Occasion of Revenge

20

It was still thirty minutes until game time, so while Daddy and Ruth checked the events going on at St. John’s College and the area around the county buildings and the Court House, Paul and I retraced our steps from Maryland Avenue, around State Circle to Church Circle and down Main Street.

Opposite Chick & Ruth’s deli, I thought I spotted Chloe riding on Dante’s shoulders about half a block down Main Street, near Hats in the Belfry. “There they are!” I grabbed Paul’s hand and dragged him down the middle of the street, playing dodge ’em with boisterous clots of teenagers and little families traveling in pods. “Emily! Dante!” But they didn’t hear me. I could see Chloe’s head above the crowds, bobbing farther and farther away.

Suddenly my path was blocked by a giant pink blob with green eyes and a yellow spine. I gasped, then recognized it as an inflatable fish; its fat purple lips swam menacingly in front of my face. I turned and bolted for the sidewalk, yelling for Paul to follow me.

In front of Brown’s Furniture, I collided with a character swathed in red silk, wearing long gloves and a stark white Venetian mask. The sinister figure raised its lantern and peered at me closely in the dim light, scaring the bejesus out of me. Behind it, other faceless figures floated threateningly in robes of green, yellow, purple, and white. I froze in my tracks. “Out of my way!” I shrieked. I needed to keep my eyes glued to Chloe. I could just see the top of her golden head as she crossed the street with her father, heading for the giant Christmas tree at Market Square.

A gap opened, and Paul and I charged through. At last we were gaining on them. “Emily! Dante!” Heads turned, but not the ones we were pursuing. It wasn’t until I had grabbed the back of his blue jean jacket that I remembered Dante had been wearing a black windbreaker and that Chloe would have been sitting in a Gerry pack. The surprised face that turned to me was that of a stranger. “Sorry,” I stammered. “I thought you were somebody else.”

As the couple walked away, I bent over double, my hands resting on my knees as I tried to keep my lungs from exploding. Paul rubbed my back. “OK?”

Still panting, I looked up at him sideways and nodded.

“Where next?”

“Let’s try the juggler.”

Paul and I cut right, dodged the Pillsbury Doughboy and his entourage at the crosswalk, and hurried up Green Street and across Duke of Gloucester to the auditorium at St. Mary’s Catholic School.

“Sorry, it’s full.” The usher offered us second-chance tickets for the ten-thirty show.

I turned to Paul in desperation. “But that’ll be too late!” To the usher I said, “It’s an emergency. Have you seen a tall guy with a ponytail carrying a baby? He’s with a woman. Kinda short with reddish hair and an earring in her eyebrow?”

The usher smiled. “There could be a dozen of ’em in there just like that.”

“He might be wearing a blinking Santa hat.”

The guy shook his head.

“Please let me in, just for a minute. I need to find them.”

Paul pinched the fabric of the usher’s sleeve. “Let my wife look. It’s important. I’ll stay here as collateral.”

Before there could be further argument, I pushed through the doorway and into the auditorium. I threaded my way through the aisles, squinting down each row, practically swimming through the waves of laughter that erupted from the crowd as Michael Rosman fooled around up on the stage with a life-size dummy. I kept a low profile, not wanting anyone to confuse me with a volunteer from the audience and clap a fake animal nose on my face. But in spite of what the usher had said, there was no one in the audience even remotely resembling Emily, Dante, or little Chloe.

We hurried back the way we had come, across Market Space and down Randall Street to the Academy, following a string of revelers through Gate One, several wearing hats made of recycled computer parts. A woman dressed as a parlor maid raced by with ice skates slung over her shoulder. “She’s going to the ice rink,” I panted. “Let’s try there.”

