Occasion of Revenge

19

Everyone stared-Ruth’s mouth ajar, Paul’s brow deeply furrowed, Daddy’s eyes like slits-as if trying to determine if I’d lost my mind. “We need to find Emily and Dante,” I blurted at last. “Virginia’s come unglued. LouElla thinks she’s on her way here to kill Emily!”

“That’s crazy!” Paul said.

“Maybe so, but there’s usually an element of truth in what LouElla says.” I smiled grimly, thinking about my father. My eyes locked with Paul’s. “Can we afford to take that chance?”

Ruth grabbed my hand and jerked me back into my chair. “But where do we look?”

Paul’s chair screeched against the floor as he scooted closer to me. “Hannah, can you remember where the kids were going?”

“I didn’t ask! Oh, God, I didn’t ask.” Panic seized me. Where did they go? Oh, Lord, where did they go? I shook my head violently, trying to drive the random bits of memory that were ricocheting around inside my skull into their proper slots. “The magic show finished at four-thirty, so that’s out. After the face-painting, there was the Punch and Judy Show…”

“Wait a minute!” Daddy nearly knocked over his coffee cup as his hand shot across the table in front of him. “How will Virginia find Emily in all these crowds?”

“Emily told Virginia where she’d be going, Daddy! When she called Virginia to warn her about LouElla.” I buried my face in my hands. “Oh, how did things get so bass-ackwards?”

I peeped out through my fingers. “We need a plan.” I pulled the First Night Annapolis program out of my bag and spread it on the table. I scanned the program, looking for events marked with a balloon indicating their suitability for children. “There’s a comedy juggler at St. Mary’s. Ruth, you take that. And there’s some sort of sand craft workshop at Annapolis Elementary. You can check that out, too-”

Paul shook his head. “No, forget that, Ruth. Chloe’s too young for sand crafts.”

I threw up my hands in frustration. “What, then?”

Paul stabbed his finger at a green section of the program: Zone 5, the U.S. Naval Academy. “There. The Harlem Wizards.”

“A basketball game? With Chloe?” I thought Paul had lost it. “What makes you think so?”

“Dante’s a nut for basketball, Hannah. Trust me. After watching puppets duke it out and having his face painted, he’ll be ready for something like this.” He tapped the program where a balloon was drawn next to the event. “Besides, this is an event for kids. And it’s practically at the Visitors’ Center where we agreed to meet and watch the fireworks.”

A wave swept over me, half of sadness, half of shame, that I had distanced myself so much from my son-in-law that I didn’t even know he enjoyed basketball.

I checked my watch. “If LouElla is right, it will take Virginia an hour to get here, another twenty minutes or so to park…” I turned to Paul for reassurance. “The game doesn’t start until nine-thirty, so that gives us plenty of time to find them. Doesn’t it?”

He nodded. “I certainly hope so.”

My cell phone burbled to life. With frantic fingers, I fumbled for the talk button. It was Captain Younger, returning my call. I blurted out my suspicions about Virginia Prentice and about Marty O’Malley’s missing Compres tablets, then babbled on about LouElla.

“Whoa! One thing at a time, Mrs. Ives.”

“That’s just it!” I was practically shouting. “If LouElla’s right, we don’t have much time!”

Captain Younger’s voice took on such a soothing tone that I wondered if I’d reached Dial-a-Shrink. “I hear what you’re saying, Mrs. Ives, and we’ll check into it, of course. Your immediate concern is for your family, I know, but I’m certain there’s virtually nothing to worry about. Just in case, however, the minute I finish talking with you, I’ll notify the Annapolis police to be on the lookout for Mrs. Prentice.”

I heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank you.”

“I’ll have to warn you, though, that LouElla Van Schuyler isn’t going to be a very credible witness.”

“I know she’s a little kooky, but-”

“Not just a little, Mrs. Ives. Last year we charged Mrs. Van Schuyler with assault when she got into a brawl with a clerk at the grocery store over the sale price of a canned ham. Both women ended up in the emergency room at Kent Queen Anne’s Hospital. In the hospital, Mrs. Van Schuyler became irrational and kept threatening to kill herself, so we got a court order to commit her.”

I let that soak in. “Commit her where?”

“To the Upper Shore Mental Health Center.”

Just great! I was about to send my family running all over Annapolis chasing the paranoid schizophrenic fantasies of a character right out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But for some reason, I believed LouElla, and to my great surprise, I found myself defending her. “But they released her, didn’t they?”

“They did, but who’s checking to make sure she’s taking her medication?”