by Amy Korman
I discreetly handed him the estimate for this blue and white striped masterpiece. He took one look, swallowed hard, and stuffed it back in the tote, apparently deciding to nail Adelia with the hefty price tag at a later date.
“That all sounds real cute,” Adelia told Joe. “Just remember, sugar, you got eight days to finish this job. I know decorators. Getting you to finish a job is like nailin’ Jell-O to a tree.”
“Frank’s got his circular saw set up in your driveway, Adelia, and he thinks he’ll have most of the woodwork done by Tuesday at noon,” Joe assured her. “Then we’ll start with the new floor, the lighting, the painting, and, obviously, the tenting. Tell those poker ladies to get ready for a pool house that’ll knock them on their asses!”
“I CAN’T BELIEVE I’m saying this after my toes were in Stage One frostbite for the last six weeks . . . but it’s really hot!” I told Bootsie an hour later as I fanned myself with a printed program featuring photos of Rafael Nadal and Maria Sharapova. We were sitting in the stands of the Delray Beach Tennis Center, which turned out to be a small stadium in the center of an adorable beach town.
“And,” I added, looking at the scene in the tennis stadium and the palm-tree-lined street beyond it, “this town is kind of awesome!”
Delray Beach, though only twenty-five minutes south of the serene and peerless shops of Palm Avenue, felt like a funky village in the Florida Keys. Reggae and Cuban music poured from speakers along Atlantic Avenue, its café-lined main street, and cool couples, both gay and straight, sipped coffee at shaded tables. Colorful pillows lined outdoor banquettes on the patios of restaurants. Shops and boutiques offered everything from cute dresses to ornately decorated cupcakes to vintage furniture. And though it was only 11:00 am, a festive island air percolated through the whole town.
I loved the formal precision and manicured hedges in Magnolia Beach, but I felt my shoulders instantly relax as soon as we drove into Delray Beach. If Magnolia Beach was the incarnation of a black-tie ball, then Delray was the fun backyard barbecue where everyone got tipsy on mojitos under strings of party lights, and ate quesadillas and guacamole. It was amazing to have two such diametrically different places just miles apart on the coastline.
I texted a few quick photos of the scene to John Hall in California, giving him a quick update on Adelia, Gianni, and Waffles. John’s a really sweet and polite guy, so he always says he likes to hear what my dysfunctional posse is up to, even if he’s likely more interested in things like bovine breeding trends.
“Delray is where my parents had their honeymoon,” Bootsie told me, her eyes on the court where two handsome tennis players, one from China and the other Australia, were battling out for a third set in the already steamy sunshine. “Look at that serve!”
I tried to follow the guys and the rocketing tennis balls on the court, but frankly, other than the fact that they were both cute and tan, I couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm about the actual game.
“My brother Chip was conceived right down the street at Crane’s Hotel,” Bootsie continued. “Mummy said she had no idea what was coming her way after the wedding, but boom! One night at Crane’s, and she was knocked up.”
“What a beautiful story,” said Joe, climbing into the seat next to us, followed by Holly. While everyone else in the stadium was in shorts, T-shirts, or workout clothes, Holly had on a crisp striped sundress and flat Hermès sandals. She wasn’t even sweating. “I might need to visit this Crane’s place just so I can fully envision Chip’s conception.”
“When does Javier Guzman-Ferrara play?” Holly asked, pushing up her sunglasses to scan the sidelines. “He’s the only reason I’m here.” She pointed at a gorgeous dark-haired guy in his early thirties doing some stretches by the main court. “I’ll just go say hi to him,” she said, getting up again. “I sat next to him once on a plane.”
“Javier Guzman-Ferrara?” shouted Bootsie, swiveling her attention away from the action on the court to ogle the handsome guy Holly had indicated. “The dark-haired, muscular Spanish guy who once beat Rafael Nadal? I’ll come with you!”
“Okay,” said Holly, not sounding all that thrilled about Bootsie accompanying her. “If you really want to.”
“Is Sophie going to join us?” I asked Joe, as Holly and Bootsie took off toward the hot tennis player.
