LouElla turned her pleasant face to mine, her eyebrows neatly arched as if painted on with a stencil. “Even if aliens got him, sweetheart, they’ll beam him back unharmed.” She patted my hand again reassuringly, then closed her eyes momentarily. She smiled a closed-lip smile then turned to me again. “I was abducted by aliens once. In Vermont.” She sighed, as if the memory were a pleasant one. “Don’t believe everything you hear, my dear. It didn’t hurt one little bit.”
LouElla was an enigma. Just when you thought she was making sense, she’d fly off into never-never land.
Virginia floated a halfhearted attempt to get rid of her neighbor. “Are you in a hurry?” Her eyebrows shot up hopefully.
LouElla beamed. “Goodness, no. I’ve got all the time in the world.”
Virginia caved. “Would you like some tea, then?”
LouElla bobbed in her seat and clasped her narrow hands together. “Oh, tea would be delightful!”
From a glass canister, Virginia selected a tea bag at random and dropped it into a ceramic mug, tag and all. I noted that LouElla wasn’t getting a bone china cup, and I wondered if Virginia had picked a disgusting flavor like chamomile or licorice in hopes of discouraging a long visit, but when she brought LouElla’s mug over I could tell from the scent that the tea was one of my favorites, Lemon Lift.
LouElla had already helped herself to a cookie; several crumbs clung to her frosted plum lipstick. “I left the party around twelve-thirty,” she announced, unasked, “and the only people left were your dad, Darlene, and her children.” She raised a painted eyebrow. “Are you staying in town, dear?”
“I’m going home in the morning.”
LouElla touched my hand where it rested on the tabletop. “He’s a good man, your father. A good man.”
A tear rolled unbidden down my cheek. “I know, and he means well, but he doesn’t always show good judgment.”
“He’s still grieving for your mother, isn’t he?”
“We all are. It hasn’t even been a year. After the funeral I prayed he’d find something to interest him, but I had something in mind like woodworking or stamp collecting! Not a girlfriend. Not so soon.”
LouElla perched next to me like a 1970’s talk-show host: ultragroomed, wearing a three-piece double-knit pantsuit in pink and tangerine. I couldn’t believe she’d just spent hours working in her garden. If it’d been me, I’d have grass stains on my knees, streaks of dust on my face, and black dirt under my fingernails. No doubt LouElla had worn gloves. “That often happens with widowers,” LouElla continued in a Doctor Ruth sort of voice, “coming out of a longtime, happy marriage.” She wagged her head. “They jump at the first woman who comes along, hoping to recapture their happiness.”
“Daddy took off with the first thing that sat next to him on a barstool,” I complained.
LouElla stared at me, silently nodding. In demeanor she was so much like Doctor Ruth or Dr. Joyce Brothers that I just couldn’t help confessing to her.
“Has he always drunk heavily?” she asked.
“No, not until after Mom died. Up until then, he’d been a social drinker. After the Navy, he worked as a consultant to the aerospace industry. There was a lot of entertaining with his job, so drinking kind of went with the territory.” I ran my fingers through my hair, separating strands that were damp with the sweat beading up on my brow. “Lately we were beginning to worry that it was getting out of hand.” I accepted a tissue from Virginia and used it to blow my nose. “When Daddy went into the hospital after his accident, they ran some tests to see if he was an alcoholic. He must have been fine, though, because the doctor let him go.”
LouElla shot a quick glance at Virginia, who jumped right into the conversation. “I hate to tell you this, Hannah, but the doctor didn’t check your father out of the hospital. He checked himself out.”
I couldn’t believe that this woman who was practically a stranger knew more about my father than I did. “How do you know that?”
Virginia chewed on her lips, then said, “Darlene told me. She said the doctor wanted to keep him for a while, but that it was an unnecessary expense and he was perfectly fine so she was going to take him home.”
I thought back to that day in the hospital, to the bottle of vodka in Darlene’s hand, and to Daddy’s remarkable “recovery.” I realized that if Darlene weren’t already dead I would have killed her myself.
