Occasion of Revenge

10

By Monday morning I’d organized the Ives family troops. I remained in Chestertown, moving into a smaller room on the second floor of the hotel. I instructed Paul and Emily to drive to Annapolis at a horn-provoking crawl while scanning the highway on both sides for skid marks, tire tracks in the grass, or breaks in the guardrail. Ruth agreed to hold down the fort at Daddy’s house on Greenbury Point. And although it seemed crazy, I even notified the couple who had bought my parents’ old place in Seattle to be on the lookout for him.

Daddy hadn’t been seen since midnight on Saturday.

He hadn’t telephoned.

He hadn’t e-mailed from some anonymous cyber-café.

Even if Darlene’s death had sent Daddy off on a drunken binge, I couldn’t believe that he would fail to get in touch. I knew that something must have happened to prevent him from contacting us, and I feared the worst.

I spent the morning zigzagging through the streets and alleyways of Chestertown-down High, along Water, up Canon to Cross, back to High and up to Spring-searching for my father’s rental car, checking behind hedges, and peering into ditches. In the parking lot behind the Old Wharf Inn I spotted a dark blue Taurus with Maryland plates parked behind a boat hauled up on carpet-padded jack stands. With my heart banging against my rib cage, I combed the waterfront all the way to the bridge, praying I wouldn’t catch sight of anything floating in the Chester River wearing Daddy’s familiar blue sweater and gray wool pants. But I saw nothing except a wayward crab pot float, and when I returned to the parking lot, a grizzled fellow carrying a paint can was just climbing into the Taurus.

Around noon, I found myself opposite the police station, an L-shaped brick building with two police cars parked at an angle out front. Hoping that there might be some news, I went inside.

A Coke machine nearly filled the waiting room. On the wall to my left were two armless chairs and a potted plant, flanked on one side by the Maryland state flag and a Lions Club gumball machine and on the other by a water cooler. I stepped up to the window on my right, leaned my arms against the counter, and waited, studying the various notices and framed certificates that hung on the wall.

“Hello?” I ventured at last.

A serious-looking woman, astonishingly pretty in spite of the oversized eyeglasses that threatened to slide off her nose, appeared almost immediately. “Can I help you?”

I asked for Captain Younger and learned that he was out working a case. I wondered if it were my case. “Can you tell me if anybody’s located my father, George Alexander?”

She shook her head. “Let me check with Chief Hammett.” She disappeared through a door into an adjoining office. I heard the murmur of voices, and then she returned, followed by a policeman in his mid-forties who reminded me of a young Rod Steiger.

He had no news.

I gave Chief Hammett my cell phone number and told him where he could reach me, smiled a good-bye, then stood on the steps of the police station for several minutes, staring numbly at the fields beyond the railroad tracks. With his rental car nowhere to be found, I didn’t know what made me think that Daddy was still in Chestertown, I just knew it, is all, the way I sometimes knew that he was on the telephone by the way it rang. I smiled as I recalled the discussion at the party about that book, Flex Your Psychic Muscles, and decided that I’d distract myself by wandering over to the bookstore to see what all the hype was about.

As I strolled east on Cross Street toying with the idea of actually hiring a psychic to help locate our father, I found myself outside Play It Again, Sam, a retro, fifties-style coffee shop where a young professional couple sat on a sofa in the window drinking lattes and sharing a biscòtti. I stared, unabashed, as she nibbled coyly on the pastry, then offered him the end she had just bitten. Although the couple in the window was decades younger than my father and Darlene, something about this little mating ritual reminded me of watching Darlene feed my father crackers and brie. I felt a chill, hugged myself for warmth, then hurried on.

At the bookstore I discovered that Virginia was right; Flex Your Psychic Muscles was on back order. I browsed the collection of books by local authors, selected one on the history of Chestertown, paid for it with my credit card, and wandered back out onto High Street, turning the pages as I walked. In front of me was the courthouse and, according to a centerfold map, Court Street would be to my right. Court intersected with Church Alley, I discovered, which dumped you back onto North Queen Street, just half a block from Darlene’s.

I tucked the book in my bag and headed in that direction, curious because I could see from where I stood that the east side of Court Street was lined with quaint eighteenth-century, one-story shops that had been converted into law offices.

