Killer Punch
Page 19
“Is that your boyfriend from college?” Sophie asked her, nodding toward a tall blond guy in cargo shorts and a polo. “ ’Cause he’s real cute.”
“Yup.” Abby nodded proudly. “He, um, doesn’t know anything about those couple of dates I had with Gianni, so if you could not mention it, I’d really appreciate it.” She looked nervous for a few seconds, gulped some beer, and then spoke up again.
“There’s another thing I wanted to tell you guys, if you can promise you won’t tell Officer Walt or Eula Morris or Mrs. Potts,” she whispered. “I’m terrified of Mrs. P.! I can barely serve her lunch without my hands shaking!”
“Is it something bad about Eula Morris?” Holly asked hopefully. “We’re excellent at keeping secrets, by the way. You can tell us anything.”
“Great!” said Abby, relieved. “It’s not about Eula, though. It’s about that painting that went missing.”
“WHAT HAPPENED WAS that the day when the Colketts were there setting up the tent for the big Tomato Show party and Eula was bossing everyone around, me and Stacy, the lunchtime waitress, got really tired of it,” Abby told us.
“Setting up the bar in the tent took forever, and then we had to help the Colketts arrange about eight thousand hydrangeas on the porch, and Eula kept making us reposition those rented sofas from The Trendy Tent, which weighed a ton! So Stacy and I each had four shots of tequila out in the tent when we were setting up the margarita machine, because finally Eula and the Colketts went inside to have lunch.” She looked embarrassed at this. “Which I feel real bad about.
“We like you and the Colketts, though!” Abby told Holly. “Anyway, after the tequila shots, we heard Mrs. Potts make them rehang her painting for, like, the twelfth time, Stacy and I snuck into the Camellia Room, and—this seemed like a good idea, but we were honestly really drunk—we took the painting of the cow and hung it in the men’s locker room over the trash can!
“There was a painting of an old guy there, so there were two picture hooks already on the wall, and we replaced it with the Heifer thingy.”
We all stared at Abby.
“So the Colketts did see Heifer in Tomato Patch in the men’s locker room,” said Holly. “Did you move it again?”
“No!” whispered Abby. “Because when we sobered up later that night, when Officer Walt arrived and we realized this was a major fuckup, we went into the locker room, and it was gone!”
“Excuse me,” said a wavy-haired guy at the bar, turning around to face our table. “Remember me? I’m Randy, Gianni’s cameraman. I think I have something to add to this story.
“I’m real sorry, but I was in a seriously bad mood when Gianni and I got to that country club on that Thursday,” the guy said, sipping his Corona. “I snuck out to that party tent, too, and drank everything I could get my hands on.
“Then when I heard the ruckus about a missing painting, I figured I could frame Gianni!”
Randy said he’d gone into locker room to use the bathroom and had seen a big framed painting that even in his drunken state he knew had to be Heifer.
Without much thought, he grabbed the painting and stuck it in the back of his rented car with his camera equipment, then drove to Ristorante Gianni to do some more drinking. Later that night, when Gianni was at the emergency room and the staff were busy with the dinner service, he’d stealthily gone in via Gianni’s delivery entrance and hung the painting—where else—on a convenient hook in the men’s room. A scene of ancient Rome that had been displayed there he’d stuck in his rental car, where it still resided.
“I feel kinda bad about this,” Randy admitted. “I figured someone would notice the fancy painting in Gianni’s restaurant’s bathroom—but I guess no one has!”
Randy jumped up. “Well, I’m headed to the airport—see ya. The Food Network wants me to film the return of Nonna Claudia to L.A. They’re doubling her pay to come back. They love her!”
“I always thought you made up these stories about the stuff that happens whenever I leave town,” John told me, shaking his head as he sipped his beer.
As Randy left, Eula arrived, her face in complete shock.
“Remember how I told you someone dropped off ten Powerball tickets in my mailbox last week?” she asked Bootsie.
“Of course I remember,” said Bootsie. “Not that I’d know anything about who bought them for you,” she amended.
“Well—I won!” screamed Eula, jumping up and down in front of the bar. “I won Powerball!”
The bar erupted into applause, except for Holly and Joe, who were frozen in their seats, their faces in complete shock.
“The Lotto Commission already announced that only five winning tickets were sold,” Eula sang out. “I’m gonna get, like, $50 million! I can finally take that round-the-world cruise!”
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, Eula left to start researching her cruise, and Holly and Joe were able to move their lips again.
“I thought that’s what you wanted,” Sophie said to Joe. “To send that girl on vacation.”
“I did,” said Joe. “I just didn’t think through the fact that I’ll be arranging dishtowels for Adelia Earle next week while Eula’s doing a back flip into the Mediterranean.”
“Cheer up, Honey Bunny!” Sophie told him. “I got some Powerball tickets, too! They’re right here in my purse.” She pulled out some slips of paper and examined them, looking bewildered. “These are something else—but I pointed at Powerball. At least, I think I did. The guy at the deli told me to pick five numbers and I paid him twenty dollars.”
“You bought the Pick 5,” Bootsie told her, inspecting the tickets Sophie had produced. “That’s different. I’ll check the winning numbers for you.”