“If you want my opinion, he should have stayed there a few more days.” LouElla gave me a knowing look. “And not just for the head injury, if you know what I mean.” I felt my face flush with embarrassment. It was one thing to suspect your father of being an alcoholic, and quite another to realize that everyone in town must be talking and tut-tutting over it, too. I shoved my teacup toward the center of the table, suddenly certain that I’d never want to eat or drink anything again. “I’d better go.”
LouElla clapped both hands to her cheeks. “Oh! I nearly forgot why I came!”
Virginia had taken my empty cup and was heading toward the sink with it. She glanced back at LouElla. “What might that be?”
LouElla rose and ambled to the center of the kitchen where a shaft of sunlight settled on her for a moment, highlighting her hair and giving it a reddish cast. I wondered if she colored it herself—a packet of “midnight blue,” perhaps, followed by a “summer berry” rinse. “Look, Virginia,” she said. “I know you’re not a dog person, but I am. I would love to take Speedo off your hands for the time being.”
Virginia’s eyes widened in surprise. “You would?”
“I really, really would.” LouElla knelt in front of the dog. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Speedo, old boy.” But Speedo was sound asleep, his back legs twitching as if chasing squirrels in his dreams. “If you’re worried about it,” she addressed Virginia, “I have experience. Who did they call on when the CIA station chief in Athens was murdered in a drive-by shooting?”
I thought I could guess, but why spoil LouElla’s pleasure. Virginia simply stared.
LouElla stood tall. “Me. Why, me, of course.”
“How did you help?” I asked, sublimely naïve. “Did you bring the terrorists to justice?”
LouElla’s eyes sparkled. “No, I adopted his dog, a German shepherd named Bonzo.”
Virginia smiled as if everything were normal and her whole kitchen hadn’t slipped into some parallel world where grass is red and the sky is green and fish are plucked out of the clouds. The woman actually looked grateful. “I’d like you to take the dog, LouElla. Thank you.”
LouElla clapped her hands together. “There! Then it’s settled.” She reached for the leash which Virginia had draped over the kitchen doorknob. “C’mon, Speedo.”
Speedo opened one eye, rose to his feet, and shook himself with extravagant pleasure. LouElla clipped the leash to the dog’s collar and led him toward the door. “We’ll come visit you, Virginia. Won’t we, Speedo?” Speedo’s whole body wagged. “Well, bye,” she caroled.
When the door had closed behind LouElla and her new charge, I turned to Virginia. “Why did you let Speedo go home with LouElla?” I couldn’t believe it had escaped her notice that LouElla was a bit … eccentric.
Virginia waved me back toward the table, a steaming kettle of water in her hand. After I sat down, she poured hot water over the cold, soggy tea bag in my cup. “Let me tell you about LouElla.” She set the teakettle down on a braided mat. “LouElla’s right, I’m not a dog person. I much prefer cats.”
“You have cats?” I hadn’t seen any around.
“They’ve been hiding out since Speedo came to stay. Jennyanydots is cowering under my bed upstairs, and the last time I saw Bustopher, he was in the basement curled up on top of a heating duct.”
“I’m a cat person, too,” I admitted, “although I’m between cats right now. I’m just waiting for the right one to adopt me.” I dunked my tea bag up and down thoughtfully. “But you were going to tell me about LouElla.”
“Yes, well, LouEll
a might have been married at one time, because she had a son. But no one ever saw her husband and she never talks about him. When she came to live in Chestertown, her son was six. They were very close, as close as a mother and son could be. But, just before high school, Sammy got sick.” She rested her elbows on the table. “Two years ago, just about the time I moved here, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. They tried chemotherapy, radiation, surgery … everything. Eventually, there was nothing more they could do, so the doctors sent him home to die.”
My heart ached with sympathy for that strange woman and her son. I thought of my mother’s death in the coronary care unit of University Hospital in Baltimore. She hadn’t even had the luxury of coming home before she was taken away from us.
