’s been s
itting in that tumbledown house next to yours for the last five decades.”

  “That’s pretty much it,” I agreed.

  “And you’ve been wearing it around town for the past few days, including this morning, when you were at Holly’s and Chef Gianni got shot.”

  “Yup.”

  “So you’ve had the ring on while doing errands, walking the dog, cleaning the store, picking up dog doo,” he asked in a neutral tone.

  I nodded. If I wasn’t mistaken, I was beginning to sense a hint of negativity. “Is that wrong?” I asked, trying not to sound defensive. “I could put it in the store safe.”

  “You have a safe?” said George, his voice cracking.

  He looked dubiously at the store’s front door, which, as noted by Gerda, is flimsy and ancient. Then he glanced at the tall front windows, which I sometimes forget to close before I leave. “And where is this ‘safe’?” he asked, making air quotes with his fingers as he said it.

  “It’s in the back room!” I told him. “Hidden away, behind the cleaning supplies.”

  He sighed.

  “Am I correct in guessing that the safe is a vintage item?”

  “It’s an older safe, yes,” I conceded. I could tell that George was mentally cataloging the ease of a thief breaking into the store, grabbing the safe, and hightailing it out the door lugging the old metal strongbox. It’s true that the safe isn’t too big, and doesn’t weigh all that much, maybe forty pounds. Since some of the window locks in The Striped Awning are missing (I keep meaning to replace those), and the deadbolts date back to about 1928, I guess someone could bust in overnight if they put their mind to it. I mean, if Bootsie can break into liquor cabinets and basement bunkers, who knows what kind of ­people might be out looking to burgle my store? Then again, The Striped Awning doesn’t usually have much worth stealing in it.

  Meanwhile, George had gotten up, walked over to the front door, and was inspecting the lock in a supercilious manner (which was uncalled for, if you ask me).