Killer WASPs (22 page)

“Why did you hire him?” I whispered to Holly. “I thought you hated Gianni.”

“Of course I hate him,” Holly told me. “Everyone does. But I can’t have my housewarming
party without Gianni cooking the dinner. I mean, how would it look if I
didn’t
have Gianni? Even I love his food, and I barely eat. ­People wouldn’t come if his
gnocchi wasn’t on the menu. It’s going to have its own Wikipedia entry soon.”

“Oh, fuck,” said Joe, who’d just appeared on the patio in his pajamas. He froze for
a moment when he spied the chef, Jessica, and her plume of cigarette smoke rounding
the rosebushes. “It’s too early to deal with those two.” He took off toward his bedroom.

“My darleeng!” said the chef, hopping on his crutch to Holly, and leaning over to
kiss her twice on each cheek and several times on her hand and forearm, a gesture
that hasn’t been seen since Errol Flynn movies went out of production. The chef’s
cologne, a heavy, musky cloud of fragrance, drowned out the roses’ mild scent. Holly
and I both coughed uncontrollably for a minute, while Waffles sniffed the air, whined,
and lay down over by a planter filled with geraniums.

“Gianni, you know Kristin,” said Holly, gesturing politely toward me.

“Oh,
sí
,” he said by way of greeting, while Jessica nodded at me, looking nervous.

“Holly,” the chef proclaimed, “I go to your kitchen now. I need to see where I work,
and to plan in advance.”

“The kitchen’s right through there,” Holly told him, pointing at the French doors.

“So anyway, George,” she said, returning to her phone call as the chef limped in,
Jessica sourly clicking along behind him, giving us an eye roll as she passed us,
“the ring has a big oval ruby—­or a stone that resembles a ruby—­surrounded by tiny
diamonds, and it’s very old, I think. Did you get the picture I texted you yet? Okay,
great! You know someone at your offices in New York who could look at it? Perfect.”
She listened for a minute.

“Okay, I’ll tell Kristin you’re coming by her store later. And by the way, George,
you have to be here for my party next weekend. It’s going to be all about Chef Gianni’s
gnocchi with boatloads of Italian wine, and I’m having the Colketts bring in about
three thousand lilies!”

Just then, the chef appeared in the French doors.

“Hollleee,” he shouted. “There is big problem with your kitchen. Not gonna work. I’m
gonna need my catering truck for your dinner party. I need to call Channing about
this. I’ll get my phone from the Fiat.”

The chef grabbed his crutch, and with surprising speed, started limping around the
rosebush hedge toward his car.

Just as he turned onto the walkway that led to the driveway, something tiny, invisible
as it passed, whizzed through the rose hedge and, with a metallic ping, lodged itself
into the stone exterior of Holly’s house, right next to one of the French doors into
her living room.

A millisecond afterward, there was another whizzing sound, then the crunch of man
and metal crutch hitting slate walkway. A car at the end of Holly’s driveway screeched
into reverse, hit a three-­point turn, and squealed away before any of us could get
a look over the hedge at the distant vehicle.

“
Merda!
” screamed Gianni, who’d gone down like a bowling pin.

Holly and I looked at the object lodged into her stone wall, then at the chef, and
then at each other with shocked realization.

“George?” said Holly into her phone. “Can I call you back? I think someone just shot
the chef.”

Holly, Waffles, and I rushed inside, terrified. Joe was in the shower and Martha was
in the kitchen, watching the
Today Show
at top volume and ironing Holly’s dish towels, oblivious to the chef screaming outside
on the walkway. Jessica was also unscathed, but had seen the shooting from just inside
the living room. We sat her down and called 911, which told us to stay inside until
help came.

We were pretty sure the car that had sped out of the driveway had contained the person
who shot at us, so probably it was safe to go outside. So, ignoring the 911 operator’s
advice, Holly and I crept outside and dragged the chef back into the living room in
a matter of about three seconds, in case the shooter returned to finish the job.

We laid Gianni on the hardwood floor (Holly wasn’t about to risk getting blood on
her carpet), where he shouted obscenities and squirmed like an upside-­down caterpillar
while Jessica fluttered over him uselessly.

Oddly, we couldn’t see any wounds or blood on the chef, but he was screaming in apparent
agony. Then we noticed a little black hole in the cast on his right ankle, and a trickle
of dark liquid seeping out slowly over his exposed toes at the bottom of the cast.

