by Amy Korman
Sophie explained that we’d driven over from Pennsylvania because a new wine store was opening, and it was real upsetting for people who wanted to save the forest currently located where the huge store was going to be built. But, she added, a lot of people were super-excited about free wine and cheese nights to be held there on Thursdays and Saturdays.
Lobster Phil sat up straighter. “What’s this place called?”
“It was supposed to be a real tiny shop called Maison de Booze, but it turns out it’s a Mega Wine Mart,” Sophie said.
“I’m intrigued,” said Phil, leaning back and folding up his napkin. “You know what, Sophie, I think I am gonna come check out this cute town you live in. I’ll drive over tomorrow, and you can show me the site for the Mega Wine store.”
“Sure!” she said. “I’d love to show ya around. You can check out Gianni’s fancy restaurant, too.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” said Phil thoughtfully, drumming his fingers on the table and beckoning a waiter to remove his plate. “You gals ever hear any more about the painting that got stolen from your friend?”
“I’m eighty-seven percent sure it was stolen by Chef Gianni Brunello, who then dropped it at a Pack-N-Ship store to be mailed to his new restaurant in L.A.,” Bootsie told him.
“Gianni might have stolen it?” Phil said, interested. “You can’t put anything past that guy. Always was up to no good, even when the two of us had our restaurants in our Jersey days.”
Just then, Gerda returned, and I jumped up to leave.
“Sophie, I hate you right now for this jumpsuit,” she announced. “You ever try to go to bathroom in one of these?”
SINCE NO ONE else except Gerda was sober, and she doesn’t have a license, I steered Bootsie’s Range Rover toward Bryn Mawr on the Atlantic City Expressway. Bootsie examined the file from Chad, which wasn’t easy in the dim reading light in the passenger seat, while Gerda and Sophie complained being squashed in the back between all the L.L. Bean goods still stuffed into the SUV.
Bootsie tipsily leafed through the half-inch-thick Mega Wine Mart file on the upcoming Bryn Mawr franchise.
“The owners have to be named in here somewhere,” she said. “Articles of Incorporation; Brand Continuity; Approved Suppliers—the reading light in this car sucks, I can barely see anything—Fees and Royalties . . . here’s something. There’s a BT Development listed, but there’s no contact info for him other than a law firm in Miami. There’s nothing in here about who this Tutto guy is!”
Her phone rang, and she Bluetoothed the call into the car’s fancy sound system.
“Did you find out anything about the Mega Wine Mart?” Holly asked.
“We struck out,” admitted Bootsie.
“Uh-huh,” said Holly, not sounding all that surprised. “Anyway, I’ve almost recovered from my three months of dealing with Eula, so I need a project, plus thanks to Kristin, I finally received seventeen boxes of clothes and shoes that she found in the back room at the Pack-N-Ship.”
“Ooh, I want to come see what ya got!” said Sophie.
“Anyhoo, I can’t stop wondering if Honey’s painting was in that box you saw yesterday headed to California,” Holly said, a slightly manic edge in her voice that I know all too well and usually precedes either shopping or Internet stalking to make sure her husband isn’t cheating.
Once a year or so, Holly bands together with Bootsie and Gerda on one of their investigative boondoggles. Sometimes this trio gets results, or they find themselves being faced down by an angry wife who shows up, screams at them, and drags her husband away—which happened last winter at a lounge called Tiki Joe’s in Florida.
“So I’m heading over to Gianni’s restaurant right now to get him liquored up and find out if he knows about the box,” Holly told us.
“Count me in!” said Sophie. “Joe’s text mentioned an all-nighter at Kristin’s store, which he said is, like, a fiasco, decor-wise.”
“I go, too, to Gianni’s,” announced Gerda. “Gianni a real hands-y guy. No girl safe with him.”
“Um, I have five dogs at my house, so I probably shouldn’t come,” I told the group, desperate for the day to end. “You’ve got this plan under control,” I added encouragingly.
“Gerda and I will swing by your house and pick ya up after you feed all those dogs!” said Sophie.
“You guys don’t need me for this!” I told Sophie. “Holly and Gerda have a special technique for information gathering. They’re like a dream team!”
