by Amy Korman
Chapter 12
A LINE OF valet parkers, Town Cars, and the HGTV bus still idling outside the restaurant greeted us at Gianni Mare’s, which had a seriously festive air on its opening night. Beautifully dressed older couples were arriving, the HGTV cameraman was filming, and the ponytailed photographer from the Miami Herald was snapping away. A few glamorous-looking models who’d been hired for the event greeted guests at the door under the hammered silver “Gianni Mare” sign.
On the patio, Sienna Blunt, looking extra sexy in a low-cut white top and skirt and holding a wrench, was being filmed by another camera operator as she pretended to tighten the hinges of the French doors that led from the dining room. All of the Colketts’ hard work had resulted in a chic, lushly landscaped front patio space, lit by silver lanterns and banked with massive jasmine and hibiscus trees set in blue and white Chinese-export planters.
The outdoor patio, where a jazz trio was sawing away on instruments and a vocalist was cooing “The Girl from Ipanema,” had blue inlaid mosaic tables and beautiful blue toile banquettes. It was somehow both classic and modern, and totally gorgeous. I saw Joe’s eye twitch, a sure sign he was entering a jealous funk.
“We get it,” he said dismissively. “Blue and white. Classic Florida with a twist. I mean, for me, this is Decorating 101.”
I wasn’t sure if it had been Sienna Blunt or the Colketts who’d taken the theme and run with it, but when we stepped inside the restaurant, I felt my jaw drop slightly: Decorating 101, this was not.
Lit by votive candles and already abuzz with a happy crowd, the restaurant space somehow combined sophistication and coziness: The floors had been painted a snazzy blue and white chevron pattern, giving a modern flair, and were bordered with inlaid blue-and-white porcelain tiles. On every available surface, colorful ginger jars of various heights were bursting with about eight thousand bright-blue hydrangea blossoms (which must have cost a fortune to fly in), and a buffet held huge platters of oysters, olives, and Italian cheeses. The walls had been painted a gleaming deep cerulean that glowed under the massive silver chandelier, and an antique mahogany bar ran along the right wall of the restaurant, around which guests were gathered three-deep. The banquettes that lined the interior of the restaurant were the same shade of stunning blue as the walls, and as expected, every dish in the place was classic white and blue.
“They’ve got a full restaurant service of Ralph Lauren’s Mandarin Blue china!” Joe marveled. “I’ve used it for clients, but only in their homes. It’s way too expensive for a restaurant. Every time a plate breaks, Gianni’s going to be out twenty bucks.” This seemed to cheer Joe up. “Drinks?” he asked.
“Hey!” said Tim Colkett, zooming over to greet us. His tan was even deeper than it had been the day before, and he looked tired, excited, and nervous. “How do you like the design? Because, and this isn’t to throw Sienna Blunt under the bus, we did one hundred percent of the job.”
“It’s fantastic,” Holly told him, ignoring Joe’s pissy expression. “Seriously, Tim, this is like waking up in I Dream of Jeannie’s bottle, if she’d been into Chinese-export china, that is. It’s so beautiful.”
“I gotta admit,” Sophie told him, “ya outdid yourself!” She gave Tom a hug. “And trust me, as much as I like you guys, I wasn’t rooting for you. I’m on Channing’s side in this restaurant war.”
“Listen, doll, I’m sure there’s room for two great bistros in this town,” Tom told her. “I mean, look how many customers are here, and the party officially started thirty seconds ago.” Magnolia Beach residents were indeed streaming through the door in droves, grabbing glasses of wine from waiters and loading their plates at the buffet.
“Where’s Tim?” asked Bootsie in her typical blunt fashion, scanning the room and pulling out her reporter’s notebook. “And where’s the chef?”
“Tim’s changing. He got behind schedule today helping Olivia pick up the gamberetti and the wild boar fresh off the plane from Italy,” Tom told us nervously. “There was a tiny issue with bringing in meat that was basically unregulated wildlife, but Tim drove down to Miami, and they got it straightened out.” He leaned over and whispered, “The paperwork wasn’t a hundred percent finalized back in Rome. But Gianni sent down five hundred in cash, and once that got handed out to the right people, there was no problem. Some airport guys even helped them load it into the truck.”
