by Amy Korman
“Why don’t you call Howard and see if he’s here at the hotel?” I said as Holly handed the valet parker a couple of twenties. “You two really need to talk. We could explain about the whole situation with J. D. and Scooter. I’m sure he’d understand!”
“If he doesn’t trust me implicitly, I don’t see the point of talking to him,” Holly said stubbornly.
I wanted to point out that she didn’t trust Howard, either, but I knew it was pointless.
“But if you just told him you were trying to help Jessica and stop a sneaky developer, I’m sure Howard would get over the whole thing!” Well, probably he would.
Holly shook her head. “You don’t understand.” She scrolled on her iPhone for a moment and handed it to me.
“Howard has no room to talk,” she said, affecting a serene expression in her almond-shaped blue eyes. “Look at the lead photo of Indianapolis Social Life, from a party that was given Sunday night. Then we’ll talk.”
Truthfully, it looked bad. Headlined “Saving Presidential Park—in Style!” the posting detailed a black-tie fund-raiser held at a private home in a suburb of the Midwestern city. There was a huge heated tent and dance floor. More pics showed guests lounging on white modern sofas in a temporary “Selfie Lounge” under the tent. NFL and NBA players mingled with local businesspeople, and, of course, Dawnelle and her family. And Howard, who was twice pictured with Dawnelle.
“But you really love Howard,” I reminded her. “Just ask him about Dawnelle.”
“Of course I love Howard,” Holly said. “But right now, I need to help Channing reopen Vicino.”
Chapter 20
WHEN WE GOT back to Holly’s house from The Breakers, two enormous flower arrangements were on the table in the living room. I was hoping they were from Howard, although I couldn’t think of a reason why he’d send his wife flowers after catching her out with two other men.
“The white roses and orchids are from Scooter, and the other one is from J. D. Alvarez,” Bootsie said, holding up the cards, which she’d opened.
“And J. D. wants to take you to Prime 112 in Miami for dinner tonight,” she told Holly.
“Forget it,” Holly told us. “I’m not going. Just because J. D. looks like Michael Fassbender and lives in Miami and California doesn’t mean I’m going to have an affair with him.”
“Great!” I told her, relieved.
“So what are you going to do?” Bootsie asked.
Just then, Sophie and Joe walked in carrying huge bags that smelled awesome and bore the inscription of Captain Harry’s Sea Shanty.
“We figured since your whole life’s a disaster, we should stay in and have takeout!” Sophie told Holly.
WAFFLES WAS SITTING at my feet, drooling, while we sat at the dining room table in Holly’s house and ate fried shrimp, beer-battered fish, corn on the cob, and curly fries from Captain Harry’s.
I’d noticed that Holly, who’d changed out of her workout outfit, was sitting up straighter as the meal progressed. She appeared lost in thought for about five minutes, then a determined gleam appeared in her expression as she nibbled Captain Harry’s slightly limp side salad and did some quick texting.
“I might have made a few mistakes this week,” Holly told us. “First of all, J. D. is too smart to spill information, and it turns out Scooter is way more discreet than I figured he would be.”
“Ya fucked up, big-time,” Sophie told her. “Both of those guys are liars, even if J. D. is really good looking.”
“They’re both trickier than I realized,” Holly admitted. “We still don’t know who did the damage at Vicino, or where Bingo is. Which is why I’m going to go over in about ten minutes to visit Chef Gianni at his suite. Gianni’s the loose cannon in that group! He’ll tell me everything he knows.”
“Holly, let me give you a piece of advice,” Sophie told her, nibbling a shrimp. “There aren’t a lot of guys out there like my Honey Bunny and your Howard. Get your crap together and go apologize to your hubby.”
“I just texted Chef Gianni to meet me at The Breakers. He’s leaving his restaurant right now,” Holly said, getting up and heading for her front door. “After I get everything I need from Gianni, I’m going to take Sophie’s advice, find Howard, and make up with him,” she added over her shoulder.
“I’ll drive you!” Bootsie told her.
Chapter 21
NATURALLY, I WENT along too, and minutes later Bootsie and I sat in The Breakers’ Tapestry Bar sipping Diet Cokes after Holly headed up to Gianni’s suite.
