The Unraveling of Violeta Bell (18 page)

I could see where he was going with this. “As long as everybody knows they’re reproductions?”

“Bingo.”

“But given your record, it might be hard to convince the police that everyone knew?”

“The lady wins a toaster!”

We were one traffic light away from the Carmichael House. “Speaking of the lady—did you know Violeta had once been a man?”

Eddie went right through the red light. “
Mama mia!
I simply could not believe what I was reading!”

I pressed him. “You’re a very street-smart man, Eddie. You had no clue at all?”

“May I expire on the spot, I hadn’t the foggiest.” He pulled into the Carmichael House. “I always took her as just another old bird whose time had come and gone—lookwise.”

Gloria McPhee, Kay Hausenfelter, and Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy were waiting on the walk outside the entrance. Gloria, trim as an asparagus spear, was fashionably dressed in a pink three-quarter-sleeve polo shirt and stone-washed capris. Ariel, more on the rutabaga side, was wearing baggy khakis and an oversized tee shirt sporting a cute but dire message about global warming: Penguins On Thin Ice. Kay was wearing red Bermuda shorts and a sleeveless pink western shirt with sparkly, ace-of-spades buttons.

Gloria and Kay squeezed into the back next to me. Ariel sat up front with Eddie. While we’d eyeballed each other at the funeral, we hadn’t formally met. We shook hands across the seat. “I just love penguins,” I said.

“If we can’t save them how are we going to save ourselves?” Ariel answered.

Gloria, apparently, was in charge of our itinerary. She was clutching a folded classifieds section. The garage sales were not circled. “Okay, Mr. French,” she said. “Seventeen-eighty-three South Grabenstetter.”

That address excited Kay. “There’s always good buys in Tudorville,” she said.

Eddie headed back south on Hardihood. We crossed West Apple and wound our way into the dark and hilly Hannawa Heights neighborhood. Not all of the houses were Tudors, but most were. And they were all big. Eddie parked along the curb. He stayed in the cab while we ladies made a beeline for the great clutter of treasure that covered the grand old house’s blacktop driveway.

Gloria headed straight for a table covered with jewelry and other artsy trinkets. Kay went for a box of old LPs. I followed Ariel into the garage, to a table stacked with moldy old books. “I’m always looking for first editions,” she whispered to me. “I found a signed
Sound and the Fury
once.”

“I remember trying to read Faulkner in college,” I said. “I could never get past the first chapter.”

Ariel laughed. “That’s farther than most people get.” She got busy checking publication dates.

“What kind of things did Violeta look for?” I asked her.

“Anything made in Romania, of course.”

“Of course.”

“She never found much of course.”

“Of course not.”

“But she mainly bought furniture. Old crap that had been antiqued or painted and left in somebody’s basement for forty years.”

I picked up an old Lassie novel.
The Mystery of Bristlecone Pine.
My niece, Joyce, collected them. “And she’d turn around and sell it for a bundle?”

Ariel stuck a tattered book under her arm and continued down the table. “That’s what you’d expect, wouldn’t you? But she was very honest about it. She’d tell the homeowner what it was worth and then bargain down from there.”

Ariel drifted off to look at a card table sagging with kitchen gadgets. I was left to reconcile the two Violeta Bells. One trafficked in fake antiques. The other was as honest as Abraham Lincoln.

I bought the Lassie book. Ariel bought two old books for herself and an almost-new dehumidifier for the Harvest Hill Homeless Shelter. Kay bought a fifties’ Peggy Lee album,
I Like Men.
Gloria didn’t buy a thing.

We drove off to 119 Buffington. When we saw all of the plastic toys and tables stacked with children’s clothes, we kept on driving. “Violeta always told us not to waste our time on garage sales with piles of kids stuff,” Kay said. “‘The homeowners are too young to have inherited anything,’ she’d say, ‘and too poor to have accumulated anything worth a damn on their own.’”

We drove on to house number three. Three hundred and six Chancellor Circle. The house was a behemoth. Built in the twenties probably. We hurried up the uneven brick driveway. The woman holding the sale sat in an aluminum lawn chair. She was yakking away on her cell phone. She was surrounded by several perfectly groomed toy poodles. I followed Ariel again. There wasn’t a book table, but there were enough holiday crafts to decorate a landfill. “You and Gloria were good to invite me today,” I said, “and I don’t intend to spend the day peppering you with questions, but—”

Ariel put a finger to her lips to hush me. “You’re wondering if I knew about Violeta’s—what should we call it—previous life?”