Sophie’s huge brown eyes welled up with tears.
“I need my friends around me.” She sniffed. “I’m in crisis. If Joe won’t even look at the Town & Country jewelry ads, how are we going to get engaged? Plus my ex is trying to take my new house and all my shoes. And I hate being alone. I get real depressed!”
“Okay,” I agreed hastily. “We’re almost back at The Striped Awning. Everyone can get their own cars and then you and Gerda can pick me up in twenty minutes at my house. But I refuse to stay later than eleven at Gianni’s!”
“I’ll get what I need from him by ten-forty-five,” said Holly, and hung up.
Chapter 17
“COME HERE, YOU sexy girl!” Gianni told Holly when we got to his restaurant. The chef hopped over on his crutches to nail Holly with a double cheek kiss, then aimed for her lips, which she neatly averted with a merry little laugh and hair toss.
“I got the vodka ready for you!” Gianni told Holly. “Or champagne. Whatever you want!” Just then, he noticed the rest of us trooping in behind her.
“And for your friends, too, I guess,” he said, looking none too happy about it as he poured us all drinks from the festive pitcher of cocktails he’d stirred up. The restaurant’s tables were empty of diners, and a lone busboy was draping them with crisp white linens for the next day.
The kitchen was gleaming, but no cooks remained, and it looked like the dishwashers were about to leave for the night, which wasn’t surprising given that it was a Monday.
“I don’t drink alcohol,” Gerda informed him. “Although I just been to Atlantic City, and I tempted. For now, I take sparkling water, no ice.”
As Gianni grumpily soda-gunned a seltzer, I thought to myself that Holly must have ordered some really great clothes over the past few months, because the dress she wore was absolutely gorgeous.
It was an indigo strapless number with built-in corseting and a subtle slit in the knee-length skirt. Like me, Holly doesn’t have cleavage, but the structure of this amazing dress gave her something close to it.
“That’s the Jason Wunumber I saw at the mall!” whispered Sophie, nodding to the amazing dress. “And Holly busted out the Sergio Rossi cage sandals, too. No man can resist those!”
“Holly, this great timing, I was gonna call you tonight and invite you to a special top-secret party tomorrow night,” Gianni went on. “Gianni about to get even more rich and famous with a new business venture!”
“Are ya opening another restaurant, Chef?” asked Sophie, after succumbing to the same smooch-filled greeting as Holly.
“Even better!” he told her. “What I gonna announce tomorrow will be trendsetter! You all invited,” he told us. “Be here at restaurant at 6 p.m.
“Hey, Sophie, why don’t I sit between you and Holly here at the bar? I could be, like, a Gianni sandwich between you two gorgeous blondes!”
Gerda cracked her knuckles at this statement, while Holly gave an eye roll, but managed to keep smiling in Gianni’s direction.
“I don’t want to mess up my new jumpsuit,” Gerda told Gianni, “but you being real inappropriate, and I can punch you in face if I need to.”
“I need pasta,” Bootsie announced to Gianni, plopping herself down next to Holly, as Gerda loomed ominously behind her. “I’m super hungry. Can you whip up that wild mushroom and
prosciutto dish you do with the agnolotti?”
“Kitchen is closed. But I can call Nonna Claudia down,” Gianni offered. “She could do you a pasta.”
“You know what, Gianni,” Holly told him, “I’ve been thinking of eating carbs again—at least on holidays and alternate weekends.”
She jumped up and out of reach of the chef’s roving hands. “Let’s go make pasta together, and who knows, maybe next summer, I’ll throw a dinner party on the holistic meditation terrace the Colketts are going to design for me,” she added.
With this, Holly indicated the restaurant’s open kitchen, which was gleaming with its stainless steel just past the bar. “You can give me a quick cooking lesson!” she added.
“This could be pretty sexy,” Gianni agreed, jumping up as fast as his crutches would let him. “You ever see that movie Ghost when the couple making some kind of pottery thing together? This pasta gonna be like that for us!”
“Absolutely,” agreed Holly serenely, then turned to give Gerda desperate raised eyebrows and hand signals indicating that she needed her to burst into the kitchen sometime within the next seven minutes.
