Killer WASPs (28 page)

“I don’t think that sounds like a very good idea at all,” said a frosty feminine voice
from the front of the store.

We all swiveled toward the coolly elegant voice; the sleigh bells I keep on the door
handle jingled as the door closed behind Mariellen Merriwether, who stood there in
a tasteful pale green linen frock, a beige handbag, and beige low-­heeled pumps, her
right hand caressing her ever-­present pearls.

“I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to find you alone,” Mariellen said to me in
a low tone that threatened me more than an out-­and-­out hissy fit would have. Her
Caribbean-­blue eyes flashed demonically, and I had a sudden vision of her in a coat
made of sewn-­together Dalmatian puppy hides.

“Er—­you have?” I said nervously.

“Well, she ain’t alone, Mariellen,” offered Jimmy jocularly. “Obviously. May I say,
that dress makes you look positively fetching. Reminds me of our old school dances
back in the sixties when I was dating Honey and you were going steady with Martin.”

“This young woman never seems to be without one of her drunken cronies during the
day, or at night,” Mariellen observed, ignoring him. “Too busy trying to sleep with
all the men in this town.”

“I haven’t slept with any of the men!” I protested, shocked. “At least, not lately.
If you mean your daughter’s ex-­husband, I’ve barely even kissed him.”

“Husband,” she corrected me. “Her
current
husband. They are still married.”

I didn’t think this was the appropriate time to tell her that this was no longer the
case, so I kept my mouth shut.

“Mariellen, be reasonable,” said Jimmy, who was twirling an unlit cigar in his left
hand. “You’re being a bit rude, my dear. From what I hear at the club, your daughter
dumped her hubby more than a year ago for some Andre Agassi type in Connecticut. You
can’t expect the fellow she’s divorcing to stay single forever.”

“
I’m
being rude?” sniffed Mariellen, still standing in the front of the store like a statue
while Waffles sniffed her ankles happily, perhaps catching a whiff of Norman. “I don’t
think so at all.

“I’m merely being direct, and unlike everyone else in this town, I’m disciplined,
and focused on getting things done,” Mariellen continued, using her beige pump to
give Waffles a swift kick in the neck. Shocked, he whimpered and ran over to his dog
bed.

Nothing like that has ever happened to Waffles before. I was aghast, but I was so
stunned that I didn’t say anything for fear of setting her off even more.

“For instance,” she went on, “I am determined to halt the awful, hideous, destructive
spread of tacky new houses all over this town, and so I took a stand against that
Shields person.

“And I’m equally against our town becoming the sort of glitzed-­up, celebrity-­chef-­worshipping,
restaurant-­obsessed place where ­people blab on about rare taleggio cheeses and which
pig in Parma their prosciutto came from!” she ranted furiously. ­“People like Mr.
Shields and that hideous chef are ruining Bryn Mawr!”

What exactly was Mariellen saying?

“Uh, Mariellen, are you angry about cheese?” said Hugh, confused and astonished at
this geyser of rage.

“She’s angry that Bryn Mawr is changing, and that she can’t stop change,” said Jimmy
simply. “And so she tried to kill Mr. Shields and the Italian chef to send a message.”

Mariellen nodded. “This is a cheddar and Triscuits town, not some fancy Neiman Marcus
place with frou-­frou pastas and overpriced wine. I get my chardonnay at the Wine
Stop for six dollars a bottle, and that’s good enough for me.” She seemed to calm
down for second while talking about her bargain wine, but then dialed up her nutty-­rage
factor again as she turned on the Bests.

“And you two, letting go of a house that’s been in your family for two centuries.
The idea of selling out to Barclay Shields!” she yelled at Hugh and Jimmy, incensed.

“The heat doesn’t work,” Jimmy told her. “Freeze my tuchus off all winter, Mariellen.
We don’t all have the millions of dollars in a trust fund that you enjoy. But we haven’t
sold the house. You’re misinformed.”

“I don’t have time for this pointless debate,” she said, more calmly, striding toward
us. That’s when I saw she was holding a small, but nonetheless very scary, antique
gun.

She had a firm grip on the gun, which was tarnished with age, but clearly a finely
made handgun from decades back. If I had to make a guess, I realized, this gun was
the same vintage as the one used to shoot the chef.

Mariellen’s spine was straight as a NASA laser as she held the gun with a practiced
hand.

