The Yoga Club Read online

  hatting it up with bendy WASPs is the last thing on Coco Guthrie’s mind during her 8:30 a.m. yoga class. Having made her fortune as the world-renowned inventor of Butt-B-Gone derriere cream, Coco still doesn’t feel like she belongs among the upper class—until she attends the swankiest Halloween soiree in Greenwich, Connecticut, where three of her fellow morning yogis shared her brilliant idea to appear as Sarah Palin.

  Soon it’s clear that a love of stretching isn’t all this accidental sorority—which includes a single mom with echolalia, an entertainment reporter who charms the pants off handsome stars, and a drama-prone producer with a taste for drag—have in common.

  When the four mischievous Sarahs wander away from the party to sneak a peek at the mayor’s neighboring estate, they are stunned to find him adorned in leather and latex, and rolling up a woman’s body in a Persian rug. To make matters worse, someone has spotted the spying Palins. Someone who threatens to expose their torrid affairs in business and the bedroom. Now the un-likely foursome must use all their wits and wiles to get to the bottom of the kinky crime. But will their budding friendship be strong enough to protect their deepest secrets?

  “A delightful romp perfect for slipping into your yoga bag and sharing with friends.”

  —LAURIE GWEN SHAPIRO,

  author of The Matzo Ball Heiress

  COOPER LAWRENCE is a radio and television personality who has been featured in countless newspapers and magazines for her unique expertise on celebrity culture. She is the author of five nonfiction books. The Yoga Club is her first novel. She lives in New York City.

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  “The perfect stoop read! I love to laugh, and this book provided ample opportunity. So now, I’m in love with a book…. this book. Is that weird? Don’t tell my husband.”

  —Cat Greenleaf, NBC’s Talk Stoop with Cat Greenleaf

  I’m not trying to be rude, but don’t we need to discuss this?” Coco opened the newspaper, knowing full well that dread was written all over her face. Right there on the front of the “On the Town” section were Sarah Palins One through Four. And a moose.

  CJ looked closely at the photo. “How cute we look!”

  “Why aren’t you freaking out?” Coco asked. “We saw what we thought we saw, he knows we were there, and now he knows our names.”

  Olivia began to freak out, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!”

  “So now you have Tourette’s too?” CJ said snidely.

  Olivia quivered. “That’s not funny. Oh, god, we’re totally screwed.”

  “Girl, relax, we were all in drag. Nobody’s coming after us. We’re going to be fine. Have a Xanax,” CJ said, pulling a bottle from his pocket.

  “Oh, god, I hope we aren’t going to be killed. I would hate it if this was the last picture taken of me!” Olivia said.

  CJ smirked. “Oh, not me, girl. I looked fierce!”

  Also by Cooper Lawrence

  The Cult of Celebrity

  The Cult of Perfection

  The Fixer-Upper Man

  Been There, Done That, Kept the Jewelry

  Gallery Books

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Cooper Lawrence

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsover. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Gallery Books trade paperback edition December 2011

  GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Davina Mock-Maniscalco

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lawrence, Cooper.

  The yoga club / Cooper Lawrence.—1st Gallery Books trade paperback ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Yoga—Fiction. 2. WASPs (Persons)—Fiction. 3. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. 4. Greenwich (Conn.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3612.A946Y64 2012

  813'.6—dc22

  2011017655

  ISBN 978-1-4391-8727-2

  ISBN 978-1-4391-8728-9 (ebook)

  For Joe

  Acknowledgments

  My friend Anne once said to me, “Don’t just live your dreams, live your wildest dreams.” Great advice for sure—but what she didn’t tell me was that living your wildest dreams usually requires a collection of special and valuable people in order to make those dreams happen. For me that would be the incredibly talented team at Gallery whose support is the most precious commodity a writer can have.

  Thank you to Anthony Ziccardi, my champion and ministering angel from the start. My deepest gratitude to my generous publisher Louise Burke, the wonderful Jen Bergstrom, the quiet genius Jen Robinson, and the magnificent design talents of Janet Perr.

  Lucky is the writer who gets to work with one of the most admired and hard-working editors in the industry, Abby Zidle. Thank you, Abby, for getting my jokes, being available whether I had a real question or just wanted to gossip, and always using your powers for good and not evil.

  I have to say a special thank-you to Sean and Jon Lee, who are the most generous supportive people I have ever met. Thank you to my radio gurus Scott Shannon and Todd Pettengill, whose humor keeps me motivated every single morning.

  Since The Yoga Club is about friendship, I wouldn’t dream of missing an opportunity to thank my true friends, Emily, Stacy, Jeffre, Liz, Adam, Kim, Eric, and Cheryl, whose friendship and love I take with me every day. Thank you to my parents, Sandi and Robert, who early on called me their “blue-chip investment,” and thank you to the person I may be the most indebted to, my partner Joe Clarke, who gets me like nobody ever has.

  I am beyond grateful to you all.