“As you can imagine, LouElla was pretty torn up about it. We all urged her to put Samuel in a nursing home, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She rented a hospital bed and a Porta Potti. A truck used to come by each week with fresh oxygen tanks. She spoon-fed the boy, she bathed him, she did everything for him. Lord, how that woman worked to save that child!” Virginia gazed out her window in the direction of LouElla’s backyard. “LouElla was trained as a nurse, of course.”
I thought about all the things LouElla claimed to have done. It wouldn’t have surprised me to hear that she’d been trained as an astronaut and was volunteering to help resupply the space station.
“Samuel died only six months ago, Hannah, so I thought that if she wanted to keep Speedo, it might give her something to do.”
I had witnessed for myself the effort that LouElla had put into being official greeter at my father’s engagement party, and thought that a person like that with time on her hands could be dangerous. “So you think Speedo will be safe with LouElla?”
“Of course!” Virginia snorted. “LouElla throws herself wholeheartedly into everything. By the time Darryl shows up, if ever, Speedo will be winning blue ribbons at the Westchester County Dog Show.”
The thought of Speedo holding still long enough to allow himself to be groomed or perform for the judges made me laugh. “I’m sure you’re right.” I looked at my watch. It was nearly two o’clock. “I’d better be going, Virginia. Thanks so much for the tea and cookies.” I stood, determined to leave this time.
As I opened the door, Virginia laid a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure your father will come home soon, Hannah.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears,” I said.
chapter
11
As a card-carrying sun worshiper, the short days of December had never much appealed to me. December twenty-first was no exception as darkness fell early, bringing a premature halt to my fruitless combing of the grounds of Washington College for any signs of my father or his car.
On my way back from the campus, I stopped at a convenience store and bought a few items I could nuke into a reasonable facsimile of supper in the little kitchen that adjoined my room—a Stouffer’s turkey tetrazzini and a spinach soufflé. After I scraped the last bits of spinach from the corners of the cardboard tray and licked my fork clean, I took a long, hot bath, then crawled into bed with the remote. It had taken me a little time to find the TV. In an attempt to maintain Victorian verisimilitude, the decorator had hidden it in an antique wardrobe opposite the bed.
I grazed through the channels, watching a few minutes of an old Clint Eastwood film, then switched to a popular sitcom after Clint’s bullets started flying. When the local news came on at eleven, there was nothing, thank goodness, about Darlene’s death or my father. At this point I was certain that no news was good news and that any news would be bad news.
Sometimes I hate being right. In the morning, just as I was finishing my continental breakfast of croissants, juice, and coffee, Paul and Captain Younger showed up almost simultaneously—Paul to take me home and Younger requesting a few moments of my time. From the look on Younger’s face, I suspected he was going to need more than a few moments.
“Did Mrs. Tinsley have high blood pressure, do you know?”
I glanced at Paul, then back at the officer. “I don’t know. She could have, I suppose. Why? Did she die of a stroke?”
“Does your father have high blood pressure?”
“No, he doesn’t. Definitely not.” I couldn’t figure out where this conversation was going.
“Anyone in your family have high blood pressure?”
I shook my head.
“Your sister Ruth, for instance?”
I was mystified. Was this guy a policeman or a doctor taking a medical history? “No,” I said. “As far as I know, nobody in my family has had trouble with high blood pressure. Why do you ask?”
“Mrs. Tinsley died of an overdose of clonidine.”
I shrugged and looked at Paul, who shrugged back at me. “What’s clonidine?” Paul asked.
“It’s a blood pressure medication.”
“Maybe Darlene had high blood pressure, then, and nobody knew it.”
Captain Younger shook his head. “Dr. McWaters has been her family physician ever since she moved to Chestertown. He told me she’d just had a checkup. The woman was healthy as a horse. Had the blood pressure of a twenty-five-year-old.”
“Maybe she took the clonidine by accident?” I offered brightly.
“It hardly seems likely.”
“On purpose?” I said before I realized how ridiculous that must have sounded. A woman about to marry the retiree of her dreams doesn’t usually go around committing suicide. I raised a hand. “I withdraw that.”
