Occasion of Revenge (14 page)

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!”