Killer WASPs (29 page)

“Let’s get down to brass tacks, Mariellen,” Jimmy said impatiently as he looked around
the room for a bar. His eye landed on a table over by the window with more decanters
on it, and he made a beeline for it and poured himself a stiff Scotch. Mariellen kept
the gun trained on him, and seated herself, ramrod straight, on the chair that was
a twin to Hugh’s.

“You’re the one who banged Shields in the head. Is that what you’re saying?” Jimmy
asked her, plunking himself down on the window seat as he swigged his drink.

“Of course I did,” Mariellen said primly. “See the empty spots on my bookshelves?”
She pointed to shelves at our left. “That’s where my acorn bookends used to be. I
had four of the bookends—­two of my own, two from my good-­for-­nothing former husband,
who also went to Bryn Mawr Prep, before he married me and then bolted for some dusty
hill town in South America—­and I gave them away to the church charity sale last fall.
Eula Morris was working at the charity sale that day.

“I knew Eula would remember that I’d given four bookends, since she’s such a busybody,”
Mariellen continued, pleased with herself. “If anyone ever suspects me—­which they
won’t—­I could simply tell them to check with Eula and she’d confirm that I’d given
away all four acorns months before Mr. Shields was hit.

“But during the church sale, while Eula was inside trying to hit up Honey for money
to restore the stage at the symphony,” Mariellen told us, “I quietly put one bookend
back in the trunk of my car. Then, while I was manning the lemonade stand, two horrible
hippie women came by in a
van
that reeked of marijuana, and bought the other three.”

Annie and Jenny, I thought to myself, who couldn’t remember where they’d gotten the
bookends. They must have been high, and forgotten attending the church sale where
they’d bought the acorns. Not that it mattered now. It was ironic that I’d ended up
with Mariellen’s acorns, but I didn’t think this was a good time to bring that up.

“I saved the fourth bookend just for Mr. Shields,” Mariellen said, pleased. “A man
like that needs to be literally hit in the head with something to understand it. And
I thought the acorn was a fitting symbol of what this area used to be: tasteful and
modest.”

Honestly, her house with its vast paddocks, barn, and ornate decorating wasn’t all
that modest, but I kept this to myself.

“So I set up a fake meeting for Mr. Shields and Honey ten days ago,” she continued,
crossing her slim legs as a light breeze blew in through the picturesque farm doors.
“I knew he’d be positively chomping at the bit to buy some of Sanderson’s acreage.
When Honey dropped me off here at home after that disgusting party at the old firehouse,
I simply slipped the bookend in my saddlebag, jumped on Norman, and rode over to Sanderson
to meet Mr. Shields. Takes me a matter of minutes to ride there, as you know; it’s
just through the woods. A beautiful trail runs over that way. I tied Norman to a tree
just past the barn and out of sight of the house, and then walked over and hit the
despicable man right on his head. He was knocking so hard on the front door and cursing
a blue streak about no one answering, that he never heard me coming.”

Jimmy, Hugh, and I exchanged glances, with Hugh approximating the terrified, bulging
eyes I once saw on a Pomeranian that Waffles once tried to befriend at the pet store
over in Haverford. Jimmy put up a better front of bravado, and honestly didn’t seem
scared.

“Did Honey help you hide Shields after he was knocked out?” he asked. “How the hell
did you move that big fat man into the bushes?”

“I didn’t,” Mariellen informed him, lighting a Virginia Slim.

“As a matter of fact, I left him right there on Honey’s front doorstep. I took the
bookend and went out to the pasture, where I tossed the bookend into a briar patch.
Naturally, since I wear riding gloves, there weren’t any fingerprints on the bookend.”
She paused and took an elegant puff on her cigarette. “Then the oddest thing happened.
I was at least a quarter of a mile away, and just getting ready to ride Norman home,
when two men came walking down Honey’s driveway. I could just see them in the light
over Honey’s front door; they wore horrible leather jackets and jeans, and they grabbed
Barclay by the feet and dragged him away from the house.” She shrugged. “I didn’t
wait to see what happened after that.”

“What are the chances!” hooted Jimmy, leaning back on the window seat cushions. “It
must have been those mafia guys who’ve been looking for Shields. You got the job started
for them, Mariellen.” For someone who might be killed at any second, Jimmy seemed
totally at ease. The only logical conclusion I could make was that Mariellen was intent
on permanently silencing all of us, because why else would she be telling us all this?
Hugh, on the other hand, appeared to be catatonic with fear, which was closer to my
own state of mind. Maybe Jimmy thought Mariellen wouldn’t really shoot him.

Personally, I really did think she’d shoot me.

“And when the chef fell at the symphony party—­you pushed him off Sophie Shields’s
balcony?” I asked.

