Killer WASPs (27 page)

I wondered distractedly if Joe could possibly have feelings for Sophie. She was pretty
and sweet enough, but she and Joe were as different as Chippendale and Ikea, as diametrically
opposed as Campari and Coors. They had absolutely nothing in common. Then again, who
knows? Maybe it was time for Joe to move out of Holly’s guest room and get on with
his life.

“Listen, girl,” said Honey to Sophie. “I don’t know you. You don’t seem all that smart.
And you married Barclay Shields, so your judgment can’t be all that great. But most
of us marry a horse’s ass at some point.”

“I did,” agreed Holly.

“I did, too,” said Honey. “And I spent a lot of time being miserable about it. I should’ve
picked myself up and gone on with my life, and married someone else. And that’s what
you should do, too, Sophie. Go tell this Joe that you love him. Maybe it will all
work out.” We all looked at Honey in surprise, but just then a cow bellowed from the
barn.

“Blossom!” barked Honey, worriedly. She and Mike got up and zoomed out the front door
toward the barn, leaving me, Holly, and Sophie with our cocktails. It seemed Blossom
was now in full-­on labor, and while I felt badly for the poor cow, it didn’t make
me any less sure that Mike was definitely not a potential long-­term relationship
prospect.

“Let’s go, Holly,” I said. She yawned and agreed.

“I better get going, too,” Sophie piped up.

“I’m exhausted,” Holly moaned. “Just getting Honey to try on clothes at Talbots was
a huge ordeal. But I’ve made a lot of headway in our new friendship, and I’m eighty-­seven-­percent
sure she didn’t try to kill Barclay or the chef.”

“I just need to excuse myself for a second, and then I’m ready,” I told her and Sophie.
“Be right back.”

Mike’s powder room was snazzy, in an English country house kind of way. The walls
were painted a pretty dark red, and there was an old white porcelain sink and a Venetian
mirror that was blurry with age. There was a print of a handsome cow on the wall opposite
the door, and some books on a shelf above the commode. It was a very cute bathroom.
Whatever—­so Mike had good taste. As soon as I washed my hands, which were covered
with dog hair, I was out of here, and I never wanted to see Mike or his
Lonely Planet Guide
again.

Then I froze.

At one end of the little bookshelf above the toilet was a silver acorn bookend.

Only one acorn bookend.

I knew this didn’t necessarily implicate Mike, since Walt had told me there were any
number of the acorn figurines floating around Bryn Mawr, but, still—­one of the acorns?
Right here, on the grounds of Sanderson, where a heavy, sharp, bloodied acorn bookend
had been found just days before? I felt a shiver of fear run down my spine. Why did
I always find myself in these situations lately?

I threw open the door into the small front hallway, noticing in the dim light from
the sconces that directly opposite the powder room door, above a small oil painting
of a constipated-­looking old woman in a bonnet, a
gun
was mounted on the wall.

It was a glossy, attractive, antique gun made of gleaming wood and elegantly tarnished
metal, unmistakably a vintage piece. I don’t know the first thing about firearms,
but unless I was very much mistaken, this one was old. Who keeps a
gun
in their front hallway?

­People who go around shooting chefs with antique guns,
that’s
who! Mike had to be the attacker of both Barclay Shields and Chef Gianni. Why he
had gone after the two men, I wasn’t sure, but maybe he was trying to keep Barclay
from taking land away from his precious herd of cows. Who knows why he’d target Gianni,
but if Mike was a hothead, possibly he just thought the chef, being your basic jackass,
was worth shooting.

Mike had been at Sophie’s Symphony party, too, so he could have been the one to push
Gianni. When I thought back, I hadn’t seen him among the crowd who’d immediately gathered
around the fallen chef. Had he gone inside and pushed Gianni?

“Yikes,” I whispered, petrified. I’d been making out with a murderer. Well, attempted
murderer. This was a new low.

I wheeled around to leave the bathroom and went back to the living room to grab Holly
and Sophie.

“Look!” I whispered, dragging them into the hallway and pointing toward the gun.

“What?” said Sophie, staring at the rendering of the woman in the bonnet. “Not to
be negative, but that painting’s ugly as sin. This lady looks like she hasn’t taken
a crap for a week. Did I tell you that always happens to Barclay when we travel? One
time when we went to Atlantic City—­”

“No, above the painting,” I squeaked, pointing above the small painting. “The old
gun. And in here, in the powder room”—­I threw open the door and gestured wildly—­“the
acorn bookend. He’s got all the weapons that have been used over the past week in
the attacks on Gianni and Barclay.”

