Killer Punch Read online

The shed was also lit entirely by candles and lanterns, and was totally adorable, if something of a fire hazard. A long barn table had been turned into a bar with charming antique glassware and pots of herbs lining shelves behind it, where a hot bartender flashed a handsome grin as he muddled mint in a glass pitcher. The party shed had its own Latin soundtrack, and a sexy, stylish vibe, as if Martha Stewart, J. Lo, and one of the Iglesias family of singers were cohosting a barbecue.

  “The only problem is the actual goats,” said Tim, turning more serious. “My aunt in Vermont kept goats, so I know a lot about ruminant animals. I tried to explain to Gianni that goats eat everything. Roses, fences, hydrangeas, tires, furniture—­they’ll mow it right down.”

  “We discouraged him from investing a lot in flowering plants, which are pricey,” Tom agreed. “But he didn’t listen, and he insisted on a twenty-­eight-­hundred-­dollar outdoor sofa from Restoration Hardware.” He shrugged nervously. “We put an eight-­foot deer fence up between the pasture and the house, but I already saw a few goats starting to chew it.”

  “Hi there,” said a familiar voice. We all turned to see a girl wearing beige and a smug expression, with a notepad and pencil in hand.

  “We just did a forty-­five-­minute interview with her,” whispered Tom, grabbing Tim and taking a left turn toward the bar. “See ya!”

  “Hey, Eula,” said Bootsie. “I didn’t see you on the party bus.”

  “That’s because I’m here working,” Eula informed her. “On a Gazette story about Gianni’s chevre business! When you guys were redoing my living room today, I stopped by the newspaper office and the press release had just come in about this place. So here I am! Look for my byline tomorrow,” she added breezily, turning on her heel to go interview the Binghams.

  “When is that Powerball drawing?” asked Bootsie, grabbing another drink from a passing waiter. “Because I’m starting to think if Eula doesn’t win and leave town, I might need to do something that will land me in prison.”

  “Hey, there’s Abby from the club,” Sophie said, pointing out the long blond curls of the cute waitress, who was out of country-­club uniform tonight and into a sexy black knit dress topped with a tiny white apron. She was passing a tray of crab salad on a grilled polenta round topped with—­what else?—­goat cheese.

  “Abby!” Bootsie called out, beckoning the girl over. “You’re working for Gianni now?”

  Abby looked distinctly uncomfortable, and a guilty expression appeared on her pretty face.

  “Um, just for tonight!” she said, handing Bootsie a cocktail napkin along with the polenta. “And I might do some part-­time waitressing for him, if I can make it work with my club schedule.” She looked poised to take off, but she was too late, because Bootsie was aiming a laserlike stare at her that I was all too familiar with.

  “You’re not, you know, getting horizontal with Chef Gianni, are you?” Bootsie asked Abby.

  Bootsie’s got a weirdly accurate radar for even the most unlikely romantic entanglements, but in this case, I was worried about the same thing. Abby was far too cute for Gianni to have hired for her food ser­vice skills.

  “No!” said Abby, looking embarrassed. “We just, you know, had some wine the other night, and he, um, asked me out to dinner. And to work at this party!”

  “How old are ya?” asked Sophie. “Is it legal for him to date you, because that’s super creepy if you’re a teenager, and your parents would be real upset.”

  “I’m twenty-­one,” said Abby proudly. “But we haven’t . . . you know.”

  Bootsie raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “Okay, I kissed Gianni the other night, but that’s all we did, and then he told me he could get me on his TV show!”

  She paused for a second, looking nervous. “You won’t tell my parents, will you?” she said to Bootsie. “Plus I have a boyfriend at school!”

  “We won’t say anything,” Holly told her. “But let me save you some trouble. Within three weeks, Gianni will be dating at least two other girls who work at his Beverly Hills restaurant, and he’ll have you down at the airport bribing customs officials to bring in illegal salami. You need to go back to school and forget the TV show.”

  “Okay,” said Abby, looking relieved. “I was getting stressed out about moving to L.A., anyway. It’s really expensive there!” She paused nervously. “I guess I’ll tell Gianni tomorrow night that I can’t see him anymore. We’re supposed to have dinner at his restaurant.”