“Gianni needs the music!” shouted the chef, ripping off his white chef’s jacket to showcase his tattoos in a white T-shirt. “We gonna blast Pitbull!” Catchy Latin pop was soon blasting into the bar and kitchen.
“By the way, Gerda,” Bootsie said, sipping her drink, “are you good at tennis?”
“I’m excellent at all sports,” Gerda informed her.
“Great, because Mummy has a sore ankle, and I need a new doubles partner tomorrow. You free at two?”
“Absolutely,” said Gerda, cracking her knuckles. “Tennis very big in Austria.”
All we could see past the bar were Gianni’s limbs, which were moving like arms on a slot machine—up, down and all around Holly’s slender waist and shoulders. How the man could simultaneously toss dough, sauté wild mushrooms, and grope was quite a feat, especially since he was down to one leg.
“I go into kitchen to supervise,” said Gerda finally. “This guy creeping me out.”
“How’s that pasta coming?” asked Bootsie, shouting across the bar and over a catchy Pitbull tune.
“I was just asking the chef what kind of art he likes,” Holly told us through the open kitchen window, “and whether he’s buying any paintings for his new place in Beverly Hills, but he told me he doesn’t care about stuff like that and leaves it to the Colketts.”
“Are ya sure, Chef?” Sophie said. “What about, like, paintings with cows in them? Cows are real relaxing to look at.”
“Animals not for Gianni’s walls,” Gianni told her. “They for the plate, after they’re cured, grilled or roasted. Anyway, I don’t care about art. Gianni focus on the food.”
He expertly sliced at a whopping piece of pork, producing slices so thin you could see through them, and fired up olive oil, shallots, and herbs in a pan—which smelled incredible.
“So you haven’t been, um, acquiring any fabulous paintings at all and shipping them out to your new place?” confirmed Holly.
“I got more important stuff than that to do!” Gianni said, downing his drink and the olives floating in it.
“Now we gonna add the prosciutto to the sauté pan, and the ripe little tomatoes—reminds me of your skinny but sexy self!” he told Holly. His hand moved toward Holly’s tomatoes, and he went in for the grab.
“I take care of this,” said Gerda. She jumped from her bar stool in a dead run, briefly pausing to flip open the hinged door that led to the back area of the bar and the kitchen, but her spiky size 9 heel got caught in the perforated nonslip floor mats. Blond braids flying, Gerda was aloft for a few hair-raising seconds, then crashed onto Gianni, who’d been staring openmouthed as she sailed toward him.
“Verdammt!” she screamed. “These shoes gonna kill me!”
“Merda!” erupted the chef, who was facedown on the kitchen tiles, Gerda on top of him. Luckily for Gerda, the chef had cushioned her impact. Unfortunately, though, Gianni himself had been in a compromising position at the moment he landed.
“You make me land on prosciutto knife!” he screamed at the Pilates pro. “I got razor-sharp blade stuck in my thigh! Gianni in agony--again!”
“Sorry.” Gerda shrugged. “Anyway, what we’re trying to find out is, did you steal Honey Potts’s painting and mail it to yourself at California restaurant?”
“No, you putana broad!” he told her, still facedown. “I don’t steal nothing. Gianni need medical attention and maybe gonna sue you!”
“Your floor mats are unsafe,” said Gerda blithely. “Maybe I sue you.”
“I’ll just call nine-one-one,” announced Holly. “Oooh, it looks like it’s the same leg as the injury from Thursday. Poor you.”
“Anyway, the pasta looks like it’s ready,” observed Bootsie, who took over kitchen duties, draining the agnolotti and adding the pillowy pasta to the delicious sauce. She gave it all a toss, and grabbed some take-out containers from a nearby shelf. “We can take this to go.”
AFTER THE EMTS came, I went home and jumped into bed with the five dogs. Unfortunately, since I smelled like prosciutto and the dogs spent from midnight till 2 a.m. sniffing my hair and licking my wrists, it wasn’t a restful night.
