All's Well That Ends (8 page)

because she hadn’t been left anything.

She lit another cigarette again without asking, and inhaled deeply. “I mean,” she said in a cloud of exhaled smoke, “her possessions were quite special. Heirlooms, some of them, but even the ones that weren’t had meaning for her. Her treasures, she called them, making it a joke, but underneath, I think they were.

The things she collected—beautiful things, and so many. I can understand why she was proud. They were all souvenirs of her life, her adventures. Everything had meaning for her.

“I was so touched when she gave me the eagle. Do you see how beautifully it’s made, with every tiny talon clear as can be?

And the flag with its ripples? And when you’d compliment something, she’d tell you all about where she found it and what was going on with her at the time. That little eagle had been a gift during the Vietnam War. A suitor, or maybe one of her husbands.

She said his name, but I don’t recall it. So every single object was a treasure to her, because they held her memories.” She inhaled, looked down, shook her head, sighed out the smoke. “And what else do we have, when you get down to it?”

“Yes. So true,” I said, leaving the politics of why the other neighborhood women should not, by Ramona’s rights, have in-GILLIAN ROBERTS

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herited any of those memory-treasures. “I guess you must have been in her house several times, enough times to learn about the different pieces.”

She shrugged. “I’d stopped by, as I said, after she lost her husband. Brought a cake one time, asked her to go to a church social with me another. She declined, invited her over another time, but she couldn’t make it. So no, not that often.”

“And about those other visitors, the ones you didn’t know.

Did she talk about them with you? Tell you their names, or how they came to be in her life?” She did it for whoever was associated with a pathetic-looking, flag-waving eagle, I mentally reminded the universe. For heaven’s sake, she could do it for the humans in her life as well and make my mission easier.

“You mean that day when we had the tea?” Ramona asked.

“Did she talk about her other friends that day?”

“That day or any of the other days when you stopped in, or had a little chat outside.”

“No. Never.”

Nice that she’d needed to know which date I was talking about in order to say no, never.

“Not that I mentioned taking note of them to her, you see. I didn’t want her to think I was prying, and if she’d wanted me to know, she’d have told me. It’s only that I’d hear the automobile door and think it was somebody for me—the houses are close, as you can see. Her driveway and carport are right beside mine, and almost in my living room. Otherwise, I wouldn’t know. They were quiet, the visitors. And most times, they went out somewhere else. No carrying on. I didn’t mean to suggest any such thing.”

“No, no, of course. One last question: The night she passed away, were you home?”

“It was a weeknight, wasn’t it? Which night, do you recall?”

“A Thursday evening.” Unless happenings were a lot more dramatic on Hutchinson Court than I had reason to think, it was difficult for me to believe this woman wouldn’t recall in minute 57

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and excruciating detail where she’d been, what she’d seen, and what night of the week it had been when her secondary source of entertainment, her next door neighbor, had killed herself.

“Oh wait, of course. It was a Thursday. Yes, I saw her briefly.

She was all gussied up. High heels and lots of jewelry, and I must say, though events proved otherwise, that I would
never
have suspected that she was feeling low. She was cordial and seemed quite contented.”

“What was she doing when you spoke with her?”

“Taking the trash to the curb.”

“In her high heels and jewelry?”

Ramona Fulgham grimaced. “What are you going to do when there’s no man of the house? I remember because she said she always forgets until it’s too late at night to want to go outside and take care of it. I understood, because when your husband passes away, things like that become sad reminders of what he would have done. Not that I would have wanted to take out the trash in my dress shoes, or with clean hands and all. Don’t want those smells on us, do we? I try to do it in the afternoon if I’m going out at night, like I was that night. But then, I’m not—I was not, I guess—Phoebe Ennis. To each his own.”

Again I agreed, and waited while Mrs. Fulgham spent a moment looking as if she were remembering all the glorious Thursday nights that somebody else had taken the trash can down to the curb. “Did she in any way mention her plans for the evening?” I finally asked.

