Killer Punch by Amy Korman

resistance from the older members, was now a huge hit at the club and quite affordable at just $9.95.
    It’s one of the few club events that fits in my meager budget. Actually, I can’t afford the club at all, and there’s no chance I could pay my annual membership fee, given that I’m behind on rent at the shop and AmEx has been calling my house incessantly about my past due charges. Somehow, though, my club dues are fully up-­to-­date—­Ronnie insists that my grandparents prepaid my fees for several years in advance, but I know it had to have been Holly.
    â€œWhere’s Eula?” asked Bootsie, popping up at my elbow. She looked very pretty tonight, I noticed, in her standard party outfit of Talbots cotton shift dress and flat sandals. She’d added some dangly earrings, and even gone for a swipe of pink lipstick.
    â€œI’ve got a plan to get her drunk, then drive her home and search the parts of her house that I couldn’t see when I was in her tree on Thursday,” Bootsie said. “I did a little legwork outside her house today. It’s one story, but there’s an attic, and it looks like she’s got a secret painting studio up there. I aimed my binoculars at her second floor window, and I’m pretty sure I saw an easel!”
    Just then, Sophie and Joe showed up, and I quickly told them about Eula’s surprising hobby of selling paintings at Stoltzfus’s. Naturally, Joe agreed with Bootsie that Eula was the mastermind behind the Heifer heist.
    â€œWhere’s Gerda?” I asked, hoping she might be skipping the party.
    â€œWe just dropped her off at Barclay’s place,” Sophie told me, wriggling nervously in a silk caftan, while Joe headed for the bar. “She’s going to work on figuring out his new e-­mail password tonight.”
    â€œHey, everyone,” shouted Chef Gianni, limping out from his outdoor kitchen area while three waiters followed him bearing trays of delicious-­smelling tiny plates of pasta. The chef waved his crutch for emphasis as a crowd of arriving guests paused, gazing admiringly and sniffing the air. “My duck ragout is finally ready! Gianni got stabbed, but he don’t give up!”
    Waiters began passing the little plates of pasta to guests, along with tiny silver forks and linen napkins. More servers followed, bearing glasses of some delicious-­looking red wine, and Gianni personally helped hand out the snacks to the little crowd of early party guests, doling out kisses to the ladies and doing some greetings of the back-­slapping variety to husbands.
    I instantly forgot the fact that I don’t eat duck, and dug in. The food was so delicious that the group actually cheered.
    â€œGianni try to be modest, but I killing it with this pasta!” the chef said.
    Then he indicated Skipper’s burrito setup, which did look a little flat next to Gianni’s modern-­Italian tour de force. Gianni made a skeptical face as Abby and two other waitresses loading up trays with Skipper’s mini-­tacos and tiny shrimp tostados.
    â€œI feel like I’m at, what you call it, Taco Bell!” yelled Gianni to the admiring crowd of club members. “What is this, Skipper, refried beans? Maybe I’m at Chipotle!”
    â€œThese are organic black beans sautéed in a chili oil, and we have some heirloom tomatoes and fresh cilantro that we grew ourselves in the club’s veggie garden. Of course, we make our own tortillas, and the meats are free-­range chicken and grass-­fed beef . . .”
    Skipper wiped some sweat from his brow.
    Just then, a huge sheepdog ran up to the gas grill where Skipper and his team were basting a hefty piece of beef. Skipper’s signature burrito filling, a flank steak, had floated its smoky, yummy scent out past the sycamores and the laurel hedges, and the sheepdog sat down by the grill, panting and slobbering.
    I knew this dog: It