Occasion of Revenge (13 page)

“I know.” Paul pointed to the plug, an old-fashioned rubberized disk on a chain. “It probably leaks.” Paul straightened his knees. “Come here, Hannah.” He pointed at something in the bottom of the tub. “What do you make of that?”

My breakfast was staging an encore, the acid combination of coffee and orange juice biting the back of my throat. I took a tentative step forward, then another. At the bottom of the tub, lodged between the drain hole and a smooth and still shapely foot, was an empty wineglass. “She must have taken something to drink into the bath with her.” Without thinking, I reached out to retrieve the glass, then pulled my hand back in horror.

I had drawn close enough to see her breasts, to notice that they bore the sunken scars of several incisions. Darlene had undergone biopsies, maybe even a lumpectomy. Tears stung my eyes. I felt profoundly sad for this woman, this pathetic object in a cold, hard bathtub who, only hours before, had been a living, breathing human being.

Contracting cancer is a life-changing experience, I knew firsthand. Maybe that’s what had turned Darlene so cold, calculating, and get-it-while-you-can. I was nothing at all like Darlene, but because of the cancer I suddenly felt a certain kinship to her.

“Oh, cover her up!” I wailed. “A towel. Anything!”

Paul shook his head. “Better not mess with the scene.”

I wiped my eyes with the hem of my sleeve. “I wonder how she died,” I sniffed. I was no expert, except for what I saw on TV during twice-daily reruns of
Law and Order
. Nothing about the body indicated foul play, at least not to me. Darlene’s face was composed and her eyes were closed. She could have been napping. There were no bruise marks on her neck. No stab wounds. No bullet holes. No blunt force trauma.

“She just
died
, Hannah. Maybe a heart attack, or a stroke.”

“But, what happened to her hair?”

Paul pointed to a wicker footstool under the window. On it, Darlene’s familiar blond hairdo lay in a damp heap, like a slumbering cat.

I stood there with Paul for what seemed like hours, tears cooling on my cheeks, the
drip drip drip
of the bathtub tap thundering like a bass drum in my ears. I studied the mildewed grout between the bathtub and the tile, the way the curtains were drawn back from the window with black ribbons tied in precise bows, the wallpaper where corseted Victorian ladies fussed with their hair, powdered their cheeks or adjusted their garters. I willed any one of them to speak up and tell us the story of what happened in this room. Finally, Paul grabbed my hand and pulled me out into the hall where Speedo waited obediently, his head on his paws. But not before I had noticed my father’s red toothbrush still in the holder over the sink, and his Norelco shaver dangling from the end of a cord plugged into an electrical outlet in the fluorescent light fixture over the medicine cabinet.

I rooted in my purse for the cell phone and dialed 911. Story of my life.

While we waited downstairs in the kitchen for the
ambulance to arrive, Paul used a spatula and a wad of paper towels to clean up after Speedo. But all the time I was filling Speedo’s bowl with kibble and his dish with fresh water I was wondering:
Where in bloody hell is my father?

chapter
9

Captain Younger of the Chestertown Police
Department wanted to know the same thing. While his officers secured the scene upstairs and we waited for the Kent County medical examiner to arrive, Younger, dressed in dark blue uniform trousers and a light blue shirt, shotgunned us with questions.

The man was good. Almost before I realized what was happening, he had pried open the family closet and the skeletons had come rattling out in all their sordid splendor.

During the interview I sat stiffly on a two-cushion sofa next to Paul, our shoulders touching. Through the French doors I could see Speedo snuffling joyfully about in the patches of parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme in Darlene’s immaculate garden. I wondered if I’d ever again experience such pure, mindless joy.

“Your father was living here, then?” Younger asked.

I nodded. “Most of the time.”

“So, where is he?”

“Captain Younger, I honestly don’t know.”

The Kent County medical examiner turned out to be a nurse from the local hospital. When she showed up, followed by the Maryland State Police crime lab, things got busy and Captain Younger let us go.

Halfway back to the hotel I grabbed Paul’s arm. “Holy Mother of God! I forgot to call Emily!” We found our daughter waiting inside, pacing the long central hallway from the front door of the hotel to the reception desk in the back, holding Chloe and frantic with worry. “I didn’t know what to do,” she complained. “I finally let them clear the plates away.”

After we explained what had happened and arranged with the hotel to stay another night, Paul suggested we go back into the restaurant and order some lunch, although it was well past two o’clock by then.

I had forked up the last bite of a poached pear tart when a white police cruiser with a splash of red on its rear quarter panel pulled into a parking space on High Street just outside the dining room window. I watched, chewing thoughtfully, as Captain Younger uncoiled himself from the driver’s seat, adjusted his sunglasses, slammed the door of the cruiser, then stepped onto the porch. “Oh, oh,” I said.

Paul eased himself out of his chair. “Best to get it over with.” He waylaid the officer at the door to the dining room, just as he passed by.

