Occasion of Revenge (27 page)

“You won’t get any argument from me.” She peered into the depths of my eyes as if more information were hidden there. “What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later. C’mon, let’s get back to the others.”

Paul, looking relieved, stood up when we appeared and held my chair out until I’d settled down into it. He kissed my cheek. “Thank God. I thought maybe you’d fallen in.”

I patted his cheek and managed a smile. “It took longer than I thought.” I’d fill him in later. Paul, who took care of business in men’s rooms as if they had revolving doors, always claimed to be completely baffled by why women took so long to accomplish the same thing, so he accepted my explanation without question.

Deirdre was staring at me curiously. I wondered if my cowlick was misbehaving again, or if I had spinach on my teeth. How old was she, anyway? Twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? How would I feel having a stepmother fifteen years younger than I was? I shook away the thought. The hell with Darryl; he was just rattling my cage. I sprinkled some salt and pepper on my duck and took a bite, surprised to find it hadn’t grown cold, and consoled myself by picturing
him
behind bars.

Deirdre pushed her soup bowl toward the center of the table and stood. “Well, sports fans. Gotta go.”

Daddy and Paul rose politely. Daddy extended his hand; when Deirdre took it, he covered both their hands with his left. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to
stay and see in the New Year with us?” I held my breath, hoping she had other plans. Like having to alphabetize her spice rack. Or neuter her houseplants.

“No, sorry. I’ve got to get back to Bowie. My roommates are having a party and I’m expected to make the pizza.” She turned to us. “Bye. Happy New Year.”

We watched her go, Daddy looking wistful, whether from melancholy over what might have been with Darlene or for some hope of a new relationship with her daughter it was impossible to tell.

I worried about this through the rest of my roast duck, but by the time Mary Ellen cleared the dishes and began hovering tableside for our dessert order, Daddy had remained so cheerful that I knew Darryl was full of baloney.

When my cell phone rang again, catching me in mid–Key lime pie, I hurried to answer it, thinking it had to be Captain Younger.

But I was wrong.

“Hannah, thank goodness I got you!”

I closed my eyes. “Hi, LouElla.”

“No time to chat! Hurry! You’ve got to find Emily and warn her!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” All eyes at our table and several pairs from the adjoining tables glommed on to me.

“Virginia’s gone crazy! She just came over here and demanded my log book.”

That was the silliest thing I ever heard, but there was no use telling LouElla that. “Why would she do that?”

“She hit me in the face. Knocked me over,” LouElla whimpered. “I’m going to have a black eye.”

“I’m sorry, LouElla, but what can I do to help?”

“She’s going to destroy it, obliterate it, wipe it off the face of the earth! Oh, my poor log book!”

An alarm clanged in my head. “What does all this have to do with Emily, LouElla?”

“Emily?” LouElla paused, as if she’d lost her train of thought.

“Yes, Emily. What were you saying about Emily?”

“Oh! It was Emily who told Virginia about my log book. I’m sure Emily didn’t mean any harm by it, and I certainly don’t hold anything against the dear girl, but Virginia says that now Emily’s seen what’s written in it, she’ll have to be stopped.”

I sighed. Another one of LouElla’s loopy conspiracy theories. “That doesn’t make any sense, LouElla. You
wrote
the log book and she didn’t stop you.”

“That’s what I told her, but Virginia said that
nobody’d
believe a crazy old witch like me.” She snuffled noisily. “Except she used the B-word.”

“I’m sure you’re overreacting.”

“No, I’m not. You should have seen her face! All red and purple and the veins in her neck popping out.”

I needed to drag LouElla back on track before she wandered down a divergent path. “You said she went looking for Emily?”

“She blames you, Hannah, for messing up her plans. She said there was only one way to make you understand why she had to do it. You were going to find out, firsthand, how it feels.”

How it feels?
Adrenaline suddenly shot through my veins, cold as ice water, but I had to ask. I had to be sure. “How what feels, LouElla?”

“How it feels to lose a child.”

I leapt up from my chair, clutching the cell phone to
my ear with both hands. “LouElla! Look out your window. Is Virginia’s car still parked in the lane?”

“Just a minute.”

I filled the time with silent prayer:
please, oh, please, oh, please, oh …

“She’s just leaving!” LouElla seemed suddenly focused. “But don’t you worry! I’ll follow her. I’m good at it.”

