The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy (26 page)

“It’s Very.”

“It’s very
what?
”

“That’s his name.”

“Well, I don’t care what he says neither.”

“Why, what does he say?”

“That you’re okay.”

“Very said that? I’m touched.”

Munger slurped some more of his coffee, sucking down a whole lot of air with it, rather like an old toothless geezer sitting on a park bench with a runny nose and nowhere to go. “I don’t like the whole idea of you being in contact with Slawski, y’hear? I want ya to stop calling him. This is
my
investigation, not his. I’m the primary detective vis-à-vis this case.”

I finished my sandwich and poured myself more coffee. “Okay, let’s say I did kill Thor Gibbs.”

“Let’s say you did,” he agreed.

“Why did I do it? What’s my motive?”

Munger held his hands out to me, palms up. “You tell me.”

“No, no. Please continue, Lieutenant. You’re doing so much better than I ever could.”

“Okay.” Munger stuck out his lower lip, flicking at it with his thumb as if he were about to count out a wad of bill. “The oldest one working—the girl.”

“What about her?”

“Helluva pair of tits on her, huh? Guy might do just about anything for a chance to bury his teeth into ‘em. Bet she’s got some kind of little lemon squeezer on her, too. Sweet and juicy and—”

“Are you trying to get a rise out of me or a rise out of yourself?”

“Don’t dick me, Hoag,” he snarled, turning mean. “Trooper on duty the other night saw Clethra Feingold sneak in here in the wee hours wearing almost nothing. Saw a light go on upstairs in the master bedroom. Saw it go out. And he didn’t see her come out again until morning.”

“So?”

He leered at me. “So your wife—”

“Ex-wife.”

“Your ex-wife was in New York. Just you and the girl here all alone in this great big house. Old man Gibbs out of the way. Nice and tidy, y’ask me.”

“Are you insinuating there’s something going on between the two of us?”

“I ain’t insinuating it, Hoag. I’m
saying
it—you’re slipping it to her. The man showed up here with her. You wanted her. So you killed him for her.”

I tugged at my ear. “I see. And why did I kill Tyler Kampmann?”

“I’m still working on that,” Munger said threateningly.

“You keep right on working, Lieutenant,” I said. “And while you’re at it I suggest you go home and wash your mind out with strong soap. I’d try Lava. I believe they still make it.”

“You’re the one needs to come clean, Hoag. You’ll feel a lot better, y’know.”

“I feel fine,” I assured him, “aside from the pesky little fact that I’ve just lost a dear friend due to a close encounter with a sledgehammer. I am a family friend. I am Clethra’s collaborator. Period. There’s only one woman in my life, and her name is Merilee Nash.”

“No chance,” he scoffed. “You showbiz types hop in and out of bed with babes by the dozen. Blondes—”

“I’m a writer, Lieutenant, not the lead singer of a rock ’n’ roll band.”

“—brunettes, redheads—you bang ’em all. Younger the better.”

“I really wish I had this on tape.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “We can make this official, that’s what you want.”

“What I want, Lieutenant, is for you to leave. Unless you have some specific questions regarding this murder investigation, I’m going to ask you politely to get the hell out of here. And if you don’t I shall cease being polite and sic my dog on you.”

He snorted at her derisively. “What’s she gonna do, lick me to death?”

“It’s been known to happen, vis-à-vis her breath.”

Munger didn’t budge for a moment. Just sat there, his left eye twitching at me. Until, abruptly, he shoved his chair back and stood. “I ain’t kidding around, Hoag!” he warned me, waving his finger under my nose.

“Nor am I, Lieutenant,” I said, resisting the urge to bite it off. “Now get out.”

We stared at each other in charged silence. My fists, I discovered, were clenched. The man made me angrier than anyone I’d met in a long time. I felt like hitting him. He wanted me to hit him. Sure he did. Then he could haul me in and show everybody he was doing something—aside from peeing down his own leg.

But I didn’t hit Chick Munger.

He moseyed out the door, taking his sweet time, then got back in his car and drove away. He never did ask me for any of my shoes.

I changed into the heavy oiled wool sweater from the Aran Islands and my leather jacket. Outside, the kids were sitting on Dwayne’s tailgate eyeballing me with newfound respect.

“Whoa, Mr. H,” Dwayne marveled. “Did you piss that fucker off or what? Looked like he was ready to have a heart attack.”

