Gillian Roberts - Alls Well That Ends: An Amanda Pepper Mystery

Contents

For Abby and Matt
alls well that begins, too!

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Sarah Burbidge and Paula Jaffe for helping Casa de Angeles Orphanage in Guatemala and in so doing, giving Amanda two new super-smart students, Margaret Burbidge and Eddie Schneider.

Gratitude beyond words to a trio who tried their best (and their best is as good as it gets) to pull out the weeds and cut through the brambles in this book: Jo Keroes, Betty Schafer, and Louise Ure. Thank you for all the TLC. And though I felt obliged to change titles midstream, thank you, Betty, for the original and clever: Beth Be Not Proud. Next time?

For two decades, Ive been privileged to have the late Marilyn Wallace as my dear friend and first reader. This would be a better book and a better world had she been able to stay longer.

One

S he was the best of mothers, she was the worst of mothers. She had wisdom, she had foolishness.

Denniss words made me want to snatch the silver martini pitcher from his hand and smash him with it, even though that would make my behavior as inappropriate as his was. We were paying our last respects, except for Dennis, who was paying his final disrespects.

Inappropriate didnt begin to describe posthumously clobbering the Dickens out of your own mother. I dont care how literary Dennis thought he wasnot that familiarity with the opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities qualifies as anything special.

It is a far, far worse thing you do than ever you have done before, I muttered to Sasha. Unfortunately, that probably wasnt accurate. To put it as charitably as I could: Dennis Allenby was a jerk.

Hed been a jerk in tenth grade when his mother was married to Sashas father. Twenty years later, age had not withered nor custom staled his infinite jerkiness. He had a reputation as a specialist in the nearly-illegal scheme, the loophole-finding arrangement, the deal that shamelessly preyed on the gullible.

His mother had been Sashas favorite stepmother. Despite the divorce, Sasha managed to maintain the relationship through three more of Phoebes marriages, and two of her own, until Phoebes untimely death two weeks ago. Sad, or ironic, that having pledged five separate times to be with a man till death did them part, Phoebe wound up alone, dead by her own hand, with only Dennis as a sorry by-product.

I blocked out his drone, forced his voice to dissolve into the bright December morning, to be no more than the crunch of twigs underfoot, the occasional birdcall, or the murmur of the stream; although in truth, the water was silent. It was so chilly, it was probably icing up. So was I.

My chattering teeth helped drown him out. I looked around and could see that my irritation was shared. Maybe we could rush Dennis, push him into the creek along with the urns contents.

Sasha, dressed intensely in black, from the oversized broad-brimmed hat that wobbled and shivered with each wintry gust to her high boots, looked flamboyantly in mourning. But her face was set with anger, not grief. She opened her eyes wide, the better to glare at Dennis. You see? she hissed. You see?

She wanted me to see a murderer, but I saw only a middle-aged jerk.

I once again let my eyes travel around the group. On this bright winter day, about twenty people had gathered by the river to remember and honor Phoebe Ennis. The group included her cousin Peter, who hadnt seen Phoebe in fifteen years but had memories so vivid that hed made the trip from his home in West Virginia; four women whod identified themselves in such a rush that I never got them straight; a woman who looked in her eighties and whod identified herself only as a former neighbor, though of which time period and/or house she didnt say; and near her, Phoebes flame-haired business partner, Merilee Wilkins, standing so rigidly she looked planted in the spot. Id met her a while back when I went to Top Cat and Tails, the shop she and Phoebe owned. I was amused by the idea of a pet boutique, which probably shows what a shallow, uncaring cat-owner I am. But the admittedly funny sight of sale items such as a Halloween costume for a dachshund that made the pup into a hot-dog on a bun did nothing to make me take the place more seriously.

I went for entertainment value, not to buy, and apparently, so did too many others, because the business was about to fold. Merilees husband was withdrawing his financial support and, not coincidentally, withdrawing from the marriage as well. Somehow, Merilee blamed Phoebe for the weak revenues that she believed had led to her husbands defection, and in her agitated state shed accused Phoebe of larceny.

Judging by Merilees grim expression today, the bad blood between the women had stayed bad, which made me feel a twinge of sympathy for the otherwise annoying woman. There couldnt be many things much worse than having a friend die in mid-quarrel. Surely both women hoped, if not expected, that theyd find a way through their anger, that theyd resolve their issues and restore the friendship. Now it was impossible.

Looking less profoundly upset, two men in their forties who had identified themselves in unison as the Daveswere just her friends stood at the back of the small group. Only one of Phoebes ex-husbands had attended, Max Delahunt, the fourth of the Alphabet boys. Phoebes love life had been frenetic, but her marriage partners turned out to be as systematic as if theyd been chosen by a file clerk. Shed wed, in order: Harvey Allenby, Charlie Berg, Bert Carnero, Max Delahunt, and Nelson Ennis. Among the wedding gifts for Phoebe and Nelson had been a set of towels that had the entire alphabet embroidered along the hem. Pre-emptive monograms, the gift giver called it. Nelson Ennis should have seen the writing on the towel and known he was a short-timer, and indeed, he didnt make it to the getting-divorced stage. He was done in by an out-of-control motorcycle, barely a year into his marriage.

Phoebe probably would have found herself Mr. F, too, except that she ended the progression by killing herself.

Maxs son, Lionel Lion Delahunt, a slender, balding man, stood close to his father, looking pensive, representing along with Sasha Phoebes many temporary stepchildren. He was next to a man I didnt know, but the teenager by that mans side was a Philly Prep student, Mitchell Jonesy Farmer.

At lunch, before this ceremony began, Jonesy had told me he was here because it was his weekend with his father, and his father said it was the right thing to do. His father had known Phoebe, Jonesy had said grudgingly, and I assumed that meant the senior Farmer had dated her. I wondered if hed been optioning for a position as next husband. Alphabetically, at least, he was appropriate.

There were a few other mourners I didnt recognize. At least one, I suspected, was someone whod been out for a walk, bundled in his sweats and parka, and had spotted something out of the ordinary and opted to join in for the novelty factor.

We stood in a glorious sylvan setting of trees and water, even if the stream wasnt burbling and the trees were bare under the December sky, and we did our best to ignore the human traffic nearby. This part of the park was called Forbidden Drive, which sounds more exciting than it is. Cars are forbidden, but pretty much everything else is allowed, except, I suspect, what we were about to do. In any case, the bucolic silence, if you ignored Dennis, which I was trying my best to do, made Philadelphias stone and brick feel galaxies away. You dont realize until youre away from it how nonstop noisy a city is, a perpetual motorized grumble, air being pushed aside by crowds of people, gears churning.