FALSE CONCLUSION

Kindhearted Bea Abbot takes on yet another worthy cause.

As owner of a well-regarded domestic services agency, Bea already has a lot on her plate. But she never hesitated when her old friend Leon Holland asked her to serve as guardian for his orphaned niece, Bernice. Truth be told, middle-aged Bea enjoys having the lively teenager around—not that she’s around all that much, since she’s a star student at a prestigious boarding school. So Bea’s more than a little disappointed when wealthy, imperious April Trescott insists on driving Bernice home from school instead of letting Bea collect her. Bernice has been given the dubious honor of serving as roommate to April’s niece, Evelina, a fellow orphan, who needs supervision because she suffers from epilepsy. April also presses Bernice to accept an invitation to Evelina’s 16th birthday party, an event Bernice would just as soon skip. But the week before the party, Bea gets an emergency call from April begging her to let Evelina stay with her for a few days while the family sorts out the death of April’s brother, Constant, who was Evelina’s legal guardian. The more time the dull, ill-dressed, ill-groomed Evelina stays in their house, the more Bea and Bernice suspect that she’s not as impaired as her aunt wants them to think and the more Bea wonders whether Bernice’s assignment as Evelina’s roommate was entirely random. With the help of her ex-husband, Piers, another lost soul who falls intermittently under her care, Bea unearths a plot against her family as finely calculated as it is evil.

Shocking yet not really surprising.