“I thought I saw a gun in your handbag when you pulled out your cigarettes the other
day,” Jimmy told her. “Was up in the attic at the club, and had some old binoculars
out. Told myself my eyes were playing tricks on me. Something glinted in your handbag,
and it looked the right shape, but I didn’t want to believe it of you.”

Mariellen ignored him.

“If you try to scream or run, I’ll shoot your dog,” she told me. My heart plummeted,
and I felt nauseated and numb. Why hadn’t I grabbed my cell phone from my desk when
she’d first walked in?

“Out the door, all of you, and get into my car. Anyone have a cell phone?” she asked.

I pointed sadly toward mine, sitting uselessly on the desk, while Jimmy and Hugh explained
they didn’t believe in cell phones, and in addition, why would they pay forty dollars
a month for such an unnecessary device.

“I hope you know what you’re doing with that gun, Mariellen,” Jimmy barked at her.

“Of course I know what I’m doing,” she retorted. “I’ve been around guns my whole life,
rode in all the hunts at Sanderson in the old days, and had target practice with Papa
every Saturday. How else do you think I shot that Italian chef from two hundred yards
away with Papa’s old shotgun? Not this gun, of course,” she said, waving her pistol.
“The shotgun has a much longer range. I could have killed him, but I was fairly sure
that another warning note combined with shooting him in the foot would convince him
to close the old firehouse and go back to the city. I left the note for him today,
warning him that next time I won’t aim low.”

Jimmy, Hugh, and I exchanged glances, with Hugh looking as shaky as I felt, and Jimmy
wearing an expression of true surprise. Well, it was official. Mariellen had shot
the chef, and now she was prepared to shoot the three of us. I could feel my bones
turning to mayonnaise as we all marched toward the door.

Including Waffles, who’d forgotten about getting kicked in the neck and was now galloping
happily after the four of us, thinking we were going somewhere fun—­maybe on a walk!—­and
he’d be missing out.

“Lie down, Waffles,” I told the dog shakily, shooing him back toward his bed. “Go
play with your bone,” I told him desperately, while he ignored me.

“Bring him,” Mariellen told me flatly. She looped the handles of her purse over her
arm, so that her right hand was free to keep a grip on the weapon, and jingled her
car keys with her left hand. Waffles trotted even faster after us. He loves the jingle
of keys.

“He’s fine here,” I said, trying for a lighthearted tone while I choked back a sob.

“I said, bring that fat mutt.”

I let Waffles out the door, shakily closed and locked the door behind us, then led
my trusting hound to her Range Rover. Waffles even wagged at Mariellen when I opened
the backseat to the roomy truck, looking around desperately for anyone to flag down
on the normally busy street. Of course, there wasn’t a soul in sight.

Why, today of all days, couldn’t Bootsie be out walking Lancaster Avenue, sticking
her nose into the café, the hardware store, the post office, and the bakery, hoping
to catch a cheating spouse or hear about a drunken escapade at a party, as per her
custom? Why wasn’t Holly heading back from Booty Camp, or Joe and Sophie at the paint
store a few doors down, debating fifty shades of beige? But there was absolutely no
one out on the street at the moment. Even the elderly lady who runs the liquor store,
who’s almost always outside puffing on a Parliament, had disappeared.

“You drive,” Mariellen told me, handing me the keys to her large black Mercedes, her
gun aimed firmly at Waffles. My hand trembled as I climbed into the driver’s seat
and inserted the key into the ignition. Mariellen gestured for Hugh to sit shotgun,
and she, Jimmy, and Waffles got into the backseat. A tear rolled down my cheek.

“What in the name of Johnnie Walker are you up to, Mariellen?” complained Jimmy as
he buckled his seat belt—­an unnecessary precaution, probably, since we all seemed
as good as dead. “If you’ve gotten yourself into trouble, we should go discuss it
with the police. And maybe a good headshrinker.”

“We’ll discuss it at my house,” she said. “Head toward Sanderson, then take a right
on Camellia Lane.”

Mariellen’s estate was only minutes away, in the opposite direction of Sophie Shields’s
house. Shady Camellia Lane is one of the prettiest roads in Bryn Mawr, but I didn’t
notice its namesake flowers in bloom as I shakily steered the large car into her driveway
per Mariellen’s instructions. Her property had no gates, just a small black mailbox
set in a bank of irises and lilies. The driveway was lined with oak trees, and the
sense of privacy would have been idyllic under different circumstances.