“I sincerely wish he had.”

“Cool,” exclaimed Clethra. “Like, what’d you do?”

“Would you two mind keeping an eye on Lulu for a while?” I asked, marching grimly and determinedly toward Thor’s Norton Commando. “I have to run a certain personal errand of an unpleasant nature.”

“No problem, Mr. H.”

I climbed aboard and kick-started it. Or tried to. It didn’t catch until the third try, the exhaust billowing thickly. It had been sitting for a few days, and the nights were cold.

Dwayne came shambling over to check it out, his rough, veiny hands stuffed into the back pockets of his jeans. “Totally awesome machine.”

“That it is.” I fished my aviator shades out of my jacket pocket and put them on. I revved the engine. “I suppose Ruth will be selling it, unless she wants to keep it for Arvin, which I rather doubt.” I revved it some more. “If you want to make an offer I’ll let her know.”

“No way,” he said, with that lopsided grin of his. “Couldn’t handle somethin’ this fine on my paycheck, man.”

Clethra hopped from the tailgate of the truck and started toward the house, dusting off her bottom as she went along. We watched her. Or at least Dwayne did. I was watching him watching her. There was naked desire on that scarred young face of his. There was hunger.

“Thanks, by the way.”

He frowned at me. “For what?”

“Keeping her busy. She’s got a lot on her mind. Do her good to be out and about, instead of sitting inside brooding.”

Dwayne ducked his head bashfully. “We been talking a lot about her plans. Y’know, like whether or not she should be moving back in with her ol’ lady or going back to school or what.”

“Any idea what her plans are?”

He shook his head, his eyes still on the ground.

“What do you think she should do?”

“What do
I
think?” Dwayne tugged at his goatee. I suppose he was seldom asked his opinion by anyone about much of anything. “School’s probably the best place for her. I don’t think she’s ready to handle real life.”

“If this is real life I don’t think anybody is.”

“She could take classes just about anywhere though, right?” he ventured hopefully. “She wouldn’t have to go back to New York, would she?”

“She’s in a rather delicate frame of mind right now, Dwayne,” I cautioned.

His eyes met mine. A rare thing. There was hurt in them. “Jeez, Mr. H, you don’t really think I’d try to get with a girl whose old man just got killed, do you? I mean, for sure, I think she’s pretty outrageous. But I’m not that kind of snake.”

“I know you’re not.”

He thought it over for a moment, and decided not to be offended. “She sure has a lot of respect for you, Mr. H.”

“Only because she doesn’t know me very well.”

He grinned at me and started back toward the barn to his work. I eased the Norton down the drive and bulldozed my way through the swarming press corps, then zoomed it the hell out of there. The narrow, twisting country roads were made for a motorcycle. I let it out, enjoying the speed and the cold wind in my hair. I took the bridge at East Haddam and then tore down Route 9 to Essex. Made a huge racket when I pulled into the Exit Meadows parking lot, greatly alarming the three Q-Tips who were using the putting green. Maybe that was why I took the bike in the first place. Maybe there was no maybe to it.

It was too chilly for them to be out on the terrace that day. They were in the living room. I stood out there a moment looking at the pair of them through the sliding glass door. He was dozing in his wheelchair, the
Times
crossword puzzle folded in his lap. She was doing needlepoint. They could have been a Diane Arbus photograph:
Two Connecticut Yankees Waiting to Die.

Eventually, she saw me there and let me in, gasping with delight. “Look who it is, Monty! My, my, what a lovely surprise.”

He sat there scowling at me, frail and shrunken. “What … happened t-to your hair?”

“Wind got to it,” I said, brushing it back with my fingers.

“Look thoroughly dis-disreputable,” he muttered, stumbling impatiently over the words. “Like a hippie or y-yippie or … Gonna g-get us thrown out of here. Any idea how long the … w-waiting list is here?”

“Coffee, darling?” said Mother. “Shall I make some?”

“That would be nice.” I sat.

She flashed me a grateful smile and went into their little kitchen to fix it. I knew she wouldn’t come out for at least twenty minutes, and she knew I knew.

He and I sat there in silence, staring at the TV.

“Shall I turn it on?” I asked.

No answer. Only another long silence.

Until he said, “What are you … w-working on these days, Stewart?”

“Working on?” This one caught me short. He hadn’t asked me about my work since, well, never. I said it again. “Working on?”

