by Amy Korman
There was no use in pointing out to Holly that people love fragrant Douglas firs, cheery strands of lights, and Elvis’s Blue Christmas album. So the cooks and bartenders at the country club were worried, but then again, Holly’s parties generally are awesome, and how bad could four hours of loud music and an open bar really be?
And the themes Holly was considering did sound promising: The Colketts had proposed a Southern Shrimp, Grits, and Crabfest. For her part, Bootsie was pushing for a soiree titled “Summer Cabin in Maine,” with specialty drink tents, seats made of logs, and chili out of a can. The Colketts told Holly that both could be totally spectacular, and were constantly making notes about things like trucking in seven hundred branches of out-of-season magnolias and a dozen Bayou Classic sixty-quart aluminum pots with lid and baskets suitable for a crab boil, or building a bar entirely out of Maine-style moss, walnut branches, and fragrant spruce swags, and ordering plaid flannel shirts for fifty guests. So far, all these ideas were still under consideration by Holly, except for the flannel shirts, the thought of which had given her a cluster headache.
“And forget the themes—even the party food is a major problem. I can’t ask the club staff to cater their own party. And other than this place”—she gestured around the Pub—“and Restaurant Gianni, which both close down for Christmas week, the only other restaurants in town are the luncheonette, which doesn’t make food after 3 p.m., and the Hoagie House, which only has three employees.”
“You could get six-foot turkey subs from there for the party,” I suggested. “Everyone likes giant sandwiches!”
“I don’t think turkey and Swiss is going to cut it for a fifty-person holiday party that the Colketts are flying in a forest of magnolia trees for,” Holly told me.
“I just texted Chip four times with no response,” Bootsie informed us. “This is scary. Maybe I should call Officer Walt.”
Privately, I thought Bootsie had good reason to call in the police to help Chip, and was about to tell her so when Joe brushed off Bootsie’s concerns about her brother.
“Chip’s fine! You think that’s a problem? Try renovating a house with Adelia Earle,” Joe informed her. “At this point I’m drinking almost as many margaritas as she is, and I can’t keep up with her. She’s had years of practice.”
Joe told us that Adelia’s love of color made the job fun, but her perpetual tipsiness meant that she changed her mind from one day to the next about whether her baseboards should be pink, orange, or lemon-yellow, and required a lot of overtime by his paint crew. Meanwhile, Joe was staying three days a week on Adelia’s dime at the Palms Inn, a swanky Magnolia Beach hotel, and eating (and drinking) most of his meals at Tiki Joe’s, a retro-cool lounge in town. It sounded fun, honestly, to spend half of December in balmy Florida, but Joe was too depressed about his status with Sophie to enjoy the seventy-five-degree sunshine.
“Plus, Adelia keeps inviting me to luncheons with all her friends,” Joe told us gloomily. “Usually I love eating chicken salad with ladies in caftans, but this holiday season, I don’t have it in me to booze and schmooze.”
He nibbled dispiritedly at a Thai wing, then threw it aside. “I never thought I’d say this, but I actually miss spending hours on end sitting on the man-bench at the Versace boutique, waiting for Sophie to make up her mind between slingbacks or strappy sandals. I must be close to hitting bottom.”
Other customers wanted their beer and wings, so for the next fifteen minutes, I had to miss out on the rest of Joe’s complaints about Adelia. He was just finishing up regaling Holly with the Eula-suitcase incident when Sophie and Gerda walked through the slightly battered front door of the Pub.
“We have returned, because I have been thinking more about Eula’s missing items. If we are to find the loot, we need to follow Eula around and gather clues,” Gerda announced. As always, she sounded like a Game of Thrones character whose syntax had been influenced by Yoda.
“I agree,” said Joe, which surprised me, since he and Gerda rarely see eye to eye. “I want that nine grand from Eula’s gold bricks. And Gerda, you’ve got upper body strength I’m never going to attain, and which we’re gonna need to hoist that Samsonite when we find it.”
“That’s for sure!” said Sophie, violating her no-insults agreement with Joe. “You could barely lift my clutch bag when I asked you to hold it at parties. When we were dating, that is.”
“I hate to say it, but we need to put together our own Ocean’s 11 to find Eula’s missing gold, with Gerda as the muscle of the operation,”.” Joe shrugged, while Gerda nodded somewhat smugly.
