Killer WASPs (24 page)

While Jimmy poured us both a drink, I explained to him that George wanted to take
the ring up to New York, and that he’d need to sign a release, which Hugh had already
done. “Fine, fine,” Jimmy said grumpily, taking the paper and adding his signature.
He sat on the window seat and looked outside. “Wouldn’t mind being out there and watching
the tennis matches,” he groused. “Getting a little stuffy up here.”

This was all way too
Flowers in the Attic
, I thought. Time for tough love.

“Jimmy, you have to go home tomorrow,” I told him. “Ronnie said the members are starting
to get suspicious,” I added, truthfully, “and he can’t risk getting fired.”

Jimmy looked simultaneously irked and relieved.

­“People are too damn nosy around this club,” he complained, straightening the belt
on his bathrobe. “If they’d mind their own business, no one would notice anything
going on up here. But I wouldn’t want Ronnie to lose his job. And the staff’s slacking
off quite a bit, as you can see. So I guess I’ll go home tomorrow.”

“Great!” I told him. “Hugh will be so happy to see you.”

“Rumor has it that our crack local police force finally found the weapon used to hit
Barclay Shields?” Jimmy said, sipping his drink.

I tasted mine and winced. Scotch again. Still, I took another gulp. When in Rome,
I told myself.

“Ronnie heard it from your friend Bootsie at lunch, and he told me when he brought
up my tray,” Jimmy informed me. “The weapon makes Honey Potts look guilty, of course,
but I’ve known Honey a long time, and she ain’t the violent type. I used to date her
when we were teenagers.”

“You did?” I said, shocked.

“Sure,” he said. “Honey was very attractive, believe it or not. Tall, blond, athletic.
She always had a tan, which unfortunately now has the consistency of a boot, but back
when she was seventeen, it looked fantastic.”

“So why didn’t you and Honey end up together?” I asked Jimmy.

“We broke up during college, and she married Phil Edwards in 1966. Boring guy. A banker
from Chester County,” he said. “I knew she wasn’t all that crazy about him, because
she never took his last name and she never moved out of Sanderson to go live with
Phil. Made him move in with her and her parents. And later that year, I married Darleen,
my first waitress. Darleen was an Angie Dickinson look-­alike. Gorgeous girl, very
sexy, and one of the first in town to wear miniskirts in the late sixties. Honey was
more like Doris Day.”

“What went wrong with Darleen?” I asked.

“She had an affair with Phil Edwards,” Jimmy replied simply.

“She slept with Honey’s husband? That’s terrible,” I said, shocked.

“Well, it wasn’t ideal,” he conceded, snipping the end from a cigar and lighting up,
“but I think it was worse for Honey. Embarrassing for her, really. They split up,
and she stayed on at Sanderson.”

“What happened to Darleen?”

“We got divorced, after I paid her forty thousand dollars to go away,” he said, then
paused to blow a smoke ring. “Which was a lot of money in those days. Between my marriages
and Hugh’s useless business ventures, we managed to bankrupt ourselves in the most
entertainingly stupid ways possible.”

He glanced out his open window. “Honey was out there earlier,” he said, “watching
tennis with that uptight bitch Mariellen Merriwether. Now that’s one woman whose husband
couldn’t stay put. Soon as they had their daughter, Lilly, Martin took off for South
America and was never seen again. And there were some good reasons why he didn’t want
to come back. I’ve been watching Mariellen from up here over the past few days, and
she is one tough gal. Overly focused on that daughter of hers.”

“I better get downstairs to meet George,” I said, peering over his shoulder at the
grass courts.

There was John Hall!

He was in the middle of a tennis match, hitting the ball at about one hundred miles
per hour to his opponent, who looked a lot younger and faster, but was still struggling
to return John’s hit. I admired John’s great arms in his white polo shirt for a minute,
feeling a pang of regret that I’d never be able to (a) check out his biceps close-­up
and (b) understand how, or why, ­people get that good at tennis.

Then I glanced at my watch, and grabbed the Sotheby’s contract from Jimmy’s coffee
table.

“So you’re going home tomorrow morning?” I prompted Jimmy.

“Guess so,” he conceded. “I’ll be home in time for one of Hugh’s awful casseroles
for lunch. If it’s tuna-­noodle, I’m going to hit
myself
in the head with a bookend.”