And just because John had only texted me twice during the time he’d been away didn’t mean that our relationship was off track—did it? And the fact that I’d thought about Mike Woodford seven times in the past two days didn’t mean anything—probably. At least John was due back tomorrow from his vet clinic, I thought happily as I dropped off to sleep at 2 a.m.
Chapter 18
MY MOOD SOARED when I opened my eyes at seven on Tuesday morning, even though my bedroom was still full of dogs. Bootsie had promised to be guest counselor at her sons’ day camp, which would keep her busy for the morning.
Even more exciting, I’d soon be down to one dog again. John’s mutts could vacate my place today and return to his rented condo, relieving me from daily vacuuming and being trampled every time I opened the door.
And The Striped Awning was ready for its big reveal!
Joe’s one-day makeover promised to be amazing, at least according to Joe. I’d finally turned off my phone at 2 a.m., since texts had been arriving every fifteen minutes informing me with his usual lack of modesty that with a single can of dark brown paint, some ’70s-modern light fixtures, and a vintage 1920s dining room set, he’d taken The Striped Awning from blah to awe.
“And I do not want to see Eula’s tomato artwork anywhere in that store,” he’d told me in his final message of the night. He’d stashed the canvases behind the mop and vacuum cleaner in my back room, and recommended that I tip the town trash guys ten bucks to dispose of them on Monday.
I figured I’d hang them in the shop as soon as Joe went back to Florida next week. The truth is that most of my customers would love Eula’s botanical artwork, while only Holly and the Colketts would appreciate his supercool Halston–meets–Hollywood Hills makeover of the shop, even though I couldn’t wait to get over there and see it for myself.
I unscrambled myself from my duvet, jumped over several dogs, turned off my ancient window unit air conditioner, and threw open the windows as I fired up the coffee machine. I unleashed the pack into the backyard, jumped in the shower, put my hair in a ponytail, and threw on a black Gap sundress. Given the fact that I’d spent most of the past week on the highways of South Jersey, the yard wasn’t looking great, so I headed out front to water the ancient rosebushes and spritz the old flowerpots I’d painted black and filled with pink geraniums.
Across the street at Sanderson, cows wandered around in the sunshine, tails swishing, which brought Mike Woodford to mind—a vision I quickly shut down.
As I aimed a hose toward the roses, I noticed movement just behind the
gorgeous hydrangeas in full bloom that lined the front of the estate, including the one beneath which I’d discovered the unconscious form of Barclay Shields the previous spring.
Just beyond the fence was a short girl in a beige outfit, and she was pushing a small but fully loaded wheelbarrow, its contents hidden by a tarp.
Eula.
What was she schlepping across the grounds of Sanderson at seven-forty-five in the morning? Her Miata was parked on Camellia Lane bordering the estate, and I watched her look around furtively, then open the trunk of her Miata, dump whatever was in the wheelbarrow inside, and shove the small single-wheeled cart inside a thick hedge of holly bushes. With that, she roared away in her snazzy little car.
I waited five minutes, then went across the street, nervously parting the hollies to inspect said wheelbarrow. I’d imagined all kinds of horrible possibilities, but the wheelbarrow was empty. I sniffed. It smelled a little funky, but Sanderson itself has a pleasantly farm-y scent that wafts around its hundreds of acres and mingles with the roses and lilies.
There was some old dirt in the wheelbarrow, but nothing along the lines of remains of a human sacrifice.
Was Eula stealing something else from Honey Potts—maybe another family heirloom, something heavy enough that she needed a wheelbarrow? Had she taken Honey’s painting, and was now back for the silver candelabra or a marble bust of an ancient Potts patriarch?
I was too scared of Mrs. Potts to ask her if she’d noticed a short girl in beige robbing her house that morning, so I knocked on a different door at Sanderson.
“MIKE, DID YOU just see Eula Morris pushing a wheelbarrow across the cow pasture?” I said, as he greeted me on the front porch of his cute stone cottage near the cow barns. I then grabbed a column to steady myself. Mike was in jeans . . . and nothing else.
I’d never seen him sans shirt before, and between the tan, the pecs, and the smell of Irish Spring soap, it was a lot to take in.