“Oh, good,” said Holly soothingly. “Look, Chef, the bullet went right through your
cast. That’s really lucky!”

“I would not call it lucky!” screamed Gianni.

“Well, it’s better than getting shot in the head,” said Joe, who had come out of his
room and was taking in the situation. “That would really hurt.”

“
This
really hurts!” exploded the chef.

“Maybe a pillow will help,” Holly suggested. She took a silk pillow off the sofa and
gingerly put it under the chef’s bald head. She stepped back and eyed him critically,
like a sales manager at Pottery Barn who’s just put together a window display, and
sees something lacking. Holly nudged the pillow a little straighter with the toe of
her sandal, and bent over to adjust his sleeves to show a bit of the tattoo of St.
Peter’s Basilica on his muscled arm. “There,” she cooed. “That’s better.”

Then a police car pulled up, Officer Walt got out accompanied by a teenager wearing
jeans and a T-­shirt, and that’s when things started heating up in the investigation
of who wanted Barclay Shields and Chef Gianni maimed, dead, or, preferably, both maimed
and dead.

“W
ALT,
I
CAN
totally help you with this investigation,” Holly told Officer Walt five minutes later.
“You too, Jared.”

Jared, the teenager who’d accompanied Walt to our crime scene, was a senior at Bryn
Mawr Prep, winding up a six-­week internship at the police department. He had an earring,
no facial hair, and smelled strongly of Axe body spray. He looked more like he was
fourteen.

An ambulance manned by the same EMTs from Sophie’s party had arrived. Once again,
Gianni was ladled onto a gurney, and the emergency workers prepared to take him out
the French doors, speaking to the chef cheerfully as his vital signs were checked.
“Hey, man, good to see you again!” said the youthful medic to Gianni.

“
Vaffanculo
,” the chef told him.

“Looks like you took the bullet right in that same ankle—­bummer. Let’s cut this cast
off out in the ambulance see what’s what,” added the other medic in an upbeat tone,
ignoring the invitation to go fuck himself.

Gianni gave him the finger as he was wheeled out across the patio. They took off for
Bryn Mawr Hospital, Jessica following nervously in the red Fiat. Officer Walt, in
over his head, called the Philadelphia Police Department for assistance, and detectives
were dispatched. Walt then came inside to the kitchen and pulled out a little black
spiral notebook to write down what we knew. Jared, the intern, meanwhile stared adoringly
at Holly, his mouth hanging open.

“Jessica—­that’s the chef’s girlfriend—­was inside my house when he got shot,” Holly
explained as we all perched on the white bar stools around her kitchen counter. “So
at least we know
she
didn’t shoot him. The shot came from the front yard or driveway. But just so you know,
Walt, there’s a lot of gossip going on around town about the chef, and Jessica, and
Barclay Shields, and I’m going to help you get it all down in that notebook of yours.”

Walt dutifully poised pen over notebook. Jared, sitting on a counter stool nibbling
at a plate of fruit, appeared utterly useless. He continued to stare at Holly, his
mouth agape. He was wearing a retainer, I noticed.

Truthfully, I felt for Officer Walt. For three hundred years, Bryn Mawr’s been one
of the more peaceful places on earth, where most troubles are along the lines of a
failed soufflé or a sand-­trapped golf ball. How was one thirtyish policeman with
a seventeen-­year-­old intern in late-­stage puberty supposed to solve all this?

“Walt, it turns out that Gianni and Barclay both had some ties to what sounds a lot
like the mafia,” Holly told the officer. “I don’t know much about organized crime,
but apparently they both had a lot of uncles from New Jersey.”

“We have all that info,” Walt said, surprising me. “I’m working with teams in Philly
and from Newark, and we’ve been able to piece together a lot about Barclay and Gianni’s
past. The drive-­by shooting is a surprise, actually. We’re told the guys in Jersey
don’t have any issues with Chef Gianni. Apparently, he paid off all his debts when
he sold his pizza joint.”

“The chef’s girlfriend Jessica is having an affair with one of Gianni’s assistants,”
Holly informed Walt.

“Right, Bootsie McElvoy told me about that.” The policeman nodded. “Guy named Channing.”

“So maybe you should check to see what Channing was doing twenty minutes ago when
my patio was shot at!” suggested Holly.

