Occasion of Revenge (9 page)

I ran my hand over a shelf which was not even dusty, then jerked my hand away. “Fingerprints?”

“We’ll dust for fingerprints, ma’am, but I’ll have to be honest with you, I doubt it will do any good. Whoever did it probably wore gloves,” the shorter cop said.

His partner nodded. “Whoever got in had a key. Or the door was unlocked. There’s no sign of forced entry.”

Ruth scowled. “I
always
lock up.”

I believed her. Ruth was compulsive about locking up, but the police didn’t know that.

“Are you sure?” the short guy prodded.

Ruth nodded her head so vigorously that her long beaded earrings bounced against her neck. She turned to the officer, each word falling from her mouth like a blow. “The doors were locked.” She folded her hands in her lap. “I dread telling Daddy. He’ll think I’m not taking care of his things.”

She looked so pitiful that I decided to spare her that. “Don’t worry about it, Ruth. I’ll tell him.”

When I got to Anne Arundel Medical Center and found my way to Daddy’s room on the second floor, he was sitting up in bed, watching television. He beamed at me, then aimed the remote at the TV and clicked it off. “Hi, sweetheart.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Peachy! I’m ready to blow this pop stand.”

I pulled a chair over and sat down in it. “Daddy, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Hold that thought!” Daddy flung off the covers,
revealing legs so skinny I was shocked. “Gang way! Gotta use the head.” He slid out of bed and padded across the tile in his bare feet.

While I waited for him to finish in the bathroom, I stared at my hands, wondering how I’d phrase it. Too soon, I heard a flush and Daddy crawled back into bed, pulling the covers taut around his body and tucking them in, like a cocoon, his arms resting on top. “OK. What is it?”

“There’s been a robbery at your house.”

“A robbery?” His eyes grew wide.

“The TV and DVD. All your stereo equipment.” I thought I’d fire that round and let it soak in before dropping the bomb about the missing CD’s.

“Nope. I gave Darlene a key.”

“What do you mean, you gave Darlene a key?”

“Just that.”

“Somebody mention my name?”

Daddy turned toward the door, a grin as wide as the Golden Gate Bridge plastered across his face. “Good to see you, sweetheart.”

Blood rushed to my head and I thought I was going to pass out.
Sweetheart! That was what Daddy always called me!

Darlene set a colorful shopping bag on the bedside tray table and bent to kiss my father lightly on the lips. “So, what am I supposed to have done?”

Daddy looked at me. “I was just telling Hannah that I gave you a house key.”

She shrugged. “Seemed only fair since I gave him one of mine.”

I stared her down. “Somebody used a key to steal my father’s TV and stereo equipment today.”

“Well, it wasn’t stolen,” she said matter-of-factly. “Darryl helped me move it, at your father’s request.”

I glanced quickly at Daddy, who looked back almost guiltily.

Darlene’s face wore a look of triumph. “Since he’ll be moving in with me.”

Daddy smiled crookedly. “See, you were worried for nothing.”

I was certain this plan was a surprise to him, but if Darlene was as calculating as I feared, she probably figured that where the opera recordings went, so went the man. Ruth had lost this round. Score one for Darlene.

“So it seems,” I said. I regarded Darlene coolly. High black boots disappeared beneath the hem of a Burberry raincoat made bulky by the addition of a zip-in lining. Her blond hair frizzed out behind each ear and was held in place with silver combs.

“It’s the most logical thing. He still needs looking after.” She laid a palm on his forehead like a mother checking a child’s temperature. “Don’t you, Georgie?” She straightened blankets that were already pathologically straight. “And Ruth, well, she has to work, doesn’t she?”

“Seems you have this all planned.” I turned to my father. “Daddy?”

Darlene smiled at Daddy, stiff-mouthed, as if daring him to contradict her. Daddy tore his eyes from his girlfriend’s face and looked at me blankly. He nodded. “It’s for the best.”

Suddenly he grabbed my hand and squeezed. “You will come to the party, won’t you?”

“If I’m invited.”

“Of course you’re invited,” he insisted passionately, still not letting go of my hand. “Tell her, Darlene.”

“Sure. Bring Ruth, your husband, Emily. Hell, bring the whole family.”

“I can’t speak for everyone, of course, but I’ll try. Georgina and Scott won’t be available. They’re taking the kids to his parents in Arizona for the week before Christmas.”