“It’s eight-thirty-five. Holly was supposed to text us at eight-twenty,” I said, worried. “Gianni’s so creepy!”
“Even worse, I just saw his girlfriend walk into the hotel,” said Bootsie, who was facing the hotel lobby. She held up her huge tote bag. “My Breakers uniform is still in here. I think it’s time for Housekeeping to head up to Gianni’s suite.”
Two minutes later, Bootsie emerged from the ladies’ room in her maid’s outfit, and we headed down a corridor to the elevators that led up to the guest rooms. A twenty-something girl with a blond ponytail in a Breakers uniform and nametag that read “Britney” was dusting the crown moldings outside the now-closed gift shop as we passed. She gave Bootsie a curious glance and rueful half smile, communicating that (A) Bootsie must be a new employee, and (B) it sucked to be working the evening shift, didn’t it?
Just then, Bootsie grabbed my arm and turned toward Britney. “Hi, Britney! I’m new on staff here. Barbie McElvoy!”
Three minutes and forty dollars later, I was in Britney’s uniform and had her Swiffer in hand, while Britney waited in the restroom wearing my Old Navy sundress. Bootsie had launched into an explanation that we were surprising a friend and it was all a practical joke, but Britney interrupted her, saying she didn’t care, and she was clocking out at 9:00 p.m., so hurry up.
“Turndown service!” Bootsie hollered outside the door to Gianni’s suite.
“HOLLEEEE, IGNORE THAT!” we could hear Gianni yelling over thumping music as Holly opened the door.
She looked fine, if a little frazzled.
“I know where Bingo is,” she whispered to us. “I just need to grab my handbag, then I’m out of here.” She beckoned us in, and Bootsie and I came in behind her.
“Hollee, get rid of the maids,” Gianni said, turning up the Euro music to full volume and throwing open the balcony door.
I Swiffered the suite’s baseboards, thinking that Gianni’s neighbors couldn’t have been too happy about all the noise, and that Olivia was going to wonder what all the commotion was in her boyfriend’s room. Gianni was now doing his trademark shimmying dance, manic energy pulsating from him, trying to get Holly to join in and have another drink.
“This has been fun!” Holly told him, heading for the door.
Unfortunately, Bootsie decided at that moment to go off-script. She pulled a rumpled piece of paper from her apron pocket and waved it in Gianni’s face. “This invoice is for clams from Maine Coastal Catch!” Bootsie yelled at the chef over the music. “Did you tamper with the clams that got Slavica d’Aranville sick last weekend?”
“Hey, baby, fuck you,” Gianni told her. “I don’t need to screw around with Channing’s place. And who the fuck are you?” He stared at Bootsie for a minute, recognition dawning. “Hey, I know you! You that annoying reporter from home, the one with the flowered outfits. Get outta my suite!”
“I’m an investigative reporter!” Bootsie told him.
“Investigate this!” Gianni said with a rude gesture south of his waistline.
“So you’re saying you didn’t have anything to do with the bad clams?” Bootsie shot back. “Or the damaged air-conditioning?”
“No, you crazy flowered pants chick!” Gianni said, his earrings jangling and his bald dome taking on a sweaty sheen. “I didn’
t do nothing to fuck Channing over! And guess what—if I did, you’d never find out!”
“Gianni, I am so sorry,” Holly said, staring at Bootsie, eyes wide in fake shock. “Bootsie here has been off her meds for the past few weeks. We’ll leave now.”
“You don’t need to go, Holleee! You got some weird friends, but that’s okay!” Gianni told her. “These two gotta leave!” he shouted rudely to me and Bootsie, then he clutched at Holly and tried to get her to join him while he started dancing again.
Just then, the door from Olivia’s connecting room opened, and Olivia—wearing leather leggings and a black silk tank—walked into the suite. She didn’t look too happy as she took in her boyfriend in mid-shimmy with Holly.
“Thanks so much, Gianni, but I better go,” Holly said breezily. “Bye!”
We all hustled out of the room toward the hallway and onto the elevator, and when the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, Howard was standing there. He looked at Holly, then at me and Bootsie in our maid outfits, then back at Holly.
