Occasion of Revenge (21 page)

Georgina’s dining room table had been stretched to the walls and covered with a Vera tablecloth in a holiday motif that hid the fact that her extra leaves were made out of plywood. The table had been set with her best silver, china, and crystal. I could tell Julie had laid the silverware. She preferred the fork on the right, near the right hand that would use it, and treated any suggestion to the contrary with disdain.

Sean and Dylan had made place cards by folding three-by-five index cards into tents and printing our names on them in block letters with crayon. Mine said “Aunt Hannah” and had a Christmas wreath sticker affixed in the right-hand corner, its red bow covering the
h
. Carrying the ice cube bin, I walked around the table dropping ice cubes in glasses. “Aunt Ruth” was written in purple and decorated with a Christmas tree. “Mommy” was pink, with an angel. At the head of the table, I stopped, choking back a sob. “Granddaddy” had a rocking horse.

When Georgina came to check on my progress a few minutes later, I asked, “Why did you set a place for Daddy?”

Georgina smiled sadly. “I keep hoping he’ll walk in the front door.” We stood side by side, staring silently
at his name tag. Georgina was working with a psychiatrist who was helping undo, step by step, the damage inflicted on her and on our father by a previous therapist. She had a ways to go before the rift between them could be completely healed, but I took this gesture as a positive sign.

Georgina shuddered, then began rummaging in the buffet for some hot pads which she arranged in two cloverleaves in the center of the table. “Thanks for helping, Hannah.”

“You’re welcome.” In truth, I hadn’t done much. I’d brought the jellied cranberry sauce, still ribbed from the can, and the sauerkraut. Over the years she had lived in the city, Georgina had become a true Baltimorean, and a true Baltimorean wouldn’t dream of serving turkey without sauerkraut on the side.

Soon the table groaned with bowls of mashed potatoes, green beans, baby peas, sauerkraut, stuffing, and gravy. Parker House rolls steamed under a napkin in a basket. We stood dutifully behind our chairs, knowing the rules, waiting for everyone to assemble. Paul arrived with the chilled wine, brandishing a corkscrew. Ruth bustled in from the kitchen with a casserole dish of caramelized sweet potatoes sandwiched between two pot holders. She set the dish on a hot pad in front of me.

I leaned over and took a good whiff. “Yummy!” I said. “Thank goodness they’ve repealed the law that says sweet potatoes have to be cooked with pineapple chunks, coconut, and miniature marshmallows.”

Emily gave me a look just as Dante said, “But I
like
them that way, Mrs. Ives.”

I rearranged the salt and pepper shakers, feeling my face grow red.

Scott held the kitchen door for Georgina, who glided in with the bird, twenty magnificent pounds of it, golden brown and glistening on a platter. She paraded the turkey around the table, then set it in front of Scott.

Scott stood at the head of the table and looked around uncomfortably. We waited, Julie tipping her chair back and forth on its hind legs.

Paul cleared his throat. “Shall I?”

Scott shrugged.

Emily slipped Chloe a roll to distract her from banging on the tray of her high chair with a spoon.

“I don’t mind,” said Ruth, but we all knew it had to be either Scott or Paul.

“Where’s Granddaddy?” piped up Sean.

“He’s on a trip, honey,” Georgina said.

Dylan pouted. “Dumb trip.”

Emily laid her hand on top of Dante’s. “It should be the oldest.”

“Right,” I agreed.

“Me, then,” Paul said. He grabbed my hand, squeezed, then extended his other hand to Ruth on his right. Ruth gathered up Sean’s hand and Sean took his mother’s. Soon the circle was complete and Paul bowed his head. “Bless this food to our bodies and us to Thy service.”

“And bless Daddy, wherever he may be,” I added, my chest tight.

Paul smiled at me crookedly, as if apologizing for the simplicity of his efforts. After all, it was Daddy’s job to say the grace. He wrote special ones for every occasion. Last year, he’d blessed the food and his joy at forty-nine years of marriage to our mother.

I swallowed hard. No, not twelve places at the table. There should have been thirteen.

chapter
15

Two days after Christmas, we couldn’t find
Tinky Winky. That precipitated a crisis of major proportions, second only to the threat of global thermonuclear war. In less than forty-eight hours, Chloe’s new toys had lost their attraction and she began crying for “Dink,” her purple Teletubby friend. The last time I’d seen the little guy, Chloe and I had been at LouElla’s.