“Easily,” said Mariellen proudly, twisting her pearls. “When that dreadful Sophie
was showing us around the house, which I knew she’d be dying to do, I lingered behind
in the kitchen for a few minutes and saw that there was a large pantry closet I could
easily conceal myself in. Later, when the cooks all took a cigarette break and Honey
was in the powder room—­she takes forever in the bathroom, honestly—­I simply slipped
into the pantry, waited till the chef was outside on the landing, and gave him a good
hard shove.”

I was kind of impressed by this. Mariellen didn’t screw around.

“If ­people still had the gumption we had back in the 1960s, we’d all be a lot better
off!” Mariellen added. “That was a time when this area was serene and unspoiled. It’s
all been downhill from there, and in my own small way, I’ve been trying to stem the
tide.”

Mariellen had taken nostalgia to a psychotic level, I realized. In a strange way,
I could understand her longing for the past, if not the extreme measures she’d taken
toward trying to preserve it. We all mourn for things that are lost, of course, but
hopefully we can put the losses in perspective. I always felt sad when I’d see one
of the quirky old shops along Lancaster Avenue close, like the place that only sold
antique trains, and then the musty old Irish sweater place, because they reminded
me of my childhood. But truthfully, I’d never set foot in either of the shops. It
was indeed awful to see chainsaws cutting down Bryn Mawr’s ancient towering trees
to make room for house upon new house, but change is inevitable, and, on a more positive
note, if nothing ever changed, no one would have invented Starbucks. In her quest
to maintain a bygone way of life, Mariellen had, to put it in clinical terms, gone
cuckoo.

“And by the way, John, my son-­in-­law, is going to be a member of this family till
the day he dies,” Mariellen said to me. “Now, hand me that dog’s leash.”

Another tear trickled down my cheek as Waffles wagged, confused, and I clutched his
collar more tightly.

“What are you going to do with him?” I whispered.

“I’m going to march all four of you over to the pond, and I think you can figure out
what comes next,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette in an Hermès ashtray. “My pond
is enormous, and very deep, and the koi fish and trout will gobble up your corpses
in no time. I’m a member of one of the oldest families in Bryn Mawr, darling. The
police would never dare question me, let alone even consider me as a suspect, or think
to look anywhere on my property for your sad selves. If anyone saw us get into my
car—­which they didn’t—­I’ll say I dropped you all at the club, and no one will doubt
a word I say.

“So let’s all get up and start walking, shall we?”

I’ve always had a strange antipathy toward koi fish, with their huge mouths and chubby
fish bodies. I felt like I’d gone into a coma of fear, when we suddenly heard a familiar
whinny outside, accompanied by the clip-­clop of hooves on the slate pathway just
outside the library.

Norman stuck his long, gleaming, brown neck in through the open top of the farm door
and neighed at Mariellen inquisitively, while Waffles woofed at the horse.

“Norman, how did you get out of your stall?” Mariellen asked the horse, irritated.

“Who is this horse, Mr. Ed?” demanded Jimmy.

“I let Norman out, Mummy,” we heard a girly voice call out from some twenty yards
away, just behind Norman in the sunshine. “I came back from early from Greenwich,
and thought I’d turn him out in the paddock and come say hi to you. Do you have friends
over? And was that a
dog
I heard in there?”

Lilly!

Lilly’s beautiful face appeared next to Norman’s, and she peered into the pink library.
Her eyes widened in shock as she took in the scene around her. “Mummy! And the Best
brothers? Why do you all look so serious . . . and, Mummy, what are you doing holding
that
gun
?”

Chapter 21

“I
CAN’T BELIEVE
I’m saying this, but thank goodness for Lilly Merriwether,” I told Holly and Joe that
night at Holly’s house.

It was a warm night with candles lit on the patio and drinks flowing, but even with
a sweater on and chubby, snuggly Waffles next to me on Holly’s enormous chaise longue,
I was still shivering. “If she hadn’t shown up with Norman, Waffles and I and the
Bests would be fish food right now,” I told them.

“There’d probably be nothing left of you. Your bones would be picked as clean as a
Thanksgiving turkey,” agreed Joe. “I had a client once whose terrier fell into her
koi pond, and
whoosh
—­before she could grab the dog, it was a feeding frenzy! The fish gobbled the pooch
alive in like fifteen seconds.”

“That’s disgusting!” Holly told him, frowning. “And very insensitive.”

“Sorry,” said Joe, looking apologetic. “I just could never get that image out of my
mind. You and the dog would probably be the ones the fish would eat first,” he added
to me, reflecting on this with some interest, “since the Bests are really old and
wouldn’t taste all that good. Too stringy. The dog would probably the best meal of
the four of you, to be honest.” He eyed Waffles approvingly.