“Help me get this straight: You’re going to spend the holidays trying to find a suitcase belonging to an evil girl who exclusively wears beige swoopy dresses?” said Holly, looking as stressed as I’ve ever seen her.
“Eula’s expanded to a more stylish wardrobe,” Joe told Holly. “It’s still all beige, though,” he admitted.
“Just be careful,” said Holly coolly, crossing her skinny jean-clad legs. “Eula’s got all that cash now and might invite you to be the Leo DiCaprio to her Kate Winslet on this pricey boat trip.”
“I hate Eula, and I’m still going to do everything in my power to make her feel the Grand Canyon–like breadth of my hatred! I’m going to be pissy, petulant, and incredibly persistent in dogging her!” Joe exploded. “After I find the gold bricks, that is.”
“Figures,” said Sophie, sipping the Sprite I’d handed her, since she’s not much of a drinker.
“I don’t picture me and Eula at the prow of her cruise ship anytime soon, but if you think I’m going to pass up a chance to get forty thousand dollars of Eula’s money, split it four ways, and possibly turn her over to customs, you don’t know Joe Delafield!” said Joe, employing the third person.
“Well, here’s your chance, because the horrible Eula has just arrived,” Gerda told him.
Eula had indeed entered the Pub. She marched over, reached into her shiny beige handbag (probably bought at duty-free), and emerged with an iPad. “I just came by to show you the exact type of suitcase that’s missing,” she said, bringing up the Samsonite Web site. “It’s this one, the thirty-inch Black Label Firelite spinner in deep blue.”
“Where’s your new boyfriend?” asked Bootsie pointedly.
“He’s meeting business associates for a drink,” Eula said primly, “and then we’re having a late dinner over at Gianni’s.”
“Does this guy really exist, Eula?” asked Joe.
“Of course he exists!” Eula screamed, losing it and looking a little less like the fancy new version of herself and more like the annoying teenager we’d all known and hated in high school. “He’s amazing! He’s tan, tall, and wears crisp blue blazers and fantastic striped shirts and has handmade loafers! And he’s a lawyer!”
“Uh-huh,” said Joe. “And he’s staying at your house? Are you guys having lots of steamy lovin’ over on Rosebud Lane?”
“He’s staying at the home of a friend,” Eula informed Joe angrily. “And by the way, he’s a complete gentleman and we’re taking things slow. Also, I’m not going to tell you where he’s bunking this week, because I don’t want you showing up there and bothering him. You and Bootsie are basically one step removed from stalkers.”
Gerda and I looked at Joe and Bootsie for a comeback, which neither of them had, since Eula’s assessment was correct.
“Fair enough,” acknowledged Joe. “We’ve stalked a few people in the past. But I still question the existence of your admirer.”
“See for yourself,” Eula told him, recovering some of her air of calm superiority. “We’ve got an eight-thirty reservation at Ristorante Gianni. Just so you know where to find me, I’ll be at Table 11—the best table in the place—wearing a new Gucci shearling jacket, and I’ll be ordering the arugula salad and the lobster pasta for two. See ya!”
Wing Night gets an early crowd, so after cleaning the tables and a quick mop of the floor, I finished my shift at 9:15 p.m. Unfortunately,
I looked awful and smelled worse, unless you like the scent of stale wings and fries.
Sophie and Gerda had stayed to drive me to go watch Eula on her dinner date, and to prevent me from sneaking home and going to bed after my long day. I wasn’t all that happy about this, but I’d been told it was nonnegotiable: We were all going to check out Eula’s new guy.
Joe and Holly were already on-site at Gianni’s, having left the Pub at 8:45 to ensure they wouldn’t miss a single second of Eula’s date. Bootsie, somewhat distracted by sending text after unanswered text to Chip and still feeling the effects of the Xanax she borrowed from Joe, had gone with them.
“I need to go home and take a shower,” I told Sophie and Gerda, who were waiting outside for me in Sophie’s huge car.
“Ya could use one,” agreed Sophie, giving me a dubious sniff. “You look worse than I’ve ever seen ya, too, but we don’t have time to stop at your place if we’re gonna see Eula in action on her date. I feel real bad for you, though. I figured you’d be a mess, so I brought you my Cavalli poncho, which is real long and swingy, and I’m gonna do my three-minute makeover on you right here in the car.”
