Killer WASPs (4 page)

It was eau de cow.

“Do you work here?” I asked, relieved. Honey Potts wouldn’t hire a homicidal maniac,
I was pretty sure. She probably inherited her servants,
Downton Abbey
style. This guy had doubtless been born into the Potts household, the son of the
family chambermaid and head gardener.

“I take care of the herd,” the guy answered. “Got a minute?” he added. “You and your
dog can walk to the barn with me while I check on the cows.” He smiled. Waffles wagged.
I wavered. “Um, okay,” I said, fueled by liquid courage.

Over the next twenty minutes, I admired roughly a hundred cute and sleepy cows in
the Potts cow barn. In the brightly lit barn I saw that the guy, who introduced himself
as Mike, was in fact very handsome. He proudly conducted a short tour de bovine, explaining
patiently that all the Sanderson cows were of the Hereford variety, originally from
the British Isles. Mike, much like the cows he tended, was not too skinny, friendly,
and kind of scruffy.

This kind of unconventional guy has always been my type, which is why I haven’t found
anyone to marry. As my friends like to point out, the men I attract usually disappear
to backpack through Thailand soon after our third date, which makes it hard to pursue
a relationship. Anyway, after we looked at the cows, Mike walked me back up the path
toward the road, and we reached the Potts driveway, where I intended to turn left
and head for home.

Unfortunately, Waffles was straining at the leash to turn right, sniffing and wagging
in the moonlight in the general direction of a hydrangea bush. He whined and pulled
me closer to said flowering shrub. A few feet from the bush, Mike grabbed my free
hand and paused. I felt a little thrill down my spine, thinking he was about to ask
me for my number.

Instead, he said, “There’s something under that bush.”

Mike walked closer to the hydrangea, Waffles and I close on his heels, and all three
of us noted what appeared to be a pair of Ferragamo loafers attached to a chubby,
motionless man. Mike amended his statement. “Actually, there’s some
one
under that bush.”

You know the rest—­under the shrubbery was Barclay Shields. After a call to the police,
Officer Walt arrived, followed by a teenage intern, a pair of EMTs, and at one point
Honey Potts—­
in her nightgown
—­who drove down her quarter-­mile-­long driveway in response to the police’s knock
on her baronial front door. In all the confusion, I never got to say good-­bye to
Mike. I did watch the medics hook Barclay up to a drip while the policeman removed
the contents of his pockets. Methodically, he carefully packed up Barclay’s wallet,
keys, and cell phone. He also found a note, handwritten on expensive-­looking, cream-­colored
notepaper, addressed to Barclay. It was easy to read in the bright headlights of the
ambulance, and its large block letters said: “Stop building cheap houses.”

Chapter 3

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
after Sophie Shields bought everything in The Striped Awning and after Bootsie finally
left, I packed up every damn thing in the store. This tedious task took a little over
seven hours, but I was happy to do it. I bubble-­wrapped and carefully placed items
in a dozen moving boxes; I carefully folded paper around the crystals adorning the
Palm Beach chandelier, wound tarps around the legs of a maple hall table and the vanity
in the front window, and polished silver candlesticks and a tea set (leaving a little
patina on the tea set, since I figured if Sophie had live-­in Pilates help, she had
­people to polish silver for her).

Luckily, I had a fair amount of furniture and accessories in the back room of The
Striped Awning with which I could restock the store once I delivered Sophie’s loot
to her. “This is a ton of stuff!” I told Waffles, who wagged back at me.

Between all the silverware and wineglasses, pillows and prints, several pages of the
yellow legal pad I was using to keep track of Sophie’s purchases filled up rapidly.
There were old glass decanters, a needlepoint stool, and a set of blue-­and-­white
Chinese export dessert plates, all things that I had loved when I’d bought them at
flea markets and estate sales, which is important in the antiques business: You have
to believe in what you’re selling. I loved them even more at the moment, since they
were going to help me pay my mortgage and keep the store open. I even apologized to
the chair I’d yelled at the day before.

For packing music, I turned up the country-­music station on the radio, and occasionally
thought about cute Mike Woodford, distracted by visions of his tan forearms and dark-­stubbled
jaw. I also thought about Barclay Shields, wondering how he was doing with his head
injury, and shuddered at the image of his extra-­wide Ferragamos under the bush last
night. Then I sternly ordered myself to focus.

Occasionally, I’d pause to calculate the subtotal as I worked my way through the store,
singing out, “We just made another four hundred dollars!” and “Mirror: two hundred!”
until I finally reached the back of the small store and the grand total: seven thousand,
five hundred, and seventy dollars. Minus rent and my AmEx bill, this meant The Striped
Awning was in business for at least another few months. At three, I called Mr. Webster
to tell him I’d be dropping off a check for this month as soon as Sophie’s Visa payment
went through, probably by Tuesday. He sounded like he thought this was bullshit, but
accepted my promise of payment.