While Bootsie did some quick research on her phone, Sophie told us that there’d been a huge breakthrough on her divorce deal. It seemed that Freddie and Lobster Phil had sat down with Barclay over drinks in Atlantic City, and suggested that for both his and Sophie’s sake, they thought he should fork over half his worldly goods and move on.
“Phil and Freddie told Barclay that he should look for a new wife now—before he starts gaining weight again!” Sophie told us. “It’s only a matter of time. And they said that Joe and I make a great couple!”
“They did?” said Joe, surprised. “Those two goombahs—I mean, those guys—are in favor of you and me as a couple?”
“Sophie,” said Bootsie, looking up from her phone, “this is unbelievable. You got the Pick 5! You won two hundred and fifty thousand dollars—tax free!”
TRUE TO HER word, Sophie made Gianni an offer for his goat farm the next morning, which he took, even though he complained about the fifteen thousand dollars he’d already spent on the cheese kitchen.
“I can tell Gianni’s really glad he’s back in L.A.,” Sophie said when we met for lunch at the country club the next day. Things were back to normal here, and a blissful summer breeze floated over the wide porch. At neighboring tables, Binghams were sipping white zinfandel, Mrs. Potts was eating fried oysters with Mike Woodford, and Abby was cheerfully bringing out drinks to a group of elderly golfers
“I don’t know anything about goats, but I’m gonna have those nice Amish guys run the place, and my Honey Bunny and I can go out there on weekends and, like, have special time alone in nature!” Sophie said, giving Joe a loving pat on the arm.
“That is, as soon as I get a satellite disk, wi-fi, and one of those really cool new Williams-Sonoma cappuccino machines installed,” she added. “And a pool. I mean, it’s a little rustic out there right now.”
“I think you’re going to be really good at goat farming, Sophie,” said John, who was sitting next to me, holding my hand. He gave my fingers a little squeeze. “The Stoltzfuses will do a great job running the place for you. I was out there yesterday, and the goats are thriving.”
“It’s real handy that Kristin’s dating a vet!” Sophie told him gratefully. “Especially one as handsome as you.”
Joe looked nervous about the goat farm idea, and flagged down Abby for another drink.
“And Gerda’s got the name for her Pilates studio,” Sophie told us. “Tell them, Gerda.”
“I’m gonna call it Gerda’s Bust Your Ass Gym,” announced the eponymous owner.
“That says it all,” agreed Bootsie, who’d arrived just behind them.
“Everyone in town is going to be there!” Holly promised. “Especially when they hear that I’m going to pay for Ursula to give free aromatherapy neck massages after every class for the first two months.”
“Thank you,” said Gerda, looking pleased.
“It’s the least I can do when you singlehandedly took down Gianni, thanks to your new leopard pumps,” Holly told her sweetly.
“Also,” Holly told me, “I can’t face peach punch ever again. I got you a margarita machine for your store, and Howard and I are sponsoring Tequila Tuesdays at The Striped Awning for the rest of the summer.”
This sounded amazing! Just then, John excused himself and got up from our table. “I’m meeting Mrs. Potts and Mike Woodford to talk over some new breeding trends for their cows,” he told me. “Would you like to join us?”
“No, thanks,” I said hastily.
“I’ll call you later,” he said. “We can barbecue tonight.”
Perfect! I thought. A breezy summer night with my boyfriend, whose ex-wife was back where she belonged in Connecticut. Things were totally going my way! I would soon be five thousand dollars richer, since Eula could now definitely afford to cut me my ten percent of her painting sale. Plus Joe had helped me with a great new look at The Striped Awning, and the town was seemingly free of mafia types as well as Gianni.
I stole a furtive look at Mike Woodford’s tanned arms as he gave John a handshake and they all sat down together. Gosh, Mike looked good, I thought . . . and this town is really small . . . I need to get Mike one hundred percent out of my system. I should really meditate every morning until I’ve completely forgotten about Mike Woodford . . .
“Don’t you have something to give to Sophie?” Holly prompted Joe, interrupting my thoughts.
Joe nervously pulled a small white box from his pocket, and Sophie’s eyes widened in shock as he popped open the lid.
“Sophie,” he said. “I’d love to marry you one day, but in the meantime, would you like to be preengaged, as signified by this amethyst once worn by Lady Gaga on the Cheek-to-Cheek Tour with Tony Bennett?” He wiped his brow nervously.
“Abso-freakin’-lutely!” shrieked Sophie, jumping into his arms.
About the Author
AMY KORMAN is the author of Killer WASPs, Killer Getaway, and Frommer’s Philadelphia and the Amish Country, and is a former senior editor and staff writer for Philadelphia Magazine. She has written for Town & Country, House Beautiful, Men’s Health, and Cosmopolitan. She lives in Pennsylvania with her family and their basset hound, Murphy.
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By Amy Korman
KILLER PUNCH
KILLER GETAWAY
KILLER WASPS
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
KILLER PUNCH. Copyright © 2016 by Amy Korman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.
EPub Edition AUGUST 2016 ISBN: 9780062431134
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062431318
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