As I turned the corner into Church Alley, I ran smack dab into Virginia, walking Speedo on a leash. At the sight of me Speedo went bonkers, dancing on his hind legs and pawing the air like a palomino. Finding Darlene’s body together had clearly been a bonding experience.

“Speedo! Sit!” Virginia ordered.

Speedo ignored her. Virginia hauled back on the leash, but Speedo only pranced around in a tighter circle, barking joyfully.

“Looks like you have your hands full.” I chuckled.

“Speedo!” Virginia’s breath came in short gasps. “Damn dog!”

“Let me try,” I said, taking the leash from her hands. Soon Speedo was sitting at my feet, happily panting drool all over my running shoes. I smiled at Virginia. “You’re sweet to take the dog,” I said.

“I need my head examined,” she said, tugging at the hem of her lightweight jacket which had ridden up during the struggle. She looked up. “Any news about Darlene or your father?”

I shook my head. “We’ve looked everywhere for Daddy. Nothing. And as for Darlene, we’ll just have to wait for the police.”

“Deirdre is making arrangements to have her cremated, after…”

We both must have been thinking the same thing: after the autopsy. I shivered. Bone saws, Y-incisions. It didn’t bear thinking about. “Is there to be a funeral?” I inquired, realizing with a pang that Daddy might miss saying good-bye.

Virginia shook her head. “Darlene wants… wanted her ashes scattered among the azaleas at Longwood Gardens.”

“They’ll let you do that?”

Virginia shrugged. “Who’s to stop you?”

Who indeed? I nodded toward the dog who was lying spread-eagle on the pavement with his muzzle resting on my shoe. “Where are you heading, Virginia?”

She pointed to her right. “That way,” she said. “I live on Lawyers’ Row.”

I must have looked puzzled.

“Otherwise known as North Court Street,” she added. “It’s only to confuse the tourists.”

“Well, whatever it’s called, let me walk you and Speedo home.” I tugged on Speedo’s leash until he reluctantly got to his feet.

Virginia smiled, bowed, and with a broad sweep of her arm, indicated I should lead the way. We walked back the way I had come along Church, passing a row of modest, two-story colonial homes, recently renovated and variously covered with aluminum siding in shades of vanilla, sand, or pink with darker, contrasting shutters. Number 108 on the west side of the street was a particular standout in pale lavender, with shutters the color of ripe plums and a red door. Behind it, a tall white picket fence stretched for a hundred feet before ending at the back of somebody’s garage. On the other side of the fence, a broad-brimmed straw hat bobbed. I couldn’t see who was underneath.

Speedo stopped, raised a hind leg, and relieved himself against a sugar maple tree whose roots extended under the pickets, causing the fence to buckle. Virginia and I looked at each other and pretended not to notice. Instead, I waved my free hand toward a row of three nearly identical houses. “Which one is yours?”

“The green one.” Virginia turned and headed toward the house on the end nearest us. In front of it, brown grass sprang from cracks in a sidewalk bordered by a privet hedge from which unruly tendrils shot out in all directions. I yearned for my pruning sheers. The hedge turned a corner at Virginia’s driveway and we followed it for a few yards before I handed the end of Speedo’s leash back to Virginia. I was surprised to see that Virginia’s house lay backyard to backyard with Darlene’s. The steep-pitched roof of Darlene’s garden shed poked out above a chest-high stone wall that separated the two lots.

“I didn’t realize you and Darlene were neighbors,” I commented.

“Oh, yes.” Virginia opened a gate and released Speedo, leash and all, inside. “We would probably have been even better neighbors if it hadn’t been for that wall.” She shrugged. “But it was already here when I moved in,” she said, almost apologetically.

“As inherited walls go, that one’s fairly attractive.” Four rosebushes were espaliered equidistantly along the wall, two on each side of an ancient wooden gate covered with ivy. In summer the bushes would be heavy with blooms. “Did you plant the roses?”

“Oh my, no!” She laughed. “I’m terrible with plants. Have a brown thumb, if you want to know the truth.”

Speedo, dragging his leash, loped joyfully around the pocket-sized yard.

“Would you care to come in?” Virginia asked.

