Killer Getaway (6 page)

 

Chapter 8

A
S
J
OE DIALED
Adelia and cranked up the air-­conditioning inside the Caddy, I saw Jessica's thin, tanned face peeking through the fichus hedges on Vicino's patio, a thin plume of smoke rising from where she sat. Her Louboutin strappy sandals were visible beneath the lush green foliage that surrounded the tables in the outdoor dining area.

Not surprisingly, Jessica looked stunned and upset by the level of frenzied construction going on just opposite her own restaurant. And since she and Channing had moved more than a thousand miles to get away from Gianni, I didn't think they'd see his new restaurant as friendly competition. Still, I had to give Jessica credit: a girl with a sprained hand that can balance on five-­inch heels isn't going to let her rage-­aholic ex-­boyfriend scare her off.

In fact, as we idled, a car with “Miami Herald” inscribed on its door parked behind us and a young reporter, followed by a bored-­looking photographer with a ponytail and a beer gut, hopped out and approached the boobalicious Sienna. Clearly, Gianni Mare was big news, and the whole instant-­makeover angle was only making matters more interesting for local media.

For her part, Jessica gave Joe and me a little wave with her cigarette, but her expression was pure misery as she turned on her heel and disappeared inside Vicino. She obviously hadn't expected Gianni's “pop-­up” venture to be an all-­out, over-­the-­top restaurant on steroids.

“Should we stop in and check on Channing and Jessica before we take off?” I asked Joe, who had just surreptitiously gulped down a Xanax. “She looks pretty upset.”

“No way,” he said. “We'll see those two tonight at dinner. Let's forget about confronting Holly, and hit a ­couple of antiques stores. I better start buying stuff for Adelia's place before the Colketts steal my pink theme for their next job.” He floored the convertible, and we hung a left and headed toward the Intercoastal.

I looked up, admiring the gorgeous phalanx of royal palms that shaded this beautiful road, and the lush banks of pink and red impatiens banked magnificently in a center median. Not one speck of dust or one stray palm frond or wayward coconut marred the perfection of the wide avenue. A woman in a spotless green Jaguar, top up and hair in shellacked perfection, drove past us. Her face was beautiful, but frozen to the point that she might not have actually been alive. But then she hung a right into a bank parking lot.

“Here, check my iPhone tracker,” Joe instructed me. “I've got Holly on there, it's the icon at the top right. Just click it, and it'll tell you exactly where she is. And it better not be the Gucci store.”

“She's still on Palm Avenue,” I told Joe, peering at the screen, where a small circular icon on a map showed Holly's location.

“It's part of a manic episode brought on by Howard being away in Indianapolis,” Joe sighed, shaking his head. “That's why she's been working out so much, too.” Joe paused at the stoplight before the causeway and looked at me with a concerned expression under his jaunty straw hat.

“She's in the middle of a full-­blown Howard meltdown,” he said, then gunned the car when the light turned green. “And this time, I don't think she's inventing a problem.”

I was truly upset to hear this. And worried for Holly, especially since she seemed so manic. She's naturally skinny and hates exercise, so when Holly starts working out excessively, there's something seriously bothering her. I mean, once in a while, she'll put on a tennis outfit and go to lunch in it, but that's mainly because she looks good in a short white skirt. She doesn't actually pick up a racket or anything.

Everything had seemingly been going well in Holly's marriage over the last six months, or at least I'd thought. She and Joe had even created a “man room” with brown walls, a huge antique desk, and a pool table for Howard at their house in Bryn Mawr, since Howard didn't share her obsession with airy, all-­white and pale-­gray modern decor. And, understandably, he wanted one small space in their nine thousand square feet of house where he could drink a glass of red wine without fear of leaving a ring on a white marble table. Holly had also received a gorgeous antique ruby ring from Howard as a getting-­back-­together present, after which they had thrown a non-­divorce party at their newly renovated house.

Then Howard had actually taken
time off,
which he never does, and they'd spent August in Tuscany. I mean, how bad could things be?

“Holly had a Google freak-­out last week,” Joe said, turning left onto the Dixie Highway, which had a charmingly run-­down, old-­time Florida look to it. There were high-­end antiques stores in low-­rise shopping centers, and next to the fancy shops, I noticed a few consignment stores. There were also, I noticed, quite a few liquor stores.