The driveway wound back from Camellia Lane, and as we rounded a curve and the house
came into view, even in my panic I couldn’t help noticing that Mariellen’s stone farmhouse
oozed good taste. Dogwoods bloomed along the walkway to her dark green front door,
and flower boxes filled with hot-­pink petunias were mounted on each front window.
I guess elegance and insanity aren’t mutually exclusive.

Behind her house was a paddock, and then a barn, painted pristine white, with none
of the mud and muck you normally see outside a horse barn. The grass was as lush as
that of a golf course, and the pathways were beautifully raked and maintained. To
its right was a large pond, covering at least three acres, upon which a pair of geese
was swimming; in front of the pond, a gravel lane led off into the woods. “That lane
leads over to Lilly’s house,” Mariellen informed us. “The house I bought for her and
her husband.” She shot me a significant look as I pulled up and parked to the right
of her house.

Mariellen had it made. She lived in one of the most beautiful houses I’d ever seen,
inherited along with a large trust fund, making her one extremely lucky woman. She
had a devoted daughter, and a schedule filled with cocktail parties, golf, and a beloved
horse. Her life appeared to be as flawless as her pearls. How could anyone who lived
in such a gorgeous setting be so mean? Even if the rest of Philadelphia was being
developed and modernized, she had carved out an island of farmland that seemed frozen
in time. She was completely isolated in bucolic perfection.

A whinny pierced the birdsong humming all around us as we climbed out of the car at
Mariellen’s direction, the gun aimed steadily at me. I saw Norman’s tall brown head
sticking out of his stall, looking around to see what was up.

“Mummy will bring you your alfalfa soon, darling!” cried Mariellen to the horse, who
neighed back at her. Waffles sniffed and spied Norman, started wagging, and whined
excitedly.

“Inside, please,” said Mariellen frostily.

M
ARIELLEN’S FOYER WAS
painted lime green, and had ornate old woodwork that was exceptionally lovely. In
orderly lines along the front hallway hung a dozen pretty framed floral prints by
Pierre-­Joseph Redouté. A graceful staircase was directly in front of us, and then
the hallway led back to a sunroom painted pale yellow and filled with orchids in full
bloom. For the house of a psychotic country clubber, this was all very beautiful.

Also, as Bootsie had reported, there was toile and monograms out the yin-­yang. On
the antique console table in the hall sat lime-­green lamps with monogrammed M shades,
a silver tray embossed with double Ms, and M-­monogrammed cocktail napkins. Flanking
the console were two side chairs covered with a riot of green toile, depicting French
milkmaids, cows, horses, and birds; the dining room, visible to our right, featured
monograms everywhere, including the seats of the dining chairs. I began to feel a
twinge of migraine in my left eye. Everything was in perfect order, of course, but
the mind boggled at the varying patterns.

“We’ll sit in the library,” Mariellen announced, opening a door off the lime hallway
into a pink and white library in which the theme seemed to be horses. Straight ahead
was a lovely fireplace, and on either side of it were old-­fashioned Dutch doors.
The top halves of the horizontally-­divided doors were open, with banks of buoyant
rosebushes visible beyond them, and then a fenced paddock filled with jade grass.
At the right was a pink-­toile-­covered window seat, and on the walls were several
large old English paintings of Norman look-­alikes depicted standing in Cotswold meadows.
There were silver-­framed photos of Norman himself on the glossy antique tables, looking
quite regal as he was awarded ribbons at local horse shows, and a few pictures of
Lilly were scattered around, too (though she got less play than the horse, I noticed).

However, on the mantel was a wedding picture taken just outside this very house, and
I didn’t need to look twice to realize who the ­couple was. I gulped and vowed to
not look at this picture of Lilly and John, turning my attention instead to the coffee
table, which featured monogrammed items including coasters, decanters, and glass bowls.
The sofas were, naturally, pink toile. My eye began to twitch.

The twitch got worse when I noticed that as Hugh sat nervously in a pink wing chair
and Jimmy leaned against a farm door, Waffles was eyeing the plump sofas with a look
I knew all too well: The expression in his eyes foretold a flying sofa leap at any
second, which I thought might mean instant shooting with Mariellen’s pistol. I grabbed
his collar and held tight while I stroked his ears, and tried to keep him from drooling
on the pink needlepoint rug embroidered with Norman-­style horses.