by Amy Korman
“This lady Amanda should have password-protected her device,” Gerda observed.
“There’s a text from Pete telling Amanda not to come to the place on Swan Key when she leaves Le Vert Epinard, but instead to go right to Miami!” Bootsie said. “He said some deals are going down in the Keys this weekend, and that Amanda would be real bored and should stay away.” She looked up, eyes bulging angrily.
“The only thing going down in Swan Key is Pete Penworthy, who I’m going to, um, whack with a kayak paddle for kidnapping Chip!” she yelled into the wind as we buzzed across the little inlet. “And Scooter, if we can find his preppy ass!”
“I’ll help,” promised Dave. Then he paused, looking upset. “I forgot my new Brooks Brothers loafers at the spa!” screamed Dave, who was holding Holly’s luggage on his lap, scrolling through his phone, and suddenly looked down at his feet, which were pale, scrawny, and encased in flip-flops bought that morning at the airport Ron Jon. “I loved those loafers.”
“Dave, since you did a good job on the phones and the luggage, we’re gonna get you new loafers,” Sophie told him. “And I think we should let ya text your mom tonight just to check in. She must be real worried. As long as you don’t tell her you were kidnapped, that is.”
“I won’t,” Dave assured her. “In fact, I’m hoping it takes a few days to find Chip, because this is the greatest free vacation of my life!”
Chapter Eighteen
Steel drum music was playing, palms were swaying, and the moon was shining across the water that evening at the Sugar Lime Inn, where we were sitting amid a happy crowd under a hibiscus-covered open-walled bar and restaurant. Ceiling fans spun slowly above, and thin-crust pizzas topped with lobster, burrata, and arugula were arriving at the table. Joe had vetoed a pie topped with baby spinach, telling the waiter that we’d just fled Le Vert Epinard, and that he would probably never feel the same about all vegetables in the leafy green family, and that even the arugula was pushing it.
We’d checked into adorable rooms, which were Caribbean-style with dark wood furniture, white bed linens, and excellent wi-fi and flat-screen TVs, and I’d checked on Waffles. Martha reported that she’d made him a gently sautéed chicken breast for dinner, and that Waffles was happily watching Beverly Hills Chihuahua nestled onto Martha’s lap. I could relax! Waffles loves that movie.
Despite the fact that we hadn’t yet figured out the details of the Chip rescue operation, the Sugar Lime Inn had a distinctly festive air, and even Bootsie was in a good mood.
“This place is awesome!” said Sophie, sucking a frozen margarita through a straw. “That bellboy knew what he was talking about.”
“Sienna Blunt’s on her way over to meet us,” said Joe, tossing aside his phone for the first time since we’d arrived. “As much as I think she’s overrated, and I’m positive Sienna got her own show because she looks good in a tool belt, I’m going to become her new best friend if it’ll help us wind up the hunt for Chip. I need to get out of the Keys and back to work ASAP, because Adelia’s collection of vintage Florida-travel-themed coasters isn’t going to organize itself.
“There’s Sienna now. Hey, beautiful!” he called out to the TV personality, who did look fantastic in a little beige linen dress and flat sandals. “We escaped Shutter Island!”
After introductions and some commiserating about Le Vert Epinard, where Sienna had gone for a spa treatment once, then been lectured by Hans because she’d had a Snapple in her purse, we got down to business, and Sienna pulled an iPad out of her tote.
“It’s weird that you called about L’Etoile Hotel, because I was so excited about the project when Pete Penworthy hired me to do some drawings for it last fall,” she said. “That old place is adorable, and I have an amazing midcentury-modern-meets-South-Beach vision for it. Look at these renderings!” she said.
“Love the double-height yellow lacquered doors, the ten-foot ficus hedges, the lanterns, and the glass-tiled pool,” Joe told her, admiring the images Sienna had produced.
“This looks nothing like my brother’s prospectus!” observed Bootsie. “This is, like, a boutique hotel design.”
