Tomorrow's Vengeance (20 page)

‘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?'

‘That would be lovely.'

Safa picked up the electric kettle and filled it with water from the tap. ‘Yasmine, why don't you go color in your mother's office so Hannah and I can talk?' She switched on the kettle, removed two cups from the dishwasher and set them down on the counter.

Yasmine crammed the crayon she was using back in the box, hopped off the stool and said, ‘Can I play on your iPad, Grandmother?'

Safa smiled indulgently. ‘Of course.'

Yasmine snatched the device off the counter where it had been charging and skipped off into the adjoining room.

When the kettle began to scream for attention, I said, ‘Have the police made any progress in finding Masud's killer?'

Safa filled the teapot and set it in front of us to steep. ‘Sadly, no.'

‘I keep asking myself who could have done such a terrible thing.'

‘I ask myself the same question, every minute of every day.'

I was tempted to tell Safa about the evidence I had found on the croquet mallet, but I had promised Detective Powers that I'd keep that information to myself. ‘Everybody at Calvert Colony is jumpy,' I said instead. ‘If it can happen to Masud it can happen to anyone.'

‘Not just anyone,' Safa said. ‘I think the newspapers were right. It was a hate crime.'

As I sipped my tea I reviewed my list of potential suspects: the colonel, Christie, Richard Kent, Tyler Bennett and Balaclava Man – who may, of course, have been one of the men. After a few moments, I asked, ‘Safa, are you sure you didn't report what we saw to the Office of Health Care Quality, between Nancy and Jerry, I mean?'

She studied me over the rim of her teacup, pale eyebrows gracefully arched. ‘No, of course not. That's not my job.'

‘Then who did, I wonder? It wasn't Elaine or Tyson.'

Safa's gaze was steady, unwavering. In that moment I knew it was Masud – it had to be. And she knew that I knew.

‘Masud can, uh, could be compulsive. When I told him about the rape, he marched off to see Tyson Bennett. Demanded that he
do
something, although between you and me, Hannah, I'm not sure what Mr Bennett could have done. You can't chain old people to the beds, after all.'

As I sipped Safa's fine Earl Gray tea, I mused that Masud was
exactly
the kind of person who might chain an infidel to a bed, but the man was dead, so I chided myself for being so judgmental and moved on. ‘So what happened between the two of them? Did Masud say?'

Safa set down her mug, stirred in another half teaspoon of sugar, then laid the spoon to one side. ‘Masud told the director that perhaps we'd made a wrong decision in moving into the colony, that maybe it wasn't a safe place for a woman to be.'

‘Ah.'

‘Mr Bennett insisted that Jerry's sex with Nancy had been consensual, and that, he said, was that.' She shrugged. ‘Perhaps Masud called the Health Care Quality people after hearing that Mr Bennett didn't plan to report it, or perhaps not. I really don't know. But maybe Masud was right. Maybe Calvert Colony isn't a safe place for a woman like me to be.'

‘Does that mean you're not planning to come back?'

‘I'm needed here.' She bobbed her head in the direction of the next room where the familiar sounds of Angry Birds –
deedle-deedle-ha-ha-ha-squawk-squawk-squawk
– followed by the computerized sound of broken glass testified to a touchingly familiar, normal twenty-first-century home environment.

‘They've been a great comfort to me, my family,' she said.

‘I'm crazy about my grandkids, too, Safa, but you have many friends at Calvert Colony. We miss you.'

‘After the incident with the graffiti, Masud wanted to move right away.'

‘I can understand that, but where did he plan to go?'

‘That's just it. The waiting list at Ginger Cove is a mile long and, well, they don't cater to our special needs.' She smiled. ‘I put my foot down, Hannah. I told Masud that the only way I was leaving Calvert Colony was feet first. I
love
my town home.'

‘Good for you,' I said, admiring her gumption.

‘Underneath all this,' she said, indicating her baggy dress and hijab, ‘there's an opinionated Southern Baptist from Texas named Linda.'

