Occasion of Revenge (19 page)

Younger pressed on. “Ever hear of Tidewater Credit?”

Ruth seemed to deflate before my eyes. She reached for the stool she keeps behind the counter, then sat down heavily on it. “Yes. They’re the outfit that refused to loan me the money.”

“Ruth?” This was news to me.

Ruth took a slow, deliberate breath. “I was going to tell you, Hannah, but I was so embarrassed.” She went eye-to-eye with Captain Younger. “Somebody’s stolen my identity. My credit is so screwed up right now it’ll take me years to get it straightened out.” A tear leaked from the corner of her eye and she quickly brushed it away. “When I checked with the credit bureau to find out why my application for a loan was denied, I found out I’m over twenty-seven thousand dollars in debt on credit cards I didn’t even know I had. It’s so bad that
I’ve had to ask Eric to handle any new accounts for the store.”

That
was
bad. My sister hated asking her ex-husband for anything, even the time of day. I reached her in two steps, folded her into my arms, and squeezed tight. “You aren’t responsible for those debts,” I soothed. “We’ll get you a lawyer. It’ll all work out.”

Ruth, who rarely cried, fell apart like a dime store toy. “No, it won’t!”

I rubbed her back with the flat of my hand. “Yes, it will. You’ll see.”

Over Ruth’s shoulder, I noticed Captain Younger fiddling with a miniature Japanese garden as if the answers to life’s big questions—such as, what is it with women anyway?—were written large in the sand. I reached behind the counter and yanked a fistful of tissues out of the box Ruth kept there, then waited with the officer for my sister to dry her eyes.

“Ms. Gannon?”

Ruth blew a honking B-flat into the tissue, then waved the used wad in the air. “Sorry, Captain Younger. It just makes me so angry.”

“Ms. Gannon, were you aware that over the past six months unpaid bills for accounts in your name with Visa, MasterCard, and Discover were piling up in a post office box in Edgewater?”

I’ve known her all my life, so I could tell that Ruth’s surprise at this news was genuine. “What?” she exclaimed.

“We’re trying to find out who rented the post office box, but whoever applied for it seems to have used a fake ID.”

“In Edgewater?” Ruth seemed bewildered.

“But how can that be?” I asked. “Edgewater’s on the other side of the South River. Ruth lives in downtown Annapolis, not Edgewater!”

“It’s ridiculously easy to get a post office box,” Younger continued. “All you need is a driver’s license and a major credit card.”

“But it can’t be so easy to get a credit card in somebody else’s name.” I paused and looked at Captain Younger for reassurance. “Can it?”

“I’m afraid so.” A corner of his mouth twitched. “Think back. How many offers for credit cards have you found in your mailbox lately?”

I didn’t need to think. “Tons. Back in September I remember getting two or three a week. Gold cards, platinum cards, cards with my favorite football team on them. Some promising zero-percent APR until the next millennium, all that B.S.”

“What did you do with them?”

“What do you think? I threw them away.”

“Torn up? Shredded?”

I shook my head. “No, why?”

Captain Younger stared at me. The last time I’d seen a look so painfully patient it was worn by the guy trying to explain to me why my precious Le Baron was going to fall apart on the interstate if I didn’t have five hundred seventy-five dollars’ worth of work done on the transmission right away. “All someone needs to do,” Younger informed us, “is intercept that credit card offer, fill it out with a change of address, and then when the card is delivered to that address, take it out on a shopping spree.”

“And never pay,” I added helpfully.

“Right.” Captain Younger turned to Ruth. “So, who would have had access to your garbage?”

“Just about anybody, I suppose.” Her shoulders drooped.

“Wait a minute!” A thought had hit me like a two-by-four square on the forehead. “Nobody would even need to get their hands dirty, Ruth. Think about it! Who had access to your
mail
?”

“Daddy, and …” She turned to look at me, her eyes wild. “Darlene Tinsley had a key! Darlene and that no-good son of hers!” She spun on Captain Younger. “You can check with the Annapolis police about that. Darlene and her son stole some things from my father’s house, but since they had a key, they were never charged with breaking and entering.” She began to sputter. “Son of a bitch!”

