Perfect
So we’re going on a real date—dinner and the Switchyards jam—when he gets back in a couple of weeks. Exactly fourteen days from today, but who’s counting? I can’t get all swoony now, there’s work to do: three phases down, one to go. It’s time to commence with OperationMy Fair Lady—the etiquette lesson.
Luisa and I decided to bring Eli to a private dining room at the club for the fourth, and hopefully final, stage of our preparations. We thought that conducting the etiquette lesson here would give him a chance to become familiar with the club and seem at ease in this type of environment, where he’s supposedly spent a lot of time.
“Didn’t you tell me that my most important run-in with these guys was gonna be over wings and beer in a locker room?” Eli asks, a puzzled look on his face.
“Not exactly a locker room,” I say. “The Men’s Grill, adjacent to the locker room,” I explain, gesturing down the maroon-carpeted hall. “It’s at the other end of the building.”
“Well, as far as I can tell, there’s nothing locker-room-adjacent about this place,” Eli replies, “or the weird menu.”
“Which is why we’re here,” I reply cheerfully. “So you can learn the ins and outs of table setting and dining etiquette, while also practicing that lovely new Mississippi accent.”
Justine breezes through the room, takes a hard look at me, and then pastes a disingenuous smile across her face. As I expected, she bit her tongue when I asked her to come in today. I explained Eli/Tripp would be spending time at the club as the guest of a member, and since he’s a fellow Mississippian, I offered to help him feel less nervous about the whole thing. She knows I’m full of shit, but she also knows not to ask questions,God bless her.
The club is closed on Mondays, so no one’s here except for Byron and Justine, whom I convinced to serve as our sommelier and waitress, respectively, and Irma, who never turns down an opportunity to play in the kitchen.
I point to the framed page. “Just think of the prix fixe menu as a cheat sheet,” I tell Eli. “You pick one item from each category, which helps you understand the structure of rich-peopledining, in case Griggs invites you out for dinner to seal the deal.”
“Well, alll riiight,” he says, still inspecting the menu while also beautifully capturing the slow and lilting musicality of his new accent. “But there doooon’t appeeear to be any priiices,” he says.
“It’s a set price,” I reply, pointing to the small print. “That’s what ‘prix fixe’ means.”
“One hundred and twenty-five dollars a person?” Eli blurts out, the lilting accent gone.
“Not including cocktails and wine,” I add. “Absurd, I know.”
“That’sgot’damhighway robbery,” he exclaims, sliding back into his country twang.
Anxiety rises in my chest as I take in his last lingering slip—the North Georgia expression Eli can’t seem to drop:got’dam. I just hope the new accent will stick around long enough for us to get our information on Griggs and get out.
As if on cue, Justine returns. “May I bring you a cocktail while you wait?”
This, of course, is precisely the trick question that I told Justine to start with. I’ve already instructed Tripp that under no circumstances will he order a cocktail. He will order bourbon, neat. This does not mean a shot of Wild Turkey, as he initially assumed. It means he will make his way down a priority-ordered list of Kentucky bourbons, beginning with Blanton’s—which feels veryTripp Bedfordto me, but can be hard to find. If he wants to mix it up, he can order Widow Jane from a hipster distillery in Brooklyn, but he’ll need to joke that it doesn’t really count as bourbon, since it’s from above the Mason-Dixon Line. Excellent opportunity to demonstrate that he’s a Bubba at heart.
Eli sails through his first test smoothly, and when Justine returns with our drinks, he even remembers to sip on (not shoot!) his Blanton’s, as we peruse the menu together. Luisa arrives, late and stressed, as tends to be the case for her, but looking fabulous in a fire-engine-red dress with matching lipstick.
“God, I could use a drink,” Luisa mutters over an anxious breath. “Finally made some progress on my forensic audit sideproject.” Her voice drops as she adds, “A third of the nonprofits Griggs’s family foundation gives money to, don’t actually exist.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, disbelieving. “How is he getting away with that?”
“Easy—” she scoffs. “You move the money enough times, it becomes untraceable. And Jim Wade is probably making sure nothing is audited.” She pulls up a very complex-looking spreadsheet on her phone. “I scoured their tax records. The money trail leads straight to that offshore bank in Panama.”
“Is that enough to take Griggs down?” I ask, hopeful. Luisa shakes her head.
“I’ll get you what you need,” Eli assures her, resting his hand on her shoulder and giving her a gentle squeeze.
To my surprise, Luisa doesn’t recoil from the touch.Interesting.
“My source at the DA’s office says we’ll need the bank statements,” she adds, leaning into Eli’s hand. “Or a way to track the money back to Griggs’s development.”
Justine interrupts, then discreetly ushers us to our table. We take our seats, and she heads back to the kitchen. Luisa and Eli bicker over whether he should have pulled out her chair (which he did), or stood until the women were seated (which Luisa insists he should have done).
“I have news!” I clap my hands together, vying for their attention. “I found the perfect place for our trial run.” They stop their banter to look at me, their expressions expectant. “This morning, as I was dragging my recycling bin to the corner—”
“Jesus. What’s the headline, Holly?” Luisa cuts in.
“My neighbor Aunt Edna rushed over,” I continue, ignoring her, “calling out that she wasjust desperatefor someone to drive her to Madison next weekend for the bridge ladies’ event of the season.” I pause for effect, thrilled that the universe must find our cause just, because it had dropped the perfect invitation into our laps. “Judy Swanson’s Annual Kentucky Derby Party,” I exclaim.