Sophie’s jaw dropped, and Holly looked stunned. She stared at me with comprehension,
then clutched my wrist and Sophie’s, one in each hand. Sophie also appeared to put
two and two together, and I was pretty sure I saw a light bulb pop on inside her head.

“I know what we’d do in Joisey if we thought we were inside the house of a guy who’s
probably a wannabe murderer,” she shrieked.

“What?” asked Holly, looking slightly hysterical.

“Run!” said Sophie.

I grabbed Waffles’s leash, and Sophie ran for her convertible, while Waffles and I
got into Holly’s car. I could see that John’s SUV was already parked over at the barn,
but there was no sign of him, Mike, or Honey, who all seemed to be inside the brightly
lit barn. We sped out up the long driveway of Sanderson toward the road.

“I can’t believe you’ve been kissing a murderer!” Holly said, shooting me a glance
as she hit fifty, gravel flying. “Even I have never done that.” She seemed a little
envious. “You didn’t have sex with him, did you?”

“Nope,” I told her, truthfully.

“Oh well.” She looked disappointed. “Where did you make out? Was it always at his
house?” she asked, pulling into my driveway across the street from the Sanderson gates.

“No, not at all. Once out by my fence, and one other time in the Sanderson barn,”
I admitted.

“Against a fence and in a barn?” Holly breathed. She looked impressed. “That’s so
. . . so . . . Kenny Chesney, in a good way.”

“That was before I knew about Mike’s crazed-­murderer secret,” I explained.

“I’ll call you in the morning and we’ll talk about everything,” I promised, getting
out of the car and running into my house like a spooked rabbit, Waffles following
me.

“Lock yourself in,” Holly called after me. “You never know if he’ll get that acorn
bookend out tonight and smash it into your skull—­right after he talks his way into
your house and has his way with you on your kitchen floor! Which honestly sounds kind
of hot. Except for the skull-­smashing part.”

Holly backed out of the driveway and I bolted all the doors, latched all the first-­floor
windows, and closed the kitchen curtains. Then I ran upstairs, brushed my teeth, and
got into bed, frantically clutching the blanket and Waffles, who blew out a sigh and
gave me a look that implied I needed to pull myself together—­the equivalent of a
dog eye roll—­before he curled up and went to sleep.

As I calmed down, breathed, and began to think more logically, I started to doubt
my freak-­out. The bookend wasn’t proof of anything. Walt had said that Bryn Mawr
was full of the acorn bookends; lots of ­people had been given them by Bryn Mawr Prep
School, and had passed them along to family members or given them away.

But the acorn
and
the gun, both within a few feet of each other at Mike’s house, and on the grounds
of Sanderson, scene of the acorn crime? It was just too coincidental. I pulled the
covers up higher around my ears, retrieved my cell phone from my bedside table, and
tucked it under my pillow, wondering if I should call Officer Walt. He struck me as
the early-­to-­bed type, though, and Bootsie had tortured him so much the past week
that I hesitated to bother him again. It popped into my mind just before I fell into
an exhausted sleep that the bonneted woman in the painting at Mike’s house bore a
strong resemblance to Honey. It must be a Potts ancestor that Honey couldn’t stand
looking at, since it was basically an ominous predictor of exactly how she was going
to look in a few years—­it was like the opposite of
The Picture of Dorian Gray
.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
in the light of day, my terror had turned into a confused headache. I wasn’t feeling
too perky when I got to the shop, despite the fact that I’d spent five extra minutes
under the shower, and had loaded up my biggest insulated coffee to-­go cup at home.

I knew I had to call Officer Walt, but it could wait until after I finished my coffee
and dusted.

Or
did
I really need to tell Walt about the acorn and gun we’d seen last night at Mike’s?
Would I sound like a paranoid nut job? And truthfully, even though I now really liked
John, I’d harbored a pretty serious crush on Mike (unless, of course, he was a deranged
killer, then my crush would immediately and retroactively become null and void). I
didn’t want to think badly of Mike.

It seemed a little unfair to call Walt and blab about my suspicions about Mike. Or
was it insane
not
to call Walt? This was awful.