I was about to beg him to change the subject when my cell phone rang. Bootsie, for
about the seventy-­fifth time that night. I’d taken her first six calls, and then
was too tired to talk to her anymore. I hit ignore, figuring that Bootsie would probably
just show up at Holly’s soon anyway.

The past five hours had been beyond exhausting. Thankfully, when Lilly Merriwether
saw her mother pointing a gun at the four of us, she had calmly taken in the situation,
then walked into her mother’s library and convinced Mariellen to give her the weapon.
Mariellen was so crazy (literally) about Lilly that it took her daughter less than
a minute to convince Mariellen that what she was doing “wasn’t a very good idea,”
as Lilly told her.

Mariellen was led upstairs to take an aspirin and lie down, and Lilly hadn’t objected
when Jimmy had immediately called the police. Within twenty minutes of Officer Walt’s
arrival, it had been decided that Mariellen needed to be hospitalized, rather than
spend time in a jail cell while awaiting a hearing with a judge; Walt and Lilly had
driven Mariellen over to the hospital, where she was currently under psychiatric care.

It turned out that Lilly had already had her suspicions about her mother’s mental
health, but had been feeling helpless as to what to do about them.

I felt terrible about all of this, but was happy that Mariellen was getting help,
rather than sitting in jail with no toilet seats, polyester jumpsuits, and instant
mashed potatoes. That didn’t seem right for her, even though she’d attempted to murder
an innocent doggie (and me, and the Bests). I couldn’t believe all this had happened
today, and here we were back on Holly’s patio as if it was a typical early-­summer
evening. I shivered again despite the warm night.

“It’s George calling,” said Holly, as her cell phone buzzed. “Uh-­huh,” she said to
George. “Um-­hmm. That’s interesting.
Very
interesting. Wow!”

Holly hung up and stared at us, her sky-­blue eyes huge. “It turns out that Hugh and
Jimmy’s ring is part of a set of diamond-­and-­ruby jewels that was made in London
for someone named the Countess of Cascott in 1884.

“Their jewelry department just got the confirmation from Garrard this afternoon that
the ring is part of the Countess of Cascott jewels, and”—­Holly paused dramatically—­“the
rest of the Cascott rubies, a necklace and a pair of earrings, sold a ­couple of years
ago for almost five million dollars. And the ring has the biggest, rarest ruby of
the whole set!”

As we sat there trying to absorb this information, wheels crunched on the driveway,
and Sophie Shields popped around the hedge, waving.

“Hiya Kristin!” she said. “I heard you almost got killed today. I can’t believe it!”

“I can’t, either,” I told her. I was glad Sophie wasn’t a wannabe killer, after all,
though I didn’t mention that to her.

“It turns out it was Barclay’s fake cousins from Jersey had come to slap him around
a little last Thursday, and followed him over to that Sanderson place.”

“I heard,” I told her.

“The Jersey guys said Barclay owed them fifty grand from some construction company
they owned together back in the late nineties, and he was cheaping out on paying it.
Barclay called and told me he settled up with them this week, so they’re not after
him anymore,” Sophie added. “Not that it changes anything between me and him. I’m
still getting divorced, I’m still fighting for my shoe closet, and I’m still crazy
about that one right there.” She pointed at Joe and winked at him, making “mwah” kissing
noises in his direction.

Just as Sophie wriggled herself into the sofa next to an embarrassed-­looking Joe,
John appeared around the hedge of rosebushes. “I went to your house, but your neighbors
said you were here,” he said, walking over and sitting down next to me and gently
taking my hand. “I’m so sorry about all this. Can I give you a ride home?”

I
DECIDED TO
take the next day off work to celebrate not being killed by Mariellen, and because
I’d stayed up late the night before with John, who had been very reassuring. Even
if his ex-­mother-­in-­law hadn’t tried to kill me, he told me, he was ready to start
over, and he was happy that his divorce from Lilly had come through. He felt terrible
about Mariellen’s mental breakdown, which obviously wasn’t his fault.

I spent most of the morning over at the Bests’, where the three of us pored over stories
about their mother’s ring in local newspapers. Even the
New York Times
had a short piece about the amazing discovery of a rare seventeen-­carat Burmese
ruby once belonging to the Cascott family of Ackworth, England.

“We did have a great-­aunt Prunella whose last name was Cascott,” Hugh Best told me,
looking dazed as he sat out on the back screened porch, sipping a cup of coffee, his
hands shaking.

“Auntie Pru always loaded a lot of jewelry on,” agreed Jimmy. “Most of it she sold
over the years, but she was the one who left the ring to our mother. Guess she forgot
to tell Mother that it was good stuff, not just the usual costume junk.”

