All's Well That Ends (7 page)

Unfortunately, she hadn’t found a way to cover the air, and the stale cigarette smell of the house was so overpowering, there’d been a danger of secondhand smoke even before she lit up. “No, of course not,” I said. “It’s your house.”

“Well, thank you kindly. I like your attitude, but some people are so damned self-righteous, and I was raised to try to be polite.” She exhaled a plume of smoke, then eyed me. “So,” she said. “I don’t know what’s under dispute, but let me make something perfectly clear. Phoebe gave me the eagle. I admired it, it being the American symbol and all, and she gave it to me. Flat out, no strings, and for keeps. She had so many beautiful things.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said, “that isn’t . . . there isn’t a question about your eagle.”

By now, she’d gone to a corner shelf and retrieved a porcelain bird five or six inches tall. “See?” she said. “It’s got this little flag in its talons. I thought it was cute, but I didn’t mean for her to give it to me. She did, though. The next day, walked over here and gave it to me. Could have knocked me over with a feather, you could have.” She considered her remark, and laughed.

“Funny, that, isn’t it? Feathers when I’m talking about an eagle.”

I smiled and nodded, then assured her there was no problem with the bird. Meantime, I wondered when the gift had been be-49

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stowed and whether Phoebe had given other things away. Wasn’t that supposedly a sign of suicidal plans?

“Well, if not that,” Ramona Fulgham said, settling into her sofa corner, the eagle in one hand, and a cigarette laden with ash in the other. “If not that, then what is it about Phoebe Ennis?”

“I’m not at liberty to be precise, but there’s some question about identifying a recent visitor to her home, so if—”

“Hah!” she said with no mirth. “No surprise. Which one?”

Her laugh produced a brief coughing spell, after which she laughed again. Despite the chortling, Ramona did not seem to be expressing joy or approval.

“I take it there were many visitors?”

“Many? Many? Lord help us all! It was . . . well, far be it from me to speak ill of the dead, or to imply anything bad about the poor soul, but I was surprised to hear she was depressed enough to kill herself. Unless all those people were psychiatrists making house calls!” She laughed and coughed again. “Otherwise, it looked to me as if she was having quite a good time, going out or having company in, nearly every night. But I’m not saying anything was wrong; they might have been relatives. Or people paying their condolences.” This last was said with eyebrows raised, to make sure I understood that she in no way believed what she was saying.

“So these—these visitors—were a fairly recent occurence?”

She shook her head. “Not while she was married, of course.

Not the men, at least. I’m not implying anything of the sort. At least, not that I know of. But I am a widow myself, and I know how terrible it is to lose a husband, so I was surprised by how quickly she, um, bounced back, shall we say, from her state of grief.”

“She’s been a widow for a while now,” I murmured. “Didn’t Mr. Ennis die last January?”

Ramona looked stern. “Not even a full year yet. She’s been going out and having visitors for months now, too. But far be it from me to criticize anybody’s method of handling grief. We all GILLIAN ROBERTS

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have to find our own ways, so I’d never say having all those people over and going out so much was improper and unseemly behavior.”

Of course she was saying precisely that. She was apophasing—

mentioning something by saying it wouldn’t be mentioned. I knew that thanks to Opal Codd. Sometimes her ridiculous words were actually useful.

“You must understand,” Ramona said with great earnestness,

“losing a husband and being on her own wasn’t exactly a new experience for her, the way it was for me, so maybe . . .”

I let the idea of Phoebe’s suddenly-single-again expertise pass me by. Then I said, “About how many people would you say visited her in the past month?”

Ramona slowly shook her head and looked thoughtful.

“Men and women? Because women visited, too. Don’t mean to imply only men. Women friends. I’d see them arrive, all fixed up, and Phoebe would be in her finery—she really knew how to dress, although she gave up on wearing black real quick, at least in the daytime. I mean she wore black, but she wore it the way women dressing up always wear black, not as a widow. But when the women came, they’d go out together, mostly. On the town, you know?”

“Any idea of how many?”