“Okay,” I said, admitting to myself that deep down, I did want to see Eula’s new boyfriend. My car was parked behind The Striped Awning, but I could walk the half mile to the shop in the morning. Waffles and I could use the exercise, actually.
“I need to get home soon, though, to let Waffles out. If he misses his nine-thirty snack, he gets really hungry!” I felt a pang of guilt about leaving Waffles for the whole night. He’d probably slept through the HGTV shows I’d left on to keep him company, but what if his tummy was growling?
“That dog needs strict organic diet of steamed poultry and a few vegetables such as carrots, and should not receive snacks,” Gerda informed me. “He looks like he been stuffing his face with Big Macs. Typical American, full of cheese, sauce, and meat.”
These words hurt, because occasionally Waffles and I do hit the McDonald’s drive-through, but we never get a Big Mac. We share a cheeseburger, hold the onions, which is barely three hundred calories, and Waffles is built along the lines of Kevin James: It would be weird if he was suddenly as gorgeously muscled as, say, a dog version of Alexander Skarsgård. Not everyone’s going to be super-fit!
While I fumed silently, Sophie parked in the Gianni driveway, turned around to face me in the backseat of her car, and turned into a one-person glam squad. She spritzed me with a cloud of Versace perfume, threw a cool, fringy black poncho over my head, and aimed some hairspray at my head while whipping the largest round hairbrush I’ve ever seen through my long brown hair. Within seconds, blush, mascara, and lip gloss somehow flew from Sophie’s makeup bag onto my face.
Meanwhile, I noticed that Sophie herself had on an outfit that might have been designed for Britney Spears’s Vegas backup dancers. Her dress was roughly the size of a hand towel, super glittery, and strapless, which was surprising considering the temperature had fallen to thirty-five degrees.
Sophie eyed me critically, then took off the pair of swingy drop earrings she was wearing and stuck them into my earlobes. I fingered the baubles, alarmed, since they featured enormous stones that I’d be terrified to wear if they were real.
“Ta-da!” she sang out to me as I took a quick look in her compact mirror, and thanked her. “I took you from chicken wing to awesome bling in a matter of seconds. And don’t look so nervous, ’cause those earrings are Diamonique! Six-carat total weight, but only forty-two bucks on QVC!
“Now, let’s hustle, girls, because not only do we all want to get an eyeful of this guy of Eula’s, but I need to flirt with Channing to make Joe jealous, and also, I’m freezing. A girl can’t cover up a dress like this with a parka.”
Fifteen seconds later, we were inside Restaurant Gianni, where our eyes immediately zoomed over to Table 11. This table, midway between the bar area and just at the front of the dining room, is considered by people who know (namely, Holly and Sophie) to be the most desirable placement to sit and consume the handmade pastas and wood-fired meat at Gianni’s. It offers little in the way of privacy, but does provide a view of every angle of the old firehouse-turned-eatery.
There was Eula, giggling over the lobster while a guy with his back to us leaned over to feed her a twirled-up forkful of spaghetti. His hair was perfectly combed back with a teeny bald spot, his hands were tanned to a Bermuda Gold, and his shirt cuffs were striped and spiffy. He leaned in to give Eula a little squeeze as she chewed and swallowed.
“This is all way too familiar,” said Holly. “The starched shirt under the navy blazer. The groping hands. The leaning over and cheesily fawning over Eula . . .”
“Eula’s new guy is Scooter Simmons!” shrieked Sophie. “That shady lawyer from Florida!”
Chapter Six
“I see you’ve eyeballed Eula’s new guy,” said Joe, when we all managed to collect ourselves and stagger over to where he was seated at the bar with Holly, who was sipping a Pellegrino, and Bootsie, who, like Joe, had a large glass of Scotch in front of her. “I was so shocked that I couldn’t even text you. It was all I could do to lift this drink to my lips and gulp.”
“Yeah, our old friend Scooter is in town visiting Eula,” agreed Channing, emerging from the kitchen to say hi. “I have to say I’m surprised to see him. Scooter just doesn’t look right outside his natural habitat, which is on a golf course in Florida.”