“Working … on.” He stared at me with that drooping, lifeless eye of his, waiting for a response. He seemed much more alert than last time. He’d even called me Stewart.

I told him. Told him about how I was trying to write another novel but it wasn’t going very well—so I was helping a friend’s stepdaughter tell her story, although my friend had died, as had the girl’s ex-boyfriend. I told him about Thor and Clethra and Ruth, about Arvin, Barry and Marco, Tyler. I told him about everything that had happened. I don’t know why I did. Maybe because it was easier than talking about something else. Like us, for instance. Maybe because he asked me.

He listened intently, nodding and moistening his chalky lips from time to time. For a while, he shut his eyes. I thought he’d drifted off, but he hadn’t. He was just concentrating. “Police people … c-can’t get to the … bottom of it, you say?”

“Two police departments are stymied so far.”

“Want … an old m-man’s advice?”

“Any particular old man?”

“Mothers,” he declared firmly. “They always p-protect their young.”

“You think it’s Ruth?”

“Strongest b-bond there is. Stronger than … anything. But y-you don’t need me to tell y-you that,” he said, his voice quavering weakly. “Already know it.”

“Do I?”

“Wrote … it.”

Briefly, I stopped breathing. “Did I?”

“That scene in your f-first novel,” he recalled, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a horsy grimace. “When the … the s-son tells the f-father he wants out of the business. The father w-wants to lash out at him, hurt him l-like … he’s just b-been hurt himself. A-And the mother, she … What was it she s-says? ‘We are not a business, Harrison … We are a f-family. If you hurt that boy … you hurt me. If y-you hurt me, you hurt us. And if you hurt us, you only h-hurt yourself.’ ” He nodded. “D-Damned fine piece of … writing, Stewart. Not a day g-goes by I don’t think about it. About how … the father d-didn’t heed her advice. That … that was his big mistake.”

I swallowed hard, gaping at him. So he
had
read it. He’d even memorized the damned thing. But he’d never told me. All these years he’d never told me. Why the hell hadn’t he told me? I glanced up at Mother, who was standing in the kitchen doorway, smiling at me encouragingly, her eyes filled with tears. I glanced back at him. He’d gone back to staring at the silent TV. He was done. It wasn’t an apology. But it was probably the closest he would ever get to one. I sat there, letting it sink in. And then I did something I’m not very proud of.

I bolted. Grabbed my jacket and ran. Didn’t so much as say goodbye. Just sprinted to the Norton and jumped on. I didn’t start it up. I sat there. I just sat there.

Until she caught up with me. A cardigan sweater was thrown over her shoulders. “That was not easy for him, Stewart. It may have been the single hardest thing he’s ever had to do in his life.”

“I know that, Mother.”

“The rest is up to you.”

“I know that, too.”

“You’re not willing, are you?”

“Willing?”

“To forgive him.”

“I’m not a forgiving person. A trait I happen to come by genetically.”

“I am not impressed by your attitude, Stewart,” she said sternly.

“I haven’t heard that one in a while.”

“Possibly that’s part of your problem.”

“Who says I have a problem?”

She wrinkled her nose at the Norton in disapproval, as if it smelled bad. She’d been doing that for as long as I could remember. Her dead cat look, I called it. “Where on earth did you get this contraption?”

“A friend loaned it to me. Sort of.”

“Where’s your helmet?”

“Haven’t got one.”

“Stewart, Stewart, Stewart …” She shook her head at me. “You have responsibilities now. You’re a father.”

“You’ll recall that—”

“Stop, I know exactly what you’re going to say next.”

“How can you when I don’t?”

“Because I’m your mother. I know you better than you know yourself.”

“You poor woman. That should qualify you for federal disaster relief. What was I going to say?”

“That Tracy wasn’t entirely your idea.”

“Actually, Tracy wasn’t my idea at all.”

“Well, that’s just tough,” she snapped. “Life is a matter of embracing the future, not rejecting it. Do you want her to end up forty years from now feeling toward you the same way you feel toward your father?”

“God, no.” I peered at her curiously. “Why would she?”

“Ask yourself that sometime.”

“Mother, do you …?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you remember when he used to come downstairs in the middle of the night for a glass of milk?”

She furrowed her brow thoughtfully, one index finger raised under her chin. The thing with the finger she’d done for as long as I could remember, too, though I had no name for it. “Monty? Are you sure?”