Finally, at five-­thirty, I went into the store’s tiny black-­and-­white-­striped
powder room, washed my dusty face and hands, put on new mascara and lipstick, pulled
my hair out of its ponytail, and shook it down around my shoulders. I attempted to
shake the wrinkles out of my dress (Gap outlet, black cotton, thirty-­nine dollars)
and spritzed on some of Grandma’s YSL perfume, circa 1970, which sits on a little
shelf in the bathroom and, by some miracle, still smells fantastic. I hoped the YSL
drowned out some of my current scent, which was a combination of dust, old furniture,
silver polish, and basset hound.

Waffles was giving me a significant look at the back door of the store, so we went
outside, where he did his daily double in the grass behind the store. I pooper-­scooped,
went back inside, filled up his water bowl, and threw a handful of kibble into a dish.
By the time I’d grabbed my keys to leave, he’d inhaled his dinner and was back on
his bed, asleep. That’s one of the great things about Waffles. He sleeps about twenty
hours a day, the bulk of them snoring on his bed in the store. The downside of this
is that the four hours he’s awake, he’s incredibly energetic and steals all my food.
He’d grabbed the chicken salad I’d bought for lunch today, as a matter of fact, while
I briefly turned my back to answer the phone. He gave me Sad Eyes and looked convincingly
guilty after he ate it, though I’m not sure that was the case.

“I’ll be back in twenty minutes—­one quick drink!” I promised the sleeping dog, then
locked up and rushed to the club to meet Holly and Joe.

“Seven thousand, five hundred, and seventy dollars. Seven thousand, five hundred,
and seventy dollars,” I sang good-­humoredly to the tune of “Happy Birthday to You,”
as I drove down Lancaster Avenue, the main drag in town, where The Striped Awning
sits along with the luncheonette, a few boutiques, a bakery, and the (very popular)
liquor store. Then I turned left onto shady Montgomery Lane, and after a quarter mile,
into the rosebush-­lined entrance of Bryn Mawr Country Club.

The cars in the parking lot were a mix that closely resembled the members—­some new
and glossy, some old and dusty. My own slightly dented old Subaru looked even seedier
than usual, I noticed, parked next to a gleaming Jaguar convertible in a nice, cool,
shady spot under a two-­hundred-­year-­old oak.

“Uh-­oh,” I said aloud to myself a minute later, peering around the corner of the
club’s wide porch from behind a wide pillar. I could see Honey Potts and Mariellen
Merriwether at the other end of the porch, seated at one of the wrought-­iron dining
tables and watching a tennis match on the club’s grass courts. Honey was eating a
plate of fried oysters and drinking her trusty Stoli. Mariellen was in her pearls,
smoking a Virginia Slim. Just in front of me were Holly and Joe.

Phew—­I could sneak up the side steps of the porch to Holly and Joe’s table unnoticed.
There were a dozen tables crowded with preppy members between us, and Honey and Mariellen
would never see me. I was pretty sure Honey hadn’t taken much notice of me last night
in the dark while she’d been talking to the police, but on the off chance that she
had, I was intent on avoiding her.

I
had
noticed her eyeing Waffles, though, last night when she’d been standing there in
her white cotton nightshirt—­oh, that I could erase the image of Mrs. Potts in her
sleep garb from my brain—­since his short legs and massive ears make him kind of hard
to ignore. In her mind, I was sure, not only had Waffles and I recklessly trespassed
on the hallowed grounds of Sanderson last night, we’d been instrumental in discovering
a crime scene that had forever tarnished the property. Eventually someone would have
found Mr. Shields, but I didn’t think Honey had considered that. I breathed deep yoga
breaths for a moment (I don’t do yoga, but I’ve heard the breathing is good), and
gazed around at the club grounds to calm myself.

You can’t beat the club for sheer old-­fashioned loveliness and stateliness, especially
at this time of day, with the late-­afternoon sun turning into shade and shadows lengthening
around the hulking building. The century-­old structure is three stories high, all
gables and mullioned windows, with a charming shingled roof above brick walls and
the wide wooden porches. Inside is a dining room, rarely used except in the winter,
vintage locker rooms with mahogany cabinets for tennis and golf gear, and an incredible
old paneled bar, which until the late 1960s had actually been men-­only (women had
to drink either in the locker rooms, or when seated in the dining room or on the porch,
which seemed a little unfair, though there were some nice comfy couches in the locker
rooms). Adjacent to the tennis courts are the golf course and putting greens. The
grounds are at their best this time of year, too, with rosebushes exploding with buds,
and borders of lilies and peonies in fragrant, massive bloom.