“I need a cigarette,” said Channing’s girlfriend Jessica, who as usual looked beautiful and bored. She drifted past us in leather pants, impossibly high heels, and some kind of drapey blouse, headed for a smoke break on the chilly back patio. Jessica doesn’t wear things like coats, boots, scarves, or cozy L.L. Bean wool socks, and she doesn’t seem to get cold. Maybe all the cigarette smoke has a warming effect, or, as Joe has theorized, she might be part vampire.
It was unnerving to see Eula’s new man, Scooter Simmons, outside of his usual upscale environs in his native Florida. We’d all met Simmons not quite a year before at a local lounge called Tiki Joe’s in swanky Magnolia Beach, Florida.
During our trip, it had been revealed that Scooter and Sophie’s estranged husband, Barclay, were secretly plotting to condo-ize a pristine patch of beachfront, and we’d helped prevent the sneaky deal. Scooter had been a frequent customer at a restaurant Gianni had opened down in Florida, and had been involved in any number of illegal deals.
When last we’d seen him, Scooter was being grounded by his stepmother Susie and put on a strict allowance, which was embarrassing since he’s in his midforties. I guess Susie had loosened up the purse strings considerably, though, if he could afford even a week on board Eula’s ship. Or maybe Scooter had found a new and lucrative business deal which yielded the kind of cash needed for a ticket onto the Palace of the Seas.
“I’m trying to imagine what kind of racketeering business Scooter has dreamed up since last we saw him,” mused Joe. “The deeds to nonexistent diamond mines and worthless shares in caves filled with secret deposits of platinum are two that spring to mind.”
“Channing, we’ll take Table 12, please,” Holly told the handsome chef. “We’d like to be Eula-adjacent.”
“Eula must have gone home to change before dinner! She’s wearing the sold-out Gucci cropped jacket,” whispered Sophie, clearly outraged. “Which I was going to buy myself for Christmas, but all the salesgirls said it had been sent to, like, European movie stars!”
“Hi, Eula,” Joe said, as he pulled out our chairs in his usual polite way. “Cute jacket. A word of advice, though, a girl your size shouldn’t try to pull off Italian designers, at least in the outerwear category. That coat is wearing you.”
“I think you all know my boyfriend, the very handsome and wonderful Scooter!” said Eula, after giving Joe an angry glare.
“Hey, there!” said Scooter, getting up to aim kisses at Holly and Sophie. Naturally, he didn’t remember who I was, which was fine with me, even though I’d once had din
ner with him, dressed up with hair extensions and huge eyelashes as part of our effort to uncover Scooter’s secret condo plans.
Scooter had harbored a serious crush on Holly, and his slightly bloodshot blue eyes lit up when he saw her. Eula, though, was aiming a suspicious eye at him, and Scooter quickly scooted back to his seat next to Eula and began kissing her hand.
I could see that Eula was utterly smitten with her new man, though, and understandably: Scooter is a handsome fellow with extremely good manners. He’s honestly quite likable, exuding a golfy bonhomie. He’s fun to have drinks with, very well-groomed, and smells fantastic, and will open your car door and pull out your chair attentively while paying you lavish and unlikely compliments (if perhaps finding a way to get someone else to pay the bill). Not everyone has these skills, and frankly, he’s a very charming guy. If he hadn’t once tried to steal from his own half brother, he might have been the perfect guy for Eula. They could float around the world sipping champagne and golfing their days away, and a permanent cruise is probably the perfect place for Scooter.
“Soooo, you two are in love,” said Bootsie. “And you met on a boat,” she said, dragging her chair and her wineglass over to Eula and Scooter’s table, which Eula didn’t look all that happy about. “Can you describe to me the exact moment you fell for Eula?”
“It was on the dance floor!” Scooter said, sipping what looked like . . . a wine spritzer? This was weird, because Scooter in the past had always been gulping down 100-proof martinis and tequila drinks the way other people slurp Gatorade. “Just picture this: a moonlit night, the second one onboard the Palace of the Seas, and there’s a dinner dance up on the Aloha Deck. We’re just floating past Turks and Caicos when, suddenly, this petite vision in a beige gown caught my eye.”
“I was wearing Calvin Klein!” Eula piped up. “And Scooter here had on a Ralph Lauren navy blazer, which perfectly matches his gorgeous blue eyes.”