With psychics on my mind a lot lately, I concentrated on sending hot tea messages in her direction. “I’d love to.”

Virginia reached for the doorknob, turned, and called, “Speedo!”

Speedo, in the midst of a full-blown squirrel alert, ignored her. He dashed off after the poor creature who barely escaped with its tail by scampering up the ivied wall and frisking over the fence.

“Speedo!” The dog skid to a halt, dirt flying, his nose inches away from the wall. He sat there mournfully, gazing up at the spot where the squirrel’s tail had last been seen. “Speedo!”

At first Speedo didn’t seem to hear, then he got to his feet, turned, and trotted in our direction. “Beastly dog,” Virginia muttered. “I’ll be glad when Darryl comes to collect him.”

“Where does Darryl live?” I asked Virginia.

She held the door wide until Speedo, with me close behind, had both entered the house. “Up near Glen Burnie, I think.”

Virginia’s kitchen radiated sunshine. To my left, a pleasant breakfast nook, painted yellow, was built into an alcove under a window. Frilly country curtains printed with concentric, multicolored rings like the Olympic flag were tied back with wide red grosgrain ribbon. Piled on the painted tabletop were a number of magazines and mail-order catalogs. To my right was a serious stove with two overhead ovens and six gas burners. “Are you a gourmet chef, Virginia?”

“Not a bit of it.” She pulled the back door closed behind her. “Another thing I inherited from the previous owners.” She indicated the breakfast nook. “Have a seat, won’t you?”

I moved aside a pair of scissors, a pad of lime green Post-it notes, two plastic mailers from L.L. Bean, a flat, square carton from Harry and David, and a Jiffy bag from Amazon.com. Virginia lifted a stainless steel kettle from the stove, strolled to the double sink, and filled it from the tap. She set it on a front burner and twisted the knob, adjusting the flame from boil to incinerate. While she rummaged in the dishwasher for some clean cups, I browsed through the catalogs spread out before me. In addition to L.L. Bean, there was Ross Simon, TravelSmith, Signals, J. Jill, Orvis, White Flower Farms, Boston Museum of Art, and, hanging out in an awfully good neighborhood, a Sears Roebuck catalog.

“Christmas shopping?” I asked.

Virginia smiled a sad smile. “A bit. Mostly I just enjoy looking at them.”

I picked up the catalog from White Flower Farms where spring bulbs of every variety were offered for sale. “I thought you said you weren’t a gardener?”

“I’m not.” She crossed the black-and-white checkerboard linoleum, took the catalog from my hand, and riffled through it. “My husband was.”

Something about the way she said was made me look up.

She put the catalog down and looked at me directly. “Harry died five years ago.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She stood before me, her fingers neatly laced together. “It was sudden and rather horrible, but I’m pretty much over the shock of it now.”

“Did you and Harry have any children?”

Her face took on a look of such infinite sadness that I wanted to snatch back my words. Her eyes, her face, her hands-everything about her body grew still.

“I had a daughter,” she said. “But she died, too.”

To my relief, the teakettle screamed, rescuing me. Virginia hurried over to the stove where she bustled about preparing the tea. She lowered a tea bag into each cup, then looked up. “Earl Grey OK?”

“Perfect!”

“Milk?”

“No, just tea. I’m a purist.”

“I am, too. That’s why I use bone china. Real bone china.”

She set a cup in front of me and I sipped at it gratefully. In a moment, a plate of Pepperidge Farm cookies appeared at my elbow. I stuffed one in my mouth. Milanos worked better than a foot anytime.

“How long have you known Darlene?” I mumbled, my mouth still full.

“Since I moved here from Tiverton.” She looked thoughtful. “About two years.”

“Tiverton?”

“Rhode Island.”

The only thing I knew about Tiverton was that it was near Bristol, Rhode Island, where they build boats. I’d visited Bristol with Connie when she’d been shopping for a sailboat, not long before she’d bought Sea Song. On the other hand, everything was close to everything else in Rhode Island.

Virginia settled onto the bench opposite me. Silence grew in the space between us until it loomed so large I felt I had to break it. “How long did you stay at the party last night?”