We invited Younger to join us for coffee. While I filled his cup, he pulled up a chair, moved some glassware, dirty dishes, and the salt and pepper shakers aside, then dealt some items out on the tablecloth in front of us. They looked like greeting cards encased in plastic sleeves. “What do you know about these?”

I started to pick up one of the cards, then withdrew my hand, waiting for his permission to touch them.

“It’s OK,” he said. “Have a look.”

I used my fingertips to slide the cards around the tabletop. I must have had a question mark on my face because Younger suddenly said, “We found them in a pigeonhole in her desk, tied in a bundle with white string.”

Each plastic sleeve held a greeting card, open and flat. The illustrations and writing on the face of each card seemed tame enough, but if you flipped the sleeve over, you could read the ugly sentiment inside.

When it comes to describing you
,

One word says it all …

Bitch!

Emily leaned toward me, reading the card over my shoulder. “Well, she
wasn’t
a very nice woman.” She smiled at the officer, then picked up another card and read aloud,

Consider this a personal invitation …

Go fuck yourself!

“Emily!”

“
I
didn’t use the
F
word, Mother, the card did.” She flapped it at me.

I tried to look serious. “Daddy mentioned that somebody was sending Darlene poison-pen mail. This must be some of it.”

The jeweled ring in Emily’s eyebrow shot up. “You don’t think Darlene was
murdered
, do you?”

I looked into the officer’s intelligent eyes and said, “Somebody
did
try to poison her dog.”

Emily gasped. “Speedo?”

I nodded. “Daddy told me about it.”

Paul was examining a postcard of Arlington Cemetery on which someone had scrawled, “Wish you were here.” He laid down the card and stared at the officer. “What’s going to happen to Speedo?”

“One of the neighbors showed up. Virginia Prentice? She volunteered to keep the dog until Mrs. Tinsley’s kids decide what to do with him.”

That was good news. I fell back into my chair and prayed that he’d run out of questions and head back to the police station soon. Fat chance.

“Mrs. Ives, do you have any idea, any idea at all, where your father is?”

I shook my head. “Maybe he went home?”

“Nobody’s seen him in Annapolis.”

I spread my hands, palms up, and shrugged.

“Places he hangs out?”

I shook my head.

“We do need to talk to him.”

“Captain, if I knew where he was, I’d certainly tell you.” I met his gaze squarely. “We want to find him just as badly as you do. I’m worried about him.” I explained about Mother’s recent death and Daddy’s even more recent engagement to Darlene. “If she died in her bath and Daddy found her body …” I paused and took a deep breath. “… There’s no telling what he might have done.”

Paul reached for my hand, squeezed it, and didn’t let go. “How can we help you find him, Captain Younger?”

As Paul told Younger about Daddy’s accident on the Bay Bridge and described the rental car, I watched a
range of emotions play across the officer’s face. I could see the wheels turning, almost hear Younger thinking,
This must be the unluckiest guy alive
.

But my radar was down. That wasn’t what he was thinking at all. “Where would your father have been at approximately one-fifteen last night, Mrs. Ives?”

“I don’t know. We left the party around ten.” A wave of nausea and dread washed over me. “Why? Is that when she died?”

“We don’t know when she died; that’ll be determined by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner over in Baltimore.”

“Then why do you ask?”

“We had a hit-and-run last night. Somebody ran down an elderly gentleman out near the intersection of routes two-thirteen and three-oh-five.”

I gasped, my head swimming. If I hadn’t been holding Paul’s hand, I might have keeled over. “My father?” I croaked.

He shook his head. “No. He was a local waterman, on his way home from a late-night card game.”

“
Was
? Do you mean he’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so.”

A nightmare scenario flashed through my head. Daddy, drunk as usual, discovers Darlene dead and drives off in a haze of alcohol and grief. An old man, crossing the road, frozen in the glare of oncoming headlights. A cry. A sickening thud. I opened my mouth to proclaim Daddy’s innocence when Paul squeezed my hand again, hard. “Perhaps if you talked to the other guests. My wife and I didn’t know many of them, but …” Paul looked at me. “What was that strange lady’s name, honey?”

“LouElla,” I said. “LouElla Van Schuyler.”

“Yes,” Paul continued. “Check with LouElla. She appears to know everybody.”

Captain Younger smiled cryptically. “And everybody in town knows LouElla.” He gathered up the plastic-covered greeting cards, tucked them into a folder, and stood to go. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll put out a broadcast. We’ll find him.”

I received this promise with mixed feelings. With Paul’s arm around me, I watched Captain Younger climb into his cruiser, ease it out of park, and merge his vehicle smoothly into the traffic moving north along High Street.

“Look at this!” Emily’s voice was muffled.

When I turned, Emily was kneeling on the dark carpet next to Chloe’s high chair. She struggled to her feet holding one of the greeting cards by the edges between both hands. “It must have slipped out of its sleeve.”

Emily dropped the card onto the tablecloth.

Do me a favor …
(Paul read before opening the card with the tip of a knife)

Eat shit and die!

“Well, what do you know,” said Emily. “Maybe she did.”

chapter
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?”