Killer WASPs

by Amy Korman

  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!”

  Chapter 4

  AT THIS, WE got a ­couple of dirty looks from a table of grumpy-­looking men in golf shorts. Holly and I glanced nervously in Mrs. Potts’s direction, but she was nose-­deep in another vodka and seemed preoccupied by her fried oysters. She and Mariellen were watching the tennis matches as they snacked (well, smoked, in Mariellen’s case). They clearly hadn’t heard Joe.

  “The note said that Honey is planning to sell off a hundred acres of Sanderson land, and that she wanted to meet with Barclay about him building houses there,” continued Joe. “It was thick off-­white stationery, and written in black ink and block letters, by the way.”

  Just like the note in Barclay’s pocket.

  “And in this letter, she basically summoned Barclay to her house at 8:30 p.m., like the queen would order the Spice Girls to reunite and play the Albert Hall. It was a command performance.”

  “That’s kind of late in the day for a business meeting, isn’t it?” I asked. “And Honey Potts wasn’t even home last night. She was at Gianni’s opening, and it had to be after eight when she and Mariellen left.”

  “Mrs. Potts says she didn’t write it,” said Joe. “The police called her to ask her about it, and she said wasn’t selling any of her property, especially to a shyster like Barclay. It was very Scarlett O’Hara, with Honey shouting that she’d personally chop down every tree on her property and tear down her mansion stone by stone before she sold off a single acre of Sanderson. She’d never written any such note, nor would she.”

  We all digested this for a minute, staring surreptitiously across the porch at Honey, wondering if her wrath at Barclay wanting to buy her ancestral acreage might have led her to bash the hapless developer on the head and dump him under her own hydrangea hedge.

  Meanwhile, our waitress dropped off a modest plate of carrot and celery sticks. By now, the club staff knows it’s pointless to serve Holly actual food, so they don’t even offer a menu anymore. Actually, I was pretty hungry, given that Waffles had eaten my lunch, but I didn’t want to interrupt Joe’s tale to order an appetizer.

  “Barclay says he got there a few minutes early, at about eight twenty-­five,” Joe added, crunching on a stalk of celery. “He was knocking on the door for almost a full ten minutes. He was starting to get pretty steamed about being kept waiting when, boom!—­he got clobbered!”

  I could just picture poor Barclay at the baronial front door of Sanderson. I’d seen it before when I’d gone there with Bootsie on a garden-­club tour, and it’s an absolutely enormous, double-­height, mahogany carved monster, with a huge pineapple-­shaped doorknocker and a beautiful limestone overhang. The blow must have leveled Barclay when he was on a real estate high, thinking he was about to savor a tumbler of Glenmorangie from the ancestral Potts cellars, and practically jumping for joy as he pondered how many houses he could stuff onto one hundred acres of Sanderson land, and how much he could sell them for (well, given his size, he probably didn’t jump for joy, but he had to be pretty excited).

  “Didn’t Honey hear Barclay banging on her front door?” Holly asked, crossing her long legs under her caftan.

  “Nope,” said Joe. “Honey dropped off Mariellen at the Merriwether place at eight, and Honey herself was home a few minutes after that. She claims she was upstairs with a sandwich and her TV on full blast, watching Dancing with the Stars, when Barclay was outside making a racket. Honey’s housekeeper leaves around 5 p.m., and Honey never heard a thing.”

  “It’s weird that Barclay wouldn’t have at least stopped by Gianni’s restaurant opening on the way to Honey’s, isn’t it?” I puzzled, as Holly waved down the waitress for more drinks. “I mean, everyone else in Bryn Mawr was there.”

  “Chef Gianni and Barclay hate each other,” said Holly knowledgeably. “You know they had that huge feud that started a ­couple of years ago over a house that Barclay built for Gianni.”

  “Gianni’s place is down off Willow Road, squeezed into a tiny lot next to the Methodist church,” added Joe, with a look of revulsion. “It’s hideous, and orange. Plus it turned out the house Barclay did for him was as sturdy as a double-­wide during hurricane season. I mean, it looked okay on the outside, but the whole place started collapsing a week after the chef moved in.”

  I’d heard something about this debacle, but Joe sketched in more details: The chef had been in a manic up-­cycle about his new house, giving his girlfriend Jessica license to spend like a Kardashian on decorating the place, and had then signed up to show it off as part of a house tour to benefit the hospital.