Darlene shrugged. Whether we came to her damn party or not was clearly of little or no consequence to her. She picked up the Styrofoam water pitcher and jiggled it, then removed the lid and peered in. “You need more ice, Georgie.” She pressed the call button that would summon a nurse, then began straightening the newspapers that lay strewn about the floor.

While she was bending over
The Baltimore Sun
, I walked my hand along the tray table until it touched the bag Darlene had brought. I poked at it. Something solid. With my index finger I peeled down the top of the bag and peeked inside. Absolut. Darlene was bringing our father a bottle of vodka!

I wrapped all my fingers around the neck of the bottle, fighting the very real urge to smash it over the stupid woman’s head. “Darlene? Can I see you for a minute? In the hall?”

She looked genuinely puzzled, but shrugged and followed me out the door.

Holding the contraband in front of me, I walked nearly to the nurses’ station, seething, before I turned on her. “What’s this?” I hissed, waving the bottle under her nose.

“It’s a little prezzie for your dad.”

I shook the bottle at her again. “Darlene, he doesn’t
need this. In case you hadn’t noticed, Daddy has a big problem with alcohol!”

She blew air out through her lips. “No, he doesn’t! He just drinks a little too much sometimes. Haven’t you ever done that?”

I had, but it was a long time ago. The memory of a hangover the size of a satellite map of Hurricane Floyd kept me from doing it ever again.

“Vodka is
not
going to help.”

“You’re overreacting.”

“No, I’m not.” I stuffed the bottle deep into my bag. “And I’m not going to let you give this to him.”

“Fine. See if I care,” she huffed.

I touched her arm, but she drew back as if I’d given her an electric shock.

“Darlene, if you really care for my father, you’ll help him take control of his drinking.”

She glared at me with narrowed eyes. “A little beer and wine never hurt anybody.”

I couldn’t believe anyone could be so ignorant. Didn’t she read the newspapers? Didn’t she watch television? “For an alcoholic, even a little is too much,” I said.

“He’s had a tough time,” Darlene whined. “We both have. We deserve to
live
a little.”

I stepped close to her, so close I could tell that she showered with Irish Spring. “Just make sure all that living doesn’t kill you.” I spun on my heel and hurried away from her down the hall, feeling her cat-green eyes drilling into my back.

chapter
7

After the Absolut episode, I had half a mind
to forget calling the police to let them know that Darlene’s son, Darryl, wasn’t a thief, at least not in the technical sense of the word. Fortunately for Darryl, the regions of my brain where scientists chart charity, compassion, and mercy prevailed in me. Poor schnook couldn’t help it that his mother was a professional, uh, girlfriend.

Besides, I would soon learn that I knew a couple of thieves myself, was harboring one, in fact, right under my own roof. Late Wednesday, Emily informed me matter-of-factly that she and Ruth had taken it upon themselves to remove some items from Daddy’s house “for safekeeping.” When pressed, she confessed that she and her aunt had liberated the silverware, Grandmother Barton’s china, Mother’s jewelry, and the Waterford crystal that my mother hadn’t even had time to unpack before she died.

“Where did you put the stuff?”

“We’ve decided not to tell. That way, when you’re asked, you can truthfully say ‘I don’t know.’ ”

“But what if your grandfather notices the things are gone?”

Emily shrugged. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.”

I thought the move was risky and I told her so, but I was secretly pleased that they had taken matters into their own hands. We had all noticed things disappearing from my parents’ home over the past several months—a pair of sterling silver ashtrays, an Etruscan horse, a crackleware vase, a formal portrait of my father in his Navy uniform. There was no point asking Daddy about them. It didn’t take Hercule Poirot to figure out whose mantel that horse was prancing on. In a few days, I would be driving to Chestertown and could visit the horse myself.

I was looking forward to studying Darlene in her natural habitat, which is more than I can say for Ruth. I didn’t need the staff meteorologist at WBAL-TV to tell me that a storm was brewing on that front. As Daddy prepared to relocate to Chestertown, he and Ruth moved around the house almost as strangers, inching their way toward an inexorable clash like high-pressure systems moving across the face of a weather map. From the devil’s point of view, I thought, things were percolating along nicely; we could just sit back and wait for the eruption and hope that Darlene would not survive the fallout.

