Page 23 of Little Last Words

Deserve.

And then there was the news van. I assumed one of the neighbors had tipped them off. So much for privacy nowadays.

“What can you tell me about Penelope Barlow?” I asked.

“We’ve met. She hasn’t lived here long. Her daughter, Sadie, was riding her bike past my house a couple weeks ago, and she fell off. Looked like one of the training wheels on the bike malfunctioned, and she tipped over. Poor dear. Good thing she had a helmet on. I walked her back home, and that’s when I met Penelope.”

“How did she seem to you?”

“Nice, a little nervous perhaps.”

“What made you think she was nervous?”

“Her eyes. They were always darting around, from me, to the street, all over the place. She wasn’t focused on the conversation I was trying to have with her, that’s for sure. I’m not sure she heard a thing I said.”

Maybe it was nerves or maybe it was something else, like a lack of interest in the conversation. Or maybe she wanted to be aware of her surroundings in case her husband showed up.

“Aside from the tumble Sadie took on her bike, what else did you talk about?” I asked.

“Ever since Penelope moved in, I’ve been trying to make sense of how she’d managed to afford to live on this street. Homes in this neighborhood aren’t cheap, to rent or to buy. I asked her where she was from, and she told me she grew up here, in Cambria. I’ve owned the house I’m in now since the seventies, and even though I wasn’t always around when I was younger, I am now. I was an actress, you see.”

“Have you acted in anything I might have seen?”

“If you watch classic movies, and based on the vintage apparel you’re wearing, you do, I’d assume so. I had bit parts in all kinds of movies in the sixties and seventies, as well as several supporting-actress roles. Look me up. You’ll see.”

I was a huge fan of the classics, as was Giovanni. We spent many nights, sitting with a glass of wine, enjoying movies from the black-and-white days.

“Did you act under the name you just gave me?” I asked.

“Sure did. Back to what I was saying before, I know everything about this town and the people in it. I asked Penelope who her mother was, and when she told me, I realized I know the family. Well, when I say Iknowthem, we are acquaintances at best.”

“How so?”

“Penelope’s parents owned two houses on this street when I moved in. The one Penelope lives in, which used to belong to her grandmother before she passed.”

“And the second?”

“You don’t know? Yours.”

“Mine?”

“Yes, the DuPonts built it in the nineties if memory serves. Lived in it for years before selling it to the people who sold it to you.”

Now I understood why Angelica had eyed my place with such vigor.

It had once been her house, a house she’d built from scratch.

“The DuPonts seem well off,” I said.

“I doubt Angelica has ever worked a day in her life. Everything she has was inherited. Her grandfather owned land all over this town. When it was passed down to her father after her grandfather died, he held on to it. Her father was a real penny pincher, even worse than me, and that’s saying something. When Angelica’s father died, everything went to her—the money, the land, all of it.”

“Did you ever see anyone at Penelope’s house? Any visitors? Friends? Family?” I asked.

“Here and there. Her mother stopped in a lot. She never stayed long.”

“Anyone else?”

“A few people who looked like friends.”