“I’m totally getting this vibe,” Joe told Sienna. “And, count me in if the job gets too big for one person. Florida sunny-chic-meets-golf-glamour is what I do best. I’m picturing blowing out that entrance even more, taking the front doors to a height of twenty feet, flanked by giant modern gold palm tree sculptures, and doormen handing out highball glasses filled with Arnold Palmers as you arrive, and misting stations in each outdoor space—”
“This project isn’t happening!” yelled Bootsie. “Remember? The whole point is that investors like the Binghams were being sold on a huge property that could never fit on L’Etoile’s current footprint. There’s a thirty-five-foot height limit everywhere in the Keys. It’s not going to be built!”
“I was told by Pete and a lawyer friend of his to sketch out the decor for a ten-room luxury hotel when we met in September, and that it would just be an extensive makeover of the existing building.” Sienna shrugged. “Then, when I had a few ideas to show them, they said they’d gone in a different direction and changed their vision for the project, and that I should put my designs on hold. I heard a rumor that a big resort was coming to the area, but everyone in town told me that was impossible, because the zoning here is ironclad.
“Anyway,” finished Sienna, “I only got one check. So I’m going back to my HGTV show, which is fun, but I’ve always dreamed of designing a hotel like this one, so if anything changes, let me know!”
“Was the lawyer you met a tanned, golf-playing type by the name of Scooter Simmons?” Bootsie asked Sienna.
“That was it!” confirmed Sienna. “He was a handsome guy, a real smooth talker.”
“I’m guessing that Chip agreed to the boutique hotel plan, then got bamboozled into defrauding his friends,” Holly said. “Anyway, the easiest way to spring Chip is to find Scooter, cozy up to him, and then have him lead us to Chip. Since I might be pregnant, Sophie should do it.”
“I’ll do it, but I’m not into it!” Sophie said. “Scooter is such a sneak. Penworthy sounds like he’s just your basic scam artist, but, guess what, Sienna? Scooter’s been dating this poor girl we know named Eula. He grabbed some gold she bought with her Powerball money, and he’s also holding up Chip for fifty grand, too!”
A tanned, blond woman somewhere in her early forties, wearing a crisp silk sheath dress, turned around from her seat at the next table to face us.
“Excuse me,” she said. “You aren’t talking about Scooter Simmons of Magnolia Beach, are you? Because I met Scooter on the Palace of the Seas last month,” she added, sipping her drink and crossing her legs. “And I’m his fiancée.”
Over more drinks, our new acquaintance, whose name was Minnie Allington, told us how Scooter had met her during a ping-pong tournament the third day of the cruise. He’d been so attentive over the ensuing three months that they’d actually gotten engaged just a week ago, before Scooter had left for a meeting in Pennsylvania. Since Minnie had overheard most of our conversation of the last hour, she now realized that Scooter’s “business trip” was part Eula, part phony hotel deal, and one-hundred-percent shady.
“How’d he date you and Eula on the same boat?” marveled Sophie. “Didn’t ya know he had another girlfriend?”
“The boat is fairly large,” Minnie said, taking a drag on a Marlboro Silver. “I mean, there’s the movie theater, the poker and mah-jongg lounge, three different bars, a disco, the gym, and the spa. Naturally, there’s a pool, a Starbucks, and a jogging path, plus there’s the basketball court.”
“How much is this cruise again?” asked Sophie, looking interested.
“You don’t want to know. Anyway, when I give it some thought, Scooter did start getting a little cagey about where he was a lot of the time,” said Minnie reflectively. “He started going to daily art classes, and then he told me he was plein-air painting every afternoon,” Minn
ie said. “And one or two nights a week, he’d say he was having a quiet dinner in his suite so he could catch up on new episodes of The Walking Dead.”
“He was catching up on Eula!” Sophie told her. “Sorry,” she added. “If it makes you feel any better, Minnie, Eula told us she and Scooter never got naked together. So Scooter technically didn’t cheat on you, although he did indicate he was gonna propose to Eula on New Year’s Eve. But you know Scooter’s always trying to find easy money, and she’s real rich.”
“So am I,” Minnie told her, waving down the bartender for another drink. “But from what you’re telling me about this Powerball girl, Scooter must have figured out that she was a better revenue stream than I am.”
“The only way to reach Scooter’s cold golf ball of a heart is money,” Joe told Minnie. “I’m sure he liked you better, though, since Eula is an absolute nightmare, despite her new blond highlights. Maybe that’s why Scooter grabbed all that gold from Eula, so he can come down here and marry you.”