Chapter 19

D
OWNSTAIRS,
I
PEEKED
into the bar, didn’t see George, and went over to the window by the front porch to
look for him on the patio, where I was poleaxed by the sight of a shocking duo at
the front table.

Honey Potts and Holly were sitting together, chatting away, a bottle of Mumm in an
ice bucket between them. What had me reeling, though, wasn’t the odd pairing of Honey,
the doyenne of Sanderson, and Holly, the younger heiress, but the fact that Holly
was wearing khakis. They were perfectly cut, skinny beige pants that looked like jodhpurs,
but were still khakis. Her shirt was a white button-­down in gorgeous Egyptian cotton,
cut very narrow and rather low. She had on almost no makeup, flat beige sandals, and
she looked amazing. But it was unnerving to see Holly looking so toned down.

Honey, meanwhile, had on a yellow polo shirt that was boxy and none too flattering,
and a pair of green Bermuda shorts. So, actually, Holly’s outfit didn’t look anything
like Honey Potts’s, but obviously Holly isn’t going to wear green Bermuda shorts.

I hovered there at the window for a second, gaping at this strange pairing. It was
like stumbling on Darth Vader and Yoda sitting down for a nice cocktail together.
Suddenly, I felt a large, very strong hand grab my arm. I looked down and saw hockey
muscles, so I knew it was Bootsie.

“What are
those
two doing together?” she whispered.

“Exchanging recipes?” I guessed.

Bootsie, keeping one eye on Holly and Honey, told me that she’d just gotten off the
tennis courts, where she’d been beaten in the club tournament by Lilly Merriwether,
and she wasn’t too happy about it. Bootsie had grumpily packed up her stuff and was
on her way to her car when she’d just happened to stroll by the porch to see if anything
was happening. Then again, Bootsie checks all the aisles of the Publix and trolls
her sons’ Gymboree classes in the pursuit of gossip. And here was something finally
worth watching.

“What’s Holly wearing? She looks like Country Club Barbie,” hissed Bootsie. “Let’s
go out there and sit with them.”

Firmly in Bootsie’s steely grip, I was dragged to Holly’s table as I frantically scanned
the porch for Mariellen. Thankfully, she was nowhere to be seen. Probably she was
congratulating Lilly on her tennis triumph, and trying to figure out a way to get
her daughter back together with John.

“Champagne?” asked Holly, waving at us to sit down, then introducing us to Honey.
“Kristin lives right across the street from you!” she added to Honey, who shook my
hand politely enough with her leathery paw, but appeared to take zero notice of me,
or connect me with finding Barclay Shields at Sanderson.

“I’ve met Mrs. Potts dozens of times,” Bootsie bragged. “She knows Mummy from school.”

“Ungh,” said Honey, who was mid–crab cake, and didn’t seem too interested in this
nugget of information. Meanwhile, I looked around for George so I could hand off the
Sotheby’s release and leave.

“You might have seen Kristin around your property with her dog,” Bootsie said, as
I gave her a swift kick in the shin under the table. Of course, she kept talking.
“She has a drooling, disgusting basset hound that she’s obsessed with. Kristin was
there when your cow guy found Barclay Shields at your place!” At this, Honey looked
up from her crab cake, and leveled a none-­too-­friendly gaze upon me, while I silently
cursed Bootsie. I also realized Bootsie might have downed a post-­tennis cocktail
or two already. She seemed a little drunk.

“Honey and I started chatting while we were watching the tennis matches this afternoon,”
Holly said, ignoring Bootsie, “and she was telling me about the old days when the
club used to actually be fun. Then we came up here for a drink, and on the way to
our table, I innocently flirted with old Mr. Conwell over there for a minute. He’s
such a charming old man. He even asked me to sit in his lap, but then his wife showed
up.”

“Best thing to happen to old Conwell for years!” Honey hooted. She looked fondly at
Holly. The look that Mrs. Conwell, an attractive eighty-­year-­old, was shooting at
our table from across the porch was not quite as fond. She looked like she’d like
to come over and punch Holly’s lights out with one of her large diamond rings.

“You remind me of me when I was young!” Honey added.

Holly looked alarmed at this, but smiled at Honey, and said, “Let’s have some more
champagne.”

“I gotta hit the loo,” said Honey, rising from the table. “Get me a vodka, will you,
Holly? I can’t do champagne after 6 p.m. Hangover isn’t worth it.”

