Authors: Amy Korman
Killer WASPs (16 page)
“What can I give them? All they drink is that fucking zinfandel,” Holly hissed tragically.
“They’re here every other day, hounding me to get a look around the house. I had a
bottle of pink wine for them, but it’s all gone. Usually if I give them a drink, they
leave and go to the club.”
“They want wine this early?” I said, checking the time on the clock on her glossy
new stainless range. It was 9:40 a.m. I needed to get to work.
“Of course,” Holly said, looking at me as if I was nuts. “It’s the
Binghams
.”
“Just slosh together some red wine and chardonnay,” I suggested. “They’ll never know
the difference.”
“That’s totally going to work!” Holly said happily.
T
EN MINUTES LATER,
Waffles and I were at The Striped Awning, where we opened up the store and listened
to a message from Hugh Best. He’d called the police, who told him they couldn’t do
anything until Jimmy had been missing for at least seventy-two hours, unless he had
dementia, which Jimmy didn’t.
I was getting worried myself now. Where could Jimmy be? I called Hugh back and suggested
that he go ahead with his only idea, which was calling Hugh’s fraternity brothers
from more than fifty years ago at Princeton. I promised to check back in with him
later.
By noon, I’d had a few customers, had vacuumed the store, and was thinking about which
of my borrowed Holly dresses I could wear on my date with John Hall. I was debating
the merits of a white linen sheath with a pretty ruffled neckline (Max Mara, and definitely
priced well above my monthly rent on the store) vs. a little black cotton dress (deceptively
simple, but made by Prada—which meant I couldn’t even fathom what it had cost), when
Bootsie suddenly appeared and plopped down in her usual seat in front of my desk.
“Bad news. Walt said the goons from Jersey haven’t been seen since they stopped by
the hospital three days ago, and seafood left on someone’s doorstep isn’t something
he has time to investigate. Plus he’d need more information to interview Gerda about
being Barclay’s attacker,” she said. She wore a terrierlike expression, and I could
only imagine her relentless hounding of poor, part-time Officer Walt. “He said he’d
look into her immigration status, but if she has a valid work visa, Barclay was probably
just making idle threats to try to get Gerda to leave.” Bootsie sighed, then went
on.
“So, after I met with Officer Walt, I went to my office and Googled John Hall, your
veterinarian,” Bootsie said.
I was annoyed by this, yet racked with curiosity and kind of grateful. I’d thought
of doing the same thing, but had decided Googling was a horrible way to approach a
date. Google always brings up weird stuff. There’s a picture of me and Holly from
Bootsie’s paper at a charity event that’s very high on the Google search links, and
while Holly looks like Alessandra Ambrosio in it, I look like I’d forgotten to put
on mascara (I had put on makeup that night, too, but not enough, apparently). After
that, I started to listen to Joe more about wearing makeup and flat-ironing my mop
of long waves. It turns out the “natural look” isn’t so great after age thirty.
“And . . . John Hall got married three years ago!” Bootsie said with her usual glee
at unearthing information, while my heart skipped a beat in horror. How could I have
missed the clues . . . He wasn’t wearing a ring, and he seemed so honest . . .
“But, don’t worry, I asked around at the office, and he’s divorced!” Bootsie finished.
I started breathing again. Lots of people get divorced, and while it’s always really
sad, it does happen. Actually, most men approaching forty, which was what I guessed
John Hall’s age to be, had been married at least once.
“Well, almost divorced,” Bootsie amended. “He’s legally separated.”
My stomach did a swan dive. I didn’t like the sound of “almost divorced.”
“But here’s the really interesting part,” warbled Bootsie. “The woman he’s married
to is . . . you won’t believe this . . . it’s someone you know . . . or at least,
someone you’ve seen around town!” She looked at me with a merry expression, while
I felt a sudden urge to kick her.
“Bootsie, please,” I said. “Don’t do this to me.”
“Okay, okay,” said Bootsie. “It’s Lilly Merriwether! You know, Mariellen’s daughter.
The one who wins all the tennis trophies at the club!”
My ears started clanging, and my heart plummeted ankle-ward. Had Bootsie really just
said
Lilly Merriwether
? I clutched my desk so as to not topple off my chair. Luckily, a light breeze blew
in the open door, which cooled off my clammy forehead as I gulped some water from
the glass I keep on my desk. I’d heard, as had everyone in Bryn Mawr, about Lilly’s
epic nuptials a few summers before. But I’d never known the name of the groom, since
I hadn’t read the announcement in Bootsie’s newspaper.
