Killer WASPs

by Amy Korman

  “Great!” I said, taking a quick gulp.

  While John took a quick shower, I looked around for glasses in which to pour the rest of the champagne. I found a ­couple of water glasses, so I made do with that. Had I been a snooper, I could have poked around a little, but I had a feeling there was really nothing to snoop through. Even Bootsie might have been defeated by this place, which felt totally unlived in, like a dorm room that’s used only for sleeping and showering. John’s condo was decorated with only the basics: a couch, a table, and presumably a bed, though I hadn’t ventured into that part of the place. You could tell it was a guy’s place, because the biggest things in it were the TV and the grill on his back patio. Lilly must have kept all the wedding gifts and monogrammed pillows when she and John had split up. The whole condo was beige, with nothing on the walls and nothing on the floor except for quite a bit of dog hair.

  After some champagne outside on the patio, while the sun was setting and the dogs ventured out to surround our chairs happily, I realized that the freshly showered veterinarian smelled just as good as Mike Woodford. He might even smell better. I was shocked to realize John’s forearms, which were currently on view with the rolled-­up sleeves of a blue Oxford shirt, were even more amazing than I’d realized before. They were tan and had lots of sinewy muscle. I realized tipsily that I really wanted to check out the tennis muscles for myself. At that moment, John reached out and took my hand, and I could feel electricity between us. Or at least I felt it on my end. Who knew a country club tennis champ could be this sexy? And for the duration of the sunset, there was some fantastic kissing on the back porch as the sun disappeared and the dogs watched curiously.

  After the kissing, John ordered a pizza.

  “I have salad stuff in here, too,” he said, rooting around in his fridge, while I sat at his kitchen table. “I try to be healthy and eat salad and grilled chicken, but I usually end up ordering pizza.”

  I was trying to project calmness and serenity, which was what I imagined Lilly’s demeanor to be while she sipped champagne on summer evenings, but I was confused and doubtful about what John’s situation vis-­à-­vis Lilly.

  Against all Holly and Bootsie’s advice, I blurted out a question. Actually, two questions. “I hate to ask you this,” I said, “but why did you and Lilly split up? And do you think you two might get back together?”

  John was pouring Pellegrino into coffee mugs, since we’d used his only water glasses for the champagne. He set a mug in front of me, sat down, and looked at me. He didn’t look angry or upset, just thoughtful.

  “It’s not that I don’t care about Lilly,” he said. “But I realized within a few months after we got married that we weren’t really in love with each other. She felt the same way, I’m pretty sure, though it took her longer to admit it. Neither of us wants to get back together. We’re almost divorced. Should be final in a few weeks.”

  Yay, I cheered inwardly, at the same time feeling badly for him that he’d gone through the painful experience of getting married and finding out it was a dud. I also felt sympathy for Lilly. Honestly, though, since she’s so beautiful, she wouldn’t be single for long. “It was more that we seemed perfect for each other,” John continued. “Everyone thought so, especially Mariellen, Lilly’s mother. She’s the one having the hardest time with our marriage ending.”

  While we waited for the pizza, John told me that Mariellen had been a major factor in their split due to her quietly controlling ways. He and Lilly had been planning to buy a house out in Chester County after they got married, but a few weeks before the wedding, Mariellen had given Lilly a roomy and charming cottage next door to Mariellen’s property, which she’d bought, had fully renovated, and had furnished with a lot of chintz and pillows and paintings of horses and dogs. “It was really nice, but it looked exactly like Mariellen’s house,” he added. “Sometimes it seemed like I’d married Mariellen, too, and she’s definitely not my type.”

  My eyebrows shot up when he said this. Had he not noticed that Lilly and Mariellen looked exactly alike, except that Lilly was thirty-­five years younger? Men never notice things like that.

  “So there we were,” John went on, serving me some salad, “living a few hundred yards away from my mother-­in-­law, who was always inviting us for drinks, tennis, and Sunday dinners. And Tuesday dinners. And Wednesday dinners. I left in a cloud of Virginia Slim smoke every night. And then there were the horse events. I mean, Mariellen’s obsession with Norman is bizarre. The horse comes to cocktails in the garden every night, and eats sliced carrots and apples off Mariellen’s Limoges plates.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think my ex-­mother-­in-­law’s kind of losing it.”