  CONTENTS

  ONE All Hallows’ Eve

  TWO Peepers

  THREE 8:30 Yoga

  FOUR The Unwanted Visitor

  FIVE Michael Bublé

  SIX Corrupt Cops

  SEVEN The Nervous Nelly

  EIGHT Rao’s and Rivals

  NINE Scooby-Doo and Malcolm Too

  TEN The Yoga Club

  ELEVEN The Hubris of Power

  TWELVE The Hideous Color Purple

  THIRTEEN When Bailey Met Gertie

  FOURTEEN Yoga for Breakfast

  FIFTEEN Threesomes with the Foursome

  SIXTEEN The Gert Locker

  SEVENTEEN As Far as the Gay Crow Flies

  EIGHTEEN And the Dogs Came Running

  NINETEEN Dial BDS-M for Murder

  Epilogue

  Reading Group Guide

  One

  All Hallows’ Eve

  He OD�
��d on the first day of the tour! Can you imagine?”

  Coco couldn’t imagine. She couldn’t really even focus on what was being said, because she was trying to figure out if the guy speaking was an actual fifty-seven-year-old hippie or if he was dressed as one for this godforsaken Halloween party Rory had lured her to. The overly tie-dyed shirt said “costume” but the David Crosby—style goatee and smell of patchouli said “lifestyle.”

  “The tour manager sets him up with Nestlé Crunch by the truckload—y’know when these guys are in Nar-Anon they need chocolate. Tons of it.”

  The whine in his voice was a song of discontent and passive aggression, like that of an authentic boomer. “So anyway there’s a crowd of about forty thousand people screaming his name and the dirtbag is backstage mainlining with some dickhead roadie instead of eating his chocolate, and he friggin’ OD’s! Completely wiped out my investment.”

  Coco gazed on, wondering if this guy could have been likable once, back when he had hair and a social conscience. No question, she thought—at some point in his life, this guy had vowed to never let the Man keep him down. No, instead he became the Man, in spite of that nasty little soul patch on his chin. Yep, she thought, classic new-money Greenwich.

  Nothing grated on Coco’s nerves more than hypocrisy—and this town ran on it like it was diesel fuel—so the moment she saw her business partner, Rory, enter the room, she moved to join him. After all, he was the host of this dreadful Halloween party and the sole reason she’d shown up. The sooner she could make nice with him, the sooner she could return home for some quality time with the dogs and Sam. Coco really wasn’t cut out for these events. No matter how perfectly coiffed her hair, how expensive her shoes or house, she always felt less than. The Greenwich upper class had a remarkable knack for sniffing out those who didn’t truly belong, then making sure they were aware that they didn’t. Coco probably didn’t want to anyway.

  Rory was one of the few in this set she could respect. He worked incredibly hard despite having made his money the old-fashioned way: by inheriting it. Even though he was a Thomson, of the Canadian Thomsons who owned Reuters, he still got up early every day and worked for what he got paid. And, unlike typical Greenwich blowhards, he was discreet. “Work is like masturbation,” he would say. “Everyone does it, but nobody should be talking about it.”

  Coco was grateful it was a costume party. She didn’t feel as raw and exposed as usual, being in costume. She had decided to go as Sarah Palin, since any crack about looking nouveau riche or white trash would only be a referendum on how well she’d prepared for the role.

  Rory was dressed as Superman, which fit Coco’s view of him. To her, he fell somewhere between mentor and savior. Though she’d been no Eliza Doolittle when she first crossed his path, without him she never would have properly capitalized on her success, or learned to live with her sudden wealth. Butt-B-Gone, her derriere-shrinking cream—available not just on late-night infomercials anymore but also on QVC—was responsible for turning her rags into rubies. It was Rory who’d found her at an As Seen On TV trade show at the Javits Center in New York. The two hit it off instantly at a demonstration for vibrating underpants because…. well…. who can stand quietly while watching a male model squirm in his underwear? Rory was willing to invest in Coco because he had a gut feeling about her. He insisted that she wasn’t a fly-by-night huckster on a lucky streak but someone who could “live the life”—and make him money. There’s no free lunch in this town.

  Rory’s outfit wasn’t your schlubby, packaged Superman gear from Ricky’s. He was wearing one of the original costumes George Reeves wore in the TV series: boots, cape, red underwear, and all. It even came with that special musty wardrobe smell. Naturally, his wife was dressed as Lois Lane. Though, to be honest, were she not standing next to Rory, she’d have looked like a mousy temp from the secretarial pool.

  “Well, well, Coco! You look pretty sharp for a woman who died in Paris last week. What was it I read? ‘Scarf caught in wheel of car’? You pulled an Isadora Duncan?” Rory chuckled.

  “Washing machine,” Coco said, straightening her pencil skirt. “Spin and die cycle.”

  “Oh, right, washing machine. Pretty ironic for a woman who hasn’t done her own laundry in ten years. Okay, let’s go find the reporters.” Rory wasted no time getting down to business.