Had Bootsie really just told me that the beautiful daughter of Mrs. Perfect Pearls
was the former Mrs. Cute Vet?
W
HEN
I
REGAINED
my composure, I realized I could easily picture John and Lilly zinging tennis balls
around with matching golden tans and pristine white outfits, Lilly no doubt wearing
a strand identical to her mother’s South Seas pearls around her slim neck. “Good game,
darling!” Lilly would coo to John Hall in her Grace Kelly lockjaw accent, as they
clinked frosty vodka tonics at the end of a match, sitting on chaise longues with
monogrammed cushions. Mariellen would look on proudly, clad in a cool linen sheath,
nodding as she took a puff of her Virginia Slim and blew a smoke ring.
“When you say ‘almost divorced,’ ” I asked Bootsie in my best effort at a neutral
tone, “do you mean that the vet and Lilly are
definitely
headed for divorce?”
“I’m working on confirming that,” Bootsie told me. “I know they’ve been separated
for about a year, but I’m not sure where the divorce stands. I’m sure you heard Lilly
had a huge and fabulous wedding at Mariellen’s house with two tents and an orchestra.
I looked up the wedding announcement in our archive, and Lilly rode into the ceremony
on Norman the horse, and at midnight there were forty minutes of fireworks, and then
the next day there was a tennis brunch at the club . . .”
I stopped listening at this point. How could I, with my Gap and J. Crew outlet wardrobe,
long wavy brown hair, sorry-ass forehand, and weird devotion to a basset hound, ever
compete with Lilly Merriwether? John must have been desperate for dinner companionship
to ask me out. He was used to utter blond perfection, round-the-clock tennis, and
the manicured grounds of the Merriwether house.
I looked around my slightly battered shop, which until I’d heard this, I’d considered
charming, and my gaze paused at Waffles, who was sprawled on his bed, drooling, looking
incredibly portly. One ear was stuck to the floor, encrusted with remnants of his
rawhide bone. And there was a distinctly funky smell floating from over his way—he’d
just farted. This was the final indignity.
I’d go ahead and meet John as planned tonight, since it was too late to cancel. And
then after that, I’d forget about him, and move on.
“Anyway, I think the vet would be a good person to date, if you can be sure that Lilly’s
out of the picture,” Bootsie said.
“Um-hmm,” I answered listlessly.
“Anyway, after the Googling, I stopped by Louis the lawyer’s office to see if any
news had come in,” Bootsie continued, changing subjects. “And it had. Including one
huge
lie Sophie Shields told us!”
I listened with mild interest, too depressed about the vet and Lilly Merriwether to
get excited about this development vis-à-vis Sophie.
“Remember when Sophie said that she needed Barclay alive to get her divorce settlement?”
Bootsie asked. I nodded. Sophie had told us that within five minutes of meeting us,
actually. And in the days since the attack, it had served to rule her out as a possible
attempted murderess.
“Well, it’s bullshit!” Bootsie crowed happily. “If Barclay dies, Sophie gets seven
million in a life insurance policy that Barclay can’t cancel until they’re one-hundred-percent
divorced. Louis explained the whole thing to me. He and Sophie’s lawyers agreed to
the insurance policy staying in place until they work out the divorce agreement. Apparently,
it’s pretty common to have a deal like this when a couple is splitting up and there’s
significant wealth at stake.”
I tore my mind away from Lilly and John, and thought about what Bootsie was telling
me. Sophie had a motive to kill Barclay, after all.
“But how much is Sophie likely to get in her divorce settlement from Barclay if he
doesn’t
die?” I wondered aloud, secretly hoping there was so much money at stake that Sophie
couldn’t logically be the attacker of her ex. Sophie was starting to grow on me. “More
than seven million?”
“Undetermined!” Bootsie said. “She’ll get a lot, of course, since I doubt she’d marry
a refrigerator like Barclay if there wasn’t some major cash in the offing. Louis can’t
comment, of course, since he’s Barclay’s attorney, and it’s privileged information.”
I rolled my eyes. Louis had obviously breached a ton of legal ethics already by telling
Bootsie about the insurance policy, and numerous other details. Why stop now?
“But I got the distinct feeling that the Shieldses’ pre-nup would give Sophie less
than the insurance policy,” said Bootsie, with an air of knowledgeable self-satisfaction.
