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.”
“The teen years are rough, but they do grow up,” I said.
“Yeah. Right. And become men! Some improvement! He’ll become like his father, who created the whole mess.”
“Not necessarily,” I said softly. “I don’t mean about his father creating the mess, but about his turning out like him. You’ll see.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but how would you know? You don’t know him. Besides, you look barely out of your teens yourself.”
I smiled. Poor woman had too much on her plate. “I am well out of them, and my twenties as well. I work with teens every day, and then, when I go out and see the teens of the past, I realize that they do grow up and out of it.”
“An investigator who works with teens? Why? I’m confused now. You a social worker? Looking for a runaway, a juvenile delinquent, what? And what would that have to do with Phoebe Ennis?”
My incredibly big mouth and tiny brain. “A special program,” I improvised. “I’m part of an outreach program for a few months, but it’s not the usual thing I do. This is more what I do.”
That seemed to satisfy her enough for her to let me continue. “I was wondering, whether you saw or met any of Mrs. Ennis’s friends?”
She shook her head. “Look, to make things perfectly clear, here’s the big difference between me and people like Ramona and most of the other people her age around here. They’re retired or never worked outside the home. Me, I work. Every single weekday, I’m gone. And on Saturday, I’m gone, too. That’s when I have to do every chore, buy the kids whatever, sometimes go to their games, stock the pantry—And on Sunday, I’m near death. Sometimes we get in the car and go see my folks, who are two hours away, but mostly, I hole up with the papers and coffee and try not to move a muscle. So I don’t know what goes on outside my home. Besides, I’m not interested. Right now, that sulky teenager and his sister are the only people I’m watching, and let me tell you, they’re enough.”
“I take it, then, you did not meet any of her friends,” I said quietly.
She sighed. “Not really.” She frowned and thought. “Well, maybe once. Late this past summer there was, you know…By accident—I was in the yard, and she was in hers, with this woman. It stuck in my mind because it looked at first like two friends having lemonade or something stronger at her white, wrought-iron table. I always admired that table. But then I realized—I mean you could see from the way they were sitting, all stiff, and rigid-like—that it wasn’t any casual, friendly talk in the garden. But that was months ago.”
“Could you get any sense of what it was about?”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t about to go hang over the fence. I didn’t even say hello. It would have been rude, and why would I interrupt them, anyway? I went about my business and went back into the house.”
“The other woman, do you remember her age, or what she looked like?”
She shrugged. “A redhead. Not naturally, but a pretty good dye job. Probably around Phoebe’s age, so what would that be—her fifties? A little older? She had that cared-for look. A little on the plump side, but well maintained. I don’t know anything about brands and designer things, but everything she was wearing—her skirt, which was filmy and long and patterned, and her blouse and even her hair—it all looked like the things I’d like to buy but can’t afford. The stuff that looks easy and casual but costs a fortune? She looked that way. And she didn’t look like she’d live in our kinds of houses. You know what I mean?”
I thought I did, and I was glad I’d been deputized for this interview, not Mackenzie, who’d have been privately breathing fire at the woman’s vagueness. But I knew what “being taken care of” looked like, and Phoebe’s redheaded business partner Merilee had that look. And was, in fact, quite pampered, at least till recently. Until late summer when she might well have begun an ongoing feud with Phoebe.
Of course, Phoebe could have known any number of slightly plump well-maintained women, and might have been at odds with one of them for reasons having nothing to do with her death.
“And I saw a couple of men going to her house. I can see her driveway from here, but all I can see is that a person’s there, not how they look. They were just…men.” She stood up, and gestured for me to join her as she walked through the small dining room into the kitchen. And we both stood at the window, looking out at darkness, although there were lights on in Phoebe’s house.
“See? If I’m washing dishes or cleaning up and somebody happens to be parking their car and the headlights catch my eye, then I can see something. Maybe. But nothing like features at this distance.”
It felt like an itch inside my skull, being this close to information, and getting none, and believing ever more strongly that there was none to get. Phoebe’s driveway, partially obscured by plantings, was simply too far away. “In business suits? In jeans?” I asked, flailing wildly for anything that might pass as information.
“Yes.”
“Both?”
“Yes. Separately, of course.”
“Could you tell”—I knew she couldn’t. I knew the answer. I didn’t know why I nonetheless felt compelled to ask—“if anybody made a repeat visit? Or if the suit and jeans guys were the same person?”
We stood in her kitchen, and I could see the beginnings of dinner on the counter. I’d interrupted a busy woman who was being more than patient with me.
“Would you like coffee or something?” she asked, perhaps thinking that’s why I had glanced around the tidy room. I declined and thanked her, and asked again about repeat visitors, although Phoebe had told Ramona that the visitor her final night of life was a surprise, an unexpected person, so my questions became ever less potentially useful.
