Tomorrow's Vengeance (10 page)

After Lillian and I got settled side by side on an old-fashioned glider swing, I opened the book and began to read.
‘“In winter I get up at night, And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day. I have to go to bed and see …”'

Lillian grabbed my wrist and squeezed, hard, harder than I believed possible for anyone so frail. ‘They can't make
me
go to bed before dark,' she said, her pale blue eyes fixed so intensely on me that I imagined my cheek starting to burn. ‘I'm a grown-up, you know.' After a pause, she said, ‘I thought you were going to read.'

So I finished the poem. ‘Should I read another one?' I asked, turning the page.

She nodded and began to hum tunelessly.

‘“How do you like to go up in a swing
?
Up in the air so blue
…
”'
I read before the humming stopped and her hand tightened around my wrist again.

‘They
make
us go to bed early. But, sometimes I go visiting after dark.' She smiled mysteriously.

I lay the book of poetry, still open to the poem I'd been reading, in my lap.

‘Where do you go, Lillian?'

‘Oh, out and about. Out and about.'

I doubted if memory unit residents were allowed the same freedom to roam about the premises at night, when staffing was at reduced levels, as they did during the day. ‘What is there to do at night?' I asked her, not really expecting an answer.

She pressed an index finger against her lips then poked me with it. ‘I look after my babies.'

‘Your babies?'

‘I have lots of babies,' she told me. ‘
Lots
of babies!' She began humming again, rocking from side to side to a rhythm only she could perceive. ‘Do you have babies?'

‘I used to,' I told her. ‘One, but she's all grown up now.'

Lillian nodded sagely. ‘One, that's good. So much easier. If you have too many babies they squabble all the time.' She paused and looked directly toward a tree whose magnificent branches overhung the wall at the far end of the enclosed garden. ‘I hear them, making noises.' She stared at it for a good few seconds then leaned in closer to me and started rocking again. ‘Or they're whispering behind your back, cooking up mischief.'

Perhaps because we'd been reading classic children's verses I had to smile, picturing Lillian as the old woman who lived in a shoe, the one who had so many children she didn't know what to do. ‘My daughter is named Emily,' I said. ‘What did you name your babies?'

Lillian stopped rocking and frowned, as if giving my question serious consideration. ‘There's Princess,' she said, touching the tip of one index finger to the other. ‘And Spot. And Freckles.' She scowled, her index finger hovering. ‘I forget the rest.'

Dogs? Lillian's ‘babies' were dogs?

‘I don't see very well,' she confided after a bit, ‘but I can tell your trousers are red. I like red.'

‘I like red, too, Lillian.'

In a seat under an arbor up which tendrils of wisteria had already started to climb, a woman in an orange sweater with an untidy mass of white hair sat in a wheelchair, smoking a cigarette. She inhaled and held the smoke in her lungs for so long that I was having flashbacks to 1967 and the Summer of Love. Then she exhaled slowly with obvious pleasure.

On the opposite side of the garden, under a plexiglass kiosk that looked for all the world like a bus stop, an even older man sat, his bald head encrusted with scabs, legs stretched straight out in front of him, his head thrown back and his mouth open. I worried for a moment that he had died, but then he snorted, started, looked around in confusion, checked his watch, shrugged, and then carried on with his nap. After puzzling over it for a moment I realized the kiosk
was
a bus stop, advertising posters and all. I smiled. All the comforts of home without going anywhere.

Next to me, the humming abruptly ceased. Lillian reached for the book in my lap, quickly flicked forward through the pages, then back, then forward again. She stopped, squinted and tapped the new page. ‘Read this one,' she instructed.

As I did so, she leaned her head against the back of the seat and recited the poem along with me from memory, softly, barely moving her lips.
‘“A birdie with a yellow bill
,
Hopped upon the window sill,
Cocked his shining eye and said:
Ain't you 'shamed, you sleepy-head.”'

‘I like that one, too,' I told her.

‘More, please, lovey,' she said.

By the time I'd worked my way through ‘Travel' and ‘Land of Counterpane' Lillian Blake was sound asleep. I sat there quietly for a few minutes, enjoying the garden, the sun and the soft August breeze.