Round one went to Darlene when Ruth begged off the party at the last minute, blaming it all on Eric Gannon, her ex-husband, who is notoriously unreliable. If there was any time of year when Ruth needed help, it was the extended Christmas season when the downtown stores were open late and midnight madness often reigned. But Christmas also meant rounds
of parties for the freewheeling and fun-loving Eric, who was not inclined to let part ownership in Mother Earth cramp his style.

“No can do,” Ruth announced when I stopped by the shop on my way home after some Christmas shopping. Ruth reached under the counter and handed me a holiday bag with silver and gold tissue paper erupting from the top.

“What’s this?”

“I must be getting soft in my old age,” Ruth said.

“What?”

“Look inside.”

I tunneled down through the tissue paper and discovered a gift-wrapped bottle.

“It’s peppermint schnapps for Darlene. My peace offering. I don’t know what came over me at dinner the other night. I must be menopausal.”

I looked up from the bag expecting to see Ruth’s self-deprecating smile, but her face was composed and perfectly serious. “I don’t think it’s hormones, Ruth. We were all on edge. You stepped a wee bit over the line is all.”

“I’ve decided to be as nice as pie, even if it revolts me.”

This reminded me of the trouble we’d had with Emily. The more dead set we were against some wholly unsuitable boy she was dating, the more determined she’d be to stick with the relationship. I wondered if the same were true of senior citizens. “Dad’s a stubborn old bird.”

Ruth nodded. “I know. Anyway, take that to Darlene with my apologies.”

“I will, and I’ll pop in on Monday with a full report.”

“Monday? Why not tomorrow?”

“Ah, well. That’s the surprise. Paul has reserved rooms at the Imperial Hotel. He didn’t want to drive back late at night when we might be tired and, well, just a bit tipsy.” I stepped closer to the counter as two customers entered the shop and began sniffing experimentally at the incense sticks that sprouted from an array of ceramic jugs on the shelf behind me. “Besides, it’s
my
turn to be the designated drinker!”

“Are Emily and Chloe staying over, too?”

I nodded. “He’s reserved the Parlor Suite for us”—I shot my sister an exaggerated wink—“and the room next door for Emily. Dante has to work this weekend.”

“Again?”

“ ’Fraid so. It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t have such a long commute.”

The ladies behind me had made their selections, so I said a hurried good-bye and breezed out the door, Ruth’s gift for Darlene tucked into the shopping bag I’d got at The Nature Company. I took a shortcut through an alley to State Circle, where I stopped at Annapolis Pottery to buy a gift for my author friend, L.K. Bromley, and at Flowers by James to buy a poinsettia for Darlene. I had just gotten home and was wedging the plant behind the driver’s seat of my Le Baron when Paul appeared on our stoop, freshly scrubbed, looking
très distinqué
in gray slacks, a white open-necked shirt, and a tweed jacket. He cast a critical eye over my jeans and red chenille sweater. “You gonna be warm enough?”

“You kidding? It must be fifty degrees out!” I slammed the car door with a comforting
thrump
. “Besides, I’m going to change.”

Paul followed me upstairs and fussed with his tie while I threw on a green, ankle-length wool skirt and a
V-neck sweater, appliquéd with handmade Christmas ornaments. I clipped a jingle bell earring on each ear and pinned a Christmas wreath with teeny blinking lights to the collar of my sweater. I had a necklace of miniature Christmas tree bulbs somewhere, given to me by Sean and Dylan, but picked out by my sister, Georgina. I found the necklace in a box marked “Xmas” at the back of my jewelry drawer, slipped it over my head, then spread my arms wide. “There! How do I look?”

Paul’s eyebrows did a two-step. “Like a mail-order catalog on December the first.”

I punched him on the arm. “So where’s
your
Christmas spirit?”

He fingered his tie, a conservative red with an overall pattern of minuscule Christmas wreaths. He waggled the tail of it under my nose.

“That hardly counts, Paul. It would take a magnifying glass to distinguish those wreaths from garden-variety polka dots.”

We rounded up Emily and Chloe (looking Baby Beautiful in a stretchy red headband bow), took our festively attired selves to the car, and were soon whizzing through the tollbooths and over the Bay Bridge. By the time we reached the fork in the road where Routes 50 and 301 split, Chloe was asleep in her car seat. Next to her, Emily sat listening to something on her CD player. If I had ever watched MTV for more than five minutes, I probably could have recognized the tune from the
chee-cha-cha, chee-cha-cha
noises leaking from the earphones she had clamped to her head. I had half a mind to warn her she was going to go prematurely deaf, but thought better of it.