“Not in any detail, not with anything specific. But I do recall she said something about having a surprise visitor. Just like that, she said, or maybe I said something about how pretty she looked, and she said, ‘Ramona, I was all prepared to have a quiet night home alone, but in fact, I have a surprise visitor this evening.’ And she winked at me, and I knew that was my cue to keep my mouth shut, so I said I hoped it was a good surprise, and I didn’t ask anything, and she just winked again and didn’t say anything more.”

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“She didn’t make it clear whether it was a male or female?”

Ramona Fulgham shook her head. Then she raised her eyebrows. “But . . . that wink, you know. And the good earrings—

those diamond studs of hers. And the shoes.”

“You think it was a man, then.”

She raised her eyebrows once more and didn’t bother to say anything.

“When she went out with her women friends, did she dress differently?”

Ramona’s eyes widened, then she frowned, squinted. And then she sighed. “I suppose you’re right. She pretty much looked like that no matter who was coming calling.” She frowned again.

“And I suppose you didn’t have a chance to find out who, in fact, it was. Didn’t you hear the car pull up?”

“It was Thursday!”

“I don’t understand.”

“Bingo night. I saw her because I was getting ready to go—

waiting outside for my ride. It was Theresa’s turn to drive, and she’s always on time, so off we went.”

“What time did Theresa show up?”

“Seven p.m. sharp, like always. Takes fifteen minutes, then you have to buy in and find a good place. Theresa and me, we like to sit at the table right in front of the caller. Easier to hear, you know, and Theresa’s beginning to have problems with that.

And we have regular friends who sit there, too, so there’s a little talk, catching up on everybody’s doings. It’s fun, and then, you’re ready to roll at seven-thirty.”

I couldn’t think of anything else to ask Ramona, unless it was about Bingo. Interview over with no real information except a deeper conviction that people can use a staggering amount of words to say nothing.

Despite my impulsive decision about the stiletto heels, I was convinced that, as Gertrude Stein had said about something else, there was “no there there.” And if there was nothing there to be 59

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revealed, then maybe this dull interview was actually progress, because it proved my point.

“Thank you so much for your time,” I said as I stood up. “I hope you did well at Bingo that night, too.”

She smiled. “I’d been on a winning streak, but that night capped it. Won my age times ten. I won’t say how much that was, but it’s a night I’ll always remember.”

“I hadn’t realized you could win that much. I mean not that you’re old—but my age times ten. I hadn’t realized . . .”

“Oh my, yes. And much more, depending on the game and the place. There’s one coming up that will pay ten thousand dollars. That one’s too rich for my blood, but Bingo’s a fine way to spend a few hours for not much money. Theresa and me, we go with twenty dollars each to spend, and that’s it. So it’s a bargain, too.”

I hadn’t learned much about Phoebe, but the possibilities of Bingo—that was news to me.

Five

Ihad a long night ahead of looking at Phoebe’s detritus, so I thought I’d check out the other two women first. I hoped they were as gossip prone as Ramona Fulgham had insisted she herself was not. I popped in, told Sasha my plan, and popped back out.

We were approaching dinnertime, so I was disappointed when nobody answered my knock at Sally Molinari’s house.

Lights were on inside, and music played, but either she was hiding from me, which was unlikely, or she was one of the people who worked hard to disguise the fact that she wasn’t home.

I walked around the corner, then around again, and counted houses until I was sure I was behind Phoebe’s house. Luckily, the architect had been a bit anal, and each house had precisely the same shape and size lot, so that they lined up tidily.

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The windows must face each other in the back, I realized. So forget the fence. Unless somebody had huge plantings, a great deal could be observed from the comfort of one’s kitchen window, assuming all the houses had the same configuration as Ramona’s had. Or so I hoped, although I mostly hoped for definitive proof that Phoebe had, indeed, taken her own life. Mackenzie has taught me that most times, whatever seems the logical and obvious explanation of an event is, indeed, the logical and obvious explanation. It is also generally the truth. As upsetting as Sasha would find that conclusion, it would, at least, be a conclusion and something with which she could deal.