‘The babies are fighting again.' Plump, sausage-like fingers closed around my wrist and squeezed.

I looked up from the page I'd been nodding over, wondering how long I'd been asleep. ‘What?'

‘Agg! Argh! No! Arrr!'

The sounds seemed to hover over the garden wall, encased in cartoon balloons.

‘What's on the other side of the wall?' I asked Lillian.

‘Dunno, lovey dove. Don't get out much.'

When designing the brick wall, Calvert Colony architects had taken precautions so that memory unit residents couldn't get out – safety measures that defeated me, too. At five foot six inches there was no way I could see over a seven-foot wall. I tried a few experimental jumps, accomplishing nothing but giving Lillian the giggles.

‘Don't move,' I told her.

As Lillian observed with a bemused expression on her face, I rested one foot on the armrest of the swing, pulled the other foot after it, teetered for a moment to gain my balance, then stood on tiptoe and peered over the wall.

In a grassy patch on the other side, not far from the
musalla
, a man was on his hands and knees under a large tulip poplar. As I watched he struggled to his feet, dusted off his pants then inspected the front of his shirt, which I noticed was splotched with blood.

‘Mr Abaza! Are you all right?'

Masud touched his nose experimentally. ‘I believe so.'

‘What on earth happened?'

‘I was at prayer, and when I left the
musalla
, I caught a man …' He paused to take a handkerchief out of his back pocket and use it to clean his hands. ‘This evildoer was spray painting graffiti on the wall of the
musalla
.'

I squinted into the distance and saw that Masud was right.
Remember 9/11!!
and
Burn the Kor
had been sprayed in bold black letters, defacing one side of the pretty little building.

‘I tackled him before he could finish the job,' Masud said, which explained the ‘Kor.'

‘Who was it?' I asked. ‘Another resident?'

‘If it was I didn't recognize him. He was wearing a monkey cap.'

My granddaughter, Chloe, had a winter hat knit up like a sock monkey. Masud must have noticed my puzzlement because he explained, ‘A balaclava, like you wear for skiing, with holes for the eyes and mouth. He wore a ball cap, too. Gray, with a blue star on it.' He tucked the handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘I kicked the man hard in the uh, uh …'

The next word was probably going to be ‘balls' but Masud did a quick vocabulary adjustment and substituted ‘thigh.' He waved an arm. ‘After that, he ran across the lawn and into the woods over there.'

I scanned the line of trees that bordered the property and, seeing nothing, turned my attention back to Masud. ‘Do you need an ambulance, Mr Abaza?'

He shook his head. ‘No, no. A bloody nose, a few bruises. It's already stopped bleeding. I'll be fine.'

‘Shall I call the police?'

‘No, but thank you.' His dark eyes met mine. ‘I'd appreciate it if you'd say nothing about this to anyone until I've had an opportunity to take the matter up directly with Mr Bennett.'

‘Are you …' I began, but he cut me off with a wave.

‘Calvert Colony is supposed to be a
secure
facility. Where are the security guards, that's what I want to know. Somebody is not doing their duty.'

Masud bent over, felt about in a bed of
pachysandra
that bordered the wall on his side and came up holding a spray can labeled Krylon. ‘I got his paint can,' he said, not bothering to suppress the note of triumph in his voice. ‘That man will pay for insulting Islam.'

‘Maybe there'll be fingerprints,' I pointed out helpfully.

‘Perhaps.' Holding the can gingerly by the rim, he turned to go, paused for a moment then looked up at me. ‘Thank you for your concern.'

‘No problem.' I watched until he disappeared around the side of the building.

‘What's happening?' Lillian asked in a quiet, worried voice.

Too late, I realized that she was standing to my right, next to the wall. Since Lillian's ample bottom had been providing the ballast that kept me more or less securely balanced on the arm of the glider, I found myself suddenly catapulted into the flower bed when the arm dropped out from under me.

I must have cried out as I hit the ground.

‘Hey! Everything all right over there?' the orange-sweatered woman wanted to know.