  The chef had arrived home from Palazzo late one night, unlocked the door, and the masonry around the front entrance suddenly crumbled
like a stale macaroon. “The whole foyer avalanched down on Gianni,” said Joe. “He was pinned under the rubble for two hours, because Jessica was asleep upstairs with her iPod on, and never heard the screaming until after midnight.”

  “The chef had to have a plastic tarp around his front entrance for six weeks until he could get the wall rebuilt,” said Holly, who clearly knew this story as well as Joe did. She tried to keep a straight face, but couldn’t help laughing. “Sorry.” She composed herself, being careful not to smudge her eye makeup, and went on. “Since the chef was worried about getting robbed, not having a door or a foyer, he had to station one of his busboys at the entrance to his house around the clock. And it was too late to cancel the house tour. It was so sad. I went on it, and when you got there, there was this beautiful brand-­new garden with lavender hedges and fig trees. But no door. Just a tattered tarp flapping in the breeze, and a pile of debris.”

  Having witnessed Chef Gianni’s nutty rage the night before, I mused, “That must have really upset the chef. I mean, really upset him.”

  “He filed a lawsuit against Barclay, but it was dismissed once Barclay fixed the foyer and the door,” confirmed Holly, “which made Gianni even angrier.”

  We were all thinking the same thing: It was easy to picture Gianni, a certified rageaholic, belting Barclay on the head with a meat mallet, and then dragging the developer under a hedge. “Could it have been the chef who hit Barclay last night?” I wondered aloud.

  “Not possible,” said Joe firmly. “There’s no way that Gianni could have been at the party, schmoozing with his guests and cooking all those lamb chops and lobster tails, and bashing someone’s head in at the same time.”

  “Barclay himself must have a suspect in mind, though,” I mused. “Given his reputation, he has to have a whole line-­up of enemies in addition to Chef Gianni.”

  “Bootsie says that not only did Barclay not hear anyone creeping up behind him before he was attacked, he has no idea who hit him. He blacked out,” said Holly, “until he woke up in the ambulance. He doesn’t remember how he got from standing outside Honey Potts’s front door to being up by the road and under a bush. And he swears he has no serious beef with anyone other than the chef. He’s already agreed to a settlement with the sinkhole victims. So he’s no help at all.”

  “That’s bullshit. From what I’ve heard in decorating circles,” Joe said—­Holly rolled her eyes at this phraseology, and I stifled a laugh—­“Barclay disputes every bill, and nickel-­and-­dimes every vendor. Tons of ­people hate Barclay Shields enough to want him dead. Or at least in pain.”

  “Well, there’s definitely somebody in Bryn Mawr who doesn’t like Barclay’s adventures in real estate,” I said. “The note in his pocket was very clear—­the person who wrote it hates his ugly houses.”

  “Remember when I went on that date with Barclay Shields a few years ago?” said Holly nonchalantly. Now that she mentioned it, I did recall her night out with the developer. This was surprising, but not shocking: It’s a fact that Holly doesn’t discriminate based on a man’s size or his character. She only evaluates men on the basis of cash flow, because Holly is a member of one of the wealthiest families in Philly thanks to a lucky incident with a chicken breast. Back in the 1970s, her father was experimenting at the test kitchen of one of the chicken farms he owned out in the Amish countryside, when he’d had an inspired moment one wintry Wednesday. Bored of eating a sauteed boneless breast for lunch the four thousandth day in a row, he decided to chop up some white meat into bite-­size pieces, bread them, and have his assistant deep-­fry the little suckers.

  “Darling, I just had a brainwave,” he’d told Holly’s mother that evening, “and I think we have a new hors d’oeuvre to serve at our party on Saturday night.” Presto: The chicken nugget was born (at least according to the Dunhams; McDonald’s would likely disagree). Before long, the Dunhams had more chicken farms and nugget factories than Tiffany’s has diamonds. These days, they ship frozen nuggets to gazillions of supermarkets and delis and fast-­food joints, and the rest of their bird-­meat business is booming, as well.

  Since Holly grew up rich, she’s circumspect when it comes to her own wealth. It’s very big in Philadelphia to not talk about how rich you are, unless you’re someone as blustery as Barclay Shields, who’s known to drop at least four references to his own net worth into every conversation. In Philly, even if your family does something way more interesting than chicken, like owning a cruise ship line or running a glossy department store, you still take your financial status to the grave. To add to the confusion, some of the richest ­people drive around in junker cars and wear threadbare clothes, like Mrs. Potts. Plenty of oddball types are of unknown financial status, like my next-­door neighbors Jimmy and Hugh Best, two old bachelors who live in a tumbledown manor house, but whose family helped found the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. The result is that you never know if ­people are living on Ritz crackers and tuna fish because they’re rich and eccentric, or if they’re actually poor and had a coupon for Starkist that week.