At Dahlgren Hall the public session was still in progress, and DKGB and the Kremlin Crew had settled down into a reggae groove. We took the steps to the second level of the Victorian-era building two at a time and made a quick circuit of the balcony, scanning the faces in the crowd as well as those skating down below. As I leaned over the railing, I half expected to see Dante and Chloe watching from the sidelines while Emily performed mohawks, crossovers, spirals, and simple jumps on the ice-as a faculty kid she’d taken lessons at Dahlgren and had gotten pretty darn good before giving it all up during her Dungeons and Dragons phase. We waved halfheartedly to a few friendly faces, but no one we were related to.

“C’mon, Hannah.” Paul grasped my upper arm and tugged on it gently. “Let’s get over to Halsey in case they make the game.”

I tagged along behind him, still scanning the faces in the crowd. At the field house, we stood outside for a while letting the fans flow around us as they arrived for the basketball game, but there was no sign of Dante and Emily.

Inside, the field house was packed. I wrinkled my nose at the odor of commingled sweat and old tennis shoes.

“Ma’am?”

The door attendant seemed to be addressing me. “Yes?”

“Your shoes.”

I stared down at my feet uncomprehendingly. The peacock blue T-straps seemed perfectly fine to me. “What about my shoes?”

“You can’t wear heels on the floor in there.”

“Oh?” I was too exhausted to argue. I slipped off my shoes and stuffed them toe first into the pockets of my coat, one on each side. “OK, now?”

“Sir?”

Paul sighed, slipped out of his Corfams, tied the laces together, and slung the shoes over his shoulder. Satisfied, the attendant waved us through into…

Cacophony!

The ja-bung, ja-bung, ja-bung of the ball being dribbled down the court. The thrump of it hitting the backboard. The whoosh as it streaked through the net. The sqweep of athletic shoes on the polished floor. Add the shriek of the whistles and the cries of the crowd ricocheting off the hard walls and high, rounded ceiling, and I wanted to cram my fingers in my ears.

Paul scanned one side of the field house and I took the other. I tried to take in every face, but with so many people in the audience, it was impossible. I looked at Paul and shook my head. Maybe he’d been wrong about Dante attending the game, and I’d been right, but this was hardly the time to say I told you so, not with my family in possible danger.

I located a uniformed security guard and explained that someone might be showing up to make trouble. I begged him to be on the lookout for a woman matching Virginia’s description. White hair like Barbara Bush, I said. She’s distraught, I said, and unbalanced. The guard nodded. I could practically hear him thinking: If there’s any nut here, I must be looking at her. “I’ll keep my eyes open.” One thumb hitched in his pants pocket, he was watching the game, not my face. “Anybody looks like that comes through, I’ll let you know.”

I didn’t know how it was possible, but the noise in the arena intensified. Wearing bright purple uniforms emblazoned with red W’s and gold stars, the Harlem Wizards streamed onto the court and began their antics to the delighted shrieks of the crowd. While buzzers and whistles assaulted my ears, Paul slipped his arm around me and pulled me close. “I’m sure it’s a false alarm, Hannah, aren’t you?”

“But LouElla seemed so sure!”

“Like the smallpox?”

“I see your point.” We must have appeared to the outside world like a comfortably married, middle-aged couple, standing around looking for front-row seats.

Suddenly Paul’s arm tightened around me. “Look! There she is!”

“Who? Virginia? LouElla?” My eyes vibrated in their sockets as I struggled to look everywhere at once.

“Virginia! Over by the doors!” I followed the long line of Paul’s arm as he pointed across the court. So many people were to-ing and fro-ing near the entrances in a vibrant, colorful patchwork of winter outerwear that I missed her at first. And then it was as if a spotlight had been turned on: Virginia stood there, arms plastered to her sides, solid as a tree, her familiar white head shimmering in the blaze of lights.

I took a step forward and watched, petrified, as Virginia’s arm rose like a turnstile until it extended from her body at a ninety-degree angle. In her hand was a gun. She pointed the weapon toward a spot in the bleachers, straight at Emily, who was sitting next to her husband, bouncing little Chloe on her lap. In that split second, I realized I had been looking for Dante’s Santa cap, but he wasn’t wearing it. It lay across his knees and was no longer blinking. Dante was cheering for the players as they thundered down the court toward the basket.