Younger stood patiently, waiting for Ruth to run out of expletives deleted before continuing to grill her. “So you see my problem, Ms. Gannon. If you suspected that Ms. Tinsley was responsible for ruining your credit …” He ran a hand over his thinning hair. “It would give you a very good motive for slipping something into her schnapps.”

Ruth closed her eyes and shook her head. “I had absolutely no idea.”

It seemed time for me to jump in. “How could Ruth have suspected
Darlene
of being responsible for her financial problems? From what you’ve just said, it could have been anybody.”

“Your sister may have guessed.” He slipped his notebook back into his pocket. “An officer of the law, of course, requires probable cause before taking action. The same rules might not necessarily apply to a private citizen.”

“That’s ridiculous! Ruth would never kill anybody!”

If she lives to be a hundred, Ruth will never learn to
leave well enough alone. She hopped off her stool and stood tall before us, her spine rigid with determination. “That’s where you’re wrong, Hannah. If I ever find out who is responsible for losing me that house, for crippling my business, not to mention tarnishing my good name, I’ll personally wring his scrawny little neck.” She looked directly at Captain Younger. “And I don’t care
who
knows it!”

After that, it was all I could do to keep Ruth from shanghaiing me to mind the store while she dragged Captain Younger off to McGarvey’s to point out the despicable Darryl so he could clap the cuffs on him. With Darlene dead, Ruth had narrowed her list of possible card fraud suspects down to one. I pointed out reasonably that any larcenous neighbor or enterprising garbage man could have pawed through Daddy’s trash and stolen the credit card offers addressed to her, but Ruth was unmoved.

When three teens breezed into Mother Earth shopping for crystals, Captain Younger made a quick escape, tossing a final “Shred ’em” over his shoulder as he disappeared through the door. Two minutes later I escaped as well, promising Ruth that I’d run Darryl down and put the thumbscrews to him. One of us needed to get the goods on Darlene Tinsley’s baby boy. If not the policeman, then it might as well be me.

Some claim that McGarvey’s Saloon on the Annapolis waterfront serves the best fish-and-chips in town. I’m partial to the Irish version of the British classic that’s served at Galway Bay on Maryland Avenue, but in a pinch, McGarvey’s will do, and at six ninety-five, you can’t beat the price.

In spite of the trying morning, I managed to work
up a respectable appetite in the three minutes it took to walk from Mother Earth to the restaurant. Having skipped breakfast probably had a lot to do with it, though. I pushed through the double glass doors and loitered near the bar, waiting for a table to open up in the bright, atriumlike no-smoking section. The hostess seated the couple standing in line ahead of me, then turned to me. “Just one?”

Just
one? Must women always travel in pairs? She made me feel so guilty about dining alone that I fought back the urge to quip,
No, my dear. My Latin lover will be joining me shortly and look out, ’cause he’s hot!

The hostess led me to a table near a live ficus tree that flourished under a skylight. When she handed me the menu I asked, “Is Darryl Donovan working today?”

“He comes in at two.”

I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes to go. I studied the menu, although I already knew what I wanted, and entertained myself by watching the fellow behind the raw bar shuck oysters. He would cradle the oyster in a steel mesh glove and pry open the shell with a skillful twist of a sharp, stub-bladed knife. One every five seconds without losing any fingers! Impressive.

The waitress took my order for fish-and-chips without writing it down, and returned in a few minutes with my glass of iced tea with extra lemon. I was sprinkling powder from a pink packet into my tea—it dissolves in cold liquids better than sugar—when somebody called my name.

“Hannah?”

I looked around, puzzled, not seeing anybody I recognized.

“Over here.” Deirdre was standing by the door, wagging her hand at me. I realized that I hadn’t seen her
since the engagement party. Her short black hair was pulled into a tufted ponytail at the nape of her neck, and she wore faded black jeans, a black sweater, and her mother’s décolletage.

I motioned for Deirdre to join me and when she reached the table, I stood up and extended my hand. Hers was cold and slightly damp. “I’m so sorry about your mother, Deirdre.”

“Thank you.” She dragged a chair out and sat down opposite me, resting her forearms on the table. “I’m glad I ran into you, Hannah. I wanted you to know that I don’t believe for a minute that your father had anything to do with my mother’s death.”

“Thanks.”

“I suspect he really loved her,” she continued.

“I know.” Thinking about Daddy brought tears to my eyes, so I concentrated on scrunching the paper sheath down accordionlike on my straw, and quickly changed the subject. “Are you here to see your brother?”