“Don’t hang up!” I shouted. “Wait a minute!”

“It’ll be OK,” LouElla soothed. “I’ve trained with the best.”

“What makes Virginia think she can find Emily, LouElla? It’s New Year’s Eve. The city is packed with people.”

“Emily told her where she was going.”

“Oh, my God!”

“And, Hannah?”

“What?”

“I know for a fact that Virginia owns a gun.”

The phone went dead in my ear.

chapter
19

Everyone stared—Ruth’s mouth ajar, Paul’s
brow deeply furrowed, Daddy’s eyes like slits—as if trying to determine if I’d lost my mind. “We need to find Emily and Dante,” I blurted at last. “Virginia’s come unglued. LouElla thinks she’s on her way here to kill Emily!”

“That’s crazy!” Paul said.

“Maybe so, but there’s usually an element of truth in what LouElla says.” I smiled grimly, thinking about my father. My eyes locked with Paul’s. “Can we afford to take that chance?”

Ruth grabbed my hand and jerked me back into my chair. “But where do we look?”

Paul’s chair screeched against the floor as he scooted closer to me. “Hannah, can you remember where the kids were going?”

“I didn’t ask! Oh, God, I didn’t ask.” Panic seized me.
Where did they go? Oh, Lord, where did they go?
I shook my head violently, trying to drive the random bits of memory that were ricocheting around inside my
skull into their proper slots. “The magic show finished at four-thirty, so that’s out. After the face-painting, there was the
Punch and Judy Show …
”

“Wait a minute!” Daddy nearly knocked over his coffee cup as his hand shot across the table in front of him. “How will Virginia find Emily in all these crowds?”

“Emily
told
Virginia where she’d be going, Daddy! When she called Virginia to warn her about LouElla.” I buried my face in my hands. “Oh, how did things get so bass-ackwards?”

I peeped out through my fingers. “We need a plan.” I pulled the First Night Annapolis program out of my bag and spread it on the table. I scanned the program, looking for events marked with a balloon indicating their suitability for children. “There’s a comedy juggler at St. Mary’s. Ruth, you take that. And there’s some sort of sand craft workshop at Annapolis Elementary. You can check that out, too—”

Paul shook his head. “No, forget that, Ruth. Chloe’s too young for sand crafts.”

I threw up my hands in frustration. “What, then?”

Paul stabbed his finger at a green section of the program: Zone 5, the U.S. Naval Academy. “There. The Harlem Wizards.”

“A basketball game? With Chloe?” I thought Paul had lost it. “What makes you think so?”

“Dante’s a nut for basketball, Hannah. Trust me. After watching puppets duke it out and having his face painted, he’ll be ready for something like this.” He tapped the program where a balloon was drawn next to the event. “Besides, this
is
an event for kids. And it’s practically at the Visitors’ Center where we agreed to meet and watch the fireworks.”

A wave swept over me, half of sadness, half of shame, that I had distanced myself so much from my son-in-law that I didn’t even know he enjoyed basketball.

I checked my watch. “If LouElla is right, it will take Virginia an hour to get here, another twenty minutes or so to park …” I turned to Paul for reassurance. “The game doesn’t start until nine-thirty, so that gives us plenty of time to find them. Doesn’t it?”

He nodded. “I certainly hope so.”

My cell phone burbled to life. With frantic fingers, I fumbled for the talk button. It was Captain Younger, returning my call. I blurted out my suspicions about Virginia Prentice and about Marty O’Malley’s missing Compres tablets, then babbled on about LouElla.

“Whoa! One thing at a time, Mrs. Ives.”

“That’s just it!” I was practically shouting. “If LouElla’s right, we don’t have much time!”

Captain Younger’s voice took on such a soothing tone that I wondered if I’d reached Dial-a-Shrink. “I hear what you’re saying, Mrs. Ives, and we’ll check into it, of course. Your immediate concern is for your family, I know, but I’m certain there’s virtually nothing to worry about. Just in case, however, the minute I finish talking with you, I’ll notify the Annapolis police to be on the lookout for Mrs. Prentice.”

I heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank you.”

“I’ll have to warn you, though, that LouElla Van Schuyler isn’t going to be a very credible witness.”