“Vodka coming right up!” said Holly, waving cheerfully at the waiter. “And Honey,
I’m ordering you Grey Goose this time. That Smirnoff you’re drinking is so 1974, and
not in a good way. The Goose tastes so much better.”

“Okay.” Honey shrugged and ambled off toward the ladies’ room.

“What’s up with your outfit?” I asked Holly. “You look totally J. Crew meets L.L.
Bean, but better.”

“That’s because I’m not wearing L.L. Bean,” Holly told me and Bootsie.

“I love L.L. Bean,” said Bootsie, affronted.

“L.L. Bean looks fantastic on you, Bootsie,” Holly said, “because you’re so tall.”
Bootsie looked less offended at this. “I decided to go with the Neiman Marcus version
of L.L. Bean, which is Hermès.”

I decided not to even try to guess how much Holly’s outfit had cost. While my mind
reeled at the quantity of poultry profits that Holly directed into the coffers of
Neiman’s, I suddenly heard a familiar noise: The clomping of horseshoes on pavement
from the club driveway, punctuated by a loud whinny.

I looked up, horror-­stricken. Mariellen had Norman’s reins in hand and was walking
him straight toward a massive, leafy oak tree near the porch. She must be moving her
prized horse into the shade, I realized. Luckily, she was totally focused on murmuring
sweet nothings into Norman’s velvety brown ears, and hadn’t seen us. I jumped up and
almost knocked over George, who was just arriving at our table.

Without preamble, I handed over the signed contract. As Bootsie started to ask questions
about the paperwork, I got up and grabbed my handbag.

“Have a wonderful night!” I said, zooming across the porch toward the back door before
Mariellen could finish tethering Norman to his tree. Thank goodness the club building
is so enormous: The left wing completely blocked me and my car from Mariellen and
Norman. I was scrambling into my car when I heard a man’s voice call out my name.

It was John, smiling, and carrying his tennis racket, a leather gym bag, and the giant
men’s championship silver tennis cup toward his SUV.

“Hey!” He held up the tennis trophy. “Just won the men’s club championship. Want to
help me celebrate?”

I
DID, OF
course, so when John suggested I follow him home to the condo he was renting in Haverford,
I did just that. Ten minutes later, he opened the door, and four mutts rushed out
at us wagging and making a beeline for a common yard space behind the condo building.
“Sorry,” said John apologetically. “This place is kind of a dump. It’s not easy to
find a landlord who will rent to you when you have four dogs.”

The pack returned, he poured kibble into bowls, then popped the cork on a bottle of
Taittinger with a satisfying thunk. Then he poured half the bottle into the club’s
silver tennis cup, held it up happily, and handed it to me, gesturing to me to chug
the bubbly straight out of the trophy.

“Drink up!” he said, while all four dogs jumped up on the sofa. There were two small
beige mixes who liked like they were mostly Chihuahua, one white fluffy giant dog
of no discernible breed, and what I think was mostly bulldog. They seemed like one
big happy dog family.

“Won’t champagne tarnish the trophy?” I asked, looking inside the cup, which was about
seventy-­five years old and none too clean.

“Yeah, but it’s tradition,” John said happily. “I’ve tried to win this thing for fifteen
years, and we’re going to drink out of it if it kills me. To be honest, I only won
this year because the club’s two best players are both injured. I beat a seventy-­two-­year-­old
and a sixteen-­year-­old to win this cup, but it’s still worth celebrating.”

“Great!” I said, taking a quick gulp.

While John took a quick shower, I looked around for glasses in which to pour the rest
of the champagne. I found a ­couple of water glasses, so I made do with that. Had
I been a snooper, I could have poked around a little, but I had a feeling there was
really nothing to snoop through. Even Bootsie might have been defeated by this place,
which felt totally unlived in, like a dorm room that’s used only for sleeping and
showering. John’s condo was decorated with only the basics: a couch, a table, and
presumably a bed, though I hadn’t ventured into that part of the place. You could
tell it was a guy’s place, because the biggest things in it were the TV and the grill
on his back patio. Lilly must have kept all the wedding gifts and monogrammed pillows
when she and John had split up. The whole condo was beige, with nothing on the walls
and nothing on the floor except for quite a bit of dog hair.