  “You might want to cancel that,” Sophie advised. “Take it from me, and I had to pay a life coach ten grand to figure this out, once you realize you’re in a toxic relationship, you need to take the nearest exit ramp. I mean, I’m friends with Gianni and everything, but he’s too old for a nice girl like you.”

  “I hear what you’re saying.” Abby nodded earnestly. “But it’s just one meal, and to be honest, I’ve never been to Ristorante Gianni, and I’m dying to go! Gianni wants me to try some new spicy lobster pasta and some fancy one-­hundred-­fifty-­dollar bottle of wine. I mean, I’m in college. When am I ever going to get to try something like that? I’ll dump him right after dinner!”

  “SOPHIEEE!” SANG OUT Lobster Phil.

  “Phil!” Sophie greeted her old friend, “What are you doing in Amish country?”

  “I’m here as both guest and business partner,” he told us, munching a cucumber-­radish-­goat cheese hors d’oeuvre. “My associate Sweet Freddie McDonald and I are minor investors in Gianni’s business empire.

  “You’re all looking beautiful tonight,” he added. Phil did have excellent manners, and a certain gallant style that was very endearing.

  “Thanks!” Sophie told him. “I wouldn’t have pictured you putting your money into goats.”

  “This is just between us, but Sweet Freddie wants to take the Vegas hotel and restaurants in a new direction,” Phil said. “We’re going less Jersey, and more upscale foodie. In fact, we’re sponsoring the Fall Food Classic in Vegas, which gets all the celebrity chefs and is huge for prestige! Freddie says he wants the place to be more than just a drinks-­and-­slots kind of place. I mean, obviously we’ll still be both of those, but we’re determined to take our place to the next level.

  “We’re going to launch our new restaurant in September during the Fall Food Classic, and wait till ya hear the concept.”

  We all fell silent, thinking. Holly and Sophie have invested in restaurants before, but honestly, none of us knows much about culinary trends, and as a group, we can’t cook.

  “Is it some kind of fusion food, like Southern cuisine meets South of France?” guessed Sophie. “Like, grits and cheddar biscuits combined with, like, steak frites?”

  “Fusion would be fun,” offered Holly. “There’s that one place in Vegas that combines Asian and Spanish cuisines, and it’s got really cute lacquered red walls and delicious tequila drinks. Is your new restaurant, um, Moroccan meets Mexican?”

  “I’m guessing all smoothies,” said Gerda. “Everything is vegetable or fruit in a blender. That would be new in Las Vegas.”

  “Maybe the food gets delivered by Magic Mike guys,” said Bootsie. “That’s what I would do if I were you, Phil. Or how about this: Strip on the Strip. And you get girls in bikinis to serve strip steaks!”

  “I like where you’re going with that,” Phil told Bootsie, “but what Freddie wants to do is way more upscale.” He paused for effect.

  “It’s gonna be organic! And Gianni’s goat cheese is going to be the theme of the Food Classic’s opening night! That’s a three-­day event kicked off with a party for twenty thousand ­people at the Vegas Convention Center!”

  He beamed at us proudly as we all pondered this silently. The Food Classic did sound like a really big deal. I mean, I had heard of it only because Sophie had pointed it out in the magazine at Le Spa, but still, they had promoted the weekend in a prominen
t spread, and any event that attracts that many ­people is obviously popular. Still though—­organic? Given my minestrone-­from-­a-­can level of kitchen prowess, I’m not one to judge current food trends. It seemed, even to me, that organic fare wasn’t the newest culinary trend around.

  “Organic food is gonna be everywhere at the Classic,” Phil added helpfully. “You know, organic chickens, organic meats, arugula and shit like that grown without chemicals.”

  “Organic’s been done to death,” Bootsie told him, chugging her drink. I gazed at her with some alarm. Probably dissing a possible Vegas mafia casino owner’s big idea wasn’t a great idea, especially out in Amish country, where there are thousands of acres under which a six-­foot-­tall blond tennis player’s body could disappear forever, sowed into a field of pumpkins.

  “Not in Vegas!” Phil told her, seemingly unoffended. “And not in my and Freddie’s place.”

  “It sounds real awesome!” said Sophie kindly. “And a real crowd-­pleaser. I mean, even in Vegas, ­people like to think they’re doing something healthy.”

  “I approve,” seconded Gerda.