“She’s still Skyping with her lawyers,” he said gloomily, flagging down a passing drinks seller for a Diet Coke. “She thinks Barclay’s really dragging his feet getting the divorce finalized. And it seems like he’s out of town, because it takes about forty-eight hours to get the simplest question answered. We’ve been waiting since last Monday to find out if he wants his cashmere sock collection returned, which somehow ended up in a chest of drawers at Sophie’s new house back in Bryn Mawr.”
“If they’re negotiating socks, they must be close to being done with this settlement, right?” I asked.
“You’d think so,” confirmed Joe. “I mean, cashmere socks are pricey, but at six hundred and fifty an hour, fighting over footwear doesn’t seem like the greatest use of time for the top two divorce firms in Philly.”
“I hate to bring up the obvious, but once Sophie is officially single again, isn’t she going to want to make things legal with you?” I asked Joe, unable to resist a slightly evil impulse to torture him by raising the topic of getting hitched. I’m pretty sure Sophie’s already been pushing for him to propose as soon as she’s divorced, and I’m equally positive Joe’s scared to death of getting married. He froze, Diet Coke sloshing onto his loafers.
“I mean, you two seem so happy together, and you could have a big wedding at Sophie’s new house,” I said merrily, enjoying a bit of revenge for having been forced into the role of Joe’s new design assistant. “Since Sophie’s mere weeks away from being legally free to walk down the aisle again, you could start looking at wedding tuxedos anytime now. . . .”
I paused for a second, my eye catching on a familiar figure seated in the stands just above where Holly stood.
“Look!” I gasped to Joe.
“What, you mean Holly flirting with the tennis guy?” said Joe, following my gaze. “Holly always flirts when she’s mad at Howard. Last year, it was the golf pro at the club, the one from Scotland who looked like Tom Brady in a cable-knit sweater. She doesn’t actually fool around with them or anything.”
I know it’s rude to point, but I couldn’t help extending my finger to indicate the familiar face—above a set of incredibly muscular female shoulders—I’d just spotted in the Delray tennis stands. “Not Holly. Four rows up from where Holly and Bootsie are standing. Blond. Braids like Heidi. In a black track suit.”
Joe stiffened, and a look of fear gripped him.
“I see her,” Joe moaned. I noticed that below us, Bootsie had just picked out the same woman in the crowd, seated mere feet from where she and Holly were chatting with Javier.
Bootsie’s jaw dropped, and she turned to stare at me as I nodded a grim confirmation to her that I’d noticed the braid-wearing spectator as well.
“Gerda,” moaned Joe, burying his face in his hands. “How the hell did she end up in Florida?”
“MR. SHIELDS FLEW me down,” Gerda told us a few minutes later.
“Barclay’s here?” Joe said, blanching.
Joe did his best to keep the fact that he was dating Sophie on the lowest possible profile. Sophie, however, wasn’t quite as discreet, posting gushy Facebook missives to her “Honey-Bunny Joe.”
She lovingly depicted on Instagram every meal and movie night they shared, tweeting descriptions of how much fun she and Joe were having together, how he rocked her world and reminded her of the Nicki Minaj song “Anaconda.”
Meanwhile, Barclay had made it clear in regular drunk-texts to Sophie that he wasn’t exactly happy that his soon-to-be ex was dating at all—and he was especial
ly mad it was Joe, her interior decorator. Barclay, a developer of new homes all around the Philadelphia area, hadn’t been all that complimentary about Joe’s design work, either. This was because Joe had renovated the enormous house Barclay now inhabited in Bryn Mawr—back when Sophie was living in it, post-split.
Gerda, an Austrian-born Pilates instructor, once saved Sophie’s life, and when she showed up on Sophie and Barclay’s doorstep several years ago, the softhearted mafia wife didn’t have the heart to ask Gerda to leave.
Sophie initially kept their marital domicile—and Gerda—when she and Barclay split, he relocating to a condo over in Haverford. When Holly, Joe, and I met Sophie last spring, her house—a Disney-castle-style edifice—featured Swarovski crystals on every possible surface and a lot of tables featuring carved cherubs. Joe tried to give the house a make-under, removing much of the gold plating and smoked glass in favor of tasteful wainscoting and soothing oyster wall colors. But the house still retained the feeling of a Vegas high-roller suite. As much as Joe tried, it just couldn’t be un-glitzed.