I looked out at the blue skies over Lancaster Avenue in hopes of finding an answer.
I considered calling Bootsie and asking her advice, but if I did that, I might as
well open a Twitter account, tweet it to CNN, and try to get Anderson Cooper to weigh
in. As I ran a dust cloth over some Royal Doulton serving dishes near the front of
the store, I realized that the only ­people I could really talk to about this were
Holly and Joe. I knew Holly would have already discussed the discoveries of the gun
and bookend at length with Joe, and they’d give me sound advice about whether or not
to call Walt.

What I wasn’t sure about was how Joe would react to the news that Sophie Shields was
desperately enamored with him. But while this was a major development, it would have
to take a backseat to the potentially murderous cowhand.

­“People are complicated, Waffles,” I said to the dog, who was happily panting at
passersby near the front door. He turned and wagged, his rawhide bone poking sideways
out of his mouth in a ridiculous way. I noticed his barrel-­shaped body was indeed
turning into a round mound of hound. Gerda was right. I sighed. I’d been so distracted
lately that we hadn’t been going on our usual long walks.

As I straightened up the shop, I vowed to myself that starting today, I was going
to get my life back on track. It was officially Time to Get Motivated. I was going
to end—­well, severely limit—­my time at the club drinking wine with Holly and Joe,
sipping coffee and gossiping with Bootsie, and gulping aspirin and listening to Sophie
Shields. I needed to hit the flea markets this weekend, because when the shop’s not
fully stocked, it’s not an alluring prospect for shoppers. The shop should look full,
bursting with adorable accessories and statement-­making furniture, which it most
definitely didn’t at the moment. This Saturday I’d go on a buying run to Lancaster
County, organize the shop, mow my lawn, weed the perennial beds, and clean the house.
I’d book a trip to visit my parents in Winkelman. I might even go
jogging
.

“And I won’t be spending the weekend obsessing over anyone, including Mike, who I’m
thinking this morning isn’t a crazed killer,” I told Waffles.

As I was about to dial Holly, I noticed there was a message on my cell phone. I checked
the call log and saw that John had been the message leaver; he must have called last
night or early this morning, while my phone had been set on silent. I dialed voice
mail and listened to John’s message.

He said that he’d like to take me to dinner that night, maybe somewhere downtown.

“Or we can go to the club,” he said, sounding happy, “because my divorce came through
yesterday. It’s official. And both Lilly and I are happy about it. She’s in love with
a guy she met in Connecticut at a tennis tournament last summer, and she’s finally
free to move up there, which she’s been hoping to do.”

The wind was knocked out of me, honestly. I put my cell phone down on my desk, sat
down, and took a sip of coffee.

A moment later, belching clouds of smoke in front of the shop announced the arrival
of Jimmy and Hugh Best. They clambered in the front door accompanied by the scent
of cigars and Old Spice.

“Good news!” said Hugh, who was looking dapper today in a faded Nantucket-­red sport
coat. “Your friend from New York called us this morning to tell us that the Frenchwoman
appraising the ring has ascertained it
is
a Garrard design.” He beamed, and Jimmy cracked a smile.

“George tells us that this Frenchie has a theory about the ring,” Jimmy added, plunking
himself down on the deco bench, while Hugh took Bootsie’s customary Queen Anne chair
and petted Waffles. “It could be part of a set of what he calls ‘important jewels.’
Which means—­ka-­ching!” he said with devilish glee. “Bring on the twenty-­five-­year-­old
Macallan and illegally imported Cohibas. Out with the cheap shit, and in with the
good stuff!”

“George said there’s a
small chance
that it’s a significant piece of jewelry,” pointed out Hugh, “and not to expect much.”
Hugh clearly was steeling himself against disappointment, and I didn’t blame him.

“That’s wonderful,” I told them happily. “You deserve all the good fortune in the
world.”

“Well, we’re very grateful to you and your friend Holly for putting us in touch with
Sotheby’s,” said Hugh, sweetly. “This could be our ticket to a comfortable old age.”

“I’m even starting to think we
should
sell our decrepit old house,” agreed Jimmy, surprising me. “Hugh’s got me half convinced
to give in to Barclay Shields; get some fast cash for the old place, and start over.
Get a condo where the oven works, there’s no mold in the basement, and the heat doesn’t
thump and ping all night.”