margherita peraino

Ned Seasons offed himself seated in the front seat of his car, in his closed garage, with the motor running. If his ego hadn’t been as inflated as all four of his tires, Lillian Webber might not have had a problem accepting his tragic death by suicide. Fact is, all who knew Ned Seasons were as dubious as Lillian including her old friend, Harriet Woodside. Kill himself? Not likely. But the facts were all there. Or were they?

It’s 1936 and the Great Depression is almost a bad memory. To make ends meet, Lillian Webber takes on a tailoring job at Logan’s Department Store, where she first came in contact with the now-deceased Ned Seasons, Manager of the Bookkeeping Department. Logan’s employees are as dumbfounded as Lillian to hear that Ned had killed himself. Too many people who would gladly do it for him was the consensus.

Lillian Webber’s best friend, Harriet Woodside, a widow like herself, moves in with Lillian and her only border, Eddie O’Brien, a police officer. Harriet had helped Lillian deal with recuperation after a nasty fall the previous winter and neither Lillian nor Eddie wanted her to leave, so she acquiesced, with little argument and even less persuasion.
Lillian’s suspicions soon became Harriet’s and Eddie’s, too. But if he was murdered, who did it? His wife? The girl he got pregnant? The girl’s father? One too many flirtations? His office assistant? Although an anonymous caller keeps trying to warn her off, Lillian discovers, almost too late, that her suspicions were right on the money.