All's Well That Ends

by Gillian Roberts

  “So sad about Phoebe.” She settled back into the cushions. She was a solidly built woman with a pretty, though wrinkled, face and a flush that suggested her late-afternoon drink might not be the first she’d had today. “I thought we were going to be such friends! I thought we were well on our way!”

  “Her death was a shock to you, then?”

  Her mouth formed an “o” like a comic-book character. “Shock? What’s beyond that? I thought I’d die myself when I heard not only that she’d died but that she’d killed herself! I didn’t think she could be that unhappy—I mean, I thought I knew her. At least a little. We went out together a few times. You want to be a good neighbor, don’t you? And she was a nice woman so it wasn’t any real effort. To the movies, that kind of thing. I knew she’d been newly widowed and was probably feeling raw—I know how that feels—so we only saw comedies, and old-time comedies, you know? None of the dirty sort that’s popular now. Nothing that would upset her in any way. And she seemed fine. Sad, of course. And her with her only child living so far away and no grandchildren to brighten the picture. I felt sorry for her, but I wasn’t worried about her. She seemed a person who’d rather be happy than not. And she was pretty enough, and kept herself up, so if she was going to be in the market for a man again—and she did seem the sort to need to stay in that market, didn’t she?—then she probably wasn’t going to have all that hard a time. Unless she was hyper-picky of course. The pickings for older women are not exactly luxurious.”

  While I was trying to extract anything concrete and helpful from the verbal avalanche, Sally stood up again and retrieved a porcelain shepherdess in wide skirts and a white apron, a crook held in one tiny porcelain hand. “She gave me this. Generous woman, but she said she had so much—maybe that was a sign, then? Isn’t that what they say? People up and give things away? Divest themselves?” She put the shepherdess into my hands, being careful to avoid cracking the crook. The little statue was cold and heavy with a vapid expression on its face, as if she were playacting at being this bucolic lassie and was bored with the performance.

  It didn’t belong in this room, and in truth, I couldn’t think of a room I’d like where it might belong. Luckily, Sally didn’t seem to expect me to say anything about it.

  “Person thinking about suicide starts giving things away,” she said, retrieving the shepherdess and carefully putting it back on a knickknack shelf in the corner. “But these—she gave things to other neighbors, too—were such…well, they weren’t personal things. She certainly had personal treasures she adored, and she delighted in showing them to us: little paintings and figurines and things she’d had passed down from her grandma. But she didn’t give those away, far as I know, and that’s what I would have considered a sign—important, valuable, personal things, wouldn’t you? So how do you tell a gift of friendship from a cry for help? Should I have known? Did I miss it altogether?” She refilled her wineglass and raised an eyebrow, held the bottle at the ready to do the same for mine. I smiled and shook my head. “I’m still fine,” I said.

  I wondered if she was this garrulous when not sipping wine. “As far as I can tell, nobody saw any signs indicating that serious a depression,” I said. “You really shouldn’t blame yourself for whatever—”

  “I tried, you know.” She sighed from deep within her own narrative, and the best I could do was to simply go along and understand that nothing worthwhile would come of this. I hadn’t expected to learn anything, anyway. This visit was a formality. The whole so-called investigation was.

  “She was a woman who liked having a man in her life,” Sally said. “You know she was married a whole lot of times?” She shook her head in incredulity.

  I nodded.

  “Well, I valued our friendship and I think she did, too, and I’m not sure I would have thought of it on my own—there are so few available men around for women our age, anyway, and I’m one who is completely happy with her own company and so the idea didn’t pop right into my brain. But one night, we were having coffee after the movie—decaf really, at our age—and my cousin’s brother-in-law walked in—former brother-in-law because my cousin’s sister passed on, and he’s a widower, too, poor soul, lives with his sister, who’s a widow—and he saw me and said hello. And then, the next morning, he phoned me and asked about my ‘companion,’ who’d obviously impressed him. So that’s how I played cupid, or matchmaker.”

