Then there was the funny business with the mailboxes. Something I’d overheard at Darlene’s party was gonging loudly in my head. Hadn’t Marty O’Malley, the charming retiree, mentioned something about getting his prescriptions by mail?
Ruth was conceding that the Titans were from Tennessee when I excused myself and took the stairs to the second floor. I parked myself in the hallway next to the cigarette machine, reached into my bag, and pulled out the cell phone. I dialed four-one-one and asked directory assistance for Marty O’Malley’s number in Chestertown. For an extra thirty-five cents I let the operator connect me, then waited impatiently through the rings, praying that Marty was spending the waning hours of 1999 at home in front of his television set.
On the sixth ring, someone picked up. “O’Malley.”
“Marty, this is Hannah Ives. Remember me? From Darlene’s party?”
He remembered me, down to the sweater I was wearing.
“Sorry to bother you tonight of all nights but I was just wondering something. You get your prescriptions by mail, right?”
“Saves me money.”
“Has any medicine ever gone missing?”
“Once or twice a shipment got lost, but they always replaced it.”
“What medicine did you lose?”
“Vitamins once. And my stress medicine.”
“What do you take for stress?”
“I can’t remember. Just a minute.” Marty clunked the receiver down. While I waited, listening to his TV playing softly in the background, I paced the hallway outside the rest rooms. It seemed like forever before he returned, rattling the pill bottle in my ear.
“Something called Compres.”
I swore softly and sagged against the wall. Must be a brand name. “What do they look like?” I asked.
Marty rattled the bottle again. “Little orange buggers with a seven on ’em.”
My heart did a rat-a-tat-tat on my ribs. Clonodine hydrochloride! I thanked Marty and wished him a happy New Year. I leaned against the wall, still holding the phone, trying to catch my breath and wondering what to do next. Circumstantial evidence, I told myself. Nothing that would hold up in a court of law. But Captain Younger needed to know about this. I rummaged in my bag, looking for the card he had given me. You’d think I’d have the blasted number memorized by now. I couldn’t find it in any of the pockets or nooks and crannies so I called 911, asked to be connected to the Chestertown Police, and left a message for Younger to call me. I was putting the cell phone back in my bag when Darryl appeared at the top of the stairs.
He swaggered in my direction, his lips twisted into a half smile, half sneer. “Hannah! We can’t go on meeting this way.”
I looked for an escape route, but I was standing in an alcove next to the cigarette machine. Now Darryl hovered between me and the emergency exit on the landing. He was so close I could tell he’d had garlic for dinner. I lifted my bag and clutched it to my chest, like a shield, fighting the urge to clobber him with it. “I had to make a phone call.”
He loomed closer. “Calling the boyfriend, huh?”
I hugged my bag even closer. “Do you mind if I tell you something?”
He folded his arms and leaned toward me. “What?”
“You are disgusting.”
“That’s no way to talk. Didn’t your mother teach you manners?”
That wounded, as he knew it would. I yearned to slap that triumphant look off his face. “Get out of my way, Darryl.”
He touched a finger to my cheek. “I could have been your brother.”
My head was so far back against the wall that I had to duck to one side to escape. “But now, happily,” I shot back at him, “that doesn’t seem very likely.”
“I’m just trying to be friendly.”
I prayed somebody would show up to use the rest room soon. Usually there was a line a mile long. If nobody came, I might have to get physical with this irritating creep. “If you don’t get out of my way, I’m going to start screaming.”
He ignored me. “Didi is such a stuck-up bitch. Thinks she knows everything.”
I put my hand against his chest and pushed him away. “Move!”
Darryl raised his hands, palms out, and took a step backward. “OK, OK. Don’t get all bent out of shape.”
I scurried around him and bolted for the stairs.
“Don’t you want to know about Julia Prentice?”
As much as I wanted to put twenty-five miles, maybe even an ocean, between me and the Dearly Departed’s son, his question pulled me up short. Halfway down the stairs I turned and looked up at him.
“I thought so.” He leered.
“What about her?” I asked, hoping that he wouldn’t ask me to do him any favors in exchange for this information.
“Come here.”
“If you can’t say what you have to say from up there, forget it.”
He shrugged. “OK. Just thought you’d be interested to know that Julia Prentice killed herself.”
I swallowed my revulsion long enough to ask “How?”
“Jumped off the Mount Hope Bridge.”
I shuddered. “Does anybody know why?”
“Couldn’t deal with the divorce, I suppose, and the prospect of raising her baby alone.”
“She had a child?”
“Sort of. She was seven months pregnant when she took the plunge.”
I staggered back, catching myself against the wall. Poor Virginia. If she held Darlene responsible for her daughter’s death and that of her grandchild…
“Mother considered it a lucky break,” he continued, peering down the staircase and studying my face as if to gauge my reaction. “Carson not having to go through the trauma of divorce and all.”
Maybe my father had a lucky break, too, then. The words hovered on the tip of my tongue, but I remembered I was supposed to be a grown-up. I clamped my lips tight and forced myself to look at Darlene’s poor excuse for a son. “My father is devastated by your mother’s death.”
Darryl leered. “Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that.” He started down the steps. “I can think of a lot worse things than being your stepbrother, sis.”
I’d have a better chance of being struck by an asteroid than ever being related to a troglodyte like you. With admirable self-control, I managed a grim smile. “As I said, Darryl. I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“Don’t count on it, Hannah. I’ve seen how your father’s been looking at Deirdre lately.” His teeth gleamed white in the shadows at the head of the stairs. “How does Uncle Darryl grab you?”
The duck I had eaten for dinner rose to the back of my throat, and I thought I might do a Linda Blair all over the loathsome toad. Rather than give him the satisfaction of seeing me rattled, I turned and fled down the stairs, into the lights and comforting din of the crowded restaurant.
And ran smack dab into Ruth, who had been appointed head of the search party sent to find out what was keeping me. “Hannah! You’re red as a beet. Are you OK?”
“That Darryl is a creep.”
“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.