After some champagne outside on the patio, while the sun was setting and the dogs
ventured out to surround our chairs happily, I realized that the freshly showered
veterinarian smelled just as good as Mike Woodford. He might even smell
better
. I was shocked to realize John’s forearms, which were currently on view with the
rolled-­up sleeves of a blue Oxford shirt, were even more amazing than I’d realized
before. They were tan and had lots of sinewy muscle. I realized tipsily that I really
wanted to check out the tennis muscles for myself. At that moment, John reached out
and took my hand, and I could feel electricity between us. Or at least I felt it on
my end. Who knew a country club tennis champ could be this sexy? And for the duration
of the sunset, there was some fantastic kissing on the back porch as the sun disappeared
and the dogs watched curiously.

After the kissing, John ordered a pizza.

“I have salad stuff in here, too,” he said, rooting around in his fridge, while I
sat at his kitchen table. “I try to be healthy and eat salad and grilled chicken,
but I usually end up ordering pizza.”

I was trying to project calmness and serenity, which was what I imagined Lilly’s demeanor
to be while she sipped champagne on summer evenings, but I was confused and doubtful
about what John’s situation vis-­à-­vis Lilly.

Against all Holly and Bootsie’s advice, I blurted out a question. Actually, two questions.
“I hate to ask you this,” I said, “but why did you and Lilly split up? And do you
think you two might get back together?”

John was pouring Pellegrino into coffee mugs, since we’d used his only water glasses
for the champagne. He set a mug in front of me, sat down, and looked at me. He didn’t
look angry or upset, just thoughtful.

“It’s not that I don’t care about Lilly,” he said. “But I realized within a few months
after we got married that we weren’t really in love with each other. She felt the
same way, I’m pretty sure, though it took her longer to admit it. Neither of us wants
to get back together. We’re almost divorced. Should be final in a few weeks.”

Yay, I cheered inwardly, at the same time feeling badly for him that he’d gone through
the painful experience of getting married and finding out it was a dud. I also felt
sympathy for Lilly. Honestly, though, since she’s so beautiful, she wouldn’t be single
for long. “It was more that we seemed perfect for each other,” John continued. “Everyone
thought so, especially Mariellen, Lilly’s mother. She’s the one having the hardest
time with our marriage ending.”

While we waited for the pizza, John told me that Mariellen had been a major factor
in their split due to her quietly controlling ways. He and Lilly had been planning
to buy a house out in Chester County after they got married, but a few weeks before
the wedding, Mariellen had given Lilly a roomy and charming cottage next door to Mariellen’s
property, which she’d bought, had fully renovated, and had furnished with a lot of
chintz and pillows and paintings of horses and dogs. “It was really nice, but it looked
exactly like Mariellen’s house,” he added. “Sometimes it seemed like I’d married Mariellen,
too, and she’s definitely not my type.”

My eyebrows shot up when he said this. Had he not noticed that Lilly and Mariellen
looked exactly alike, except that Lilly was thirty-­five years younger? Men never
notice things like that.

“So there we were,” John went on, serving me some salad, “living a few hundred yards
away from my mother-­in-­law, who was always inviting us for drinks, tennis, and Sunday
dinners. And Tuesday dinners. And Wednesday dinners. I left in a cloud of Virginia
Slim smoke every night. And then there were the horse events. I mean, Mariellen’s
obsession with Norman is bizarre. The horse comes to cocktails in the garden every
night, and eats sliced carrots and apples off Mariellen’s Limoges plates.” He shook
his head. “Sometimes I think my ex-­mother-­in-­law’s kind of losing it.”

Feeding a horse off fine china didn’t seem all that strange to me, since I usually
give Waffles half of whatever I’m eating for dinner, and honestly, he hates his dog
bowl, so I usually serve him his meal in a vintage soup bowl. But then again, Norman’s
a horse, not a dog. I wondered how John would feel about sleeping with a seventy-­five-­pound
basset hound every night. I looked at his motley pack of dogs, who were taking up
the whole couch and drooling on the cushions. Probably he’d think it was fine, I decided
hopefully.

The pizza guy arrived; John paid for it and put the box on the table, along with the
salad.

The salad John had made looked fantastic. Actually, it had both carrots and apples
in it, and we both thought of a certain horse and laughed. “Norman would love this
salad,” I said.