“Well, yes,” I admitted, “but not as much about that as why you paid Eddie’s bail.”

She smiled. “You’re more interested in what’s important than what’s sensational. I like that, Maddy.”

I smiled back. I liked her. “You and Gloria obviously trust him. But given what happened and what everybody’s learned about his past—well, good gravy, most people would have dropped him like a hot potato.”

She picked up one of those glass pickles the Germans like to hang on their Christmas trees. She dangled it in front of her eyes, to see if it was an old one or a new one, I suppose. “Violeta knew Eddie long before she moved to the Carmichael House and the four of us started bumming around together. And we knew he did more for her than drive a cab.” I must have squinted or something because she quickly explained herself. “We knew he made deliveries for her.”

I found myself playing with a Thanksgiving turkey candle. It was nearly big enough to stuff and roast. “Did it surprise you that he was arrested?”

“Not at all,” she said. “Considering his police record, he was prime for the plucking.”

“You knew about his record then?”

“Not until I saw it in your paper.”

Ariel put the pickle down. I hung onto the turkey. I figured Ike could use it to spiff up the coffee shop that coming fall. “You’re confident he didn’t kill her?”

She sorted through a stack of Easter baskets. “Obviously. I made his bail.”

“And you don’t think he stole those antiques from her either?”

“I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt,” she said.

I didn’t tell her about Eddie’s confession to me that morning about his role in Violeta’s fake antique business. She and the other Never Dullers would have to learn that from someone else. I wanted my day with them to be as friendly as possible.

We moved away from the crafts, to a table covered with ceramic flowerpots and old board games. There were also several Slinkys. “You’d think one would be enough,” I said.

I not only bought the turkey candle for Ike, I bought a Slinky for Eric. Gloria bought a Ziploc bag of assorted safety pins. Kay brought a set of imitation jade chopsticks. Ariel went away empty handed.

We drove on to the next house. It was a big fifties’ ranch on Plumbrook. White with gray shutters. There was a charming stone wishing well in the front yard. The shrubs and hedges were immaculately trimmed. My target this time was Kay Hausenfelter. I followed her to a cardboard box filled with picture frames. Kay bent over the box so the back end of her red Bermudas was sticking out like a huge ripe tomato. “I have so many pictures of myself that deserve a proper hanging,” she joked.

She seemed in the right mood for the questions I had in mind. “I’ve been dying all morning to ask you about Violeta’s sex change. Were you surprised?”

“Nothing surprises me,” she said. She held a backless silver frame over her face and puckered her lips like Marilyn Monroe. “What do you think?”

“Very nice. You had to be a little surprised.”

“She always looked like a real woman to me.” She slid the frame up her arm like it was a bracelet. It was a keeper, apparently. “And as far as I’m concerned she was a real woman. Who you are is how you live. Not how you were born.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

She studied my eyes to see if I really believed that. She smiled. Then she frowned. “I just hope it wasn’t the reason she died.”

I eased into my next question. “There are so many little things about Violeta’s death, aren’t there? Interesting things that more than likely have nothing to do with anything. The sex change thing. All that silly queen of Romania stuff. Eddie’s ongoing relationship with her.”

Kay ran another frame up her arm. “Ongoing relationship? What on earth are you suggesting?”

I’d gotten the reaction I wanted. “Not that,” I said. “If Violeta was having that kind of relationship with anybody I’m sure it wasn’t with Eddie French.” I gave her one of those pregnant pauses you see in the movies. “Actually, I was referring to Eddie delivering antiques for her.”

Kay seemed relieved. “Oh. We all knew about that. He’d been doing that for years. When she still had her shop I guess.”

I laid my little Morgue Mama trap. “Ironic.”

As I expected, she misunderstood my meaning. “That he worked for her all those years then ended up driving for us? Nothing ironic about that at all. She’s the one who got him driving us around.”

“No, dear. I was referring to the bread truck.”

She was never going to land a major role with the Hannawa Little Theater. “The bread truck?”

“The bread truck,” I explained. “He delivered her antiques in an old Hausenfelter bread truck and you’re the widow of Harold Hausenfelter.”