  “They went out, then?” I asked.

  “Ooooh, yes,” she said with semi-drunk exaggeration. “Ooooh, yes indeed.”

  “The date,” I said carefully. “How did it go? When was that? How was your matchmaking?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It was nothing short of a catastrophe!”

  Things were finally interesting. “Oh my,” I said in the mildest voice I could master. “What happened?”

  She shook her head, her mouth pursed. “What didn’t? She wasn’t quite ready when he arrived, and he’s a bit of a priss, I’m afraid. A man lives alone for a long time, and he hadn’t married until he was fifty-one, a confirmed bachelor, and oh, how happy my cousin’s family was that their daughter had finally found somebody! I always wonder how that marriage went, when he finally took the plunge. He wasn’t the easiest—but then, neither was she, and then poof! Over within two years!”

  “You’re not suggesting that…well, that somebody helped it end sooner than it might have?”

  “What?” She blinked. “Oh! Oh my, no! She got some weird virus, and an infection and—no, no. I didn’t mean to suggest that at all!” She looked slightly suspicious of me now.

  I nodded and smiled. She forgave me and resumed her wandering interminable narrative.

  “And nowadays, he and his sister just rattle around a big house and I don’t think they speak to each other all that much and he’s just not used to—to going with the flow, you know what I mean? People get older and get stuck in their ways. Women, too. Probably has happened even to me!” She laughed incredulously, checked the level of the wine in the bottle, and excused herself, returning quickly with an opener and a new bottle.

  So much for that glimmer of an actual potential murderer.

  “But that’s not all,” Sally said, her glass refreshed, her enthusiasm unquenched along with her thirst. “He took her to a seafood restaurant. A good place, but she must have eaten something that didn’t agree with her—that can happen, even in the best of places—but all the same, what could put more of a damper on things than that? I mean she didn’t throw up on him or anything, but she came close; she was queasy, and he thought she was making it up, just to avoid him when he tried, well, you know. What men try.”

  “Did they…did, um—I can’t believe I forgot his name!” I said.

  “Gregory’s?”

  “Right. I am so bad with names,” I said briskly before she remembered that she’d never mentioned it. “I meet people and zip! Their names are out of my head.”

  “You know Gregory McIntyre?”

  “Not well,” I said, “but I’m bad with everybody’s names.” I was sad that she seemed to have slipped beyond a clear memory of what she’d said and hadn’t said before I could get anything solid from her. I checked the time. Fifteen minutes before I was meeting Sasha, so I might as well plug on. “About when was this catastrophe of a date?” I asked.

  She sighed, and wrinkled her forehead. “You want a specific date? Like on those cop shows?”

  “Not necessarily. As close as you can get, though. Summer? Near Thanksgiving? Or Labor Day?”

  More forehead gymnastics. Then a big smile. “Right around Halloween, because Gregory came to visit me and I still had the pumpkin outside, but it was getting mushy-faced, and that’s when I heard about the being-sick business and all.” She sat back on her sofa, and looked as if she’d just conquered a huge impediment.

  “So did Phoebe and Gregory try a second time? When maybe she wouldn’t have an upset stomach?”

  “I think so. I know he wanted to. In fact, he never
used to visit me, and I thought he came over so as to be on her street, you know what I mean? Maybe just happen to drop in?” She frowned. “I think in fact he phoned from here and maybe they made a plan but then she…I don’t know if it actually…Why can’t I remember? She was busy, I think that’s what she told him first, and you know, that wasn’t necessarily an excuse. That woman was always on the go. Had a job, of course, and we all know that owning a business is the worst kind of thing for having free time. I know because my late husband owned his business and…” She may have noticed my expression. She cleared her throat, and pushed herself back on track. “Gregory wasn’t her only gentleman caller, and then there were the women, too, or at least one woman I saw. That one nearly ran me over! Came screeching into the street, and if a car can be angry, that one was. And she just screeched to a halt, banged the door shut, and stomped into Phoebe’s house.”