First Neva shook her head, looking a little impatient with me, and I couldn’t blame her. Then she frowned. “Well, actually, they weren’t the same. I mean not all of them, though maybe somebody came back more than once. First of all, I couldn’t see, or didn’t happen to see most of the time. Lately, he’d have had to be wearing neon or something, because it’s been dark, or at least dusk. Anybody could have been there. And second, one of the visitors was quite tall and thin. I remember that. Another one was rather stocky. So more than one man visited her.”
The nice thing was that unlike next-door neighbor Ramona, back-fence neighbor Neva did not try to make something shady out of Phoebe’s visitors, who could have been, after all, insurance and medical people, or old friends—even former husbands.
“I don’t know who they were or what their business was,” Neva said, as if she’d been reading my mind. “I do know that at least one was a date. A fix-up, she told Ramona. And I think Ramona was mad because she wanted to have been fixed up.”
“Mad at Phoebe?”
Neva shook her head. “Maybe. I think Ramona’s been angry with Phoebe since the woman was widowed, but I’m not sure Ramona knows it. She seems to resent Phoebe’s having—well, having had, a life. But this time, sh
e was jealous maybe of Phoebe, but mad at Sally, who did the fixing up. Ramona told me—the side of my backyard fence touches the side of hers, too, you know. She said she’d known Sally for twenty-two years, and she thought this was a real breach of friendship. After all, eligible men are few and far between, and here Sally had been hiding away a perfectly good cousin, then had given him to a relative stranger!” Neva laughed and shook her head slowly. “Those widows. They’re really something.”
“I have to ask: Did the fix-up work out?”
She shrugged. “As I say, Phoebe and I weren’t confidantes.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I know you’re busy, and you’ve been really generous with your time.”
She shrugged. “I don’t think I helped, and I still can’t imagine what all this is about Phoebe’s will. Wasn’t that what you said?”
“Her estate,” I said.
Her eyes widened. “You mean her stories were true? That day we had tea, she talked about her treasures, but my grandmother was the same way, loving her carnival prizes and calling them treasures. Of course, in both cases, they were ordinary five-and-dime knickknacks. At least most of them were. I thought she was kidding, or I just understood it to mean that they were treasures to her.”
“Did she by any chance give you any?”
Neva’s eyebrows elevated, then she nodded. “Is this about that? A sort of inventory? Because I’d happily return it to the estate. Maybe somebody would actually want it. I didn’t and don’t.”
I shook my head. “No, thank you. I’d only heard she was…generous.”
“She certainly was with me and I think she gave something to Sally, too. Kind of sad, which is why I kept it, even though I keep it in a closet now that she’s gone and can’t drop in and see that I’d hidden it. I’d said I liked it because it felt imperative to compliment something in her house. She was so proud of her so-called treasures. I think she gave us things because she was trying to make friends, fit in.”
As she spoke, she moved toward a door to the side of the room, which, once opened, turned out to be a closet. She bent down and dug back and pulled out a gilded equestrian statue, or statuette, as it was only about six inches high. An equally gilded warrior, sword held high, sat atop the horse. The poor creature was a ludicrous, diminutive hero, proportions out of whack, and not at all as elegant or triumphant as surely the artist must have intended.
“A little garish, don’t you think?” she asked. “A little stupid? And when we had it one week, it fell onto Lizzie’s foot and broke her little toe. But what could I say? We were in her house, and Ramona was oohing and ahhing—it’s all so weird because Ramona thinks of everything as dust collectors, and Phoebe’s house was the central collection spot of the universe. But it felt necessary to join in and compliment her collections. And then the next day, there she was, with the horse I’d happened to choose to praise.”
She held up the horse, which looked ridiculous in her well-worn living room. “Sure you don’t want it back?” she asked.
“No thanks,” I said.
“I’m going to take it to a flea market or Goodwill.”
“As you choose. Nobody’s asking for it, but about that fix-up, that man…?”
“Ah,” she said. “She obviously left something special to somebody you have to find. I wish the thing she’d left was this stupid horse. My grandmother, collector of carnival prizes, would have loved it, if only she were still alive. But in any case, you should talk to Sally Molinari,” she said. “She’s the one who did the fixing up. She’s on Phoebe’s block, across the street from her. If he mattered to her, whoever he is, I hope she left him something more valuable or good-looking than this thing, or the rest of the things in her living room. I mean all the work and trouble and expense that’s going into hunting for him. Hope it’s worth it. And if he has a yearning for this horse—it’s his.” She laughed again. “But don’t bother trying to find Sally tonight. It’s Monday, so she’s visiting her married daughter over in Philly. It’s a regular thing. You could set a clock by it. She takes the bus over, then the son-in-law drives her back here around ten o’clock.”
“I’ll try her another day,” I said, and with more thanks, I bid Neva adieu, and set out around the block once more.
I turned at the bottom of her short walkway and looked back. Neva Sheffler was still standing in her doorway, the light behind her silhouetting her form and the golden horse and rider in her arms, as if still silently hoping I’d take it.