Her acting improved a bit. “That’s just a coincidence. That’s what that is.”

“I’m not saying otherwise.”

I left Kay and the box of picture frames and wandered off to look at an exercise bicycle. Not that I was ever going to buy an exercise bicycle. It was just time for me to wander off. It was pretty clear that Kay Hausenfelter knew more about Violeta Bell’s very complicated life than she was letting on. Which meant she might also know something about her very complicated death.

All-in-all, Kay bought four picture frames and a bright pink bud vase. Ariel bought three vegetarian cookbooks. Gloria bought an ant farm as a gag gift for her ex-exterminator husband. I bought nothing.

Before calling it a day we stopped at another six houses. In addition to my prying, there was a lot of laughing and good-natured ribbing. I could see why these women enjoyed each other’s company. Each was a hoot in her own way. But despite all the fun, I had not been seduced out of my suspicions. They all knew more than they were letting on.

“Lunch time!” Gloria McPhee sang out as Eddie pulled away from the last house.

Eddie wound through the city’s hilly northern neighborhoods. I figured we were heading for a restaurant. But before I knew it we were on Hardihood Avenue heading back to the Carmichael House.

Eddie pulled up to the entrance. Gloria handed Eddie an envelope. “You can pick Maddy up in an hour,” she said.

“It will be my unconstrained pleasure,” he said, playfully tugging on the bill of his Woolybears ballcap.

We piled out of the cab with our treasures. Eddie drove off.

It seemed odd that Eddie was dismissed in such a businesslike way. He’d been so much a part of the Queens of Never Dull for so many years. You’d think they would have invited him up for lunch, wouldn’t you? Then again, Eddie had appeared quite content to take the envelope and motor off. Clearly, Eddie French had been a lot closer to Violeta Bell than the other three. Nothing more than a hired gun, if you will. Unless that efficient little scene I’d just witnessed had been prearranged for my benefit, of course.

We crowded into the elevator. Gloria punched the button for the sixth floor.

Gloria’s condo was really something. Artsy. Modern. Walls had been knocked out between the kitchen, dining room, and living rooms. The hardwood floors looked brand new. The furniture clearly was. Everything was either black or gray, or creamy white. Two black and white Shih Tzus were running around like a couple of nuts.

Gloria’s husband waved at us from the kitchen. “I hope everybody likes cat and rabbit,” he called out. He was wearing one of those stupid mushroom-shaped chef hats.

Gloria must have caught my wince. “Cat food and rabbit food,” she explained. “Salad with grilled salmon. Phil’s a real comedian.”

Gloria was the only married member of the Never Dullers. And from what I’d gleaned from Gabriella Nash’s story on them, and Eric Chen’s research, happily married to boot.

She had been born Gloria Ann Gillis. She’d moved to Hannawa from a coal-mining town in Western Pennsylvania when she was nine. “Daddy had what today they call black lung and had trouble keeping a job,” she’d told Gabriella Nash for her story. “We moved from one rental to another. So I got to know about houses at an early age.”

She’d bought her first home when she was only twenty-two. “All I ever wanted was a place I couldn’t be evicted from,” she’d told Gabriella. After a few years fixing up that first little rundown house on Baxter Street, she bought a slightly bigger and better house three doors down. That was followed by a pretty cape cod on Walhounding Avenue. “It was cute as a bug,” she’d said, “but unfortunately it also had bugs—termites. That’s how I met Phil.”

They were married in October 1962. A month later they had their first of six children. In between babies Gloria got her real estate license and little by little she became one of the most successful Realtors in Hannawa. Even though she was well into her seventies and had plenty of money, she continued to sell houses.

“Cat and rabbit now being served in the grand hall,” Phil announced in a horrible English butler’s accent. We headed for the dining room table. It was long enough to land a 747.

Phil McPhee looked more like a Presbyterian minister than a retired pest exterminator. He was tall and thin with enough white hair on his head for a dozen men his age. His teeth were a little yellow and his nostrils a little fuzzy, but he was by and large a handsome man. According to Eric’s research, he’d graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State University, with twin degrees in business and entomology. Eric had found an article on him in
Pest Control
magazine. “I was a practical young man,” he’d said of himself, “who was more interested in making a lot of money killing bugs than no money studying them.”