The Unraveling of Violeta Bell Read Free Page B

philanthropic foundation he created, the D.F. Gowdy Charitable Trust.
    “I’ve been spending my father’s money all my life,” she says.

    I’d never met Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy, but I certainly knew about her good works. The Donald F. Gowdy Foundation is one of the bright spots in Hannawa’s struggling economy. It provides the seed money for inner-city businesses. It helps poor kids go to college. It supports the arts, helps battered women, teaches English to immigrants, spays and neuters cats and dogs, plants flowers in the city’s dreary parks. Oodles and oodles of worthwhile things.

    I moved on to Violeta Bell:
    If the Queens of Never Dull have a leader, it’s Violeta Bell.
    “I guess I’m the burr under everybody’s saddle,” says Bell. “But the homestretch is no time to slow down.”
    Bell is also the only member of the foursome to admit her age. “I’ll be 73 in August.”
    This brings a disbelieving guffaw from Kay Hausenfelter. “She also claims to be Romanian royalty,” she says.
    The playful Bell pretends to be insulted. “I will be 73 on my next birthday,” she insists again. “And if it hadn’t been for the damn Communists and their crazy ideas, you’d all be curtsying and calling me queen for real.”
    Whether she’s a real queen or just one of the Queens of Never Dull, it is a fact that for nearly three decades the never-married Bell owned and operated Bellflower Antiques.
    She’s lived at the Carmichael House since her retirement eight years ago.

    Bellflower Antiques was once the gemstone of Puritan Square, the snooty shopping centre on West Apple Street designed to look like a quaint English village. I was never inside the shop—its By APPOINTMENT ONLY sign successfully kept riff-raff like me away—but I had driven by it a million times on my way to JCPennys. I read on:
    Gloria McPhee is the only member of the Queens of Never Dull with a husband.
    “It’s strange that Phil and I ended up in this little cubbyhole,” she says, referring to their spacious, glass-walled unit on the top floor of the Carmichael House. “Our whole life together was houses, houses, houses.”
    While McPhee worked as a real estate broker, her husband, Philip, ran a residential pest extermination business. Before they moved into the Carmichael, they lived in an eight-bedroom Tudor on Merman Avenue.
    “Before you think me high and mighty, let me tell you about all the crummy little houses I lived in first,” McPhee says.

    I tried to finish reading Gabriella’s story while Ike showered. But the rattling of the spray on the shower curtain made it impossible for me to concentrate. So I put the paper down for later and washed the breakfast dishes.

    Ike put on his suit and went to church.

    I put on the CELLO EVERYBODY! sweatshirt and took James for his walk.

    The sweatshirt was a gift from Ike. The romantic old fool had given it to me for Valentine’s Day. It came with the Yo-Yo Ma CD he got for pledging $120 to PBS.

3
    Wednesday, July 5

    Eric Chen pulled the Mountain Dew bottle off his lips and sniffed at my hair like a truffle-hunting hog. “You’re not spontaneously combusting are you?” he asked.

    We were clicking our way up the tile-walled stairway to the third floor. The building has an elevator, of course, but it’s as slow as molasses. Anybody who has to get to a desk before noon takes the stairs. “I take it you didn’t come downtown for the fireworks last night,” I said, pulling my head out from under his.

    “And you did?”

    “As a matter of fact, I did.”

    It took the young genius half a flight of steps to put two and two together. “Ah—you went with Ike.”

    “He’s a Republican. What can I say.”

    Eric opened the door for me. “So that’s your smoldering love I smell.”

    We started across the empty newsroom toward the morgue. “No—that’s the smoke and ash from $40,000 worth of fireworks you smell. There was a damn temperature inversion halfway through the