Murder on Amsterdam Avenue by Victoria Thompson

they’d be more than happy to come over and cheer her up after the funeral was over.”
    Mrs. Decker looked shocked. “Do you think she could have been having an affair?”
    â€œElizabeth,” her husband scolded her. “Is that any way to talk about the poor girl?”
    â€œIt is if she was having an affair,” Mrs. Decker replied.
    â€œIf she was, I couldn’t tell it,” Maeve said. “She didn’t giveany of them secret looks or whisper to them or do anything to show she preferred one over the others. Which made me think none of them was special to her. But she sure enjoyed all the attention they were paying her, and she did everything she could to encourage it.”
    â€œSo maybe she poisoned her husband so she could be free to find someone else,” Sarah said.
    â€œThat’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?” her father said. “She may have been enjoying the attention of those men, but how can you imagine she would murder her husband just so she could flirt a bit?”
    â€œAnd she could flirt all she wanted while Charles was alive,” Mrs. Decker said, “just as long as she didn’t do any more than flirt.”
    Realizing they had reached an impasse on Charles’s widow, Frank said, “What about the rest of the family? Did anyone notice anything unusual?”
    â€œI noticed Jenny had been crying, at least,” Mrs. Decker said. “She didn’t shed more than a few tears at the service, but I could see her eyes were swollen even though she’d tried very hard to cover the traces.”
    â€œShe wouldn’t want to lose her composure in public,” Sarah explained. “But I’m relieved to know she was mourning her son. She seemed so cold and unfeeling when we called on her.”
    â€œBut did you notice hardly anybody spoke to her after the service?” Maeve said. “A few ladies came over and spoke to her, but you’d think her friends would’ve gathered around her or something.”
    â€œJenny has always been . . . reserved,” Mrs. Decker said. “She’s never been close friends with other society women.”
    â€œIs she shy?” Sarah asked. “She didn’t seem shy when I met her.”
    â€œI think she’s just sensitive about her background,” Mrs. Decker said. “Many people were rude to her when she came to the city, even after Gerald came home and the war was over.”
    â€œFor some people, the war was never over,” Mr. Decker said. “If you lost a son or a brother, it was hard to forgive.”
    â€œBut Mrs. Oakes was just a young girl during the war,” Maeve said. “Why would people blame her?”
    â€œI’m not sure they did, not exactly,” Mrs. Decker said. “If Jenny had been different . . . If she’d had some of that famous Southern charm and had tried to win people over, I think they would have eventually accepted her, but she always held herself a little apart.”
    â€œGerald was angry about it,” Mr. Decker said, surprising them all.
    â€œHe was?” his wife asked.
    â€œYes, he told me more than once how grateful he was that we’d befriended her. He never thought for a minute that it was any of her doing that people didn’t like her, though. He thought they were just mean to her because she was from the South.”
    â€œMr. Oakes drinks a lot.”
    Everyone looked at Gino in surprise.
    â€œI thought you didn’t notice anything,” Frank said with some amusement.
    He glanced at Maeve again. “I wanted to let Maeve go first.” She shot him a glare which he ignored. “He’d been drinking before the funeral started.”
    â€œHow do you know that?” Frank asked.
    â€œI could smell it on him when we got there. I shook his hand and told him and his wife we knew his son from the hospital and what a good job he did there and all of that.