  Feeding a horse off fine china didn’t seem all that strange to me, since I usually give Waffles half of whatever I’m eating for dinner, and honestly, he hates his dog bowl, so I usually serve him his meal in a vintage soup bowl. But then again, Norman’s a horse, not a dog. I wondered how John would feel about sleeping with a seventy-­five-­pound basset hound every night. I looked at his motley pack of dogs, who were taking up the whole couch and drooling on the cushions. Probably he’d think it was fine, I decided hopefully.

  The pizza guy arrived; John paid for it and put the box on the table, along with the salad.

  The salad John had made looked fantastic. Actually, it had both carrots and apples in it, and we both thought of a certain horse and laughed. “Norman would love this salad,” I said.

  Chapter 20

  THE NEXT MORNING, feeling upbeat after my impromptu date with John, I parked in back of The Striped Awning. When Waffles and I got inside and turned on the lights, I noticed the familiar form of Bootsie looming at the front door, waiting to chat, her tanned face flushed pink with excitement.

  Not this again, I thought. My first guess was that she’d somehow learned I’d been at John’s condo the night before. Given the breadth of Bootsie’s network, she probably had at least one friend or relative living in John’s rental complex, and who might have spied me entering the grounds, or even seen us kissing on his back patio. I steeled myself for an interrogation.

  Truly, not all that much had happened between John and me the night before; I’d only stayed for dinner. We were still just in making-­out mode. Even though he’d said he was one-­hundred-­percent not going work things out with Lilly, I wanted to be careful. What if he decided that having cocktails with his mother-­in-­law (and her horse) most nights wasn’t all that bad, after all, and moved back in with Lilly? You never know with men.

  “Update from Walt,” Bootsie said breathlessly, after I unlocked the door, sat down at my desk, and turned on my computer.

  Phew, I thought, realizing she was back in crime-­fighting mode, and wasn’t focused on my dating life. She took her customary seat in the in front of my desk, and tried to wave away Waffles, who was in his customary position of amiably licking her ankles.

  “The acorn was definitely the weapon used to hit Barclay. The blood on it matches. Also, the chef is on bed rest for a few days, but he’s home already. The bullet just grazed his foot, thanks to the cast,” she informed me.

  “The real news is that Channing doesn’t have much of an alibi for yesterday morning when the chef was shot. He went to the gym at eight, and then left a little before nine, got a coffee from the Starbucks drive-­through, and headed to work. He got to the restaurant fifteen minutes later, and you know the gym and Starbucks are less than five minutes away from Holly’s. So he definitely could have swung into Holly’s driveway, shot the chef, and then gone to work.” Bootsie paused to take a breath and frowned. “Still, though, he just doesn’t seem guilty to me. Why would Channing risk going to prison when he’s busy having lots of inappropriate sex with Jessica?”

  I nodded in agreement. Their hot affair had to be preferable to a stint at Graterford.

  “Sophie and Gerda are still in the running as suspects, because they don’t have much of an alibi for yesterday morning—­only each o
ther. If they have access to guns, they could have definitely done the shooting.”

  “I can’t figure Sophie out,” I said, shaking my head. “It doesn’t seem possible that she could be as dumb as she seems, but then again, it seems more implausible that she’s secretly smart.”

  “I agree,” Bootsie said. “I’m starting to think Sophie’s just what she seems to be. So I’m ruling her out, at least for now. Also, she has a motive against Barclay, but none that we know of for shooting Gianni.”

  “Great,” I told her. “I like Sophie, at least when she’s not talking about her and Barclay’s sex life.”

  “Walt’s pretty sure it wasn’t Honey Potts who took the shot at the chef yesterday, but he can’t completely clear her yet,” Bootsie told me as I made a quick trip to the back room for my favorite Swiffer, some paper towels, and a bottle of Windex, and started to spruce up the store in hopes of foot traffic. I was listening to Bootsie, but also thinking that I really need to get customers in again, since Sophie’s windfall won’t last forever. Maybe I could go ahead with my mojito happy hour, or I could serve hors d’oeuvres on Friday afternoons at the store to lure in buyers, I thought hopefully.