“I couldn’t say. I’m not the type to spy on a neighbor or keep track. The houses are close together, but I’m not always where I would know if somebody came. But I’d say a person every day, just about. As far as I could tell. But I don’t know if there were repeats. Who is this person you’re looking for? An heir? Maybe if you described him or her, I could think back and remember something. I believe she had a son.”

I sighed. “Do you know where Phoebe and her callers went when they left here? Women or men? Any special place or places?”

“How would . . . ?” She shook her head. “I only meant they were all dressed up and I never saw her in church, so I assumed . . .

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I surely didn’t mean anything else. Probably just cheering her up.

A widow needs her friends, I can tell you that, and I know from bitter experience. Trust me. The world of couples certainly forgets all about you.”

I murmured sympathetically. “Would you consider yourself one of Mrs. Ennis’s friends, then?” I asked gently. “Did the two of you ever go out on the town?”

She set her mouth in a tight, small circle and shook her head.

“I tried. Tried to be a good neighbor. After all, I felt like somebody who could understand her trials, being in the same situation and all. I tried, and she was polite enough, but not close, do you understand what I’m saying?” She stubbed out the remnant of her cigarette. “Some might call her uppity, or a snob, too good for the rest of us here. All her talk about her ancestors and such, even though she admitted she wasn’t one thousand percent positive. If you aren’t, then why mention it, is what I wondered.

Napoleon, did you ever hear such a thing? Her family was from Ireland! She told me that herself, so where would they come to Napoleon, even if her imagination wasn’t running wild? I was too polite to note the inconsistency there, mind you, and in any case, who really cares—besides her, I mean? I’m not a name-caller, mind you, and all that talk—who did it hurt, is what I say. She thinks of herself as something special, well . . . who does it hurt?”

“When was this that she talked about her ancestors?” Ramona had said they didn’t go out together socially, and I couldn’t envision even Phoebe seeing this woman in the driveway and abruptly spouting her mishmosh of genealogical theories.

“One time, a few months ago, her husband had passed and maybe she was lonely. But in any case, she invited me and two other neighbors in for tea. You know she didn’t live here that long before he died, so nobody really knew her, and I thought this was her effort to finally really move into the neighborhood, you know? I thought a cup of tea—” She flicked a finger against the teacup on the end table. “In fact, would you like one? Where are my manners?”

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I demurred, thanking her, reminding her that I’d barged in on her and that, in any case, I wasn’t staying long. I hoped that would speed up her memories and get us to the night Phoebe died, but not all hopes are realized.

“Tea, I thought. A cup. How would I know different? But she meant the whole shebang. Like the Queen of England might have in the afternoon, with the little sandwiches and cookies.

And pretty china, I have to admit. And she talked about having inherited the set, which was quite grand, but it wasn’t clear if that was from the mister who just died, or an earlier husband, or her own family. And afterward, when we talked, we all had noticed that the silver service was monogrammed, but it wasn’t clear whose initials they were, unless the big ‘B’ in the middle of a lot of curlicues was one of her husbands’ initial and it was a souvenir from that marriage. Of course, you know she was married more than once, don’t you?”

I nodded. I also knew who the “B” in the alphabet of mates had been, although I would have said that Charlie Berg, Sasha’s father, would be more likely to want plastic implements. Dispos-ability was high on his list of priorites, certainly when it came to wives.

“So one of those marriages, maybe. It seemed rude and in-sensitive, given her recent widowhood, to ask why I knew her as Phoebe Ennis, and her silver had the wrong monogram. I mean what if she bought it secondhand somewhere?” She paused to light another cigarette, this time not bothering to ask if I minded.

“The thing was,” she continued after a deep drag, “she suggested that she was descended from royalty. That was the very way she put it. Royal blood flowing in the veins, the whole thing.

She said it as if it was a joke: Haha, look what it’s all come down to. And she said it was something her grandmother—who wasn’t all the way right in the head by then—had told her, but you know, she also sounded like she wanted us to believe it. Like she did, anyway, and like it mattered. I mean this is the United States of America. We don’t have royals here and we don’t want them, 53

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either, so what was that all about? That’s when I noticed the eagle with the flag, and commented on it, kind of a small reminder of what makes this country great. It was almost a relief, seeing something patriotic in her house after that la-di-dah talk.”