“Louis
hinted
that Sophie would get more out of Barclay being dead than if he lived to sign the
divorce agreement.”
This was bad news, because along with Sophie’s passion for statues, she had an upbeat,
hopeful personality and an appealing, up-for-anything attitude. Hopefully her go-getter
attitude didn’t include trying to kill her Sub-Zero-size husband.
Bootsie rattled on about how Sophie and Gerda could have carried out the attack on
Barclay in tandem, but I had stopped listening.
“Bootsie,” I asked her suddenly, “do you think you could give me some tennis lessons?”
B
OOTSIE AND
I made a date for a lesson the following morning at her parents’ court, since there
was no way I was displaying my crappy forehand at the club for all the Merriwethers
to see. Maybe I really did have some talent with a racket, I thought hopefully, despite
about thirty years of evidence to the contrary, as Bootsie left and headed back to
her office.
At four, I decided no one was buying any more antiques today. I took Waffles home,
showered, did a quick makeup and hair blitz, and put on the white dress. I checked
in with Hugh Best, who hadn’t heard from Jimmy; I encouraged Hugh to keep calling
friends in the Princeton alumni directory, and promised to spend the next morning
driving around town hunting for Jimmy. I decided to head over to the club early, leaving
Waffles on his bed in the kitchen, snoring.
Five minutes later, I parked under my usual tree at the club, but the familiar, charming
old building didn’t do much to quell my anxiety. I was an hour and half early for
a date with a guy who was married to—okay, separated from, but legally married to—the
Perfect Woman, and would probably reconcile with her any day now. I looked down at
my outfit, smoothing the skirt of Holly’s Max Mara dress.
I went inside to have a soda at the bar with Ronnie—that might calm my nerves. I
was determined not to have any wine at all before my date. I went in the club’s front
door, crossed the hallway to the bar, peeked into the room, and saw the Binghams had
invaded Ronnie’s bar, and were currently working their way through a fresh bottle
of white zinfandel. Darn! I did a U-turn and trotted back out the front door.
The only option left was the 19th Hole, the club’s snack shed by the driving range,
which dispensed beer, wine, and hot dogs. I shouldn’t get that worked up about meeting
the vet, I told myself, since it was the first and last date ever with him. I ordered
myself to buck up as I passed banks of lilies along the clubhouse exterior. The Hole,
as it’s known, with its cold Heineken and free-flowing pinot grigio, was a cheerful
spot, perfect for golfers during the summer. I could really go for a pinot grigio.
I revised my self-imposed rule about no wine before the date. Wine was a
good
idea, I decided.
It was a perfect afternoon, breezy, quiet, and peaceful, with the metallic whump of
golf clubs in the distance. What was the use of torturing myself over one more going-nowhere
date? I tried to convince myself. I’d had plenty of those before!
I still had a few good years left in me,
and
I was about to learn tennis! Who needed a cute vet, anyway?
Just then, as I passed the golf cart shed, I saw a flash of red through a window that
caught my eye as out of place within the shed’s freshly painted, dark green clapboard
exterior and orderly rows of golf cars within. Dusty, rusty red, with a metallic,
gritty quality that stuck out amid the white carts, it caught my eye as something
familiar, a flash of shape and color that I’d seen many times before. I paused and
backtracked, sliding open the garage door that led into the roomy shed, which at night
accommodated some three dozen carts, and peered deeper into the dim expanse. There
was no mistaking it: The Bests’ Volvo was in the back corner, a large cloth tarp partly
concealing its dinged-up, late-seventies glory.
I walked over to the car and gingerly lifted one side of the tarp: There was the familiar
giant dent in the driver’s side door, and the inspection sticker dated July 1989.
The Metamucil and Kleenex were intact on the front seat, but the backseat of the car
was now stuffed with what looked like most of the contents of the Bests’ attic. Silverware
and napkin rings in ancient plastic baggies and old books littered the seats, and
on the floor were cardboard boxes and a moth-eaten deer head mounted on a wooden
plaque.
I let the tarp fall back into place and tiptoed out of the shed into the late-afternoon
sun, closed the sliding door behind me, then walked back into the clubhouse and down
the air-conditioned hallway toward the locker rooms. There, I sat on a chintz-upholstered
bench for a minute to digest the presence of the Volvo at the club. A portrait of
a 1950s-era club president in a gray flannel suit stared down at me sternly from
across the hallway, which didn’t help me process my next step, now that I’d tracked
down my missing neighbor’s car.