“Ms. Jones,” a deep voice addressed us, and we all turned to recognize J.D. Alvarez, the dark-haired forty-something guy who’d sent Holly champagne the night before at Tiki Joe’s.
“May I get you another drink?” he asked, directing the question to Holly but including us with a polite nod that encompassed our whole group.
“Sure! I’ll have a margarita,” said Sophie. “But this one’s married, just so’s you know.” She pointed at Holly, who kept her cool but looked like she’d like to give Sophie the same skin-it-and-roast-it treatment that the wild boar was currently undergoing in Gianni’s kitchen. J. D.’s eyebrows shot up at Sophie’s announcement, but he didn’t seem unduly upset by Holly’s marital status.
“Where ya from, J. D.?” queried Sophie.
“I spend most of my time in Miami,” J. D. said. “Then part of the year I’m in New York, and I have some business in South America and in London.”
I could see Holly’s eyes light up with interest. J. D.’s life did sound pretty glamorous. Howard’s garbage empire expanding to Indianapolis couldn’t really compete with the places J. D. had just mentioned.
“Hey, man, I know you!” said Tom Colkett. “You’re a friend of Gianni’s, right? I’ve seen you around the restaurant a few times this weekend.”
“I made a small investment in this restaurant,” J. D. said politely. “Of course, Chef Gianni’s the one who’s really putting in all the hard work.”
J.D. flagged down a waiter, who refilled all our glasses. Then he excused himself, saying, “I apologize, I need to make a quick phone call outside. I hope we can talk more afterward.” Obviously he meant Holly, but I had to admire his good manners.
As he walked out the front door, I noticed that not a single wrinkle marred the back of his perfectly tailored gray sport coat. I don’t know how some people can maintain that level of perfection. I mean, Holly does, but she has Martha, and special dry cleaners who charge forty dollars to steam a single silk blouse.
“Well, I’ll go see what’s up with the food. The boar’s roasting on a spit and Chef Gianni is grilling the heck out of the gamberetti. I think Gianni will be out here mingling any second, though.”
Tom Colkett wandered away and Bingo Simmons walked in, still in his jeans and sandals outfit, and gave us a wave. As he approached us, Scooter entered the restaurant, too. His eyes lit up when he saw Holly and Sophie in the crowd, but when he caught sight of Bingo, his expression turned to anger and he headed right for the ponytailed environmentalist. The two were soon arguing in a corner—after Scooter hit the bar and grabbed them each a drink.
At that moment, I heard Crocs scrambling on expensive fabric as the jazz band’s instruments suddenly crashed to a halt. All eyes turned to the bald, muscular figure that had climbed atop a blue banquette.
“Welcome to the greatest restaurant Florida has ever seen!” shouted Chef Gianni.
I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. The room actually broke out in applause, and discreet cheers arose from the crowd. Chef Gianni—undeniably a talented cook with a knack for generating publicity—had convinced the residents of this beautiful town that he was the chef of the moment. Apparently, though Magnolia Beach had appeared to be a very festive place before Gianni had gotten here, the town couldn’t survive one more minute without his handmade pasta and spectacular frutti di mare.
Olivia, looking annoyed but very stylish in a strapless column dress and towering heels, handed Gianni the jazz singer’s wireless microphone as
Tim Colkett appeared in the dining room after her. Gianni, for his part, looked primed to make a speech in his parachute pants, his chef’s white jacket sleeves turned back to show his muscles and tattoos, and his gold earrings glinting.
“I want everyone to come back every night this week, Gianni wants to meet every one of you and become your friend,” said the chef. “We like to thank the HGTV and the sexy Sienna Blunt!” Sienna waved from her spot next to Gianni, while cameras filmed the speech and her reaction to it.
“And I want to thank the real money my investors put into this place, because HGTV, you kinda cheapos!” Gianni shouted. “Just kidding!”
He didn’t look like he was kidding, I thought to myself, as some of the production staff standing near Sienna pursed their lips, looking pissed off at this assessment of them as cheapskates. I noticed the Colketts looking upset, too, since Gianni didn’t thank them.