Six
* * *
* * *
I found Sasha surrounded by open cartons. When she saw me, she rolled her eyes. “This is so intensely not fun,” she said. “Somebody should have done an intervention. She must have spent every free minute on the shopping channel, eBay, or in catalogues. And that’s before she left home. I think she had a standing worldwide order for anything with frills and furbelows. And what is a furbelow, anyway?”
“A flounce on a skirt—or ornamentation. Know how I know?”
She shrugged. “English teacher.”
“Nope. New secretary. The day she commented—complimented the furbelow of my blouse, she also told me she was a gobemouche. That, my dear, is somebody gullible or, literally, one who swallows flies.”
Sasha stared at me, expression guarded.
I laughed. “That’s precisely how I looked. It isn’t easy understanding Opal. That’s her only real flaw. She’s semiprecious, like her namesake.” No response. “Right. We were discussing Phoebe’s treasures. Did you make any headway?” I couldn’t see any visible reduction in the clutter.
Sasha sighed and shrugged. “How could I? You said not to toss anything till you got here. Big excitement was that Dad phoned me on the cell.”
“Really? Your father?”
“I e-mailed him when Phoebe died. I don’t know the protocol about dead ex-wives, but it seemed the right thing to do. She was a part of his life for a while. And then I didn’t hear back, and I figured that’s just Dad being Dad. Then he phoned today.”
“From—where is he?”
“Still in Spain. He’d been traveling and not picking up mail, so he gets an excused absence.”
This time, I thought. Only this time. The man was the definition of unreliability.
“He told me things about Phoebe I’d never known, or else I forgot them. She didn’t talk about them.” She suddenly grinned. “All I remember were snarls and sighs, but I guess they had a brief period when things went well enough for confidences. What he said helped explain her to me. The weirder—the more idiosyncratic—parts. Like this.” She waved her hands in all directions.
My gaze followed her motions and landed on a bookcase top crowded with zebra effigies in wood, glass, and china. I turned back, my hands folded, ready to learn the origins of all of Phoebe’s species.
“First of all, she grew up dirt poor. Her mother and grandmother both worked in factories—the grandmother something with wire manufacturing, and her mother in a chemical factory. I knew she hadn’t had money, but I didn’t realize how poor they actually were. It was the kind of working poor where every penny counted, and there was never anything extra except, sometimes, maybe more than sometimes, bar tabs. But first among the missing extras was her father, including any idea of who he was. I hadn’t known about that.
“It’s not that big a deal nowadays, maybe, but back then, there was this incredible stigma, and it marked her for life.”
I didn’t need reminding of how things must have been. My mother, product of that generation, was still slack-jawed and aghast at how things worked these days. When I was still living at home, she’d read the latest headlines and say, “Movie stars pregnant and unmarried!” with shock and horror on her face. And she’d tell me again about how in her day, even a major star like Ingrid Bergman was about ruined when she became pregnant “out of wedlock.”
She still talked about girls getting “in trouble,” and had told my sister and me many stories—warnings—abou
t girls disappearing from school for a year, supposedly going to live with relatives elsewhere, but in reality, going into a home for unwed mothers. “And everybody knew,” she’d say with a tsk and a frown. Scandal. Shame. “Those girls’ reputations gone forever—right down the drain,” she would add with a meaningful look at her daughters.
All those phrases with no place to put them. Was there a home for reputations, scandals, trouble, and all the other out-of-date terminology?
“Kids made fun of Phoebe at school. ‘Bastard’ was one of the first words she learned. Some of her friends’ mothers wouldn’t let Phoebe play with their kids, like she had a contagious disease, or she’d be a bad influence.” Sasha’s words drifted off, and she looked as if she was seeing a fifty-year-old black-and-white school-yard snapshot.
“And that accounts for her collections in what way?” I prompted when the pause threatened to become permanent.
She blinked, as if I’d startled her out of the reverie, then she nodded. “Apparently, her mother decided that giving her this illustrious, if mysterious and cloudy lineage, would make up for how the world was treating them. Her grandmother, who was admittedly losing it a little at that point, backed up the story and embellished it as she went along. So as if by magic, they were no longer common folk. They were the descendants of courtesans, and, her grandmother would say with a wink, ‘notice that the word court is part of that word. We were at court, child. Famous, independent women beloved by royalty.’”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.”
“It helped Phoebe hold her head up high.”
“Held up high and full of delusions,” I said. “Didn’t you mention any spare change going toward a bar tab? I take it Phoebe’s mother or grandmother drank?”
“I think both, a little. Maybe more than a little. Why?”
“Because they were so grandiose. I get it about giving her a sense of a past, of credentials if you will, but they could have done the same thing without stretching it to ridiculous lengths. Why courtesans? Why not inventors, artists, poets—”
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