  “What do you think about me offering wine and cheese on Fridays here at the store?” I asked Bootsie.

  “Kristin, focus!” she said impatiently. “This is important. As I was saying, the chef was shot at 9 a.m. yesterday. Or a few minutes before nine, since you and Holly didn’t note the exact time.” She shot me an accusatory glance.

  “A shot was fired six feet from us,” I told her. “It was distracting.”

  “Honey’s alibi is a little shaky, too. She had a 9 a.m. tee time at the club yesterday, where she was meeting Mariellen Merriwether,” Bootsie continued. “The caddies said they’re pretty sure that Honey picked up a golf cart right around nine, and they saw her and Mariellen teeing off not long after. Of course, those caddies are always stoned, so they have no concept of time.”

  “They get stoned that early?” I asked, surprised.

  “They’re college guys who just got home on summer break,” Bootsie told me. “Anyway, I’m sure Honey isn’t involved in the shooting”—­her tone implied that Bootsie was actually thinking there was a big chance Honey was involved—­“but there’s one other thing I got out of Walt: They sent the bullet they pried out of the chef down to a lab in Philly, and it was fired from an old pistol that dates back to the 1930s or 1940s, and the bullet was also from that era.

  “And here’s the interesting part: Honey admits that there are old guns stored at Sanderson,” Bootsie continued. “Her father used to host foxhunts at Sanderson, and they had quite a few weapons, including shotguns and pistols. They kept hounds, served sherry, played bugles, the whole bit. And the guns are still there, stored in the barn!”

  Mike Woodford flashed into my mind when Bootsie mentioned the Sanderson barn. I’d been positive that he wasn’t involved with any of the crimes, but he did work in the barn. The barn with the guns.

  But I dismissed the thought of Mike shooting Gianni as unlikely—­for one thing, I was pretty sure he didn’t know where Holly lived, and possibly didn’t even know who she was. And how would Mike know the chef was going to be at Holly’s?

  Plus I’d tried and failed to think of a reason why he would want to go after Barclay or Chef Gianni. Of course, if the guns were sitting around the barn, Channing would have seen them, too, when he worked at Sanderson. Maybe Channing had borrowed a gun from Sanderson to mow down the chef?

  “Honey used to foxhunt, too, back in the sixties, before ­people gave up hunting around here!” Bootsie finished. “She’s said to be a crack shot!”

  We looked at each other, both of us thinking: That did make Honey sound guilty.

  “Anyway, I do think you should have wine and cheese here on Friday afternoons,” Bootsie told me, gathering up her stuff to leave. “I’ll come. And if there’s free food, you might even get Barclay as a regular customer, once he gets sprung from the hospital, which I hear is going to be very soon.” I was about to remind Bootsie about Barclay’s attitude toward antiques when I noticed a petite figure had just entered the store.

  “Barclay is out of the hospital!” the customer squeaked. “Has been since yesterday morning!”

  It was Sophie, of course, who’d just parked her Escalade illegally in front of the fire hydrant outside, and swung into The Striped Awning in a yellow silk top, miniskirt, and strappy sandals. With her blond hair and the yellow outfit, she reminded one of a very tiny stick of butter. I got hold of Waffles’s collar, since he had a frisky look in his brown eyes that foretold tackling Sophie again.

  “You gals might think it was Honey Potts who shot the chef,” Sophie shrieked, “but I know it wasn’t. It was Barclay!”

  “Barclay got out yesterday morning?” asked Bootsie excitedly, sitting back down in her chair. “I have a great source at the hospital, and she didn’t say a word. What time was he checked out?”

  “Early. Like eight!” said Sophie. She whipped off a pair of enormous sunglasses that made her face look even smaller than usual. Underneath them, she was as well-­groomed as ever, her blond hair perfectly blown out, full makeup and manicure in place, but she also had a slightly wild-­eyed look this morning. “So he could have totally driven over to get a gun at his condo, and then gone to Holly’s place to shoot the chef by nine!