  “How about I meet you after the party tonight, and you show me where the Wine Mart is gonna go?” Phil suggested. “Nine p.m. back at the restaurant?” Sophie agreed, and Phil excused himself and headed to the bar.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing what that guy was telling you,” whispered Abby a few minutes later. “And you didn’t hear this from me, but the goat cheese in these pastry puffs isn’t organic, even though Gianni’s claiming the cheese from this farm is all-­natural. We got it from, like, five different supermarkets today! Half the staff had to go buy up every package of chevre in a three-­county radius!”

  “What, Gianni didn’t have enough cheese?” asked Bootsie.

  “He had nothing! The goats aren’t producing milk,” said Abby. “They’ve been here a week and from one hundred and fifty goats, he hasn’t produced an ounce of cheese. The goats are on strike or something! Oh, hi, Mr. Woodford,” she added to another guest as she headed back to pick up more hors d’oeuvres.

  “Hey there,” said Mike to me. “I wanted to tell you what Eula was doing with that wheelbarrow this morning. She uses compost from Sanderson cows on her rose hedges I see her hit the barn and wheel it out once a week, minimum.”

  “What!” said Bootsie. “She steals your cow manure?”

  “It’s an unspoken agreement,” Mike told her. “We have a lot of it.”

  “That burns my ass,” fumed Bootsie. “First she grows tomatoes in Jersey, then she’s got cow product from the fanciest estate in town. No wonder her roses look so good.”

  “I didn’t know ya were a fan of Gianni’s,” Sophie piped up, giving Mike the once-­over. “Ya look good in that navy blazer,” she told him. “If I wasn’t so in love with my decorator boyfriend, I’d have a crush on you. But I know you used to fool around with Kristin here, so I could never have a fling with you.”

  “When I heard Gianni was opening a cheese business, I had to see for myself.” Mike grinned down at Sophie. “I think he might find farming to be a real challenge.”

  I was distracted by his tan. And the beard stubble. Did he grow it on purpose?

  I moved a little closer to inhale a whiff of Irish Spring . . . Mike didn’t have any gorgeous ex-­wives, unlike my boyfriend, or maybe former boyfriend . . . maybe I should just give up on John!

  Then again, I had all those dogs at my house right now, and it probably wouldn’t be possible to make out with Mike with Waffles plus four wagging, slobbering mutts in residence.

  At that moment, I noticed a tall, lean form over by the goat herd in jeans and a polo shirt. He bent over to scratch a nanny goat behind her ears, and my jaw dropped.

  Our eyes met and he broke into a smile as he opened the wooden gate and wrapped me in a huge hug.

  I hugged him back, then stepped back and looked at him. Before I could think it through, I opened my mouth and uttered the whiny words no girl should ever say: “Why haven’t you called me?”

  JOHN EXPLAINED THAT he’d been almost back to Bryn Mawr yesterday afternoon when he got a last-­minute call from his chiropractor to play in the doubles tournament after the guy’s original partner had dropped out, and with the match starting at 7 p.m. and then everyone staying afterward at the club to eat, it had been after ten. “I was about to text you last night and come over when Gianni called and said he had an emergency situation, and begged me to come out here to check on his goats,” he explained.

  He’d followed Gianni to this patch of Amish farmland and examined the sleepy animals, while Gianni cursed everything on a cloven hoof and bemoaned his herd’s lack of productivity. “It was close to 1 a.m. when I got back to Bryn Mawr, and I know you’re never up that late,” he finished. “Gianni had me here most of the day today, too, and when he told me about the party tonight, I knew you’d be here. I thought I’d surprise you.”

  I digested all this for a minute.

  “Are you ready to go?” said John, putting his arm around me. “We can go pick up the dogs and go to my place.”

  Miserably, I looked at him, trying to sift through my trust issues and Lilly Merriwether worries. Could anyone be this caught up in veterinary medicine . . . and think it was a good idea to be back in town for more than twenty-­four hours and not call your girlfriend?

  “Thanks for letting the dogs stay with you!” he said. “You’re the best to take care of them.”

  That did it. I did love John’s dogs, but I was tired of being covered in dog hair, and sick of fretting about him and Lilly. I needed a night to think things over. Maybe I couldn’t handle dating a guy who was this devoted to his work and had a perfect ex-­wife. Also, dogs are the best, but does anyone really need four?