Meanwhile, Scooter and Bingo were getting into it in the corner, their angry exchange competing with Gianni’s speech.
“That’s the one piece of land we agreed you’d never jack up with condos!” Bingo said, his voice rising above the buzz of the crowd.
“You’ve had too much to drink,” Scooter told him as heads swiveled curiously.
“Dude, I have not,” Bingo said. But he sounded a bit wobbly, and he was gripping the back of a chair. “I’ve just had this. My one daily mojito.”
“Hey, shut up over there,” Gianni told them from his perch on the banquette. “That guy Scooter has money invested in this place, otherwise I throw them out!” he added to the crowd. “Hey, Scooter, you pissing me off. Go outside!”
Scooter complied, taking Bingo’s arm and dragging him out to the patio, while Gianni made a rude hand gesture in their direction, then returned to his monologue.
“Anyway, we got a special treat today, the gamberetti flown over from Italian Riviera this morning, and the fresh-killed wild boar from Toscana. The boar, big delicacy in Italy, it’s called a cinghiale. We roast the crap out of this motherfucker today, after my girlfriend Olivia give a few bribes at Miami Airport.”
Olivia looked irked as her illegal activities were broadcast to the crowd, but no one seemed to mind, and the crowd murmured admiringly.
Gianni, thankfully, wound up the speech. “Mangiamo!” he screamed with a little jump from the banquette down to the chevron floor. “Bring in the cinghiale!”
Two waiters, uniformed in khakis, navy polos, and white aprons, burst into the dining room from the kitchen, bearing aloft a huge white platter with a hefty roasted boar atop a bed of fresh rosemary.
More cheers broke out as the aroma of garlic, mingled with a gamey, pork-y, and undeniably deliciously meaty fragrance, wafted our way. The crowd moved in a wave toward the buffet, where Gianni began carving up the unlucky beast and serving it on tiny cocktail plates.
“That smells awesome!” said Bootsie, making a move toward the cinghiale.
“It sure does,” shrieked Sophie, the former vegan.
“What is it with Chef Gianni and pigs?” said Holly, glancing around for another waiter with trays of champagne. “Is boar part of the pig family?”
“Who knows?” Joe said. His eyes took on a faraway look that I recalled from our days in high school in history class. Joe had been quite a good student, and he possessed a thirst for knowledge that had led him to spend much of his time in the library in those pre-Google days. “I might just research that,” he said, pulling out his phone and typing in the word “boar.”
Just then J. D. Alvarez came back and began talking to Holly, while I looked hopefully toward the kitchen, wondering when the gamberetti would appear. The boar did smell amazing, but I wasn’t sure about eating a creature that had been gamboling through the woods of Tuscany and then, in the next second, was dead on the back of a truck and headed for the Rome airport, fated to become cocktail fare in Florida.
Just then, though, I saw movement on the patio—not polite, party mingling, but what looked like a scuffle.
“I think Scooter’s fighting with Bingo!” I told Joe and Sophie, catching a glimpse of Bootsie elbowing her way toward the front of the wild-boar line as I wound through the crowd toward the patio doors.
The three of us arrived just as Bingo went down hard on the patio’s brick floor. I couldn’t see if he’d been punched by Scooter or had merely fallen, but Bingo lay there, face up and moaning. A couple of chairs were overturned around him, and his mojito glass was shattered all around him.
“Poor Bingo!” shrieked Sophie. “Do you need a doctor?”
“He’s fine,” Scooter told us dismissively. “He just needs to sleep it off. Too much to drink, and he smokes too much ganja. You, kid”—here, he snapped his fingers rudely at a busboy who’d come out to check on the situation—“help me get my brother out to my car.”
Gianni peeked around the door, but he didn’t seem too worried about a guest having fallen flat on the bricks.
“Scooter, your hippie brother have too good of time!” he said. “Get this drunkie out of here. I don’t run tacky place!”
“I don’t feel right about Scooter taking his brother home,” I whispered to Joe and Sophie—and Bootsie, who’d appeared next to us, forking in a plateful of cinghiale. “Scooter’s so sneaky. Maybe we should offer to drive Bingo.”