“Google Images, actually, was what triggered the Palm Avenue shopping,” Joe clarified further. “And the obsession with working out.”

“Was there a picture of Howard doing something, you know, illicit?” I asked, worried.

Howard's truly devoted to Holly, or so I'd always thought. He never gets riled up by anything she does or suggests. Take their trip to Italy: When Holly bought out the row of first-­class seats behind theirs so that her new leather goods would have their own seats and wouldn't get smooshed on the flight home, did he say anything? Not at all. He just smiled and dutifully toted boxes of Valentino sling backs and Miu Miu leather satchels to seats 3A and 3B. I guess the shoes and bags hadn't wanted to ride in coach.

“Howard's been out in Indiana for almost a month now on that garbage-­company takeover,” Joe reminded me. “He told Holly he couldn't come down here to Florida last weekend—­which he's been doing every Friday since we've been here—­because the company he's buying in the Midwest was doing a major charity event that Saturday. It was like Habitat for Humanity.

“Or something,” Joe added vaguely, waving his hand dismissively at the notion of Midwesterners banding together to build a house for the needy. It's not worth trying to convince Joe that worthy causes are in fact worthy.

“There was a big indoor barbecue party after the charity thingy for all the volunteers, which was covered by the local paper,” Joe explained. “Obviously, Holly isn't going to bang nails or whatever at Habitat for Humanity, but she could have gone to Indiana for the weekend. Instead, she told Howard she couldn't come because she had to help Jessica choose new cocktail napkins for Vicino.”

“Picking out napkins probably took about four minutes,” I said, concerned. “Maybe she should have gone to Indiana!”

“That won't happen,” Joe shook his head. “She wouldn't go anyway, because she doesn't go to barbecues. I mean, where ­people are eating food like ribs and cheeseburgers. Plus, it's seven degrees right now in Indianapolis, so the barbecue was held in a local college field house, and that sealed the deal. Holly told Howard that she never went to a field house while she was actually enrolled in college, and she isn't about to start now.” Joe was still zooming down the Dixie Highway, which was all warehouses and car repair shops at this point. “Plus, Holly claims she only gets on planes that are headed either south or east, like in the direction of the Bahamas,” he added.

“Didn't she and Howard go to California two summers ago?” I asked.

“California's different. It's the other states that are an issue,” Joe said.

I rolled my eyes at this.

“So what did she see on Google Images?” I asked.

“She saw the daughter of the garbage guy from Indianapolis,” said Joe simply. He expertly pulled into a metered parking spot outside a row of antiques stores, turned off the Caddy, and, after scrolling through his phone for a second, handed the iPhone to me. “That's the girl,” he said. “At the barbecue.”

I had to admit, squinting in the sun at Joe's phone, the girl looked pretty fabulous.

“I was picturing someone different in the garbage heiress role,” I said to Joe. We exchanged concerned glances. “This girl looks like she just left Bergdorf's. And she's got, well . . .” With my hands in front of my own sadly underwhelming chest, I made the universal gesture that conveys large boobs.

The photo on Joe's phone was part of the local paper's coverage of the society scene in Indianapolis, and it looked like the indoor barbecue after the Habitat for Humanity event had been a major event. The damning photo was captioned, “Howard Jones, who recently acquired Stewart Waste Management, with Marty, Bubba, and Dawnelle Stewart.”

Marty and Bubba looked like your basic good-­looking, golf-­playing, well-­off Midwestern guys in Brooks Brothers dress shirts and khakis. Dawnelle was another matter: She appeared to be in her mid-­twenties. She had long and lustrous hair. Her face had adorably large blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a sweet, hopeful expression. She had on what I think was a Dolce & Gabbana bustier dress. And she had a lot of bust to bustier.

“Howard might as well be doing Habitat for Humanity with Kate Upton,” agreed Joe. “It's horrible for Holly. All her worst fears confirmed. There are more photos here, too, on this Indianapolis society blog.”

“But Dawnelle isn't even standing next to Howard,” I noted, attempting to find a positive spin on the situation. “She's over there with her brother, Bubba. She looks a little young for Howard, too.”