  “Do you remember anything about her?”

  “Red hair. Long, straight red hair completely inappropriate for a woman her age, know what I mean?”

  I did, and I knew to whose head that long red hair was attached.

  “There’s a time and place for everything, and middle age isn’t the time to have hair down to the rear end like a teenager. Skirt was too short and her high heels nearly sank into the grass by the curb. That’s all I remember, I was almost in shock with nearly being killed by her, and she didn’t even look at me or apologize or anything. I never did find out who she was, because the next thing I hear is about poor Phoebe.”

  “Wait—do you know which day you saw this redhead with the big car?”

  Sally laughed. “You’re bad with names, and me? Rotten with numbers, and that includes dates.” She shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  I nodded, gave up on that tack. “So we don’t know if Phoebe and Gregory ever arranged a second date.”

  Sally shook her head. “I worry about the whole situation, about that one terrible evening, and worry that maybe she set too much stock by it. Pinned too many hopes on Gregory. And then, when it was such a disappointment, especially since she herself was the cause of the date’s fizzle, so to speak, not that she could help being sick. I’m not saying that, but maybe it set her off, made her so depressed—”

  “But you said he wasn’t the only man in her life.”

  “Kids don’t count.”

  “What are you saying? Her son visited her?”

  She shook her head.

  “Little children?”

  “Jus’ an expression. Too young to be anything serious. I think. Not that I knew who or anything much.”

  I wondered how Sally filled her long, solo evenings. Mondays she went to her daughter’s house, but there were six other nights in a week. She said she was content with her own company, but I feared she was more content with a wine bottle as companion.

  “You know, I’m old-fashioned. Once I was a widow, I stayed a widow, so don’t listen to me! But I really hoped that Gregory…and maybe they did get to have another date—nobody tells me much unless I ask. And I did ask, but I don’t think Gregory gave me a straight answer.” She wrinkled her brow again, looking confused and disoriented, perhaps surprised that her memories weren’t crisp and sharp.

  “Does Gregory live in the neighborhood?”

  She shook her head. “In Cherry Hill, with his sister, in this house that is much too big for them.” She shook her head again.

  “Do you happen to have a phone number for him?”

  She looked surprised by the request, then took a moment to think it through, and nodded, standing rather unsteadily and saying, “I’ll get it.”

  “If you tell me where…” I began, but she shook her head again, and wove her way into the dining room.

  Gregory’s second date could have been that final night. He wouldn’t have been ready to tell Sally he’d been there. But then, Phoebe’s visitor could have been her furious business partner, whose red hair had been long enough to put up into an elaborate French braid the day of the memorial service. Or one of her inappropriately young dates. Who were they—if indeed there were plural young men—and where did she find them?

  And why the devil did she want to find men online if she was already overloaded with them?

  “Still and all, fate stepped in, didn’t it?” Sally said, returning with a cracked and battered address book, which she handed to me.

  I didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “One way or another, they were simply not meant to be.” She sat back down, although it wasn’t quite a matter of seating herself as much as it was allowing herself to descend onto the sofa pillow.

  “I only meant to make everybody happy,” she said with her whiny and sentimental undertone growing stronger by the second. I flipped through the book to the “Mc”s and copied Gregory’s address and phone number.

  “The woman killed herself! I didn’t exactly make her happy, did I?” Once again, the slightly puzzled, worried expression. “I really liked her, too.”

  “You can’t blame yourself if she was depressed, or if the man you fixed her up with didn’t turn out to be Prince Charming.”

  She sighed and seemed to have run out of words and steam. I checked my watch. “I’m so sorry! I’ve been keeping you, and I only meant to stay a minute. You’re too good of a hostess. Thanks so much for the wine, and for the address.” I put the book on the coffee table. “I nearly forgot I have another appointment in two minutes.”

  “Only tried to make her happy,” she repeated.