Finally, Joe convinced Sophie to just give the house back to Barclay in the divorce and start over, which is when Sophie bought her current charming, rambling farmhouse.
Barclay, meanwhile, was furious that Joe stripped a lot of the glitzy elements from the casino-style house, and was having the whole place painted purple again, with the floors done in a jazzy white and purple mosaic featuring his initials in the front hallway. He was doubly pissed at Joe: first, for dating his estranged wife, and second, for all the money he was spending to re-glitz the house.
To make matters worse for Barclay, his doctors had ordered him to go on a strict diet for the entire fall and winter.
This worked out fantastically for Joe, because Sophie—using the time-honored tradition of reverse psychology—had gotten Barclay to hire Gerda to oversee his weight-loss program.
When Gerda lived with Sophie, she was always nagging both Sophie and Joe to do things like eat kale and give up vodka. As Joe told us, if there’s anything that kills romance, it’s having a live-in Pilates teacher from Austria in the next room.
“Mr. Shields rented a house,” clarified Gerda. “In Magnolia Beach.”
“What!” Joe groaned. “I’ve gotta call Sophie. I can’t believe Barclay followed us here! What a stalker.”
“I might get in trouble with Mr. Shields if Sophie find out he’s here in Florida,” said Gerda, looking as nervous as I’d ever seen her, which wasn’t all that nervous. Gerda is nothing if not stoic, and doesn’t fluster easily. She once fell flat on her face from atop the bar at the Bryn Mawr Pub and emerged totally unscathed.
“Mr. Shields, he said he tired of cold weather, and he not going to tell Sophie he’s staying two blocks away from her,” Gerda elaborated. “His lawyers told him stay away from Sophie—no stalking. I think maybe we keep it secret that you know he’s here in Florida. Okay?”
We all considered this. No one wanted to see Barclay. No one wanted Sophie to have to deal with him. And Joe looked terrified. Barclay is a little scary, given his onetime mafia ties and also because of his sheer physical bulk. Even down sixty pounds, Barclay’s still roughly twice the size of Joe. We agreed to make sure Sophie didn’t throw a tantrum about her ex being in town.
“How’s Barclay planning to hide out in Magnolia Beach?” Joe asked. “It’s not that big a town.”
“We mostly stay home. Me, I’m not supposed to be here at the tennis match,” Gerda admitted. “I told Barclay I take taxi to the Delray farmers’ market. He has business meeting at the house, so he said it was okay, but he told me to keep low profile.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Holly told her. “We’ll tell Sophie that she can’t let her ex know that she knows he’s here. Just don’t mention to Barclay that you saw us.”
“Not on your life,” Gerda agreed.
Holly gazed thoughtfully at Gerda. “I wonder why Barclay came to Magnolia Beach, though, if he didn’t want to run into Sophie. There are a million other towns in Florida.”
Gerda perked up a little. “I have information about that. He has business down here, he’s working on some kind of secret deal. Plus, he gets a lot of calls from that chef.”
“Chef Gianni?” Joe asked.
“Yeah, that one,” Gerda confirmed.
“Gerda, this is huge, because we think Gianni might have tried to run me over with a Chevy the other night, plus kill the manager of a restaurant that Sophie and I have personally sunk a fortune in,” Holly told her. “And the fact that Barclay’s down here too seems like too much of a coincidence.”
“Yeah,” Gerda said. “When did you almost get nailed?”
“Tuesday night, around ten,” Holly told her.
“I hate to tell you this, but Barclay got a rented Chevy at the house!” Gerda informed us. “I don’t think he drive much, though. He has Town Cars with tinted windows pick him up so he can go around and not be seen.” She paused to think for a second. “But it could have been Barclay who run you down,” Gerda said grimly. “We got to rented house in afternoon on Tuesday, and I went to bed at nine and had to take sleeping pill because I hear a lot of weird cricket noises. We don’t have this in Austria.”
“I guess Barclay could be trying to get back at Sophie by killing Jessica, which would definitely put Vicino out of business,” mused Bootsie. “Although wouldn’t it make more sense if he just hired a hit man to run over Sophie? Doesn’t Barclay farm out this kind of hit-and-run work?
