The Unraveling of Violeta Bell Read Free Page A

out of his hand and filled it. Finally I sat down to what looked to be one of the best features I’d read in our paper in a long time. Apparently Alec Tinker was not the dunderhead I figured. And even though I was not about to forgive Gabriella for spilling the beans about my investigation into Gordon Sweet’s murder, I had to admit our first week of colleaguedom had gone well enough. She’d waited patiently for the background stories she needed. She’d said nothing more long-winded than “Hi” when we bumped into each other in the cafeteria. Most importantly, she hadn’t called me Morgue Mama to my face—a mistake most new reporters make and then forever regret.
    Collectively they call themselves The Queens of Never Dull.
    “It’s a club without rules or dues,” says Kay Hausenfelter, curled up on the pink loveseat in her sun-washed living room. “We started out as a bridge foursome in the clubroom here. I guess we just liked each other’s company. Before you knew it we were bumming all over town together.”
    While all four of the Never Dulls call the upscale Carmichael House condominiums home, Hausenfelter has lived there the longest, a few months shy of ten years.
    Hausenfelter moved into the pricey, tenstory tower after the death of her husband, Harold Hausenfelter. Before his retirement, he had served as president and CEO of Hausenfelter Bread Company, the city’s largest bakery. They had been married for 41 years.
    “Harold was the sweetest man on earth,” she says, adding quickly that he was also one of the toughest. “He had to be tough to take on a project like me,” she says.
    Hausenfelter met her future husband in 1954, when she was appearing at the Orion Theater on South Main Street.
    “That’s right,” she laughs. “I was a striptease artist. Twenty-four years old and not so fresh out of Elk City, Oklahoma.”

    “Can you believe that!”

    “Believe what, sweetie?”

    Ike’s question almost stopped my heart. He’d never called me sweetie before. Either it was a term of endearment that I wasn’t ready for, or the mechanical response of a widower. I peeked around the paper at him and decided it was the latter. I read the quote to him. “‘I was a striptease artist. Twentyfour years old and not so fresh out of Elk City, Oklahoma.’” Ike partially emerged from his trance. “I thought you were from some little town in New York?”

    “Not me sweetie —this old woman in the paper. I can’t believe the copy desk let a quote like that run. ‘Not so fresh out of Hot Springs.’ Why didn’t we just run a list of all the men she’d slept with?”

    He was listening now. Grinning at my fuddy-duddiness. “Times they are a changing, Maddy. Anything goes.”

    It was my turn to grin. At his eclectic command of musical clichés. “Bob Dylan and Cole Porter in the same sentence. Not bad.” I went back to Gabriella’s story.

    I finished reading about the former stripper and bread heiress, and moved on to the next garage sale queen:
    Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy pleads guilty to “being something of an earth mother these days.” Her condo is filled with plants and cats. Atop the stack of books on her coffee table is her prized copy of Jane Goodall’s book, Reason For Hope.
    She proudly shows the inscription to visitors.
    “Ariel,” the famous scientist wrote, “hear your heart.”
    “I’ve always had a noisy heart,” Wilburger-Gowdy admits. “In the old days it was preoccupied with men—most of whom I married. Today it’s animals, organic food and recycling glass bottles.”
    And just how many times has she been married?
    “Four and no more,” she jokes.
    Her first husband, former state senator Walter Wilburger, is the father of her only child, a daughter who teaches business ethics at Hemphill College.
    The Gowdy part of her last name comes not from a former husband, but from her late father, roofing-shingle king Donald F. Gowdy. For the past two decades she has headed the