Joe just stared at me in disbelief. “Young? Did you actually just say, ‘She looks a little young for Howard'? Like that's ever stopped anyone,” he said finally. “Sometimes you worry me, honestly. I mean, where do you even come up with this stuff? Look, here's another photo of Dawnelle from earlier that day, working at the charity project. She's helping install a sink.”

He scrolled to another image where the beautiful heiress, clad in cute jeans and boots for her Habitat volunteering time, was helping Bubba tighten bolts underneath a bathroom vanity (at least, I think that's what they were doing, since I don't know a lot about sinks). Dawnelle looked really good from the side angle, too, given her tight jeans and aforementioned generously apportioned chest. She also upheld the theory that girls look good in tool belts.

Dawnelle appeared to be truly enjoying helping out with the project, too, smiling happily as she worked. “It says on this Indianapolis Style website that Dawnelle personally funded all the bathrooms and kitchens for the project and wrote a check for eighteen thousand dollars,” Joe told me grimly.

We looked at each other, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing. Holly's a truly generous person. She'll write a check for any good cause, and frequently does. But there's no way she's ever going to get anywhere near a plumbing project. Hopefully Howard wasn't falling for the do-­gooding Dawnelle.

G
ERDA CALLED
H
OLLY'S
phone at six that night, announcing she'd printed a pile of e-­mails two inches thick, and that we needed to read them ASAP.

“Where are you, Gerda?” Holly asked her.

“At Barclay's, and I can't get out of house tonight,” Gerda said in the manner of a grounded teenager. “Barclay gained seven pounds this week, and we're doing extra workouts tonight. Tomorrow morning, I can sneak out. Barclay has car ser­vice taking him to Miami for meeting at nine a.m.”

Since it turned out Gerda and Barclay were staying on Seagrape Lane just a few houses down from Adelia, we agreed to meet at Adelia's the next morning at nine-­fifteen.

Forty-­five minutes later, while I was working on my hair with a flatiron and some de-­frizzing spray, Holly came to the guesthouse, trailed by Sophie.

“Ya know what, I'm gettin' tired of Vicino every night,” Sophie told us. “Let's stop at Tiki Joe's on the way over to dinner.”

I had to laugh as I thought of anyone being tired of Vicino, where each dish was more delicious than the next and waiters were always bringing things like chilled Pellegrino, fresh bottles of pinot noir, and grilled scallops to the table. “Sophie, you co-­own the place,” I told her. “You can't be tired of it.”

“I mean, I love Channing and all,” Sophie shrugged. “But I've been there twenty-­three nights in a row! Plus, I feel awful that my ex might be the one trying to kill Holly, and I want to take her out for a drink to apologize.”

“It's not your fault that Barclay's probably trying to flatten me like a veal paillard,” Holly told Sophie. “Anyway, I'm totally up for Tiki Joe's.”

“By the way, Kristin, ya need to lose the Old Navy outfits,” Sophie told me helpfully, eyeing what I'd thought was a cute sundress. She popped some gum into her mouth, a habit Joe banned when he was present but which Sophie snuck when she could. “Old Navy ain't gonna fly at Tiki Joe's,” she informed me, chewing noisily on her Bubblicious.

Holly, who had already gone into the closet, emerged holding a white Milly mini dress with a pretty square neckline and a pair of Prada wedges, both still in the bags they'd been toted home in from the Bal Harbour shopping center. “Listen to Sophie!” Holly told me.

“I feel weird wearing your clothes,” I protested to Holly. “I mean, the tags are still on these, and look how expensive they are!”

“
I
feel weird when you wear Old Navy to chic restaurants,” Holly told me, turning on her Giuseppe Zanotti heel, Sophie scampering after her like a well-­groomed Chihuahua.

“Hurry up. We leave in five minutes for Tiki Joe's.”

T
IKI
J
OE'S WAS
pretty awesome. It combined the fun, honky-­tonk vibe of the Florida Keys with the glossy swankiness of Magnolia Beach, and it had a '60s, retro vibe. The bar and restaurant were dark and noisy, filled with older men and their younger wives and, in one case, I was pleased to notice, an older woman and her younger guy. Steel drum music was pumping, festive lanterns dangled from the ceiling, and the vibe was totally cool.