“We need to talk,” he told her.
Holly and Howard headed for the Tapestry Bar, and within a few minutes, Holly texted us that (A) she wouldn’t be home for a while, and (B) Gianni had bragged to her that Scooter Simmons had sent his half-brother to a wilderness retreat in Arizona, a remote lodge in the desert outside Tucson for technology addicts. Naturally, the lodge didn’t have phones or e-mail, since its residents were supposed to be on lockdown as they went cold turkey on their need to communicate 24/7. From what Gianni had drunkenly told Holly, Bingo was due back on Saturday, the day after the schoolhouse was due to be torn down.
Chapter 22
THE NEXT MORNING, Holly still hadn’t come home, and she’d stopped returning texts.
Sophie had given Zack Safina the news about Bingo’s whereabouts, and the detective was tracking down the younger Simmons brother at the wilderness retreat.
Adelia’s Reptile Foundation lunch was scheduled to start at 12:30 at Vicino—which was going to be the last meal served for a while at the restaurant. After the luncheon, Channing would post a “Closed for Remodeling” sign and inform the staff about the temporary shutdown at Vicino.
At eight-forty-five a.m., Channing called Sophie to tell her that except for his sous-chef, Rob, every single staff member had either called in sick or left a message that they quit. They’d all heard about the place closing down and were out looking for new jobs. That’s how we ended up serving lunch to Adelia, Slavica, and two dozen other Magnolia Beach ladies.
I FELT BAD for Channing and Jessica as I gazed around at our assembled selves in the kitchen: We were honestly a pretty terrible staff. None of us are decent cooks, except for Joe, who can put together a passable lasagna and grill a steak.
By 11:00 a.m., Bootsie started drinking and wasn’t all that much help. Sophie and Joe turned out to be the best of us: I tried to help serve the salads, but Joe took one look at my attempt at balancing plates and ordered me behind the bar to pour Moët and chardonnay, which I served to the ladies when they arrived.
The last guest to arrive was Slavica, who had on a somewhat funereal sleeveless black dress, an impressive Chanel necklace with a lot of gold double Cs on it, and a wide-brimmed black straw hat. She honestly looked pretty fabulous, if a bit on the scary side.
“Slavica, you look absolutely beautiful,” Adelia told her. “And so thin!”
“Well, there’s a reason why I lost some weight,” Slavica told her. “And let’s just say, this restaurant was part of the reason.”
“Let’s talk about you coming over to see my new dining pavilion,” Adelia told her. “You’re sitting right next to me, dear.”
Luckily, Channing had made something called individual morel galettes. None of us knew what a galette was, including Joe, who eats at a lot of fancy restaurants, but it seemed to be a small quiche filled with a lot of delicious-looking mushrooms and herbs. Thankfully, the dish was served cold, since there was no way our “staff” could have gotten thirty plates onto tables quickly enough to keep anything warm.
The lunch flew by with even Slavica seeming to enjoy herself, once she’d made sure the lunch contained no seafood. The vibe was upbeat, except for when a University of Florida professor gave a short lecture about how pollution in the Everglades was decimating the snake population, during which Adelia fell asleep.
Meanwhile, Bootsie continued to drink more wine than she served. We finally sent her home at three o’clock after she told one lady to “forget it” when she complained about the cheese and eggs in the galettes and asked for a vegan lunch.
“Walk back to Holly’s,” Joe told Bootsie. “You can’t drive. It’s less than a mile. And stay on the sidewalk.”
“Bye!” said Bootsie, handing over her car keys and taking off out the back kitchen door.
“I really like the Chanel necklace Slavica’s wearing,” Sophie mused aloud. “I think I might start collecting Chanel. Maybe vintage and new. This could be great—caftans and Chanel!”
“WHY DON’T YOU two go out to dinner?” Sophie told Channing and Jessica when the ladies finally left at 4:00 p.m. “There’s a bunch of cute places down in Delray Beach. We can finish the cleanup here, plus you two probably want to head home and get some lovin’ after such a crazy week!”
Channing and Jessica protested that they couldn’t leave us with all the cleanup work, but they finally relented and took off, looking relieved.