  A small voice of reason deep within me pointed out that I spent most of my time at work, too, and the majority of my spare time with Bootsie, Holly, and Sophie. I probably needed to focus more energy on John.

  I was irrationally upset and didn’t have the energy to sort through the millions of emotions rocketing around inside my borrowed Tibi dress, so I informed John with a chilly hauteur that I’d promised Bootsie and Sophie to go look at old Mrs. Bingham’s garden shack with a guy named Lobster Phil LaMonte tonight. He could pick up his pack of dogs in the morning.

  As we all got back on the party buses, a whiff of something that wasn’t quite as pleasantly scented as the espresso and biscotti that Gianni’s staff had just passed around floated our way. Holly wrinkled her perfect nose, while Sophie gave a loud sniff. I actually found the smell somewhat pleasant, but I like a nice earthy scent, and I live across from Sanderson, so farm odors are pretty familiar. At least the new rose garden was also wafting out its own heavenly scent.

  “Smells like goat,” pronounced Bootsie. As if to confirm this, the herd started bleating loudly. They seemed scared by the loud bus motors and the tipsy guests scrambling on board.

  “Shut up, you putana goats!” Gianni yelled as the bus doors slammed shut.

  Chapter 21

  PHIL TOLD US he’d meet us back at Ristorante Gianni, since he was a town car guy and didn’t do buses. We all climbed into his huge black sedan forty-­five minutes later for a quick tour de Bryn Mawr.

  “So where’s the Mega Wine Mart gonna be?” Phil asked.

  “We’re heading there now!” said Sophie. “Sorry it’s so dark out, but if you look past those pastures, you can see we’re passing a real fancy estate called Sanderson, which is where that lady who got her painting stolen lives.” Phil look duly impressed at the size and scope of Mrs. Potts’s estate, and kept driving.

  “Did we tell ya we got a name on the developer of the Wine Mart?” she added. “Some guy named Barry Tutto. We can’t get a phone number for him, though! It’s like he doesn’t exist in real life.”

  “Barry Tutto,” repeated Phil. “Tha
t has a familiar ring to it. I’ll look into it for you.”

  “Here’s where the Mega Wine Mart is gonna be!” said Sophie, indicating the driveway that led through the woods toward old Mrs. Bingham’s former garden store. A summer moon illuminated the lofty trees.

  “These woods are fabulous,” said Phil, rolling down his window and sniffing the breeze. “Just smell that fresh night air. This is freakin’ beautiful.”

  “It won’t be for long,” Bootsie told him. “See that old building? That’s going to be a boutique wine store, but that’s just for like a month, and then it’s big box all the way.”

  BACK AT GIANNI’S restaurant, Phil insisted on going in and buying us yet one more drink. To my relief, the chef himself was nowhere to be found.

  “You were just at his party, right?” asked the hostess. “Is it true that the place smelled like goat?”

  “Just for the last five minutes,” Bootsie told her.

  “Better than nothing,” said the girl, who added that she was clocking out and took off. Ristorante Gianni was winding down for the night, with diners paying their bills and heading out. I was already wishing I was in bed. It seemed, though, that Lobster Phil wasn’t someone you disappeared on—­unless he wanted you to.

  “That Sanderson is something special,” Phil mused now, after throwing a stack of twenties onto the bar. “Mrs. Potts’s house is sparking all kinds of ideas in me.”

  “Like what?” said Bootsie. “Are you a fan of cows? Because that’s her main interest.”

  “I’m thinking old England,” he said, swirling his drink. “It’s a totally new concept for a Vegas restaurant and lounge. Imagine this: paneling, old paintings, old rugs, huge sofas, all that. And, like, roast beef and peas for the food, and waiters in ’60s Rat Pack–style suits. Downton Abbey meets Ocean’s 11.”

  “I thought ya loved the Vegas vibe,” Sophie said to Phil. “You got all those great places to eat and shop, and look at your tan—­it’s awesome.”

  “True,” allowed Phil. “But I grew up in Jersey. Sometimes I miss the trees and the forest. There’s not a single tree in Vegas unless you count some palm trees they plunked down around the pools at the casinos. I mean, I was never a tree-­hugger back when I lived in Atlantic City, but you knew they were just a ­couple exits up the Garden State Parkway if you wanted them.”