I shouted “Look out!” but my cry was drowned by the screech of a referee’s whistle.

What’s wrong with these idiots? Can’t they see what’s going on?

Without hesitation, Paul and I dashed onto the floor and raced down the middle of the court toward a herd of basketball players stampeding in our direction. Emily turned toward me, her eyes wide. Dante stood, his hands aloft, frozen in mid-cheer. The crowd around him stood, too, roaring with approval, thinking we were part of the show-Mr. and Mrs. America vs. the Harlem Wizards. Someone started to chant “Go, go, go, go…” and then the rhythmic clapping began.

“Look out!” I screamed again as the Wizards streamed by us on both sides. “She’s got a gun!”

The crowd went wild-“Go, go, go, go!”

I raced toward Virginia, my lungs exploding, waving my arms wildly over my head. “A gun! A gun!”

Suddenly the mood of the crowd changed. The clapping became sporadic as first one section of the audience and then another realized something other than basketball must be going on. Heads turned this way and that in puzzlement and confusion. On the court, the Wizards froze. First a player, poised with the ball in one hand, about to wrist-flip an effortless basket. Then his teammates. Then a referee, arms extended, whistle dangling from his lips, who, thank God, called a time out. Screeeeeeeeeee!

I focused on Virginia. Someone had turned down the volume on the crowd, and in the muffled chaos she turned her head lazily toward me. But the arm holding the gun remained steady. I imagined her finger bearing down slowly, slowly, on the trigger and willed every molecule of adrenaline I possessed into the muscles propelling my legs.

All at once, an object hurtled out of the shadow of the bleachers and launched itself at Virginia in a streak of purple fury. A broad shoulder caught Virginia just below the knees in an NFL-style tackle that sent her sprawling. Virginia’s right arm shot skyward; the gun, gray-black and ugly, spun away, sliding across the polished floor and coming to rest against the athletic shoe of an astonished Wizard. “Gotcha!” exclaimed LouElla. In a single, practiced move, she twisted Virginia’s arm behind her back and rolled her over so that the other woman’s cheek lay squashed against the floor. By the time I reached her side, LouElla was sitting on the small of Virginia’s back, pinning her down.

“Thank you, thank you!” I drew in a ragged breath.

“Are you all right?” Paul extended his hand to LouElla, offering to help her to her feet, but she shook her head.

She wiped her brow with the sleeve of her sweater. “Phew! I’m a little out of practice.” Still balancing on Virginia’s back, she used the fingers of both hands to tuck long strands of hair into the elaborate French twist at the back of her head. All around us the crowd had grown strangely quiet, and I was aware of Dante standing next to me with Emily and Chloe peeking out from behind his back.

Eyes bright and round as coins, LouElla surveyed the faces surrounding her. “Well? Isn’t anybody going to call the police?”

The security guard employed by Halsey Field House happily took over for the exuberant LouElla, who couldn’t help but preen in the spotlight like the Comeback Kid. For the photographers who materialized out of nowhere she posed prettily, but when the Department of Defense police arrived to make a formal arrest, she positively glowed.

In short order, Virginia would find herself locked in a holding cell on Hospital Point, while DOD and the Navy Criminal Investigative Service sorted out jurisdictional issues. We’d be interviewed by NCIS in the morning, we were told. What a way to spend the first day of a new millennium!

In the meantime, the Wizards had resumed their zany tricks, and Ruth had called my cell phone to report in. We’d given Ruth and Daddy the startling news about Virginia and, although badly shaken, we agreed to stay at Halsey Field House until they appeared.

I settled down on the bleachers sandwiched comfortably between Emily and LouElla. Paul, with Chloe on his lap, sat next to Dante in the row above us and behind. Adrenaline still coursed through my veins; I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble staying awake until midnight.

“Lady?”