  I showed myself out and crossed the street to Phoebe’s house. The cold air was a shock at first, but it cleared my head, and I thought how silly it was to be circling around the idea of this pathetically-rigid-sounding blind date suddenly murdering Phoebe. Drugging her wine—to what purpose? Or looking for whatever Sally considered a “kid” visitor. Or trying to believe that Merilee would screech up to a house in which she was about to commit a very low-key kind of murder.

  Nobody had murdered Phoebe.

  I felt a little better, as if I’d finally been allowed to put down an unwieldy and heavy piece of luggage.

  Sasha’s car pulled up as I reached the house.

  “Perfect timing,” I said, my breath a frosty fog. Sasha shivered while she unlocked the front door.

  “No Dumpsters yet, at least,” she said. “But I thought she’d be here. I thought we agreed….”

  “I love you, dear friend, but you do have a tendency to overstate things. Nobody’s talking Dumpsters. She isn’t rebuilding the house, just removing excess items and sprucing the place up. So probably, there will be a truck or two taking things to Goodwill. You have to admit, there is too much stuff in this house. I for one am glad that somebody else is going to do the scut work of making the place presentable. That way I don’t have to volunteer to be a good friend and help you with it. Don’t make the situation out to be so dire.”

  “She’s supposed to be here. We have an appointment.”

  I looked at my watch. “You’re five minutes early. Cut her some slack. She’s probably stuck in traffic.”

  Sasha grumbled as she opened the door and entered. Then her voice became an angry shout. “It looks worse than ever!”

  I was ready to suggest that maybe Toy had been playing with ideas, tentatively rearranging a few things, but then I glimpsed the room, and the words died in my throat.

  It was worse than ever. Much worse. We hadn’t left tables turned over, lampshades hanging crazily from broken stands. We hadn’t pulled out cabinet doors and buffet-table drawers and left them open.

  Neither would Toy have done that.

  I felt a chill much more extreme than I’d felt outside. “Sasha,” I whispered, “Sasha, I think—”

  “Don’t think,” she said from the dining room. “Come here.”

  I did.

  Toy lay the way her namesake might, when it was broken, head twisted in an unnatural direction, arms splayed, booted feet pointing outwards.

  Except
, of course, real toys don’t bleed.

  Or die.

  Ten

  * * *

  * * *

  Get out of the house,” I whispered.

  Sasha stood there, paralyzed, staring at Toy’s small body, which lay like a marionette’s might, arms and head at the wrong angle. Then Sasha bent over and touched her at the neck, where the pulse should be, and she had the same results I’d had one minute earlier. Nothing. No pulse. No life.

  “Sasha! Out!” I said, pulling at her sleeve. “Whoever—there might still—out!”

  She stood up but remained speechless. I felt like a tugboat, leading a steamship into safe harbor.

  Outside, shivering, I pulled out my cell and dialed nine-one-one.

  “She’s dead,” Sasha whispered.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “She’s still warm,” she said in a hushed voice. “Still warm. That means—”

  “Yes. That’s one more reason to be out of the house.”

  “I’m freezing.”

  “Yes, but this just happened and—”

  “She looked so…”

  I nodded, unable to find the right words any more than Sasha was. And I knew we were both thinking the irrational but irresistible thought: But I just saw her last night and she was fine. Such a sudden, unexpected, irrevocable cancellation of what we so take for granted needed those denials. Surely if I saw her last night and she was animate, this couldn’t have happened to her in the interim.

  Surely if Sasha arrived ready to do battle with Toy about possessions and priorities, then Toy could not be dead, violently, abruptly, dead on the very floor of the house under dispute.

  “In Phoebe’s house!” Sasha looked at me and bit at her upper lip. I again knew what she was thinking before she said it. “Because…this—it’s too much, the same house. This must have some connection to Phoebe.”

  I didn’t want to allow that idea back into my head. I’d resolved the issue of Phoebe’s death fifteen minutes earlier.

  “Two dead women in this one house. This is a quiet neighborhood. This doesn’t happen. This doesn’t happen in neighborhoods that aren’t this quiet.”