“I know she’s a little kooky, but—”

“Not just a little, Mrs. Ives. Last year we charged Mrs. Van Schuyler with assault when she got into a brawl with a clerk at the grocery store over the sale price of a canned ham. Both women ended up in the emergency room at Kent Queen Anne’s Hospital. In
the hospital, Mrs. Van Schuyler became irrational and kept threatening to kill herself, so we got a court order to commit her.”

I let that soak in. “Commit her where?”

“To the Upper Shore Mental Health Center.”

Just great! I was about to send my family running all over Annapolis chasing the paranoid schizophrenic fantasies of a character right out of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. But for some reason, I believed LouElla, and to my great surprise, I found myself defending her. “But they released her, didn’t they?”

“They did, but who’s checking to make sure she’s taking her medication?”

chapter
20

It was still thirty minutes until game time,
so while Daddy and Ruth checked the events going on at St. John’s College and the area around the county buildings and the Court House, Paul and I retraced our steps from Maryland Avenue, around State Circle to Church Circle and down Main Street.

Opposite Chick & Ruth’s deli, I thought I spotted Chloe riding on Dante’s shoulders about half a block down Main Street, near Hats in the Belfry. “There they are!” I grabbed Paul’s hand and dragged him down the middle of the street, playing dodge ’em with boisterous clots of teenagers and little families traveling in pods. “Emily! Dante!” But they didn’t hear me. I could see Chloe’s head above the crowds, bobbing farther and farther away.

Suddenly my path was blocked by a giant pink blob with green eyes and a yellow spine. I gasped, then recognized it as an inflatable fish; its fat purple lips swam menacingly in front of my face. I turned and bolted for the sidewalk, yelling for Paul to follow me.

In front of Brown’s Furniture, I collided with a character swathed in red silk, wearing long gloves and a stark white Venetian mask. The sinister figure raised its lantern and peered at me closely in the dim light, scaring the bejesus out of me. Behind it, other faceless figures floated threateningly in robes of green, yellow, purple, and white. I froze in my tracks. “Out of my way!” I shrieked. I needed to keep my eyes glued to Chloe. I could just see the top of her golden head as she crossed the street with her father, heading for the giant Christmas tree at Market Square.

A gap opened, and Paul and I charged through. At last we were gaining on them. “Emily! Dante!” Heads turned, but not the ones we were pursuing. It wasn’t until I had grabbed the back of his blue jean jacket that I remembered Dante had been wearing a black windbreaker and that Chloe would have been sitting in a Gerry pack. The surprised face that turned to me was that of a stranger. “Sorry,” I stammered. “I thought you were somebody else.”

As the couple walked away, I bent over double, my hands resting on my knees as I tried to keep my lungs from exploding. Paul rubbed my back. “OK?”

Still panting, I looked up at him sideways and nodded.

“Where next?”

“Let’s try the juggler.”

Paul and I cut right, dodged the Pillsbury Doughboy and his entourage at the crosswalk, and hurried up Green Street and across Duke of Gloucester to the auditorium at St. Mary’s Catholic School.

“Sorry, it’s full.” The usher offered us second-chance tickets for the ten-thirty show.

I turned to Paul in desperation. “But that’ll be too
late!” To the usher I said, “It’s an emergency. Have you seen a tall guy with a ponytail carrying a baby? He’s with a woman. Kinda short with reddish hair and an earring in her eyebrow?”

The usher smiled. “There could be a dozen of ’em in there just like that.”

“He might be wearing a blinking Santa hat.”

The guy shook his head.

“Please let me in, just for a minute. I need to find them.”

Paul pinched the fabric of the usher’s sleeve. “Let my wife look. It’s important. I’ll stay here as collateral.”

Before there could be further argument, I pushed through the doorway and into the auditorium. I threaded my way through the aisles, squinting down each row, practically swimming through the waves of laughter that erupted from the crowd as Michael Rosman fooled around up on the stage with a life-size dummy. I kept a low profile, not wanting anyone to confuse me with a volunteer from the audience and clap a fake animal nose on my face. But in spite of what the usher had said, there was no one in the audience even remotely resembling Emily, Dante, or little Chloe.

We hurried back the way we had come, across Market Space and down Randall Street to the Academy, following a string of revelers through Gate One, several wearing hats made of recycled computer parts. A woman dressed as a parlor maid raced by with ice skates slung over her shoulder. “She’s going to the ice rink,” I panted. “Let’s try there.”