“We’ll follow them to make sure he’s okay,” Bootsie said, putting down her empty plate and making for the street on the heels of Scooter, who had an arm around his brother and was half-dragging, half-supporting him as they headed for Scooter’s BMW.
As I stepped off the patio, I felt a strong hand close over my wrist, and the faint scent of Irish Spring soap wafted toward me. I looked down to see a tanned hand, white shirt cuff, and navy-blazer sleeve. I felt a shiver pass down my neck, then looked up into the dark-brown, black-lashed eyes of Mike Woodford.
What was Mike doing in Magnolia Beach?
SHOCK, SURPRISE, AND a pleasant tingly feeling shot down my spine, but since Bootsie was already behind the wheel of her Range Rover, I told Mike we had a quick errand to run, and that I’d be right back.
But Scooter didn’t take the right turn that would lead back to his and Bingo’s houses. Rather, he turned left and headed over the bridge toward the West Palm Beach business district. Three minutes later, he took the exit ramp for the airport. Bootsie, who Scooter didn’t seem to have noticed on his tail, steered her car a dozen spaces away from him under the well-lit outdoor long-term parking and turned off her lights. It was 8:30 p.m., and Bingo was walking better now but still looked groggy. Scooter grabbed his briefcase out of his backseat, and he and Bingo took off for the airport entrance.
“I’ll be right back!” Bootsie said. “You three stay here.”
Five minutes later, Bootsie returned, looking dejected. “Scooter went to the American counter and bought two tickets, but I couldn’t hear where he was heading,” she reported. “Then they went down to security, and that was it. They’re gone.”
“Did Scooter just kidnap Bingo?” I wondered.
“Bingo went willingly enough,” Bootsie said. “He seemed a little out of it, but he wasn’t putting up a struggle.”
“If we were back in Jersey, I’d say Scooter slipped him a mickey,” Sophie said, assessing the situation. “Coupla Klonopins is what Barclay used to use.”
We nodded, because Sophie honestly knows more about this kind of thing than Joe, Bootsie, and I do. In this case, given that Bingo wasn’t drunk and hadn’t seemed high when he’d arrived at Gianni Mare, she was probably right. Scooter could have drugged his brother and was currently getting him out of the way—hopefully not permanently.
We exchanged worried glances. “Er—should we call the police?” Joe asked.
“I’ll call Zack Safina!” Sophie chirped. “He gave me his number today.”
“Wo
nderful,” said Joe.
“I need to go back to Gianni’s,” I told them.
“I saw that guy Mike Woodford there!” Sophie told me while dialing. “You two going to get some lovin’ tonight? You got that whole guesthouse just sitting there with a king-size bed.”
“No!” I told her, and launched into a speech about being one hundred percent committed to John Hall, when Sophie waved me into silence and started to talk into her phone to Zack Safina about Bingo and Scooter.
“Nothing Zack can do unless someone reports Bingo missing,” Sophie told us when she ended the call. “We’ll have to wait it out a little.”
AS I CLIMBED out of Bootsie’s backseat when we got back to Gianni’s, I noticed two texts had come into my phone.
John Hall was checking in to say hi, while Holly said she was going to Tiki Joe’s with J. D. Alvarez. While I frowned at this news, a third text arrived: Mike Woodford messaged me that he was at the bar at Vicino.
As I walked to Vicino, across the street from the din and clamor at Gianni’s opening, I noticed what an absolutely beautiful night it was. A little breeze ruffled the bougainvillea that climbed on Vicino’s exterior walls, and tree frogs chirped from a park just down the street. The hubbub from Gianni gave the whole street a festive vibe, as did the Latin music the band was gamely pumping out.
Truth be told, this was a pretty romantic place to be, especially in mid-January.
But Vicino was a dismal sight with only two tables occupied. One banquette held a group of older ladies in sneakers who I guessed were out-of-towners sent to Vicino by a hotel concierge—this I knew because in four days, I hadn’t seen a single resident of Magnolia Beach in sneakers, and when I’d put on running shoes to walk Waffles, Holly had been upset and ordered me to immediately remove them. The other table was occupied by a pair of teenagers on a date, who were drinking Sprite and sharing a wood-fired pizza.