  It seemed that in Paris a week earlier a woman named Katherine Guthrie had indeed choked to death while leaning over a washing machine; her scarf caught in the works, becoming an unintended noose, and in moments she was dead. News spread that Katherine “Coco” Guthrie, world-renowned inventor of Butt-B-Gone, was the one who died, and for a moment Coco had considered not telling anyone that it wasn’t her. There were times when she’d wanted to go back to her former quiet, normal life. She dreamed of refound anonymity, where she and Sam could get things right—start anew, take different names, new identities; like a witness protection program for people who had achieved sudden fame and frequently regretted it. No such luck. The news had sent her company’s stock plummeting, and though Rory was a decent guy, he wasn’t going to lose millions on a rumor so easy to dispel. Besides, only he had the juice to arrange an impromptu press conference at his own Halloween party.

  So there they were: Sarah Palin, Superman, and Lois Lane in a makeshift pressroom, setting the record straight about Katherine Guthrie. Back to the limelight.

  When the Q & A ended, Coco looked across the room and thought for a second there was a mirror. She’d spotted another sophisticated power updo hovering above those signature Tootsie glasses: a second Sarah Palin. Good god, really? Now it was definitely time to go. Business was finished and there was no reason to linger.

  But then, not two feet from the first updo, she saw the sharp tailored edges, wide shoulders, and stiffness of yet another northern blight. At this point Coco was both mildly embarrassed and intrigued. Two was embarrassing; three was amusing.

  Nonetheless, home beckoned, so she sought out Rory for a quick good-bye, sending her best to Lois—which, ironically, was actually his wife’s name—who had vanished into the amalgam of overpriced, underwhelming rented costumes.

  Good-byes accomplished, moments from freedom, steps away from the valet, she felt a dainty hand grab her arm. Lois Lane. Damn. Lois wanted one last photo op. Coco figured more photographic proof that she was not, in fact, dead or in Paris was probably good business, so she followed along. Passing by a particularly boisterous and chatty group, Lois reached in and grabbed yet another Sarah Palin.

  “Coco, this is my darling nephew CJ,” Lois said and beamed.

  And, voil´, there she was face-to-face with her fourth Sarah of the evening, though earlier in the day this one had been a man. But, wow! He was stunningly beautiful. How do they do it? Lois herded them out to the backyard, grabbing the other Palins as she went.

  “Gather ye Sarahs while ye may!” she sang. “Coco, CJ, meet Olivia and Bailey. Or should I say Sarah and Sarah? I think it would be just dahling to have a picture of you four by the banyan tree. Isn’t that tree just precious? And what a lovely evening. It’s not cold at all!”

  Coco remembered what it was about Lois Thomson that drove her nuts. Overuse of words like precious, darling, and lovely brought a bitter bile to her throat. In Coney Island, where she grew up, that sort of talk would have gotten her a well-deserved beating. While Rory was down-to-earth despite his wealth, Lois embraced every affectation, making her not only impossible to have a real, candid discussion with, but completely unbearable.

  On their way out to the backyard, Lois also lassoed the photographer from the Greenwich Ledger, who remembered seeing someone inside dressed as a moose and promptly headed back into the party to find the beast for his photo. Lois scurried behind, leaving Coco with the other three Sarahs under the banyan tree.

  CJ spoke first. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “If you tell me, will it still be a secret? And speaking of secrets, isn’t your dad….” Coco asked. She kn
ew that Lois’s sister was married to a bigwig politician.

  “Cute. Yes, he’s William Skoda, GOP governor candidate.” CJ sighed. “But let’s not worry about him tonight, ’kay? I’m the only governor who counts right now.” There didn’t seem to be a big love there, so Coco left it. “Anyway, that Zorro in there, did you see him?”

  “What about him?”

  “Well! He may be one hundred percent accountant under that swashbuckling costume, but he is a huge Mary. Don’t let the M-R-S fool you, that boy works it on the down low…. and from the bottom at that.”

  “Come again?” asked a shocked-sounding Sarah, the one Coco thought was Olivia.

  CJ, happy to accommodate, chirped, “A Mary. A mo. You know—a nancy boy. Gawd, this town, no one here is who they seem at all. Nuh-uh.”

  Coco leaned in to Olivia and said in a loudish stage whisper, “I think what he’s saying is the masked man’s secretly a gay. And apparently he likes to be on the receiving end in his interludes.”

  “Yikes! But Mary? Why do you call him that? Is that what he goes by when he’s, you know…. being gay?” Olivia asked.

  “No, no. It’s a thing from the eighties, when we used to cruise city parks, gay bars, and rest stops. Everyone was just Mary because you weren’t with them long enough to learn their names.”

  “Oh, my god!” Olivia blurted, then clapped a hand over her mouth as her overrouged cheeks reddened even more. “Gosh, you’re really beautiful, by the way,” she said after a pause, smiling with embarrassment.

  “Well, thanks, honey. But beauty is pain, you know. Between the girdle and the pantyhose, this outfit is like a cheap hotel. There’s no ball room!” CJ replied. The girls guffawed.

  This caught Sarah Palin the Fourth’s attention, causing her to look up from her BlackBerry midsentence.

  “Wait, I know you!” she said, looking toward them. “Aren’t you in my eight thirty yoga class?”