“This one might have made out with Eula!” Sophie told Minnie, pointing at Joe. “Which is real hypocritical. But you know, love and hate are supposedly based on the same chemical in the brain. Or something. Anyway, sorry you got engaged to such a jerk. I married one myself.”
“The only thing I’m interested in engaging with Scooter on at this point is revenge,” Minnie informed us. “I’m going to help you rescue your brother,” she added to Bootsie, “and in the process, I’ll happily screw over Scooter. Who, in a lucky twist of fate, I’m scheduled to meet right here for lunch tomorrow afternoon.”
Minnie excused herself to go puff on her cigarette on a beach lounge chair and do some thinking, then returned to the table with a little smile on her elegant face.
“You need a fake investor,” observed Minnie, stabbing an olive in her drink with a tiny skewer and popping it into her mouth. “Someone who Scooter thinks has big money. Then the phony moneybags gets a meeting with Scooter and Pete. Also, we ask them to bring Chip along to the fake meeting. I can arrange everything for tomorrow at lunchtime,” Minnie told us.
“How will that work?” Bootsie asked, intrigued. “And can I wear a disguise? Because I’m excellent at portraying myself as a postal clerk, a hotel housekeeper, or really anyone in uniform. The Coast Guard springs to mind right now, given our seaside setting.”
“I think it’s better if the fake investor is temperamental, takes a sudden and irrational dislike to Chip, and has him banished from the meeting, and from being involved in any way in the deal,” Minnie told her. “Then you can just hit the road with your brother. And I like where you’re going with wearing a borrowed or stolen official outfit of some kind, but that won’t help us with pretending to have a moneybags friend interested in L’Etoile and other deals with Scooter and Pete.”
“That actually makes a lot of sense,” Bootsie said. “We somehow convince Scooter and Pete Penworthy that Chip’s a liability. Which he is,” she added. “Chip’s too honest to roll out a resort scam.”
“We can’t pose as investors, though, Minnie. The only one of us who Scooter won’t recognize is Gerda,” said Holly. “He’s seen Gerda plenty of times, actually, but Gerda tends to blend in due to her fondness for black Nike tracksuits. No offense, Gerda.”
“None taken,” said Gerda. “I do not like to be flashy.”
“Uh-huh,” said Minnie, assessing the Pilates pro, who was currently listening and also lecturing one of the waiters about how she wanted an alcohol-free smoothie with fresh ginger, coconut, beet tops, and there had better not be any added sugar in it, even though the name of the hotel included that dangerous substance.
“You know what? That girl who wants the smoothie looks a little like someone I know in Miami. She’s in the restaurant business, and she invests in small hotels,” Minnie told us. “We can get Gerda to pose as my friend Brunhilda Dagmar!”
“That sounds awesome!” said Sophie. “Does she look like Gerda?”
“Brunhilda is tall, European, stern, and dressed to the nines,” Minnie told her, whipping out her phone. “Here’s a pic from the Miami Restaurant Association Dinner, which is a more relaxed look for her.”
She showed us a snapshot of an unsmiling, perfectly made-up woman with swoopy blond waves and a severe blue sheath dress with silk scarf, pearls, pricey Chanel pumps, and a matching handbag.
“That’s relaxed?” said Sophie dubiously.
The picture of Brunhilda called to mind Martha Stewart mixed with Ursula Andress. We all swiveled from the photo to Gerda, and Minnie’s idea sort of started to make sense.
In her current look, which was workout clothes and sans a drop of makeup, Gerda didn’t evoke expensive-European-restaurant-owner vibes, and Gerda was probably ten years younger than Brunhilda. But there was a resemblance.
“I myself will admit that this woman Brunhilda could be my older sister,” offered Gerda. “Although I think she spend too much on needless luxury items, which I would never do. Money is better spent on investments and on equipment such as skis, tennis rackets, and Pilates reformer machines.”
“The more I think about it, it’s better if we convince Scooter to leave the U.S. for a while. I’d like to make sure he’s not back on the Palace of the Seas next month. Let’s tell him there’s money to be made somewhere really far away. Like, a twelve-hour flight away,” mused Minnie.
“What about Siberia?” said Sophie. “I’ve always heard it’s real cold there, and Scooter would freeze his nuts off!”