George was quoted in the
Times
as saying that Sotheby’s was rushing the ring into its summer sale as a last-­minute
addition on the following Thursday. It was too late for the ring to be included in
the catalog, but they were printing a special insert, and he was sure all the media
attention would bring in the right buyer. Sotheby’s was indeed publicizing the ring
with impressive zeal, calling it a lost treasure of English jewels, found in a “dusty,
moldering mansion outside Philadelphia,” which irked Hugh a bit. On a plus note, he
and Jimmy were going to be interviewed the following day for the
Today Show
, and even that bible of excellent news,
­People
, had called them.

At noon, Holly, Joe, and I met outside on the patio at Gianni’s, where Holly shocked
me by ordering the Bolognese pasta.

“I’m eating carbs today,” she said, crossing her perfectly tanned legs. “You almost
getting killed made me realize that I should eat carbs at least once a week. Plus
I need to keep up my strength to follow all the news with the Bests’ ring, and this
budding romance between Sophie and Joe, and whatever’s going on with you and that
vet. Not to mention Mike Woodford.”

“It’s a lot of information,” I agreed. “But I’m done with Mike. I really like John.”

“I think Mike is really cute,” Holly told us. “And, there’s something that makes him
even cuter. I had coffee with Honey this morning, who’s obviously devastated that
her best friend is a homicidal maniac.”

Holly paused for effect. “Honey told me that Mike is actually her nephew, which is
why he lives in that cottage at Sanderson. And when Honey dies, Mike inherits Sanderson,
all three hundred acres and the huge house.”

I
WOULDN’T GO
so far as to say I actually fainted when Holly told me this, but my vision got blurry
and I teetered on the edge of consciousness. Holly didn’t seem to notice, but rattled
on about Honey and Mike for a few minutes, while I recovered myself and Joe and I
listened raptly to these nuggets of Potts family lore.

It seemed Honey had a younger sister who’d gone away to college in the sixties to
Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, married her geology professor, an older man named Roger
Woodford, and never came back to Sanderson, except for the occasional visit at Thanksgiving,
when Honey’s parents would first berate her for marrying an academic, and then for
not moving back to the family compound. The sister had one son, Mike, who Honey had
always had a soft spot for.

“Honey says that Mike always had the Potts passion for cows,” Holly told me, sipping
a frosty glass of wine. “So Honey got him to move up here last year, and she’s grooming
him to take over Sanderson one day. Actually, I was thinking of asking Honey if she’d
fix me up with Mike,” added Holly casually.

What? I thought my brain would rocket straight out of the top of my head. I’m usually
never jealous of Holly, but I’m only human. If she took her closets brimming with
Chanel and her Ellsworth Kelly paintings and her piles of jewelry and moved to Sanderson
with Mike, this would be truly unfair. She already had a gorgeous house and nice husband.
I liked John more than Mike—­I was pretty sure—­but this was going too far.

“But then I realized that Mike’s more your type,” Holly added serenely to me, twirling
her pasta on a silver fork. “He’s got that burly carpenter look you always go for.
And he’s kind of hairy. Plus I’m getting back together with Howard. He convinced me
that he didn’t have an affair. He took a lie detector test in my lawyer’s office yesterday
about whether he slept with that bartender, and he passed.”

My brain unswelled. I felt really happy for Holly, and not just because I didn’t want
her to have barn sex with Mike, or marry him and move into Sanderson.

“That’s great!” I told her sincerely. “I’m really happy for you and Howard.”

“Finally!” said Joe, looking relieved. “Howard can move out of the city and in with
you. I’m starting to feel like a surly teenager living in your guest room. I’m going
back to my own apartment.” He blushed. “At least until I figure out what’s happening
with me and Sophie.”

“So are you going to keep making out with Mike, or go for the veterinarian?” Holly
asked me. “Mike would be perfect for you. He’s even been to Thailand. Honey told me
he loves to travel and has been all over the world. All the guys you date love Thailand.”

“It’s funny you should mention that,” I said, “because I don’t want to date guys who
backpack through Thailand anymore, and I think that rules out Mike.”

“Maybe he’s done with his Thai beach fantasy,” Joe said. ­“People change. Look at
me. If you told me a month ago that I’d be interested in the ex-­wife of a Mafia guy,
I’d have laughed my head off. Truth is, I kind of like Sophie.”

I was happy for Joe, but was feeling more confused than ever. John was so handsome,
kind, and reliable that he was doing a great job of making me forget—­almost—­about
Mike’s amazingly good soap smell and great arms. I sighed, and tried to enjoy the
great lunch and the pretty patio setting at Gianni’s. I didn’t need to figure this
out today. I was just happy to be alive, and nowhere near a koi pond.