Virginia must have known where I was going with that question because she set her cup down, smiled at me sympathetically, and said, “Your father was still there when I left at eleven.”

“Who else was still there?” I wanted to know.

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “That Darryl person.”

“I gather you don’t like him.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” She laughed, then her face grew serious. “In the short time I’ve known him, I’ve grown to like your father a lot, Hannah. But that Darryl I never liked. Never liked him at all.”

I thought about the untidy hair. The insolent attitude. The belligerent scowl. “He is a little hard to warm up to,” I admitted.

“And he’s a sponge. Always borrowing his mother’s car, loafing around her house…” Virginia’s cup clattered against its saucer. “He’ll never pay your father back.”

“Pay my father back for what?”

“George has been lending Darryl money.”

“How do you know that?”

“I saw them at the ATM at Commerce Bank. Your father took out a wad of money and handed it over to Darryl.”

“Maybe Daddy was sending Darryl to buy him something?”

Virginia puffed air out through her lips. “If you believe that, I’ve got a gen-u-ine Rolex watch for twenty-nine dollars that might interest you.” She leaned toward me across the table. “They’re freeloaders, those Donovans, the whole lot of ’em.”

Whether Darlene was or wasn’t a freeloader hardly mattered now. “Deirdre, too?” I wondered aloud.

“Ice would not melt in that girl’s mouth.”

We sat in companionable silence for a while, drinking tea. Clearly Virginia had no use for the Donovan clan. I wondered why. Was she in love with my father? They were about the same age, Daddy and the widowed Virginia, and with her bone-white hair, porcelain skin, and sea-green eyes, she was certainly attractive in a much less flamboyant way than her late neighbor. Could she have cared enough about Daddy to eliminate her rival?

Virginia’s eyes flitted to the back door, her lips parted, and she gasped. “Oh, no! Can’t I have a moment’s peace?”

After two brisk taps, the door was pushed open by a broad hand with familiar purple fingernails, followed almost immediately by LouElla’s cherubic face. Her ebony hair was braided and twisted into a luxurious nest on top of her head. A robin could have set up housekeeping in it. “Virginia?”

Virginia rose and headed toward the door. “Oh, hi, LouElla. Won’t you…”

But LouElla had already pushed her way into the kitchen, crossed to the stove, and stooped over to pat Speedo on the head. From a cord around her neck a straw hat hung down her back. I realized who the gardener behind the picket fence must have been. Confirming my suspicions LouElla said, “I was working in my garden when I saw you walk by.”

“I was looking for my father when I ran into Virginia,” I said.

It wasn’t until I spoke that LouElla seemed to notice me. In her crepe-soled gardening shoes, she squeaked over to the table and waved a hand indicating I should scoot over. She plopped down next to me on the bench. “Terrible what happened last night. Terrible! Terrible!” She patted my hand. “Don’t worry about your father, my dear. I’m sure he’ll turn up hale and hearty!”

I wished I could believe that. I felt drained, increasingly discouraged by my inability to help my father at a time when he needed me the most. “I’m really worried,” I said. “I’ve searched for him all morning. I’ve been everywhere. There’s no sign of him or his car. It’s like he disappeared off the face of the earth!”

LouElla turned her pleasant face to mine, her eyebrows neatly arched as if painted on with a stencil. “Even if aliens got him, sweetheart, they’ll beam him back unharmed.” She patted my hand again reassuringly, then closed her eyes momentarily. She smiled a closed-lip smile then turned to me again. “I was abducted by aliens once. In Vermont.” She sighed, as if the memory were a pleasant one. “Don’t believe everything you hear, my dear. It didn’t hurt one little bit.”

LouElla was an enigma. Just when you thought she was making sense, she’d fly off into never-never land.

Virginia floated a halfhearted attempt to get rid of her neighbor. “Are you in a hurry?” Her eyebrows shot up hopefully.

LouElla beamed. “Goodness, no. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

Virginia caved. “Would you like some tea, then?”

LouElla bobbed in her seat and clasped her narrow hands together. “Oh, tea would be delightful!”