By 6:00, we’d gotten all the dishes, pans, and wineglasses cleaned and sanitized, so I borrowed Joe’s car and went home to check on Waffles and take him for a quick stroll.
Then I headed back to Vicino to help with the final cleanup of the dining room and bar. We figured we’d be done by 7:30. As I parked yet again around the corner from Vicino, all I could think about was finishing up, rushing home, and finally cannonballing into Holly’s rented pool.
Then, I’d insert myself into the fluffy white robe hanging in the guesthouse bathroom. Fluffy white robe! Fluffy white robe! flashed happily in my cortex as I pushed open the front door to Vicino and beheld a sight I honestly could never have imagined: Sophie and Joe yielding a broom and a mop.
Joe was cursing, while Sophie had rolled up her caftan and was discreetly perspiring, looking as morose as I’d ever seen her.
“This mop is kinda heavy!” she told me. “Channing told us the whole kitchen needs to be Cloroxed nine ways til Sunday, too!”
“You guys should leave,” I told them. “Seriously, I’ll finish up. Go to Tiki Joe’s! Show off your new caftan, Sophie!”
“We couldn’t stick you with that crappy Cloroxing,” Sophie protested, while Joe’s expression telegraphed joy at the prospect of a drink at a stylish bar, served to him by someone who was actually skilled at making cocktails.
“I’ll finish up in the kitchen. I’ll be out of here in, like, twenty minutes. Then I’m going to walk home, get in my bikini, and jump in the pool!” I assured them. After a couple more minutes during which Sophie said she felt bad leaving me, and Joe kept telling her that I had an antiques shop and was used to cleaning, they finally took off in Joe’s car for Tiki Joe’s.
“Remind me never to do anything nice again,” Joe told me. “I hate helping people.”
I was exhausted as I locked Vicino’s front door behind them. I’d leave via the kitchen, then use the key Jessica had given us to secure the back door when I left.
And at least I had the image of Holly’s shimmering pool to keep me motivated as I closed and secured the dining room’s French doors to the patio, pulled down the shades, and shut off all the lights except for the required EXIT lighting. I checked to make sure the patio lighting was down and the music turned off.
Along with the bossa nova music, somehow there had been an upbeat vibe again at Vicino today. Channing had done his best hunky-chef table-hopping
with the ladies, and Jessica had booked several tables for the following weekend. The current plan, she’d told us earlier, while we’d plated molten chocolate cupcakes topped with tiny spun-sugar “lizards,” was that she and Channing would hire back a few employees and reopen for dinner Thursdays through Sundays. They were positive they could be up and running again, full-time, in a few months—as long as no more incidents plagued Vicino.
I’d nodded, refraining from pointing out that we still didn’t know who’d been sabotaging Vicino. Gianni had insisted it wasn’t him, and oddly, I kind of believed him. I also couldn’t see why Scooter, who was busy trying to tear down a historic building, would be after Jessica, and Barclay wasn’t the type who would sneak bad clams into a kitchen.
Anyway, I’d Clorox, lock up, and be home within thirty minutes, I thought, as I pushed through the double doors into the darkened kitchen.
“WHAT THE HELL are you doing here?”
The question came at me in an angry hiss from Olivia, Gianni’s girlfriend, who was holding a large and shiny chef’s knife up against Jessica’s throat over by the walk-in refrigerator.
I froze. The kitchen lights were turned off, but as my eyes adjusted to the dim light I could see that next to Olivia stood the young guy we’d seen with her at The Breakers the day before: Daniel Ainsley.
Daniel looked confused and upset but remained quiet while Olivia, for her part, displayed a surprisingly icy froideur as she stood in four-inch heels and skinny black leggings, looking like the evil dark-haired twin of the blond, bony Jessica—who’s not all that warm and fuzzy herself.
“Uh, Olivia, not to upset you, but what’s going on here?” I asked her, my voice quavering. “Did Jessica do something to offend you? Can I help?”
Olivia looked annoyed. “Seriously, what the fuck are you doing here!” she snarled. “Get over here. Daniel, tie this girl’s hands behind her back.”