I laughed out loud.

Safa's face clouded. ‘I made every effort to be a good Muslim wife, Hannah, but no matter how hard I tried, Masud wasn't entirely convinced that my conversion was sincere.'

‘I saw how he treated you outside the kitchen that day, Safa. Frankly, I was concerned.'

‘Masud was a jealous man, but his behavior that day was an aberration, I assure you. Masud never hit me, Hannah.'

I searched her face, seeking the truth. ‘I would never make a good Muslim,' I told her. ‘I have too many male friends, and I enjoy their company, even when Paul isn't around.'

‘That was the hardest part of conversion for me.'

‘Sometimes I don't play by the rules either,' I said, thinking about finding Safa alone in the kitchen with Raniero.

‘We have a lot more in common than you might think, Hannah Ives.'

I reached across the butcher block surface and squeezed her hand. ‘I know.'

‘There is a curious respect for legal formalities. The signature of the person despoiled is always obtained even if the person in question has to be sent to Dachau in order to break down his resistance.'

John C. Wiley, U.S. General Counsel in Vienna,

March, 1938.

I
f I had to write a caption to illustrate the next few days, it would be this:
Woman waits vainly for the telephone to ring.

Not that I expected Detective Powers to keep me in the loop on the progress of his investigation into the murder of Masud Abaza, but I still hadn't heard back from Hutch about what, if anything, he'd learned about Izzy's valuable painting currently on exhibit at the Baltimore Art Gallery. I was within hours of dropping into my brother-in-law's downtown office in full-blown pester mode when he phoned.

‘I have news.'

‘Good or bad?'

Hutch snorted. ‘A little of both, I should think. When can you and Mrs Milanesi come by?'

Right now
, was the correct answer, but I needed to consult with Izzy, so we tentatively settled on eight o'clock the following morning, and I'd call him if that turned out not to be convenient.

Izzy and I arrived right on time the following day; the receptionist escorted us into the conference room where Hutch was waiting. A stack of photocopies sat in front of each of our places, along with a bottle of spring water. A tray of donuts, each neatly sliced in half, sat in the center of the table. Hutch didn't usually provide refreshments. Perhaps he was laying in supplies for a marathon.

‘Please sit down, ladies.' He paused, then added, ‘Coffee?'

‘If it's no trouble,' I said, reaching for a cruller.

Hutch nodded in the direction of the credenza where a Keurig coffee machine sat in splendid isolation, surrounded by a selection of individual K-cups. ‘My new toy. Help yourself. The French roast is particularly good, but there's decaf as well.'

‘None for me, thanks.' Izzy selected a half moon of cinnamon, and had taken a nibble when Hutch tapped a set of printouts of photos that I knew had come from Naddie's cell phone.

‘First of all, Letizia Rossi's scrapbook. Has it been found?'

Izzy shook her head sadly.

‘Pity. Well, then, let me say how valuable these photographs have been. I had an expert enlarge and crop them, so we have records of at least fourteen of your family's paintings. Over the past several days I've spent a good deal of time with the director of the Baltimore Art Gallery and her staff, who have, in my opinion, been fully cooperative.

‘Naturally,' he continued, ‘they claimed to be totally surprised that
Ragazzo con Cane
might have been stolen during the war. They tell me that it, along with a couple of other smaller works, were donated to the gallery in 2011 and 2012 by Benjamin Pfaff, a prominent Baltimore philanthropist.'

Izzy sat up straight in her chair. ‘There's more than one?'

‘Let's take it a step at a time, Mrs Milanesi. Why don't we refer to the packet in front of you?'

I sat down with my coffee. The documentation had been put together as carefully as a PowerPoint presentation. Hutch walked us through the printout, page by page. Each page was like a thread, drawing us inexorably into the next, gradually stepping back in time. I picked up the document and fanned the pages, eager to skip ahead to see where they led, but Hutch gave me the evil eye, so I decided to go with the flow.