Holly and I had both been coming here since childhood—­like her family, my grandparents
had been members all their lives, long before younger (and richer) ­people had started
to join in the last ten years. The club had needed new members to survive, and opening
up membership had been, to my mind, a great thing. The club now attracted ­people
in their thirties and forties, with glossy hair and adorable children, alongside all
the eighty-­five-­year-­olds who wore vintage Lilly Pulitzer not because it was chic
again, but because they’d been wearing it for fifty years and their closets were filled
with the flowered frocks. The place was like
Grey Gardens
meets a Tommy Hilfiger ad.

One of the rich new members, as a matter of fact, was Holly’s soon-­to-­be ex-­husband,
Howard the Garbage and Trucking Mogul, whom Holly had met outside the locker rooms
one afternoon three years ago. Howard’s gazillion-­plus trash trucks handle the refuse
pickup for pretty much every house along the East Coast from Jersey to Florida, and
Howard had just personally paid for the club’s new racquetball courts (called, of
course, the Howard Jones Racquetball Courts). He’d been standing there with Ronnie,
the head bartender and manager, discussing the club’s waste-­removal discount, when
he’d spied Holly coming out of the locker room in her tennis outfit. Bingo! They’d
been married four months later. It’s a fact that Holly, while she rarely plays tennis,
looks awesome in her Lacoste tennis whites. She’s big on wearing them to the club
even when she has zero intention of picking up a racket, and accessorizes the sporty
outfit with some great Van Cleef Alhambra clover necklaces and earrings.

Actually, why I was still a member of the club was something I couldn’t quite understand,
since someone who can’t pay their mortgage definitely can’t afford the club dues.
I’d asked Ronnie the manager how it was possible that I was still in good standing
when I hadn’t paid my membership fee in months (I’d only known I
was
still a member because the club directory listed me as such when it came out in March),
and he’d told me that before they died, my grandparents had paid for a family membership
that was good through the end of next year. I had the distinct feeling that this was
bullshit, and that Holly had paid my dues.

That was really very sweet of her
, I thought warmly, as I walked up the steps and sat down at her table next to Joe,
who waved over a waitress and ordered me a rum and tonic.

“Sophie Shields bought out my store!” I told Holly and Joe immediately, dispensing
with the formalities. “She took my entire inventory, every single thing.” Holly and
I had covered the Barclay Shields incident briefly earlier, on the phone, but I hadn’t
had time to tell her about Sophie’s shopping bonanza then, because it was at that
exact moment that Waffles had stolen my lunch.

“Everyone knows about Sophie and your store,” said Holly. I sighed. I’d forgotten
that Bootsie had witnessed Sophie’s impulsive splurge. There was no way that in the
intervening eight hours since Sophie had whipped out her Visa card, Bootsie hadn’t
lit up iPhones and BlackBerrys throughout Bryn Mawr and Center City Philly with the
news, and likely blown out cell towers as far away as the Jersey Shore and the Delaware
beaches.

“Does Bootsie have anything new on Barclay since this morning?” I asked.

“The police met with Barclay this afternoon,” said Joe, as my drink arrived. After
all those cocktails the night before, drinking didn’t seem like a great idea, but
after all that packing, I reasoned, who wouldn’t be thirsty?

“He’d just ordered in lunch, by the way, when the police came in to talk to him,”
said Joe.

“What did he get?” asked Holly, curious.

“Two cheesesteaks and an order of wings from the Hoagie Hut,” said Joe. “The nurses
took the wings and one of the steaks away. Anyway, Barclay told the police that the
whole chain of events started when he got a note hand-­delivered yesterday to his
office in Haverford,” Joe said, leaning in toward us, and speaking in a loud whisper.

Between the clanging silverware, the chattering older guests, and the tennis players
thwacking balls around, I doubted anyone at the neighboring tables could hear him,
despite the fact that his voice definitely carried. A few ­people were staring at
us, but that was because of Holly’s outfit. She’s not in her tennis-­whites phase
at the moment; instead, she’s been on a kind of retro-­supermodel kick, and had on
a full-­length silk caftan, incredibly high-­heeled Gucci sandals that kind of looked
like expensive Dr. Scholl’s on stilts, and had added long emerald-­colored beads and
an Ursula Andress–style flowing hairdo. I’m not sure what to make of her new super-­glam
style, but she did look pretty, even if her outfit was more appropriate for, say,
Club 55 in St. Tropez.

“No one saw who dropped off the note, but it was sitting on his receptionist’s desk
when she came back from lunch,” said Joe, forgetting that he was supposed to be whispering.
He practically shouted, “And get this: The note was from Honey Potts!”