“That could be good,” agreed Bootsie. “I’d love to send Scooter to Siberia.”
“What’s in Siberia, anyway?” asked Holly.
Joe did some Googling, and showed us photos of majestic mountains with snowy alpine vistas.
“Looks pretty nice,” Bootsie said, disappointed. “Who knew Siberia was so beautiful? It could be the next pick for Condé Nast Traveler’s Hot List, and with our luck, Scooter might think he’s on a swanky ski vacation. I mean, obviously it looks cold, so if he got pushed into a snowdrift and fell off a mountain that would be good, but I’m not sure how we’d arrange that from a beach bar in Florida.”
“This gives me good idea,” said Gerda. “I can get my cousins to meet Scooter in Austria, lured there by fake business deal, and then scare him a little. Not to beat the crap out of him, but maybe follow him around the town and freak him out. He could maybe get locked overnight in a mountain cabin.” At this Gerda smiled, which she rarely does.
“I’m liking it,” Minnie Allington said, clapping her hands and doing a little hair flip. “I’ll pay for the one-way ticket to Zurich! The fake Brunhilda is going to get Scooter to think there’s an amazing business opportunity in the Austrian Alps,” Minnie told her. “Gerda, you’ll need to lose the black Nike tracksuit to play Brunhilda. Also, you need professional hair, makeup and a push-up bra. And a tasteful sheath dress.”
“I’m excellent at shopping,” Sophie assured her. “Where’s the nearest place to get some fancy clothes for Gerda?”
“I think the Off Fifth Saks Outlet in the Dolphin Mall near Miami is the way to go,” Minnie said. “If you can get hair, makeup, and the outfit done and be back here for lunch by 1:15 tomorrow afternoon, we have a plan.”
“I’m on it!” Sophie shrieked. “This is gonna be awesome!”
Chapter Nineteen
At 8:30 a.m., all of us except Joe, Bootsie, and Dave piled into the minivan and headed north to the Dolphin Mall. The first stop was a salon called the Blow Bar, where we dropped Gerda, with Holly there for moral support, since Gerda was muttering darkly about strangers touching her and how she did not enjoy having her hair blown out and that hair spray is full of toxic chemicals.
Meanwhile, Sophie, Minnie Allington, and I went right to a rack of dresses in the Saks Off Fifth store.
“Who’s Brunhilda’s favorite designer? Escada? Max Mara? Michael Kors?” breathed Sophie excitedly. “Akris? Oscar? Diane von Furstenberg? I want Gerda to look amazing! I mean,
I’ve been trying to get her out of a tracksuit for the last three years! One time last summer I got her into a jumpsuit, but that’s not all that different from her usual look.”
“Let’s go with the St. John sheath dress in pink with the notched neckline, princess seams, a two-inch front slit for easy movement. It’s a classic Florida look,” Minnie said, removing this garment from the rack, “and we’ll top it off with a floral silk scarf. Does your friend have Spanx?”
“I don’t think Gerda needs Spanx,” I told Minnie. “She’s one-hundred-percent muscle.”
“Ya think she’s a four or a six?” wondered Sophie, examining the tags on the pink dresses. “Who can tell under that tracksuit?”
“Get the four,” advised Minnie. “Brunhilda likes things very fitted, which is flattering on a tall girl. Now, I have my salesperson from Chanel meeting us in the parking lot in five minutes, since we don’t have time to make a run to the boutique.”
“Darn it!” screamed Sophie. “A Chanel store would really cheer me up. But I guess buying the bag and shoes in a parking lot is better than nothing. What did ya get her?”
“The large messenger bag with the shoulder strap, chain details, and gold double-C clasp,” Minnie told her. “Sporty, yet expensive. And a classic cap-toe pump.”
On the ride back south after we picked up a fabulously coiffed Gerda and Holly, Minnie told us she’d done some late-night texting with Scooter, and had mentioned to him that her wealthy friend Brunhilda Dagmar might be stopping by at lunch today, too, and she hoped it would be okay, and that she’d added that Dagmar was also looking for a new lawyer to work with her on a planned new super-spa over in Austria. Maybe it could be Scooter, Minnie had hinted, and he’d readily agreed.