From a glass canister, Virginia selected a tea bag at random and dropped it into a ceramic mug, tag and all. I noted that LouElla wasn’t getting a bone china cup, and I wondered if Virginia had picked a disgusting flavor like chamomile or licorice in hopes of discouraging a long visit, but when she brought LouElla’s mug over I could tell from the scent that the tea was one of my favorites, Lemon Lift.

LouElla had already helped herself to a cookie; several crumbs clung to her frosted plum lipstick. “I left the party around twelve-thirty,” she announced, unasked, “and the only people left were your dad, Darlene, and her children.” She raised a painted eyebrow. “Are you staying in town, dear?”

“I’m going home in the morning.”

LouElla touched my hand where it rested on the tabletop. “He’s a good man, your father. A good man.”

A tear rolled unbidden down my cheek. “I know, and he means well, but he doesn’t always show good judgment.”

“He’s still grieving for your mother, isn’t he?”

“We all are. It hasn’t even been a year. After the funeral I prayed he’d find something to interest him, but I had something in mind like woodworking or stamp collecting! Not a girlfriend. Not so soon.”

LouElla perched next to me like a 1970’s talk-show host: ultragroomed, wearing a three-piece double-knit pantsuit in pink and tangerine. I couldn’t believe she’d just spent hours working in her garden. If it’d been me, I’d have grass stains on my knees, streaks of dust on my face, and black dirt under my fingernails. No doubt LouElla had worn gloves. “That often happens with widowers,” LouElla continued in a Doctor Ruth sort of voice, “coming out of a longtime, happy marriage.” She wagged her head. “They jump at the first woman who comes along, hoping to recapture their happiness.”

“Daddy took off with the first thing that sat next to him on a barstool,” I complained.

LouElla stared at me, silently nodding. In demeanor she was so much like Doctor Ruth or Dr. Joyce Brothers that I just couldn’t help confessing to her.

“Has he always drunk heavily?” she asked.

“No, not until after Mom died. Up until then, he’d been a social drinker. After the Navy, he worked as a consultant to the aerospace industry. There was a lot of entertaining with his job, so drinking kind of went with the territory.” I ran my fingers through my hair, separating strands that were damp with the sweat beading up on my brow. “Lately we were beginning to worry that it was getting out of hand.” I accepted a tissue from Virginia and used it to blow my nose. “When Daddy went into the hospital after his accident, they ran some tests to see if he was an alcoholic. He must have been fine, though, because the doctor let him go.”

LouElla shot a quick glance at Virginia, who jumped right into the conversation. “I hate to tell you this, Hannah, but the doctor didn’t check your father out of the hospital. He checked himself out.”

I couldn’t believe that this woman who was practically a stranger knew more about my father than I did. “How do you know that?”

Virginia chewed on her lips, then said, “Darlene told me. She said the doctor wanted to keep him for a while, but that it was an unnecessary expense and he was perfectly fine so she was going to take him home.”

I thought back to that day in the hospital, to the bottle of vodka in Darlene’s hand, and to Daddy’s remarkable “recovery.” I realized that if Darlene weren’t already dead I would have killed her myself.

“If you want my opinion, he should have stayed there a few more days.” LouElla gave me a knowing look. “And not just for the head injury, if you know what I mean.” I felt my face flush with embarrassment. It was one thing to suspect your father of being an alcoholic, and quite another to realize that everyone in town must be talking and tut-tutting over it, too. I shoved my teacup toward the center of the table, suddenly certain that I’d never want to eat or drink anything again. “I’d better go.”

LouElla clapped both hands to her cheeks. “Oh! I nearly forgot why I came!”

Virginia had taken my empty cup and was heading toward the sink with it. She glanced back at LouElla. “What might that be?”

LouElla rose and ambled to the center of the kitchen where a shaft of sunlight settled on her for a moment, highlighting her hair and giving it a reddish cast. I wondered if she colored it herself-a packet of “midnight blue,” perhaps, followed by a “summer berry” rinse. “Look, Virginia,” she said. “I know you’re not a dog person, but I am. I would love to take Speedo off your hands for the time being.”

Virginia’s eyes widened in surprise. “You would?”

“I really, really would.” LouElla knelt in front of the dog. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Speedo, old boy.” But Speedo was sound asleep, his back legs twitching as if chasing squirrels in his dreams. “If you’re worried about it,” she addressed Virginia, “I have experience. Who did they call on when the CIA station chief in Athens was murdered in a drive-by shooting?”