I turned and stared into the freckled face of a gap-toothed kid around eight years old. He held a needlepoint purse in both hands, its tortoiseshell handles hanging limply to each side. “Yes?”

“My mom told me to give this to you. That other lady dropped it.” He straightened his elbows and thrust the purse in my direction.

I squinted at the kid in confusion. “What lady?”

“The one the cops took.”

Holy moley! I laced my fingers and squeezed my hands together while staring into his innocent, pale blue eyes. My good angel advised me to pat the kid on the head and tell him to give Virginia’s purse to the security guard, but there was a bad angel whispering in my other ear so I smiled, said, “Thank you,” and relieved him of his burden.

And burden it was. Even without the gun, the bag weighed a ton. I settled it on my knees and stared at it, trying to decide what to do.

Emily elbowed my arm. “I don’t remember that purse.”

I positioned my mouth a few inches from her ear and said, “That’s because it’s not mine.”

“Then who…?” she began. Her jaw dropped in a pantomime of surprise until she snapped it shut with a quick tap on her chin with the back of her hand. “Mother!”

“I probably should look through it,” I said.

“To find out who it belongs to?” Emily grinned.

“Naturally.” I grabbed the handles and pulled until the purse yawned open on my lap. A black wallet lay on top. I plucked it out and handed it to Emily.

Emily unfolded the wallet, smiled, and turned it in my direction. A younger, darker-haired Virginia Prentice scowled out at me from the corner of her driver’s license. “It’s evidence now, huh?”

Emily returned the wallet and I flipped through its plastic sleeves checking the names embossed on each credit card before I remembered that Darryl would have to account to the police for that particular crime. I reached the last sleeve and flipped it over, not to a credit card, but to a picture of a young bride. My stomach clenched. Julia. Her dark brown hair swirled high on her head in an elegant crown interwoven with seed pearls and orange blossoms. Soft spit curls nestled against each cheek. She was smiling. “Oh…”

Emily leaned close. “That’s Virginia’s daughter, isn’t it?”

“Must be.”

“So sad.” I tucked the wallet into the purse and leaned back against Paul’s knees. “We’ll take it to the police in the morning.”

I was able to keep my hands off the purse for the space of two free throws before being compelled to peer into the bag again-a lipstick, hairbrush, ballpoint pens, some loose coins. I thought I knew why the damn thing weighed so much. I felt along the dark silk lining and discovered a zipper compartment large enough to accommodate several paperback books. I drew the zipper across and pulled out what I knew had to be there, LouElla’s log book, plus a DayTimer, a packet of business cards, and a flat paper bag. I handed the miscellaneous items to Emily and turned to LouElla with the log book.

“Look what I found, LouElla.” I handed the log back to its owner.

“Oh, thank you!” LouElla clasped the log to her chest for one joyful moment, then lowered it and addressed her remarks to its black and red covers. “You are going right home with me, you little rascal.”

I laid a gentle hand on her arm. “I think you’ll need to give it to Captain Younger, LouElla. It may help prove that Virginia poisoned Darlene.”

“It will?” LouElla’s eyes widened in genuine surprise. “How?”

I retrieved the log, opened it at random, checked the date heading, then leafed forward several months to early December. “Look.” I tipped the log toward her. “This is the day you first saw Virginia fooling around with Marty O’Malley’s mailbox. Darlene died of an overdose of clonidine. The police will check with the AARP Pharmacy Service to see when they sent out Mr. O’Malley’s Compres pills. If that date corresponds with the shipment that disappeared, it may help to convict her.”

LouElla nodded her head. “Good. Shouldn’t be tolerated. Tampering with the mail is a federal crime, you know.” She stabbed the air with an index finger. “Not a good idea to mess with the feds,” she continued knowledgeably. “Because they mean business.”

While I still had the log in my hands, I thumbed back to early summer, remembering the curious notations I had seen there previously. I pointed at one now: jb23.

“LouElla? What does jb23 mean?”