‘Fine!' I caroled from a prone position in the zinnias.

‘Peachy,' Lillian replied with a conspirational glance in my direction.

‘Those men?' Lillian said as I got to my feet, dusted off my red slacks and began to pick cedar chips out of my hair. She bobbed her head, indicating the wall. ‘My eyes are no good, but there's nothing wrong with my ears.'

‘You heard something interesting, Lillian?'

‘Uh huh.'

She was making me work for it, and judging by the sly grin lighting her face, Lillian knew it, too.

‘One man said, “I'm going to kill you, you mother fucking son of a bitch.”'

‘Which one?' I asked, trying hard not to laugh at the poster image of a grandmother standing before me, swearing like a longshoreman.

She shrugged then smiled beatifically. ‘Dunno, lovey.'

Which left me wondering whether it really was the graffiti artist who'd threatened to kill Masud. Could it have been the other way around?

‘O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks (veils) all over their bodies. That will be better, that they should be known (as free respectable women) so as not to be annoyed.'

Quran, 33:59

W
hen I met Naddie for lunch in the dining room half an hour later, as hard as it was not to mention the attack on Masud that I'd come within sixty seconds of witnessing, I kept my promise. My head was spinning with thoughts as to who the balaclava man might have been – sadly, there were a few potential suspects. Naddie was an investor in Calvert Colony so she'd find out about the incident eventually, but I owed Masud the courtesy of allowing him to report it to The Powers That Be himself.

‘Who is that?' I asked, as we tucked into our starters.

‘Who?' Naddie considered my question over a bowl of
vichyssoise
.

I pointed with my soup spoon. ‘That guy talking to Raniero, over by the kitchen door. Light brown hair. Blue suit, yellow tie. He looks like a lawyer.'

She turned her head. ‘Oh, I should introduce you. That's Tyson Bennett. He's the executive director of Calvert Colony. A hands-on kind of guy who really seems to care about the residents.'

Ah ha, I thought. The Powers That Be himself.

Naddie waved in Tyson's direction but he was too engrossed in his conversation with the chef to notice. ‘Tyson used to be a lawyer but after he won some sort of long-running, high-profile liability case and got a whopping settlement for his client, he decided to retire from practicing law.'

I blew on a spoonful of clam chowder to cool it. ‘Must be nice.'

‘Everyone thought Tyson was going into politics,' Naddie continued, ‘but he disappointed everyone by applying his considerable clout and expertise to community work. After he uncovered Medicare fraud on a massive scale at a national nursing home chain where, basically, the company was giving patients rehab they didn't need and billing the government for it, he found himself on the board of several hospitals, so when the investors were looking for somebody squeaky clean to run Calvert Colony, his name shot to the top of the list.'

‘I haven't talked to all the staff, of course, but from what I've heard, I really like Tyson's philosophy.'

She smiled. ‘We all do. That's why he's in charge here.'

The server had just delivered our sandwiches – tuna melt for me and a BLT for Naddie – when Tyson Bennett made a pit stop at our table. After Naddie introduced me, he said, ‘Ah yes. Mrs Ives. I hear you're volunteering in the memory unit. Thank you for that.'

‘No secrets around here, then,' I joked. ‘And please, call me Hannah.'

‘I believe I know your husband, Paul? We met at the Rotary Club crab feast last week.'

If the annual Annapolis Rotary Club crab feast didn't have a place in the
Guinness Book of World Records
as the largest crab feast in the world, it ought to. For sixty bucks, you, too, could be one of the twenty-five hundred folks who filled the Navy-Marine Corps stadium and chowed down on four-thousand crabs, thirty-four hundred ears of corn, a hundred-and-thirty gallons of crab soup, God only knows how many hot dogs, and barrels and barrels of draft beer. You could buy T-shirts, too, natch. ‘Sorry to have missed it this year,' I lied. Picking crabs just wasn't my thing, not even for charity.

Tyson's blue eyes considered me curiously from behind his aviator glasses. ‘Paul and I were working the Budweiser truck,' he said. ‘Sixty kegs consumed, more or less.'