  “Barclay didn’t actually get formally released,” Sophie added. “He just ripped out his tubes and left, so the hospital tried to keep it quiet till this morning, but his doctor called me looking for him! And don’t worry, I already called that Officer Walt guy to tell him that Barclay’s out and about,” she informed us.

  “Does Barclay have a gun?” I asked her.

  “You bet he does!” Sophie shrieked. “He has a bunch of ’em!”

  “Does he have any old guns?” asked Bootsie.

  “I don’t know what-­all he has,” stormed Sophie with a toss of her head, “since he has so many. But he usually won’t buy anything old, so I doubt he has an antique gun. Guns are like flat-­screen TVs if you’re from Jersey—­everybody wants the newest and biggest. And by the way,” Sophie added, “Barclay stopped by last night to tell me he wants me to move out of the house, so that he can move back in. The house Joe and I are redecorating. Can you believe that?”

  “Are you going to move out?” Bootsie asked her.

  Sophie stomped her foot. “No fucking way! I just turned a guest room into a shoe room. I got storage in there for two hundred seventy-­five pairs, and we got ’em organized by designer and heel height. I just hope Barclay did shoot Gianni. I asked him about it when he came over last night, but he just laughed, and said Gianni got what he deserved.”

  Bootsie and I looked at each other again and shrugged. There seemed to be little chance that Barclay, fresh out of Bryn Mawr Hospital, would have been able to track Gianni down at Holly’s house, but who knew?

  “What’s up with Barclay’s angioplasty?” asked Bootsie.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care! We’re getting the divorce agreement hammered out next week, if he doesn’t have a heart attack by then,” said Sophie triumphantly. “I think whoever’s trying to whack him should just wait it out. He’s one cheesesteak away from the grave!”

  THE REST OF the day at the store was blissfully uneventful, other than three phone calls. The first was from Hugh Best, who reported that Jimmy had safely returned home. I could hear music in the background and the tinkle of ice cubes into glass, and Hugh sounded very upbeat.

  I could only imagine the rejoicing and general celebration going on in the kitchen and staff lounge at the club, the hallelujahs chorusing from the waiters and bartenders now that Jimmy was gone.

  The next call was from George, who told me that he’d delivered the brothers’ ring to a specialist at Sotheby’s Upper East Side offices in New York.

  George said that the woman was immediately able to identify its elegantly tattered black le
ather and velvet box as vintage Garrard (which, he told me, is Britain’s crown jeweler). If the ring box was original, then the jewel was by Garrard—­this remained to be verified, George said, but his colleague, a brilliant French woman in her forties, was locked in her office with her reference books, her computer, a jeweler’s loupe, and the ring, doing a ridiculously thorough job of researching the provenance of the bauble. If it was Garrard, he told me, it definitely had value, much more than a few hundred dollars.

  Honestly, I was impressed. Even if it sold for as much as, say, five or ten thousand dollars, it would be a nice windfall for Jimmy and Hugh. They could crank up the heat next winter and dial back on the casseroles. “I wouldn’t say anything to the old guys yet, though,” George suggested. “A lot of times, these things don’t work out the way we hope. I’d hate to get their hopes up.”

  At five, the phone rang again.

  “Doll!” said a voice speaking in a loud whisper. “Tim Colkett here. Since we already spilled so much info to you, here’s a little more news. We were at Gianni’s restaurant today doing the flowers for the bar, and not that we were eavesdropping or anything like that, but we couldn’t help listening to Jessica and Channing, who weren’t being very careful about keeping their conversation on the QT.

  “And I happened to hear Jessica and Channing talking over secret plans to move to Palm Beach.”

  “Palm Beach, Florida?” I asked.

  “They’re relocating there ASAP,” said Tim. “Opening their own restaurant. Fresh pasta and grilled meats, sidewalk tables, very summer in Amalfi. Jessica’s planning a late-­sixties vibe, with glossy orange walls and white leather banquettes and mosaic tiled floors.”

  “Interesting,” I murmured, wondering if this was a false lead to take attention away from Tim himself. I still didn’t think Channing was the one who shot Gianni, but if he had, it shouldn’t be too hard for the police to find him in Florida. Palm Beach isn’t all that big.