I apologized for leaving Tinky Winky behind and volunteered to fetch him the following morning. I had already mapped out my day. I was calling the Salvation Army in every major city, beginning on the East Coast, and after that I’d contact homeless shelters and food wagons, trying to find my father.

By the way Emily goggled at me I could tell she thought all that telephoning would turn out to be a waste of time, totally. But she was in a let’s-humor-Mother mood. “That’s OK, Mom. I don’t mind going to LouElla’s. I feel kinda sorry for the woman. No family, no real friends. And it
is
the holidays. I’ll take her a
basket of fruit and cheese and stuff.” She paused. “Besides, it’s Boxing Day.”

“What?”

“Boxing Day. In Britain the landowners deliver gifts to their tenants each December twenty-sixth.”

“Today’s the twenty-seventh.” I shook my head. “All that money we spent on college …”

“I majored in English,” Emily said with a giggle, “not math.”

Wondering if the only thing to show for my efforts would be a colossal telephone bill, I took a breather from my so-far-fruitless efforts on the telephone to rummage in the basement storage area for an old Easter basket. While Emily drove to Graul’s Market, I salvaged some tissue paper and ribbons from the plastic bag of Christmas trash and used them to line and decorate the basket, finishing off the handle with an elegant red-and-green plaid bow. Emily returned with an assortment of cheeses, crackers, and hard salami, which she plopped into the basket. I contributed a jar of artichoke hearts and marinated mushrooms from my pantry, and Emily added two apples, several tangerines, and a grapefruit from a box Dennis had had shipped to us from Harry and David.
Et voilà!

Emily and Chloe drove off in high spirits to deliver the basket. I imagined they’d be singing “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” by the time they got to the Bay Bridge. Although she chided me for fussing, I insisted she take my cell phone.

Almost two hours later, while I was caught in an automated answering system death loop with a homeless shelter in Washington, D.C., our call-waiting tone cut in. I toggled the switch. “Hello?”

Emily was talking so fast that I couldn’t understand
a word she was saying. My antenna shot up. “Slow down, Emily! What’s wrong? Has there been an accident? Are you OK?”

On the other end of the phone, I heard Emily take a deep, shuddering breath. “I think I’ve found Gramps!”

I was certain I’d misunderstood. “What did you say?”

“You’re going to think I’m absolutely crazy, but I think he’s at LouElla’s.”

This didn’t make sense at all. I clicked my brain into reverse. LouElla had invited me into her house just the other day. Surely she wouldn’t have done so if Daddy had been there. And then I remembered. LouElla didn’t invite me in, Chloe did, by crawling into the house after Speedo.

“Mother? Are you there?”

“Em, are you sure about this? I was just there!”

“I know! That’s why I thought it was odd when LouElla answered the door with Tinky Winky in her hand. She didn’t want to let me in, even when I offered her the basket. But then she noticed Chloe out in the stroller and just melted. She invited us into the kitchen and we were playing with Speedo when I heard the most incredible thing!”

“What?”

“You know that Thomas Hampson CD that Gramps likes so much? Well, I heard it playing kinda softly when I came in and I thought, wow, that’s really nice, and I got a little choked up because it’s Gramps’s favorite CD and all and I was, like, really missing him. Then it got to ‘On the Road to Mandalay,’ and I swear to you that Granddaddy was singing along!”

As Emily’s story unfolded, my heart began to pound. “Are you sure it was your grandfather?”

“You think I wouldn’t recognize his voice? It was Gramps. Definitely. Remember how he always does that funny warbly thing with the
f
’s in ‘flying fishes play’?”

“Where do you think the music was coming from, Emily?”

“Upstairs.”

A plan began to take shape in the muddle of gray cells that passed as my brain. “Where are you now?”

“In the car. I’m parked on North Court Street, so I’ll be able to see if LouElla leaves her house.”

I was relieved to hear that. No matter what role LouElla may have played in all this, even if it turned out that she hadn’t murdered Darlene and kidnapped Daddy, she might still be dangerous. “Does she suspect you heard the singing?” I asked my daughter.

“I don’t think so. Once I figured out it was Gramps I acted real casual, picked up Chloe, collected Tinky Winky, told LouElla we had a party to go to, and got the hell out.” At the end of this recitation, Emily was breathless. “What should I do, Mom? Call the police?”