I thought I could guess, but why spoil LouElla’s pleasure. Virginia simply stared.

LouElla stood tall. “Me. Why, me, of course.”

“How did you help?” I asked, sublimely naïve. “Did you bring the terrorists to justice?”

LouElla’s eyes sparkled. “No, I adopted his dog, a German shepherd named Bonzo.”

Virginia smiled as if everything were normal and her whole kitchen hadn’t slipped into some parallel world where grass is red and the sky is green and fish are plucked out of the clouds. The woman actually looked grateful. “I’d like you to take the dog, LouElla. Thank you.”

LouElla clapped her hands together. “There! Then it’s settled.” She reached for the leash which Virginia had draped over the kitchen doorknob. “C’mon, Speedo.”

Speedo opened one eye, rose to his feet, and shook himself with extravagant pleasure. LouElla clipped the leash to the dog’s collar and led him toward the door. “We’ll come visit you, Virginia. Won’t we, Speedo?” Speedo’s whole body wagged. “Well, bye,” she caroled.

When the door had closed behind LouElla and her new charge, I turned to Virginia. “Why did you let Speedo go home with LouElla?” I couldn’t believe it had escaped her notice that LouElla was a bit… eccentric.

Virginia waved me back toward the table, a steaming kettle of water in her hand. After I sat down, she poured hot water over the cold, soggy tea bag in my cup. “Let me tell you about LouElla.” She set the teakettle down on a braided mat. “LouElla’s right, I’m not a dog person. I much prefer cats.”

“You have cats?” I hadn’t seen any around.

“They’ve been hiding out since Speedo came to stay. Jennyanydots is cowering under my bed upstairs, and the last time I saw Bustopher, he was in the basement curled up on top of a heating duct.”

“I’m a cat person, too,” I admitted, “although I’m between cats right now. I’m just waiting for the right one to adopt me.” I dunked my tea bag up and down thoughtfully. “But you were going to tell me about LouElla.”

“Yes, well, LouElla might have been married at one time, because she had a son. But no one ever saw her husband and she never talks about him. When she came to live in Chestertown, her son was six. They were very close, as close as a mother and son could be. But, just before high school, Sammy got sick.” She rested her elbows on the table. “Two years ago, just about the time I moved here, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. They tried chemotherapy, radiation, surgery… everything. Eventually, there was nothing more they could do, so the doctors sent him home to die.”

My heart ached with sympathy for that strange woman and her son. I thought of my mother’s death in the coronary care unit of University Hospital in Baltimore. She hadn’t even had the luxury of coming home before she was taken away from us.

“As you can imagine, LouElla was pretty torn up about it. We all urged her to put Samuel in a nursing home, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She rented a hospital bed and a Porta Potti. A truck used to come by each week with fresh oxygen tanks. She spoon-fed the boy, she bathed him, she did everything for him. Lord, how that woman worked to save that child!” Virginia gazed out her window in the direction of LouElla’s backyard. “LouElla was trained as a nurse, of course.”

I thought about all the things LouElla claimed to have done. It wouldn’t have surprised me to hear that she’d been trained as an astronaut and was volunteering to help resupply the space station.

“Samuel died only six months ago, Hannah, so I thought that if she wanted to keep Speedo, it might give her something to do.”

I had witnessed for myself the effort that LouElla had put into being official greeter at my father’s engagement party, and thought that a person like that with time on her hands could be dangerous. “So you think Speedo will be safe with LouElla?”

“Of course!” Virginia snorted. “LouElla throws herself wholeheartedly into everything. By the time Darryl shows up, if ever, Speedo will be winning blue ribbons at the Westchester County Dog Show.”

The thought of Speedo holding still long enough to allow himself to be groomed or perform for the judges made me laugh. “I’m sure you’re right.” I looked at my watch. It was nearly two o’clock. “I’d better be going, Virginia. Thanks so much for the tea and cookies.” I stood, determined to leave this time.

As I opened the door, Virginia laid a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure your father will come home soon, Hannah.”

“From your mouth to God’s ears,” I said.