I wondered how easy it would be to lay one’s hands on some of the drug. “Is clonidine a prescription medication?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I was just about to ask Captain Younger why he mentioned my sister Ruth when I remembered the bottle of schnapps sitting open on Darlene’s kitchen counter. Someone must have told him the schnapps had been a gift from Ruth. I took a deep breath. “The schnapps! You don’t think my sister …”
“Mrs. Ives, there was enough clonidine in that bottle to knock out everyone at the party. Clonidine is particularly dangerous in combination with alcohol.”
“But … but … Ruth would hardly be so stupid as to doctor a gift meant for Darlene and then tell everybody about it!” I set my half-eaten croissant down on a napkin. “Besides, when my husband and I came to Darlene’s on Sunday morning, that bottle was sitting right out on the counter, wide open. Anybody could have put something into it.” I grabbed Paul’s hand for support and he squeezed it back, hard. “It would be pretty safe to do that, you see. Everyone knew it was Darlene’s favorite drink. I can’t imagine anybody else wanting to drink that stuff, can you? It’s positively vile.”
Younger jotted something down in his notebook with a ballpoint pen, then tucked the notebook back into his pocket. “By the way, we’ve found your father’s rental car.”
My heart flopped. “Where?”
“In a satellite parking lot at BWI, the Blue lot.” Anticipating my next question, he raised a hand. “But we checked with all the airlines and there’s no indication that he flew anywhere.”
I folded my hands and sat silently. I studied my ragged fingernails, promising myself for the umpteenth time to stop gnawing on them.
“Have you heard from him, Mrs. Ives?”
“No, I haven’t. Not a word, and I’m really worried.”
Younger looked so skeptical that I suspected he’d order a wiretap the minute he got back to his office. “If he does contact you, you will get in touch with me, won’t you?”
“Of course.”
“You have my number?”
I patted my pocket where I could just feel the outline of the business card he had given me. “I certainly do.”
On the drive home, with Paul a captive audience, I tried to sort it out. Darlene, celebrating her upcoming marriage to our father, had waited until the last guests had gone home, then poured herself a congratulatory glass of peppermint schnapps and taken it into the bath.
Wait a mi
nute! Where would Daddy have been?
That was easy. Passed out on the couch.
OK. So, Darlene tucks Daddy in, steps into the bath, takes a drink and shortly after that, goes to sleep and never wakes up. Later, Daddy comes to, looks around in confusion, realizes the party’s over, and stumbles upstairs to the bedroom. No Darlene. Then he looks in the bathroom …
By the time we reached the spot on the bridge where my father had rear-ended the truck, I was fighting back tears of frustration. I’d looked everywhere, talked to everyone. If the police couldn’t find my father, how on earth could I?
It was almost noon when we got back to Annapolis. Pinned to the fridge was a note from Emily saying that Dante had taken her and Chloe house-hunting. Presumably Chloe’s opinion on her nursery was required. Paul was supposed to attend a departmental Christmas luncheon. He had invited me along, but I said I wasn’t in the mood. He offered to stay home and keep me company, but I urged him to go on alone and he reluctantly agreed.
After the front door closed behind him, I nuked some cider in the microwave, stirred it with a cinnamon stick, slipped some Mozart into the CD player, threw myself into a chair in the living room, and stared at the Christmas tree. If Mozart, hot cider, and the beauty of a well-decorated Christmas tree failed to cheer me up, I was in trouble.
In my absence, the elves had been busy. Scattered among the gaily wrapped packages I had arranged beneath the tree myself were several surprises. A box the size of a small suitcase, wrapped in gold-and-silver paper, caught my eye. Maybe just a peek?
I eased out of my chair and bent over for a closer look at the tag. “For Emily, with love always, Dante.” Sweet. I hoped their love would last forever. I sat on the floor and retrieved some smaller gifts that had been shoved to the rear when Dante set the box for Emily in front of them. Cuff links for Paul. Earrings for Emily. A key chain for the paper boy. The vase I’d chosen for L.K. Bromley. I fingered the ribbon on Ms. Bromley’s gift and wondered if she’d be at home. If so, this might be the perfect time to deliver it. Bromley’s intelligent, eccentric company would be a tonic for my worry over Daddy.
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