Marcia Talley - Tomorrow's Vengeance

As I did so, she leaned her head against the back of the seat and recited the poem along with me from memory, softly, barely moving her lips. ‘“A birdie with a yellow bill , Hopped upon the window sill, Cocked his shining eye and said: Ain’t you ’shamed, you sleepy-head.”’

‘I like that one, too,’ I told her.

‘More, please, lovey,’ she said.

By the time I’d worked my way through ‘Travel’ and ‘Land of Counterpane’ Lillian Blake was sound asleep. I sat there quietly for a few minutes, enjoying the garden, the sun and the soft August breeze.

‘The babies are fighting again.’ Plump, sausage-like fingers closed around my wrist and squeezed.

I looked up from the page I’d been nodding over, wondering how long I’d been asleep. ‘What?’

‘Agg! Argh! No! Arrr!’

The sounds seemed to hover over the garden wall, encased in cartoon balloons.

‘What’s on the other side of the wall?’ I asked Lillian.

‘Dunno, lovey dove. Don’t get out much.’

When designing the brick wall, Calvert Colony architects had taken precautions so that memory unit residents couldn’t get out – safety measures that defeated me, too. At five foot six inches there was no way I could see over a seven-foot wall. I tried a few experimental jumps, accomplishing nothing but giving Lillian the giggles.

‘Don’t move,’ I told her.

As Lillian observed with a bemused expression on her face, I rested one foot on the armrest of the swing, pulled the other foot after it, teetered for a moment to gain my balance, then stood on tiptoe and peered over the wall.

In a grassy patch on the other side, not far from the musalla , a man was on his hands and knees under a large tulip poplar. As I watched he struggled to his feet, dusted off his pants then inspected the front of his shirt, which I noticed was splotched with blood.

‘Mr Abaza! Are you all right?’

Masud touched his nose experimentally. ‘I believe so.’

‘What on earth happened?’

‘I was at prayer, and when I left the musalla , I caught a man…’ He paused to take a handkerchief out of his back pocket and use it to clean his hands. ‘This evildoer was spray painting graffiti on the wall of the musalla .’

I squinted into the distance and saw that Masud was right. Remember 9/11!! and Burn the Kor had been sprayed in bold black letters, defacing one side of the pretty little building.

‘I tackled him before he could finish the job,’ Masud said, which explained the ‘Kor.’

‘Who was it?’ I asked. ‘Another resident?’

‘If it was I didn’t recognize him. He was wearing a monkey cap.’

My granddaughter, Chloe, had a winter hat knit up like a sock monkey. Masud must have noticed my puzzlement because he explained, ‘A balaclava, like you wear for skiing, with holes for the eyes and mouth. He wore a ball cap, too. Gray, with a blue star on it.’ He tucked the handkerchief back into his pocket. ‘I kicked the man hard in the uh, uh…’

The next word was probably going to be ‘balls’ but Masud did a quick vocabulary adjustment and substituted ‘thigh.’ He waved an arm. ‘After that, he ran across the lawn and into the woods over there.’

I scanned the line of trees that bordered the property and, seeing nothing, turned my attention back to Masud. ‘Do you need an ambulance, Mr Abaza?’

He shook his head. ‘No, no. A bloody nose, a few bruises. It’s already stopped bleeding. I’ll be fine.’

‘Shall I call the police?’

‘No, but thank you.’ His dark eyes met mine. ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d say nothing about this to anyone until I’ve had an opportunity to take the matter up directly with Mr Bennett.’

‘Are you…’ I began, but he cut me off with a wave.

‘Calvert Colony is supposed to be a secure facility. Where are the security guards, that’s what I want to know. Somebody is not doing their duty.’

Masud bent over, felt about in a bed of pachysandra that bordered the wall on his side and came up holding a spray can labeled Krylon. ‘I got his paint can,’ he said, not bothering to suppress the note of triumph in his voice. ‘That man will pay for insulting Islam.’

‘Maybe there’ll be fingerprints,’ I pointed out helpfully.

‘Perhaps.’ Holding the can gingerly by the rim, he turned to go, paused for a moment then looked up at me. ‘Thank you for your concern.’

‘No problem.’ I watched until he disappeared around the side of the building.

‘What’s happening?’ Lillian asked in a quiet, worried voice.

Too late, I realized that she was standing to my right, next to the wall. Since Lillian’s ample bottom had been providing the ballast that kept me more or less securely balanced on the arm of the glider, I found myself suddenly catapulted into the flower bed when the arm dropped out from under me.

I must have cried out as I hit the ground.

‘Hey! Everything all right over there?’ the orange-sweatered woman wanted to know.

‘Fine!’ I caroled from a prone position in the zinnias.

‘Peachy,’ Lillian replied with a conspirational glance in my direction.

‘Those men?’ Lillian said as I got to my feet, dusted off my red slacks and began to pick cedar chips out of my hair. She bobbed her head, indicating the wall. ‘My eyes are no good, but there’s nothing wrong with my ears.’

‘You heard something interesting, Lillian?’

‘Uh huh.’

She was making me work for it, and judging by the sly grin lighting her face, Lillian knew it, too.

‘One man said, “I’m going to kill you, you mother fucking son of a bitch.”’

‘Which one?’ I asked, trying hard not to laugh at the poster image of a grandmother standing before me, swearing like a longshoreman.

She shrugged then smiled beatifically. ‘Dunno, lovey.’

Which left me wondering whether it really was the graffiti artist who’d threatened to kill Masud. Could it have been the other way around?

‘O Prophet! Tell your wives and your daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks (veils) all over their bodies. That will be better, that they should be known (as free respectable women) so as not to be annoyed.’

Quran, 33:59

When I met Naddie for lunch in the dining room half an hour later, as hard as it was not to mention the attack on Masud that I’d come within sixty seconds of witnessing, I kept my promise. My head was spinning with thoughts as to who the balaclava man might have been – sadly, there were a few potential suspects. Naddie was an investor in Calvert Colony so she’d find out about the incident eventually, but I owed Masud the courtesy of allowing him to report it to The Powers That Be himself.

‘Who is that?’ I asked, as we tucked into our starters.

‘Who?’ Naddie considered my question over a bowl of vichyssoise .

I pointed with my soup spoon. ‘That guy talking to Raniero, over by the kitchen door. Light brown hair. Blue suit, yellow tie. He looks like a lawyer.’

She turned her head. ‘Oh, I should introduce you. That’s Tyson Bennett. He’s the executive director of Calvert Colony. A hands-on kind of guy who really seems to care about the residents.’

Ah ha, I thought. The Powers That Be himself.

Naddie waved in Tyson’s direction but he was too engrossed in his conversation with the chef to notice. ‘Tyson used to be a lawyer but after he won some sort of long-running, high-profile liability case and got a whopping settlement for his client, he decided to retire from practicing law.’

I blew on a spoonful of clam chowder to cool it. ‘Must be nice.’