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“Private parts,” Odelia quickly cut in, glancing down at Dooley and Max. “And I promised I’d find out who.”

Uncle Alec shook his grizzled head.“The times we live in, huh?”

“Please, Odelia. I trust you,” said Rose. “You’ll find my dad’s killer, won’t you?”

Lucky for her, Odelia was saved from having to answer the young woman’s passionate but frankly impossible request by a platinum-haired woman of indefinite age storming into the kitchen.

“Rose, oh my God—Rose, honey, what happened?!”

And before Rose could stop her, the woman had grabbed hold of her and wrapped her into her arms.

“This,” said Rose with a smothered voice and a resigned look on her face, “is Daphne.”

Chapter 5

Rose had finally gone to bed. In the kitchen now sat Odelia, Chase, Uncle Alec and Daphne Wimmer. Daphne had supplied the small company with herbal tea, which everyone except Uncle Alec had gratefully accepted—he preferred his hot beverages a lot less healthy—and Daphne now recounted how her husband had been on a downward slope for quite some time.

In a corner of the kitchen two cats sat, having been supplied by a considerate hostess with enough slices of turkey to satisfy their immediate needs and then some.

They were both quietly happy, munching on their treats and listening to the humans discuss recent tragic events.

“I should have known it might come to this,” said Daphne, who was a woman with some heft, both in the physical sense and in the forcefulness of her personality. Odelia knew she was an Avon lady, and she could just picture her holding one of her sales parties, regaling her audience with great success on the many advantages of her wares.

“Your husband was depressed?” asked Chase.

Daphne nodded as she took a sip from her tea.“He’d been having trouble at work. Some financial dispute between him and his partner and co-manager, Romney Knight. I’m not sure what it was all about. He wouldn’t tell me. Said he didn’t want to burden me with company politics as he called it. But I could tell it was more than that. He was stressed and annoyed and hadn’t been able to sleep a decent night’s sleep for weeks.”

“Is that what those pills were for?” asked Uncle Alec. “We found an empty bottle of Zolpidem on his desk,” he explained.

Daphne closed her eyes.“I should never have allowed him to take those. But he said he couldn’t sleep without them.”

“You’re Dino’s second wife?” asked Chase.

“Yes. His first wife Trudy died eleven years ago. Cancer. I met Dino five years ago through one of my sales evenings.” She smiled. “Not that he was in the market for cosmetics or anything like that, but he wanted to surprise Rose and had no idea what to buy a teenage girl for her birthday, sohis secretary had dragged him to an Avon party and that’s how we met. He bought half of my supply that night, and we got to talking about Rose, and how hard he found it to raise a daughter on his own. One thing led to another and two weeks later we were on our third date and he was introducing meto Rose. We got married a year later.”

“Do you and Rose get along?” asked Odelia.

“Like gangbusters,” said Daphne. “I divorced my first husband because he didn’t want kids, but then never found a partner to start a family with, and by the time I met Dino I was too old to have them and had already accepted that I’d never have a family.” She gave Odelia a level look. “I love Rose, Miss Poole. I consider her my own flesh and blood. Even though she was thirteen when I came into her life, and by all accounts thirteen is a difficult age for a girl to have a new mom foisted on her, we got along from the get-go. We simply decided to make it work—mainly for Dino’s sake, at first, because he wanted it so much, and then because we wanted it for ourselves, too.”

“Rose has a boyfriend,” said Odelia. “A boyfriend her dad wasn’t too crazy about.”

Daphne smiled.“Dino was very protective. So when Rose showed up one day with Cole in tow, he freaked out. Cole is a musician, you see. An artist. A wonderfully talented artist. But listening to Dino you would have thought she’d brought home some kind of terrible monster. True, Cole is a couple of years olderthan Rose, but as I pointed out to Dino it’s obvious that he loves and respects our daughter, and that’s what matters.”

“It’s just going to be you and Rose from now on,” said Odelia. “How do you feel about that?”

“I won’t lie to you, it’s going to be tough, but I think in the end we’re going to be fine.” She glanced down at the table, and a tear glistened on her cheek. “Oh, sweet, sweet Dino—why couldn’t he have talked to me before…” Her voice broke off, and soon Odelia found herself rubbing the woman’s back as she dissolved into sobs.

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“I think they should get a pet,” said Dooley as we watched the sad scene.

“A pet isn’t going to replace Rose’s dad, or Daphne’s husband,” I pointed out.