“Hello?” I ventured at last.
A serious-looking woman, astonishingly pretty in spite of the oversized eyeglasses that threatened to slide off her nose, appeared almost immediately. “Can I help you?”
I asked for Captain Younger and learned that he was out working a case. I wondered if it were my case. “Can you tell me if anybody’s located my father, George Alexander?”
She shook her head. “Let me check with Chief Hammett.” She disappeared through a door into an adjoining office. I heard the murmur of voices, and then she returned, followed by a policeman in his mid-forties who reminded me of a young Rod Steiger.
He had no news.
I gave Chief Hammett my cell phone number and told him where he could reach me, smiled a good-bye, then stood on the steps of the police station for several minutes, staring numbly at the fields beyond the railroad tracks. With his rental car nowhere to be found, I didn’t know what made me think that Daddy was still in Chestertown, I just knew it, is all, the way I sometimes knew that he was on the telephone by the way it rang. I smiled as I recalled the discussion at the party about that book, Flex Your Psychic Muscles, and decided that I’d distract myself by wandering over to the bookstore to see what all the hype was about.
As I strolled east on Cross Street toying with the idea of actually hiring a psychic to help locate our father, I found myself outside Play It Again, Sam, a retro, fifties-style coffee shop where a young professional couple sat on a sofa in the window drinking lattes and sharing a biscòtti. I stared, unabashed, as she nibbled coyly on the pastry, then offered him the end she had just bitten. Although the couple in the window was decades younger than my father and Darlene, something about this little mating ritual reminded me of watching Darlene feed my father crackers and brie. I felt a chill, hugged myself for warmth, then hurried on.
At the bookstore I discovered that Virginia was right; Flex Your Psychic Muscles was on back order. I browsed the collection of books by local authors, selected one on the history of Chestertown, paid for it with my credit card, and wandered back out onto High Street, turning the pages as I walked. In front of me was the courthouse and, according to a centerfold map, Court Street would be to my right. Court intersected with Church Alley, I discovered, which dumped you back onto North Queen Street, just half a block from Darlene’s.
I tucked the book in my bag and headed in that direction, curious because I could see from where I stood that the east side of Court Street was lined with quaint eighteenth-century, one-story shops that had been converted into law offices.
As I turned the corner into Church Alley, I ran smack dab into Virginia, walking Speedo on a leash. At the sight of me Speedo went bonkers, dancing on his hind legs and pawing the air like a palomino. Finding Darlene’s body together had clearly been a bonding experience.
“Speedo! Sit!” Virginia ordered.
Speedo ignored her. Virginia hauled back on the leash, but Speedo only pranced around in a tighter circle, barking joyfully.
“Looks like you have your hands full.” I chuckled.
“Speedo!” Virginia’s breath came in short gasps. “Damn dog!”
“Let me try,” I said, taking the leash from her hands. Soon Speedo was sitting at my feet, happily panting drool all over my running shoes. I smiled at Virginia. “You’re sweet to take the dog,” I said.
“I need my head examined,” she said, tugging at the hem of her lightweight jacket which had ridden up during the struggle. She looked up. “Any news about Darlene or your father?”
I shook my head. “We’ve looked everywhere for Daddy. Nothing. And as for Darlene, we’ll just have to wait for the police.”
“Deirdre is making arrangements to have her cremated, after…”
We both must have been thinking the same thing: after the autopsy. I shivered. Bone saws, Y-incisions. It didn’t bear thinking about. “Is there to be a funeral?” I inquired, realizing with a pang that Daddy might miss saying good-bye.
Virginia shook her head. “Darlene wants… wanted her ashes scattered among the azaleas at Longwood Gardens.”
“They’ll let you do that?”
Virginia shrugged. “Who’s to stop you?”
Who indeed? I nodded toward the dog who was lying spread-eagle on the pavement with his muzzle resting on my shoe. “Where are you heading, Virginia?”
She pointed to her right. “That way,” she said. “I live on Lawyers’ Row.”
I must have looked puzzled.
“Otherwise known as North Court Street,” she added. “It’s only to confuse the tourists.”
“Well, whatever it’s called, let me walk you and Speedo home.” I tugged on Speedo’s leash until he reluctantly got to his feet.
Virginia smiled, bowed, and with a broad sweep of her arm, indicated I should lead the way. We walked back the way I had come along Church, passing a row of modest, two-story colonial homes, recently renovated and variously covered with aluminum siding in shades of vanilla, sand, or pink with darker, contrasting shutters. Number 108 on the west side of the street was a particular standout in pale lavender, with shutters the color of ripe plums and a red door. Behind it, a tall white picket fence stretched for a hundred feet before ending at the back of somebody’s garage. On the other side of the fence, a broad-brimmed straw hat bobbed. I couldn’t see who was underneath.
Speedo stopped, raised a hind leg, and relieved himself against a sugar maple tree whose roots extended under the pickets, causing the fence to buckle. Virginia and I looked at each other and pretended not to notice. Instead, I waved my free hand toward a row of three nearly identical houses. “Which one is yours?”
“The green one.” Virginia turned and headed toward the house on the end nearest us. In front of it, brown grass sprang from cracks in a sidewalk bordered by a privet hedge from which unruly tendrils shot out in all directions. I yearned for my pruning sheers. The hedge turned a corner at Virginia’s driveway and we followed it for a few yards before I handed the end of Speedo’s leash back to Virginia. I was surprised to see that Virginia’s house lay backyard to backyard with Darlene’s. The steep-pitched roof of Darlene’s garden shed poked out above a chest-high stone wall that separated the two lots.
“I didn’t realize you and Darlene were neighbors,” I commented.
“Oh, yes.” Virginia opened a gate and released Speedo, leash and all, inside. “We would probably have been even better neighbors if it hadn’t been for that wall.” She shrugged. “But it was already here when I moved in,” she said, almost apologetically.
“As inherited walls go, that one’s fairly attractive.” Four rosebushes were espaliered equidistantly along the wall, two on each side of an ancient wooden gate covered with ivy. In summer the bushes would be heavy with blooms. “Did you plant the roses?”
“Oh my, no!” She laughed. “I’m terrible with plants. Have a brown thumb, if you want to know the truth.”
Speedo, dragging his leash, loped joyfully around the pocket-sized yard.
“Would you care to come in?” Virginia asked.
With psychics on my mind a lot lately, I concentrated on sending hot tea messages in her direction. “I’d love to.”
Virginia reached for the doorknob, turned, and called, “Speedo!”
Speedo, in the midst of a full-blown squirrel alert, ignored her. He dashed off after the poor creature who barely escaped with its tail by scampering up the ivied wall and frisking over the fence.
“Speedo!” The dog skid to a halt, dirt flying, his nose inches away from the wall. He sat there mournfully, gazing up at the spot where the squirrel’s tail had last been seen. “Speedo!”
At first Speedo didn’t seem to hear, then he got to his feet, turned, and trotted in our direction. “Beastly dog,” Virginia muttered. “I’ll be glad when Darryl comes to collect him.”