Had Jimmy asked Ronnie if he could park the Volvo here while he holed up somewhere
local—maybe the Marriott in Villanova? It seemed unlikely. Jimmy was way too cheap
to pay one hundred thirty-nine dollars a night for the Marriott, even if it did include
a breakfast buffet and a free glass of wine each evening. He didn’t seem to have many
friends, but was Hugh right—could an old fraternity brother have taken Jimmy in?
One of the ancient members of the club, Mr. Conwell, heir to a soup fortune, walked
by on his way to play tennis, and we smiled at each other. He was a very inspiring
old guy, lean and fit in his eighties, much like my grandfather had been until the
year before he got sick and passed away.
Too bad Jimmy Best wasn’t more like the friendly Mr. Conwell, I thought. But then
again, Mr. Conwell is in possession of approximately seven hundred million dollars’
worth of stock in his family’s food company, so you’d expect him to be in a good mood.
Then I remembered a winter night in the club bar a few years ago, when my grandfather
had regaled me with stories of the club’s glory days in the years just after World
War II. Apparently, the club had been a crazy party palace in the late forties, with
black-tie dinner dances on the lawn, rollicking nights in the basement bowling alley,
martinis being drunk around the clock, and a teenage Grace Kelly dropping by. “Prettiest
girl I’d ever seen,” Grandpa had said, sitting on the Chesterfield sofa and sipping
his vodka tonic, “including your grandmother, but I hadn’t met her yet.”
The club had been Grandpa’s second home back then. He’d spent all his spare time there,
because his parents had figured he couldn’t get into too much trouble at a country
club. Actually, the activities that went on in the basement bowling alley weren’t
all
bowling, he’d hinted, but he clarified that he never got to “bowl” with Grace Kelly.
There had been drinking, dancing, and other fun distractions for everyone back then,
and members had always been dressed in great-looking suits and tuxedoes, or pretty
silk gowns, or tennis whites. Old photos of parties and tennis matches hung on the
locker room walls, which attested to the glamour of the forties and fifties.
“Upstairs on the third floor was where the real action was in those days,” Grandpa
had told me, swirling his Scotch and smiling.
“The third floor?” I’d never been in that part of the club. In fact, I’d never realized
there was anything other than an attic on the third floor of the clubhouse, with its
turrets and eaves under a shingled roof.
“Rowdy bunch up there,” Grandpa had told me, and explained that in the first half
of the twentieth century, there had been small apartments on the top floor—suites
of rooms that served as a kind of upscale retirement home for members whose wives
had passed away. The old guys who lived up there had wandered the halls in their bathrobes
and held a poker game that began every morning at eleven, continued through dinner,
and raged on until midnight, when the busboys would make everyone go to bed. Apparently,
the guys were a cigar-smoking, waitress-pinching, whiskey-chugging bunch who spent
their golden years in pure glee. “Good system, actually,” Grandpa said.
“Very Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon,” I had agreed.
Remembering this conversation, I suddenly got up and, on a hunch, walked to the end
of the hallway past the locker rooms and up a small flight of stairs that led to the
second floor of the club. Here, a lofty, maple-paneled ballroom took up most of the
floor—silent at this time of day, of course, with bits of dust floating peacefully
in the sunlight. Just down from the ballroom, a warren of small administrative offices
occupied the space directly above the locker rooms. The little stairway I had ascended
landed right between the ballroom’s open double doors and a warren of offices at the
other end of the hallway, where, it appeared, no one was working at this time of day.
I knew that there had to be stairs somewhere that led up to the third floor. As I
passed office doors marked “Food and Beverage” and “Club Manager,” I came to an old
wooden door painted dark green. It was unmarked, and a bit larger than the office
doors.
I tried the handle to the unmarked green door. Locked.
As I yanked on the doorknob one more time, something caught my eye on the old millwork
around the door frame. It was to the right, and just above my head. Something shiny.
I peeked up, and hanging from a tiny nail in the side of the millwork was a very old
key. And when I slipped it into the lock in the door handle and turned, the old door
creaked open loudly, but easily, and revealed a set of wooden stairs. I put the key
on the bottom stair (the last thing I needed was to get locked in the club attic),
closed the door behind me, and started to climb.
“O
H, FUCK,” SAID
Jimmy Best. “It’s you.”
I didn’t take it personally.