LouElla’s eyes remained glued to the court where a red-white-and-blue basketball whizzed from one Wizard to another, over heads and under legs, upside down and backward, at a feverish pace. “June bugs,” she explained. “Pulled twenty-three of ’em off the roses that day.”

Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? “Silly me,” I said.

“Mom?” Emily was elbowing me frantically. “Look at this!” She passed me a newspaper article about a fatal plane crash. Stuck to it was a lime-green Post-it note: Too bad you weren’t aboard. “It was in the bag. There’s a card in there, too,” she said. She handed the card to me. “It looks like it came off a computer.” Written across the face of a bucolic landscape were the words You can make the world a better place. I opened the card. Leave it!

Emily stared at me with troubled eyes. “I guess Virginia got tired of waiting for Darlene to go voluntarily.”

As much as I wanted to hear the bagpipers, we were too exhausted and drained to make it back downtown for the annual Parade to Midnight, or to the laser light show in the tent at City Dock. As the magic hour approached, we wandered from Halsey Field House to the terrace outside the Naval Academy Visitors’ Center which overlooks Annapolis Harbor and Spa Creek. Across the harbor, a large neon crab pot steamed on the roof of the parking garage of the Marriott Hotel. As midnight approached, the countdown began and the blue crab began its inexorable descent.

Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…

My cancer behind me, my family safe around me. A new millennium, I thought, and a new beginning for everyone.

Twelve, eleven, ten…

Daddy standing side by side with Cornelia Gibbs. However “accidentally” Cornelia had run into him at the fast-food concession in Halsey that night, he would negotiate a postponement of his cruise until March so that he and Cornelia could sit in adjoining deck chairs on the Wind Star off Belize.

Nine, eight, seven…

Emily nestled in the shelter of Dante’s arm with Chloe napping, open mouthed, on his shoulder. Years later Chloe’s parents would tease that she slept through the new millennium on the very night her baby brother was conceived.

Six, five, four…

Ruth sat alone on the seawall, feet dangling over the water. Before the week was out, her financial problems would be over, when Darryl Donovan was arrested and charged with ten counts of grand theft, theft over five hundred, theft under five hundred, and credit card theft. Now the lawyer handling her case seems to be taking more than just a professional interest in his client. Ruth calls him “Hutch.”

Three, two, one…

Paul kissed me once, curling my toes. And later? Well, you can imagine.

Happy New Year!

The millennium crab plunged the final few inches into the pot, flashing from blue to red. Cheers erupted from points all over the harbor as a salvo of fireworks was launched into the night. In the first flash, I caught sight of LouElla, her cheeks glistening with tears. I was filled with shame. In my happiness, I had nearly forgotten about her. In the past year this woman had lost her only son, had pulled my father from the depths of alcoholism, had thrown herself between my daughter and the bullet that was meant for her. With Darryl going to jail, I planned to put in a good word with Deirdre so that LouElla could keep Speedo, at least. I reached for LouElla’s hand, gathered it up into mine, and squeezed.

“Do you know something, LouElla?”

“What?” she said dreamily.

“J. Edgar Hoover would have been very proud of you today.”

She beamed as red-white-and-blue pinwheels exploded over our heads. “He would, wouldn’t he?”

“He’d pin a medal on your chest.”

She bowed her head and concentrated on finding something in her bag while I watched the double hoops in her ears revolve like iridescent Catherine wheels. “You know, everyone thinks I’m crazy.”

I swallowed my denial. Even LouElla wouldn’t have believed it.

She pulled an envelope from her purse and handed it to me. I slid my finger under the flap, withdrew a piece of paper, unfolded it, and squinted at it in the dark. Some sort of form. In the next second, brightly illuminated by a burst of white chrysanthemums, I saw that I held a discharge certificate in the name of LouElla Van Schuyler from the Upper Shore Mental Health Center.

“I carry it with me everywhere.” LouElla lifted her face to the night sky. Sparks rained down on us like spangled confetti. “Virginia’s the crazy one, not me. And I have a paper to prove it.”