“Wait a minute,” she added. “Gerda, aren’t you some kind of computer genius? Can’t you read all Barclay’s e-mail, and then give us the four-one-one on what he’s up to?”
This was true: In addition to her fitness acumen, Gerda dabbles in forensic computer snooping and is quite good at hacking into online bank accounts and personal e-mails. It isn’t that Gerda steals from people; she just enjoys gathering potentially embarrassing information.
“Yeah, I’m pretty awesome at computer hacking,” Gerda said, a note of pride in her voice. “I gave up snooping as New Year’s resolution, but since Sophie needs help, I do it for her.
“Plus, I can tell Mr. Shields up to something—he gets a special smile. He looks super happy this week, so I know he’s about to screw somebody over.”
We gave our cell phone numbers to Gerda, who said she would hit the farmers’ market for some kohlrabi, then head home to start reading Barclay’s e-mail. She promised to call us within the hour, after printing out whatever seemed suspicious.
“Tell you the truth, I miss Sophie,” Gerda told us, surprising me with this admission of a human emotion. “She always sneak the bad food and champagne when I tell her not to. But Sophie is nice person. Barclay, he is asshole.”
“So true. Well, I’ve got to make a quick stop on the way home,” Holly breezily told us. “Bye, Gerda. Good to see you,” she added, turning on the heel of her pricey sandal and heading for the stadium exit.
“I leave, too,” said Gerda, heading off in the direction of another egress from the stadium, which led toward Delray’s town square, where the aforementioned farmers’ market was in full swing.
“What’s that all about?” Joe asked suspiciously, staring at Holly’s trim and perfect form disappearing out of the arched entrance. “Where do you think she’s going?”
I had a pretty good idea Holly was off to make some lucky salesperson’s monthly quota, probably back up in Magnolia Beach at Saks. I’d noticed Holly’s fingers twisting and twitching like crazy all through the tennis match. She literally gets itchy fingers when she’s in manic shopping mode. Also, when she pulled out her iPhone at one point, I noticed a suspiciously fat envelope from Wells Fargo Bank tucked inside her small Celine tote. I was pretty sure Holly had taken out a bunch of cash and was headed to distribute said cash at the shoe salon of Saks.
“She’s definitely going shopping,” said Bootsie, who’d doubtless noticed the wad of dough herself. “Let’s watch the rest of this match, and then you two head back to Magnolia Beach and do a spend-ervention. I’ve got a couple more matches to watch here, and then I want to hit The Singing Frog.”
“Let me guess, that’s a bar where your parents got liquored up before they conceived Chip,” Joe offered.
“Absolutely not! The Frog is Mummy’s favorite boutique in Delray. They get Lilly Pulitzer exclusives. I’m thinking of going Adelia’s route, and trying on a couple of Lilly caftans.”
“Much as I hate to miss seeing you drown yourself in a flowered caftan, that sounds like a decent plan,” Joe agreed. Personally, I loved Adelian’s caftans, and thought it might be a good look on Bootsie. I mean, who doesn’t love a caftan? They’re so ’60s-cool. While we watched the tennis match, I pondered whether I could afford to splurge on one myself, and fifteen minutes later, after the hot Chinese tennis player defeated the cute Australian guy, we waved good-bye to Bootsie, who headed south in her preppy sandals at a brisk clip down Atlantic Avenue, while we climbed into the convertible.
Starting up the car, Joe handed me his phone. “See where Holly’s phone is pinging on the map?” he said grimly.
I peered in the bright sunlight at the tiny screen. “It looks like she’s at the corner of Palm Avenue and Hibiscus Lane,” I told him, worry surging through me. I searched for a positive spin to Holly’s whereabouts. “Maybe she’s returning something she bought last week?” I suggested.
Joe merely raised a contemptuous eyebrow and steered west toward the on-ramp to I-95.
“Do you think she’s at Saks? Or maybe Neiman’s?” I asked, slumping dejectedly in my seat, hoping I had on enough sunscreen.
“Worse,” Joe told me grimly, merging past some 18-wheelers into the northbound lane of the highway. “I know where she is. But I can’t even bring myself to say the name of the store. It starts with an H and has handbags named for movie stars and royalty.”