I rang the bell and a teen with long hair answered. He said nothing, but looked at me inquisitively, waiting. I introduced myself, and said I was with the offices of Ozzie Bright, which I’d finally realized sounded better than Bright Investigations, and also left some mystery as to what sort of offices they might be. I asked for Neva Sheffler.

He looked surprised. “Mom?” he asked, then “Mom!” he yelled, facing me. “Somebody for you!” He still looked surprised that anyone new would appear at the door for his mother.

A woman with salt-and-pepper hair came out of the back of the house. “Yes?” she asked, but before I could answer, she looked at her son. “How many times have I asked you to come quietly and tell me if somebody’s at the door?”

He shrugged and sauntered off.

Once again, I offered up a string of words in lieu of an honest explanation of why I was there.

“Phoebe Ennis? Why would you be—what is it you’re doing again? Investigating what?”

“There’s some confusion about the disposition of her estate,”

I said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. There was the division of the profit on the house to be settled, and I at least was confused about how that would work out, given Dennis-the-Jerk’s personality.

“Really? Then how could I possibly help you?” She waved me in and I looked at the same architectural bones I’d seen in Ra-GILLIAN ROBERTS

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mona’s house, but here, bright solids in rust, yellow, and deep green brought the room alive. And rather than being covered and hidden and protected, the furniture showed the comfortable scars of being used. I admired the spray of autumn leaves in a low vase on her coffee table.

“I waxed them,” Neva said. “Remember pressing leaves in el-ementary school? It’s the same idea. Lasts a long time, too.” Then she smiled expectantly, and held the expression. Enough of meaningless pleasantries, it said. High time for me to make some sense of my presence.

“I was wondering if you knew Phoebe Ennis well, given your location here—her back-fence neighbor, if that isn’t too old-fashioned an expression.”

She shook her head. “We’ve got backyards, and we’ve got fences. But we’ve got dryers, too, instead of those clotheslines our mothers had, so you don’t get that casual back and forth while those ladies clipped and shook out and unclipped and folded, the way my mother said she used to do.”

“So you and she had no chance to become friends.”

Neva Sheffler raised her eyebrows, pushed her chin forward, and shook her head gently, side to side, as if evaluating what the word “friend” meant and, more specifically, meant to me. I had to wonder why such an innocuous question required such deliberation. “You realize there was quite an age difference,” she finally said. “I knew her husband more than I knew her—not that I knew him in any real way, either. But I’d see him in the garden.

He seemed to like to go out there with a book and sit in the sun, and if I was out puttering, we’d exchange pleasantries. Pity about his dying. Much too young to go.”

“And Phoebe?”

“Pity about her, too, of course,” she said. “She was even younger, and to be in such despair . . .”

“I meant, did you get to know her at all?”

“We talked,” she finally said. “Now and then. Also mostly 63

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after meeting by accident, pruning the roses, raking leaves, or bumping into each other at the market. That kind of thing.”

“But you had tea with her one time, too, I understand.”

She laughed. “You’ve been talking with Ramona. She’s the one can tell you every detail of what’s going on around these parts. She has so little to think about, I swear, she has every minute of her life emblazoned on her brain.”

“She says she didn’t know Mrs. Ennis very well.”

Neva compressed her lips and did a half nod to the right, as if to say “Who did?” “She was a woman of mystery, I guess. Besides, she wasn’t here long enough to really dig in. It takes a few years to become part of a neighborhood. And if she had, it wouldn’t have been with me. We’re different generations. In fact, I’d be the least likely person in the whole neighborhood, because they’re all either her generation, or young marrieds. These seem to be starter or finisher houses. In any case, nobody around here’s my age. My husband walked out on us seven years ago, and probably if he hadn’t, we’d have moved to a bigger place, too. But I didn’t have that option. Hard enough to take care of Jimmy and his sister, and pay the taxes on this place and the daycare when his sister needed it, and to hang on to a job with the economy going all to hell and . . . On the other hand, there’s lots of babysitting opportunities for Lizzie. She’s the only teen in town.” She shook her head and sighed. “Jimmy could sit, too, but he doesn’t want to. Instead, he blames me for the lack of kids his age. Everything’s my fault.”