Once upstairs, it hadn’t taken much work to find him. The flight of stairs ended in
a long hallway that was frayed by age. The walls were covered with red-and-yellow-striped
wallpaper—faded, but as chic as the day it had been installed. There were bronze
light sconces, prints of hunting scenes, and wide, beautifully aged, polished plank
floors. At each end of the hallway was a round, lounge-like room with pretty, if
slightly dusty, mullioned windows overlooking the club lawns. These round rooms must
be the interiors of the shingled turrets that flanked each end of the club, I realized,
and they were just as appealing here as they were on the building’s exterior. There
were two ancient poker tables in the room to my left, complete with chips and yellowed
playing cards, and what I recognized as the door to a dumbwaiter directly in front
of me. At the other end of the hall, I could see a billiard table and a small wooden
bar. It was hot up here, of course, being late May at the top of a stuffy old shingle-and-brick
building, but there was something frankly awesome about this secret part of the club.
I’d turned right when I heard jazz floating quietly from that end of the hallway.
The music appeared to be coming from under a door marked the “Conwell Suite”—named
for the family of the handsome old man I’d just seen downstairs. This had to be a
good suite, I thought to myself, with all that soup money.
I’d knocked lightly, then gingerly opened the door to Jimmy’s sour greeting. He sounded
as grouchy as ever, but underneath his mustache and frown, he actually looked relieved
to be found. For my part, I was thrilled that he was fully dressed in a pair of old
khaki shorts and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
“I’m so glad you’re okay!” I told him, truthfully.
“Oh, I’m more than okay, darling,” he said with a grin, and lit up a cigar. “I’m fantastic.
I can’t tell you how good it is to be finally free of that nagging hen of a brother.
I’m smoking, drinking, and eating red meat around the clock. Should have moved up
here in 1976, when I divorced my fourth wife.”
Jimmy was happily ensconced on a leather sofa. White cotton curtains fluttered in
the late-afternoon air by a set of double windows that had been cracked open for
fresh air, and a small air conditioner hummed. Not the most energy-efficient setup,
but it definitely provided comfort.
“This
is
nice,” I admitted, “but what about your brother? He’s terrified that something’s
happened to you.”
“That old woman!” hooted Jimmy, puffing on his stogie contentedly. “He reminds me
of Angela Lansbury.”
I sighed. I’d have to somehow convince Jimmy to go home, or at least to call Hugh
and tell him he was okay. In the meantime, it was hard to deny the appeal of his attic
lair. For one thing, the view of the club grounds was gorgeous from up here. There
was a cute window seat, and I perched there for a few moments to look out at the lawn,
which unfurled in front of me in its emerald lushness. A few tennis players were still
out swatting balls, and I squinted to see if any of them were John Hall or, horrors,
Lilly Merriwether (which they weren’t—none of the women playing was as annoyingly
slim and tan as the reedlike Lilly). A trumpet vine had grown up from the porch roof
and curled around the window frame, its orange bell-shaped flowers framing the sill
perfectly. There was a pleasant clinking of glasses and murmur of people chatting
below on the porch.
What with the relaxing music, and it now being past five, I thought to myself, well,
now that I’m here, I could really go for a glass of wine.
“Your Scotch, Mr. B.,” said Ronnie the bartender just at that moment, entering discreetly
with a silver tray bearing a glass of Dewars, a chilled glass of chardonnay, and a
dish of peanuts. “Kristin.” He nodded at me, handing me the glass of wine and a cocktail
napkin as nonchalantly as if I was sitting on the porch with Joe and Holly, rather
than sitting in an attic with a seventy-five-year-old man who’d run away from home.
“Gosh, you’re good!” I told Ronnie admiringly. Clearly, the network of secret passageways
and staff gossip in the club is extensive enough that everyone who knew Jimmy was
stashed away up here also already knew that I was upstairs visiting him. Were there
cameras throughout the club, or did Ronnie and his staff have some kind of sixth sense
for what the members were up to? I’d have to ask Ronnie when I got a minute alone
with him in the bar. In any case, some of the club staff had clearly decided to take
Jimmy under their wing, and were taking exceptionally good care of him. There was
an open door behind Jimmy’s leather couch that led to a bedroom, where I could see
that a bed was made up with crisp white linens. A thick white terry bathrobe borrowed
from the men’s locker room hung on a peg beside the bedroom window, and on a chest
of drawers to my right, a tray held a pitcher of water, some glasses, and a bottle
of Amaretto.