I mentally noted that the giving away had been relatively recent, since the tea party was after Phoebe was widowed.

“Unfortunately,” Ramona said, “the other two women she invited, Sally Molinari and Neva Sheffler, they tend to be judg-mental, something I try never to be. Nice women but dreadful talkers. Not mean, not really, not on purpose, but they do like a bit of gossip, so they told everybody she was hoity-toity, putting on airs or maybe a little crazy. I mean, what royalty would live on this block? That’s the kind of thing they said. It wasn’t right, if you ask me, because we had been drinking her tea and eating her little cakes. Not right to bite the hand that feeds you, as they say.

If you can’t say something nice, keep your mouth shut. And also, royal blood doesn’t mean you are still rich. It’s about the past. It doesn’t have anything to do with now. I’ve seen the movies, the ones showing how after the Russian Revolution, all those big-shot aristocrats were down and out in Paris.”

I tried not to smile, not so much at Ramona’s insistence on her charitable heart, but at the image of those émigrés. It was an image I remember Phoebe invoking all those years ago, when she was married to Sasha’s dad. Not that she said she was the missing czarina, but she identified with the threadbare former rulers of the universe. The wheel goes round, she’d say—too often—and where you wind up, nobody knows, and life was one long game of roulette. She hoped that what had gone down had to come up.

Something like that.

I had seldom paid attention to her genealogical flights of fancy, her supposed past. I was too enraptured by the ones having to do with my future, like her ridiculous assurances that I could have been a famous dancer if I’d started lessons sooner. Even then, I knew her words were pure nonsense. Along with every other little girl in my neighborhood, I had taken ballet lessons GILLIAN ROBERTS

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early on, and I was the one at recitals turning the wrong way or falling down. “No, no,” Phoebe would say, “there’s still time.

Modern dance, that’s it. You’d be elegant.” And then she’d find another glamorous and unlikely future for me—astronaut, secretary of state, courtesan.

“I hope I’m not sounding harsh, or mean-spirited,” Ramona said.

“Not at all, not at all.” I murmured further understanding and approval of the high moral ground on which she stood. “I was wondering if she—” I began, but Mrs. Fulgham was not finished.

“Some people don’t bother to consider the mental anguish somebody else might be going through, and why she might make things up, or exaggerate. I understand, because I’ve gone through it myself.”

“Of course,” I said. “But I was wondering—”

“Not that I myself made things up afterwards. I need to make that clear. So easy to misunderstand each other, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” I said again. “In fact, just so I’m clear—those other women, Sally and Neva—are they in the neighborhood, too?”

She nodded vigorously. “I thought I said—sure, they live on this block. Well, if you count all four sides of it. Sally’s over there, across the street.” She pointed toward the living-room window, aiming her finger to the left. “First house from the corner,” she said, “and Neva’s house is behind Phoebe’s. Their backyards touch, so to speak. Both been here for a long time, too.”

“Was Phoebe friendly with either of them before the tea, do you think?”

Ramona’s head pulled back a minute amount, but enough to convey the idea that I’d insulted her. “She wasn’t unfriendly, if that’s what you’re saying. And I’m sure—I mean a back-fence neighbor, you talk to sometimes. It’s summer and hot, and everybody’s barbecuing, but I don’t know if there was more than that. And Sally?”

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She shook her head. “Not more so than Phoebe was with me, and I was right next door. She wasn’t a neighborly type, if you don’t mind my saying so. Standoffish, you know? Didn’t let anybody get too close, even if somebody tried. But it takes all types, and a man’s home is his castle, and a woman’s, too. And she made that tea for us.”

I wrote down both the neighbors’ names and nodded.

“Thanks. This is helpful. About those other neighbors—”

“If you’re wondering because she left something to them in her will, well, I’d be surprised, is all.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

I’d almost forgotten my supposed mission. “Why is that?” I prompted, though I was sure she’d be surprised—and angry—