I was having a hard time thinking of Channing in the role of homicidal maniac. When
you’re as gorgeous as a young Richard Gere with a little Jake Gyllenhall thrown into
the awesome-­genetic blender, why would you kill someone? There’s nothing to be angry
about, if you look like Channing.

But maybe Channing was getting impatient waiting for Jessica to break up with the
chef, and figured he could get rid of Gianni via one quick shot and have Jessica all
to himself?

“I could see a possible motive for Channing to shoot
Gianni
,” I said, “but attacking Barclay? What would Channing possibly gain from that, if
we’re assuming that the same person is after both Barclay and Gianni?”

“Bootsie told me that Channing once worked at Sanderson, right?” said Walt, rifling
through his notes. “Maybe he had some grudge against Barclay for wanting to buy part
of the estate.” He sighed.

“We also need to discuss the Colkett Florists. They hate the chef, so maybe they shot
him this morning!” Holly continued to Walt. “I love the Colketts, but
they
could have pushed Gianni off Sophie Shields’s balcony. They were in the house when
it happened, and were right by the stairs right after he fell!”

Walt sighed. “I know Tim Colkett pretty well. He did the flowers for my wedding, and
gave us a big discount, since he said he wanted to support law enforcement and knows
it’s not a high-­paying field.” He sighed again. “But I did hear about the chef making
a scene and humiliating those two at his opening. So I had Jared do some Internet
research on the Colketts.”

Jared nodded, his earring bobbing up and down. “Yeah,” he said, pleased to finally
make a contribution. “Four years ago, before Tim Colkett hit it big as a florist,
he lost a house to foreclosure. And the bank sold the house after that to a developer—­Barclay
Shields! And that Shields dude tore the place down. I pieced it all together from
the legal notices in the newspaper,” he said proudly. “It was some kind of historic
place. Colkett tried to stop the teardown in court, but Barclay went ahead and put
up three townhomes on the lot.”

“So you’re saying Tim Colkett might have had a motive to go after both Gianni and
Barclay?” I asked.

Walt nodded. “Bootsie told me that the Colketts claim that Gianni, Jessica, and Channing
were missing from Gianni’s opening. But who’s to say they’re not lying? Maybe they
snuck off themselves to go after Barclay.”

“Did you find out how exactly the Colketts are related?” Holly asked Walt and Jared.

“That’s out of my area of interest,” Walt told her, and headed out outside to walk
the crime scene. The Philly police were due any minute, and Jared was leaving, since
he had to be back at school for a calculus quiz at eleven. Officer Walt told me I
could go to work, and that Jared could drop me off at The Striped Awning, where I’d
left my car the night before. Walt didn’t seem to think I could add much to the investigation,
and I was inclined to agree. Meanwhile, Joe had joined us, eating scrambled eggs.

“I can’t believe I missed seeing the chef get shot,” he complained.

“I’ve got six messages from Bootsie McElvoy telling me that Gianni is the one who
attacked Barclay last Thursday,” said Walt, as he, Jared, Waffles, and I headed out
the front door, so as not to disturb the crime scene on the patio. “But a ­couple
of days ago, she left me a bunch of voice mails telling me that she thought that Pilates
woman who works for Sophie Shields hit Barclay in the head. She also told me she thinks
Sophie could have been the mastermind behind the Barclay hit.”

“Yeah, that is one of Bootsie’s theories, but they change frequently,” I said. “I’m
sure you’ve met Gerda, the live-­in Pilates instructor.”

“Oh yeah,” confirmed Walt. “I’ve met her. After the chef fell off Mrs. Shields’s terrace.
Interesting woman, Gerda.”

“Maybe—­and it pains me to say this—­Bootsie’s right,” mused Joe, who had walked out
onto the driveway with us, still forking eggs northward. “Gerda or Sophie could have
shot the chef this morning. Gerda’s got to have a killer hangover this morning, but
she could still have come over and nailed the chef. Just as an FYI, Walt, the woman
doesn’t have a valid driver’s license, so that’s another offense right there.”

Walt shrugged, closed his notebook, and hesitated over something for a moment. “I’ll
look into it,” he promised.

Then he looked up at each of us and spoke, Jared hovering at his elbow.

“I’m going to share something with the three of you that hasn’t gotten out to the
papers yet,” Walt said. “I’m telling you this because no matter what I do, I know
Bootsie McElvoy’s going to dig out the information by the end of the day, and it’ll
be in the paper tomorrow, so I’ll just tell you now.