‘My friends are over at the croquet courts playing with it now. The colony has two sets, actually, and they keep them in a kind of garden shed between the croquet and the tennis courts.’ Before he could ask, I added: ‘The door wasn’t locked, Detective, so anyone could have had access to them. The only reason I picked up this particular mallet is because I wanted to play with blue.’
‘We’ll need to take the sets away, too.’
‘Of course,’ I said, thinking, well, there goes any prayer of a Calvert Colony championship season. ‘Want me to show you where they are?’
‘Thanks. But first, can you keep an eye on it for a minute while I get something from my car?’
I nodded but paced uneasily like a mother lion protecting her cub until Powers returned carrying a large white paper bag.
He slipped the mallet carefully into the bag, secured the flap and initialed it, then said almost conversationally, ‘We’ll need your fingerprints, of course, for purposes of elimination.’
‘I was arrested once,’ I confessed. ‘They’re in AFIS.’ When his eyebrows shot up into the stratosphere, I said, ‘It was a mistake.’
‘Of course it was,’ he said evenly, but I had the feeling that the minute he got back to his office he’d be tracking my tarnished record down like a bloodhound.
‘One should never get into arguments with people who later turn up dead,’ I said, flashing back to what had happened between me and the late, unlamented Naval Academy company officer, Lt Jennifer Goodall.
‘A good rule,’ he agreed. ‘Especially in this case.’
‘Ah…’ I thought about the arguments I’d recently overheard. Raniero Buccho. Balaclava Man. Was somebody’s goose about to be cooked?
EIGHTEEN
‘It should be noted that many people at the death of a dear person will bring flowers and wreaths and after proceeding with the funeral will take the flowers and wreaths to the home of the deceased. They buy the best flowers and wreaths to show their deep sympathy and concern. To do this is forbidden – whether presenting it at the funeral, accompanying the funeral with it, or bringing it to the deceased’s house. This is an imitation of non-Muslims, and is an evil innovation which should be strictly avoided. Those who do such a thing will have no reward from Allah. To the contrary, they will be questioned for such meaningless waste.’
Shaykh Abdul-Fattaah Abu Ghuddah (RA), Haq Islam,
Sending Flowers and Reading Quran During Funerals, 9.4
The following day I went to read to Nancy and stopped to check in with Elaine. To my surprise, Heather was sitting in the unit manager’s office. As my shadow darkened her door she glanced up from the chart she was annotating, grinned and said, ‘Hi, Hannah.’
‘Hi, Heather. Is Elaine around?’
Her face flushed. ‘Sorry, but she’s on administrative leave.’
‘Why? I don’t mean to be nosy,’ I said, thinking yes I do, ‘but what happened? A family illness or something?’
‘It’s just until this whole thing with Nancy is settled.’
‘What do you mean, “settled”?’
‘There’s going to be an official hearing. Honestly, I’m really worried, Hannah. Elaine could lose her license.’
I plopped myself down in the guest chair. ‘Oh, no!’
‘They’re saying she didn’t follow proper procedures after Nancy was… well, you know.’
I didn’t understand, and I said so. ‘But Elaine reported it to Tyson, didn’t she?’
Heather shook her head. ‘No, that’s the problem. She didn’t.’
So Tyson hadn’t even known what was going on. ‘Then who told the board?’
Heather and I stared silently at one another. The way I looked at it, there were only six people who knew what Nancy and Jerry and been up to in her bedroom that day. Nancy and Jerry themselves, of course, if they could even remember the incident. Elaine and Heather, me and… Safa. Safa had assured me earlier that she hadn’t blown the whistle on Jerry and Nancy. But she had mentioned the incident to Masud. It was looking more and more likely that Masud Abaza was the WikiLeaks of Calvert Colony. The colonel certainly suspected as much.
The only way to find out was to ask Safa.
If I called I might be put off again. I decided to simply pop in instead, hoping that whatever the rules for Iddah were, if I transgressed, perhaps my ignorance of Islamic law would give me a pass.
Safa had mentioned that her daughter, Laila, worked outside the home, so I planned to arrive around mid-morning when I figured Laila would be at work.
First stop was Whole Foods, where I selected a fruit basket to take to the grieving widow, not knowing whether my first choice, Godiva chocolates, were halal. Before I pulled out of the parking garage I tapped Laila Kazi’s address into the GPS and, forty minutes later, pulled up to the curb in front of her home. I sat for a minute, studying the house – a modern, two-story colonial – before picking up my cell phone and giving Laila’s number a call, imagining, as it rang, that I could hear the phone ringing inside the house.
To my surprise, a child answered. ‘Kazi wesidence.’
I smiled. ‘Hello. My name is Hannah. Is your mother home?’
‘No.’
‘May I speak to your grandmother, then?’ I asked, taking a stab at the relationship.
Without taking the phone away from her mouth, the child yelled, ‘Grandmother, for you!’ then banged the instrument down on some hard surface. After a minute or two, while I stayed on the line rubbing my ear and hoping I hadn’t been forgotten, Safa picked up.
‘This is Safa Abaza.’
‘Safa, it’s me, Hannah.’
‘Hannah!’ She sounded genuinely pleased to hear my voice. ‘Thank you for your kind note.’
‘I felt…’ As much as I’d rehearsed coming over in the car, when the moment came I seemed to be at a loss for words. ‘I really wanted to see you, Safa, but then I talked to Laila and she explained about your Iddah and, well, I wasn’t sure what was permitted.’
‘I would like to see you, Hannah. We didn’t really get to talk… afterwards.’
‘I know.’
‘When are you free?’
‘Right now, as a matter of fact. I’m calling you from my car. If you look out your window, you’ll see me.’
Safa laughed out loud. A few seconds later I saw the living-room curtains twitch. ‘Please, come in, then.’
‘I wouldn’t be breaking the rules?’
‘Don’t be silly. I can have visitors, as long as they’re women, or men in my immediate family.’
As I climbed out of the car balancing the fruit basket in my arms, I wondered how long after Masud’s death that sort of foolishness would continue. The girl had been born in Texas, for crying out loud. Stepping from flagstone to flagstone as I made my way up the walk, I imagined Safa returning to Calvert Colony, meeting the retired CEO of a Fortune 500 company – suitably widowed, of course – casting aside her hijab and running through the Tranquility Garden with her apricot hair streaming like a banner behind her.
The object of my fantasy met me at the open door wearing a white hijab, a shapeless magenta maxi-dress and flip-flops. She engulfed me in a hug – so good to see you – then invited me to follow her into the kitchen. A child of around four sat on a tall stool at the butcher block island, drawing circles on a piece of paper with a green crayon. ‘This is my granddaughter, Yasmine.’
That the little girl’s name was Yasmine I might have guessed. She wore a bright purple T-shirt with her namesake’s Disney princess printed on it.
‘I brought you some fruit,’ I said, proffering the basket.
‘That was sweet of you, thanks,’ Safa said, taking the basket from my hands and setting it in the exact center of the island. She fingered some of the fruit through the cellophane. ‘Oh, I love blood oranges. Can I make you some tea?’