I had to think about that. I knew we should call the police, but I didn’t want them to be the first to find Daddy. I was afraid they’d arrest him. Besides, they’d have to get a warrant. With no more to go on than a few snatches of an old music hall tune, the judge might laugh them right out of court. And there was always the possibility that Emily was mistaken, but,
oh heavenly days
, I hoped she wasn’t.

I made an executive decision. “Sit tight, honey, I’m coming right over.” I started to hang up, then had another thought. “If LouElla is watching, she’ll think it’s strange if you don’t actually leave, so drive away now and meet me at the Feast of Reason on High Street.”

“Where?”

“It’s a little restaurant just across the street from the Imperial Hotel. It’s got a statue of a chef and some copper pots in the window.”

“OK.”

“And Emily?”

“Yes?”

“Let’s both be thinking about a good way to lure LouElla out of her house.”

I scribbled a note for Paul, pinned it to the refrigerator where I knew he wouldn’t miss it, then broke every speed limit posted between downtown Annapolis and the Bay Bridge. At the tollbooth, I discovered I’d left home without my purse, so I had to search the ashtray, tear up the carpet pads, and borrow ten cents from a driver one car back before assembling enough loose change to get me across the bridge.

Once in Chestertown, I squealed left onto Queen Street, where yellow crime scene tape still streamed like banners from the pillars of Darlene’s porch, reminding everyone of the tragedy that had so recently taken place there. I turned right on High and, by a miracle, found a place to park in front of an antique store, well out of sight of LouElla’s.

Inside the Feast of Reason, Emily and Chloe waited for me at a table near the cold drinks cooler under a series of colorful Heather King vegetable prints. Emily cradled a steaming cup of tea in her hands, and Chloe was working on a bottle of orange juice.

I sat down at the table opposite my daughter. “OK. Let’s brainstorm.”

She smiled uncertainly and raised a naturally lush, unplucked eyebrow. “I think I’ve figured out a way to
get LouElla out of her house long enough for you to search it.” Emily paused for a moment, driving me nuts because the best idea I’d come up with during my hour-long drive was to pound on LouElla’s door and shout, “
Fire! Fire!
”

I stared at my daughter. She wore a smile, the mischievous one, and her cheeks were flushed. I braced myself for a far-out suggestion.

With a quick glance at a customer who was taking his time in front of the dessert case, Emily leaned across the table and whispered, “I’ll go back, tell her that I’ve found some fleas on Chloe and that I think she’ll need to get Speedo treated.”

I nodded, impressed. LouElla seemed inordinately fond of Chloe. Anything that would prevent our little charmer from visiting LouElla would deeply concern her.

Emily continued. “LouElla’s house is so spotless I know she’ll freak. So I’ll offer to take her to the vet’s to get Speedo dipped.”

“What if she won’t go?”

“Then we’ll think of something else.”

“What if you can’t get in to see the vet?”

She patted the cell phone. “I checked. I found one who’s available. I actually made an appointment. We may have to wait a bit but that’s even better, isn’t it? Just so long as
you
can get into the house.”

All of a sudden I remembered the locks LouElla had installed, even on the backyard fence. “She’s got locks on all the doors. How am I supposed to get in?”

“I’ll think of something when I get inside,” Emily said. “Just try the front door.”

“How will I know when it’s safe?”

“You sit here and finish my tea.” She pushed her
cup toward me with two fingers. “After I get LouElla and the dog, I’ll drive by the window.” She pointed toward the front of the store. “Then go for it!”

I helped Chloe back into her sweater, then watched through the window as she and her mother disappeared around the corner, slightly stunned at the role reversal that had just taken place.

I nursed Emily’s lukewarm tea for five minutes, worrying. I asked for more hot water, added it to the tea bag in the cup, and made it last for ten. I talked to the girl behind the counter for three minutes about the trip she was planning to take to Guatemala next summer. I paced for two. After what seemed like hours, Emily drove by in her father’s car. There was no doubt about it. Speedo’s head hung out the left rear window, his tongue and ears flapping in the winter breeze.

I grabbed my coat and waited near the door until the car had passed through the stoplight at High and Cross. When I could no longer read the license plate, I tossed a quick “thank you” over my shoulder, then hurried down Court Street to LouElla’s.