  Anyway, even though you can never discuss your own finances, you can definitely talk about how rich other ­people are. That’s totally acceptable, and is a very popular topic at the club, on the tennis court, and at the luncheonette. Also, it seems that wealth has a magnetic force field that irresistibly attracts other big fortunes in Philly—­­people with money must marry more money. This explains why Holly could only date rich guys, even if they were Barclay Shields.

  “My date with Barclay was three years ago, before I met Howard. And Barclay was at least fifteen pounds thinner then.” Holly shrugged off her night out with the developer. We all mused silently on the fact that dislodging fifteen pounds from Barclay was the equivalent of removing one stone from the Great Wall of China.

  “We went to Palazzo, but I could tell that he was cheap,” Holly added.

  “Holly, even the salads at Palazzo are thirty-­five dollars,” Joe said. “How does that translate into cheap?”

  “He took home a doggie bag,” explained Holly. “And, I know he doesn’t have a dog.”

  Waffles! I shook my head at the waitress, who was pointing questioningly at my empty glass, and started to get up. But not quite fast enough.

  “Who was the guy Bootsie said you were with at Sanderson last night?” asked Joe.

  “It was someone who manages the cows for Honey Potts. I, um, bumped into him just before we found Barclay,” I said, gathering my handbag. I knew they’d both be able to tell immediately that I had a slight crush on Mike Woodford and his tanned forearms if I gave even a single detail about him, which would be stressful since Holly and Joe invariably disapprove of any man I’m interested in. Plus I was too tired to get into the details about Mike Woodford just at the moment. The rum and tonic wasn’t perking me up the way the Barolo had last night.

  Joe’s eyes had glazed over. Cows and the ­people who take care of them aren’t on his radar.

  Holly merely looked disappointed as she sipped her cocktail. As usual, I’d managed to meet a man who had a job that was definitely in the low-­earning-­with-­no-­future-­prospects category.

  “Well, I have to go get Waffles and head home, see you two later!” I said briskly. Just then, a slim, extremely pretty blond woman of about my age came bounding off the grass tennis courts, up the porch stairs, and slid gracefully into a chair at Mariellen and Honey’s table. “Mummy, you have got to stop that horrible smoking!” she scolded Mariellen gently in a fairylike, singsong voice.

  “Nice game, darling!” said Mariellen, puffing on her Virginia Slim and ignoring her daughter’s anti-­smoking crusade. Mariellen’s normally severe patrician face broke into a molasses-­sweet smile as she gazed at the younger woman, who looked exactly like a junior version of her mother, down to the elegant string of pearls she wore with her white polo shirt and spotless tennis skirt. It was Lilly Merriwether, Mariellen’s only child and an avid tennis player who’s frequently found on the
club’s courts.

  I have to admit, Lilly looks almost as fantastic in her tennis outfit as Holly does.

  “Ugh, Lilly,” said Holly, eyeing Mariellen 2.0 distastefully. Clearly, Holly considered her something of a rival in the gorgeous-­tanned-­blond department. Lilly was really beautiful, I thought sourly, considering my own dusty afternoon of wrapping china in old copies of the Bryn Mawr Gazette versus Lilly’s glamorous day, pursuing fitness and a great tan at the club. Her superb svelteness was obviously of the type that comes from lots of exercise, fresh fruit, and antioxidants. I, on the other hand, can only fit into Holly’s borrowed clothes because I have a food-­stealing dog, have nothing in my fridge, and get something of a workout schlepping antiques and benches from estate sales. In the tradition of her perfect mother, Lilly seemed to roam the earth only to make you feel inferior about your lowly financial status and not-­so-­magnificently tanned legs.

  Suddenly, I noticed that Honey Potts had finished her oysters, and was growling good-­bye to Mariellen and Lilly. She threw down her napkin, rose, and was heading our way, clearly bent on making her way down the porch steps in front of our table. Luckily, the grumpy golfers next to us waved Honey down to greet her, so I got up, whispered, “Bye!” to Holly and Joe, and dashed down the steps, around the corner, and leaped into my car.

  I started up the engine and noticed the time: 6:30 p.m. I had been gone for almost an hour. When I got back to the store, Waffles gave me an accusing look. I was pretty sure he knew I was late by the way he yawned disapprovingly, but he jumped in the car happily enough to head home.