She nodded. “I need to talk to him about getting a lawyer. I was surprised to find out that Mother didn’t have a will.” The waitress appeared and Deirdre ordered a hamburger with french fries. She turned to me apologetically. “I don’t usually eat like this, but I’m feeling pretty sorry for myself.” I watched my own therapeutically engineered fish-and-chips being carried toward me on a tray and silently agreed. Between Deirdre’s lunch and mine there would be enough bad cholesterol on the table to last us both until Easter.

“Have you heard from your father?” Deirdre seemed genuinely concerned.

I shook my head. “It’s a damn roller-coaster ride. I’m just feeling good about his car being found at the
airport, thinking that he must be OK if he’s able to fly off somewhere. But then I start worrying that whoever poisoned your mother might have kidnapped Daddy and left him lying in a ditch somewhere.” I rotated my plate until the McGarvey’s-style circular fries were closest to Deirdre. “Have one.”

She shook her head. “No, thanks. I’ll wait.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It occurred to me that the killer might have driven Daddy’s car to BWI to cover his tracks.”

“You must be terribly worried.”

“I am.”

Deirdre ran an index finger absentmindedly around the rim of her water glass. “I don’t know why it surprised me that Mother didn’t have a will. Typical of her, really. Always thinking of herself.”

Remembering the surgical scars I had seen on Darlene’s body I thought I’d send out a probe. “She couldn’t have been expecting to die. She was in good health, after all.”

“Everybody should have a will.”

“Do you?” I asked.

“No, I …” Darlene blushed. “I see your point.” She took a sip of water, then glanced in the direction of the kitchen as if checking on the status of her order.

“It seems odd,” I said at last, “to be having this conversation with you. Particularly since it was here that it all began.”

“What began?”

“Daddy met your mother.”

Deirdre scowled. “Mother met her last husband in a bar, too.” One eyebrow shot up and she peered at me slyly. “A bar where Darryl was working. Coincidence? I
think not.” Before I could reply, Deirdre snorted. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Darryl didn’t get some sort of finder’s fee.”

“That’s pretty harsh.”

“Hannah, I was embarrassed by my mother. I couldn’t even bring guys home from college without her coming on to them.”

“Surely you exaggerate.”

She shook her head. “Dad died of a heart attack when I was eleven. Mother started dating only weeks after the funeral.”

The waitress had arrived with Deirdre’s hamburger. Deirdre deluged her burger with catsup, then mashed the bun down on top, twisting it to spread the catsup evenly. She took a bite, chewed thoroughly, then continued. “At first, she’d leave us alone in the house, expecting me to look after Darryl. Then one of the neighbors complained to child welfare so she started bringing her dates home.” Her laugh was hollow. “Less than a year later, she married again. It would have been sooner, but the guy was still married and they were waiting for the divorce to come through.” She chewed thoughtfully on a fry. “Carson was nice enough, I suppose. He moved us all into a big house on Narragansett Bay.” She took a drink of water. “Odd what you remember. He helped us with our homework. Like I said, a nice man. Everything was hunky-dory until he got killed in a plane crash.”

I was beginning to feel a little sorry for Deirdre and her brother. “That’s really sad,” I said. “Just when you think you’ve picked up all the pieces, something comes along to knock them right out of your hand.”

“Well, Mom didn’t waste much time crying over the broken pieces. She went looking for Lynwood instead.”

“Lynwood?”

“Lynwood Tinsley. Of her exes, she was married to Lynwood the longest. Broke up his marriage, too, in order to do it.” Deirdre dredged a fry through the catsup that was leaking over the edge of her burger. “I don’t think Lynwood was all too happy with Mother,” she said. “I never knew him all that well, but I think he got more than he bargained for. Mother would give these big parties, invite everybody, drink a little too much, and strut her stuff. Well, you’ve seen the outfits she wears.”

I nodded.

“Lynwood kept his rage all bottled up. My theory is that it turned in on him. Killed the poor cuss.”

“Cancer?” I asked.

She nodded. “Colon.”

“Too bad.”

Deirdre shrugged. “Lynwood was never a part of my life. He never helped me out financially or anything.” She dusted her fries with salt. “I’ve been on my own since I turned eighteen.”