Daddy's Gone a Hunting (4 page)

Hannah realized it was good to talk so openly to the friend she could absolutely trust. “Jess, it’s absolutely coming to a head. I can’t understand it. Dad is getting more and more reckless with money. Can you believe that last summer he leased a yacht for a month? Fifty thousand a week! He’s leasing yachts while the family ship is sinking. I wish to God he’d met someone and gotten married when we were young. Maybe a sensible woman could have kept him in bounds.”

“I’ll be honest. I’ve wondered about that. He was only thirty when your mother died and that’s nearly twenty-eight years ago. Do you think he was so in love with her that he could never replace her?”

“I suppose she
was
the love of his life. I only wish I could remember her. How old was I? Eight months? Kate was only three. And of course it was a terrible tragedy. He lost my mother, his brother Connor, and four close friends. And he was at the helm of the boat. But I must say any guilt didn’t keep him from having a succession of girlfriends or whatever you want to call them. But enough of the
family woes. Let’s enjoy the dinner you’re paying for and hope that Kate and Dad and whoever-she-is are being civil to each other.”

Two hours later, on the way home to her condo on Downing Street in Greenwich Village, Hannah was again reflecting on the past. I was just a baby when we lost our mother, she was thinking as she got out of the cab. She thought of Rosemary “Rosie” Masse, their nanny, who had retired to her native Ireland ten years ago.

God love Rosie. She raised us, but she always told us that she wished Dad would get married again. “Marry a nice lady who will love your two beautiful little girls and be a mother to them,” was her advice to Dad, Hannah thought with a faint smile, as inside her apartment, she settled into her favorite chair and turned on the television and DVR to watch a few of the shows that she recorded.

The fatal fishing accident that had killed her mother, her uncle, and four other people had happened because her father’s boat hit a cable between a tanker and a barge in the predawn darkness. They were headed seventy miles out into the Atlantic to where tuna often gathered at daybreak. Her father, Douglas Connelly, was the only survivor. He was found lying unconscious and badly injured in a life raft by a coast guard helicopter crew when the sun came up. He had been hit in the head by debris of the sinking boat.

He wasn’t totally an absentee father, Hannah mused as she fast-forwarded through the commercials. It was just that he wasn’t there a lot—either traveling for business or just too busy with his social life. Russ Link ran the business and Russ was a perfectionist. The guys who worked there, like Gus Schmidt, weren’t just craftsmen. They were artists. Rosie lived with us on East Eighty-second Street and was always there for summers and holidays when we came home on school vacations. God knows Dad sent us to boarding schools as soon as they’d take us.

Hannah was not sleepy and did not turn off the television until
midnight. Then she undressed quickly and slipped between the covers at 12:20
A.M.

At 5
A.M.
the phone rang. It was Jack Worth. “Hannah, there’s been an accident—some kind of explosion at the plant. Gus Schmidt and Kate were there. God knows why. Gus is dead and Kate is in an ambulance on the way to Manhattan Midtown Hospital.”

He anticipated her next question. “Hannah, I don’t know why the hell she and Gus were in the museum at that hour. I’m on my way to the hospital. Should I call your father or will you?”

“You call Dad,” Hannah said as she bolted out of bed. “I’m on my way. I’ll see you there.”

“Oh God,” she prayed. “Don’t let this be Kate’s fault. Don’t let it be Kate’s fault. . . .”

6

E
ven before she started openly flirting with Majestic, Douglas Connelly had become thoroughly bored with Sandra. He knew that her story of being runner-up to Miss Universe was total fiction. He had looked her up on the Internet and learned that she had been runner-up in a local beauty contest in her hometown of Wilbur, North Dakota.

He had been faintly amused by her fantasizing until at dinner he had seen the scorn in Kate’s face and knew she was contemptuous of him and his lifestyle.

He also knew that he deserved that contempt.

A favorite expression his own father used when he had a difficult decision to make ran constantly through his mind.
I feel as though I’m between the devil and the deep blue sea, and be damned to them both.
No matter how much I drink, I feel that way all the time, Doug thought as he sipped the last of the champagne.

Between the devil and the deep blue sea.
It was a singsong refrain that he could not turn off.

“I like to go to places like this,” Sandra was saying. “I mean you might meet someone who’s casting a movie or something like that.”

How much bleach does it take to get her hair that color? Doug wondered.

The maître d’ was approaching with a fresh bottle of champagne. “Compliments to the beautiful lady from Majestic,” he said.

Sandra gasped. “Oh my goodness.”

As she leaped from the chair and hurried across the room, Douglas Connelly got up to slip out. “The usual tip,” he said, hoping he wasn’t slurring his words. “But be sure
that
bottle gets charged to Majestic or whatever he calls himself.”

“Certainly, Mr. Connelly. Is your car outside?”

“Yes.”

That’s another thing that drives Kate nuts—my having a chauffeur, Doug thought as a few minutes later he slumped in his limo and closed his eyes. The next thing he knew, Bernard, his driver, was opening the door at his East Eighty-second Street building and saying, “We’re here, Mr. Connelly.”

Even with the doorman’s arm guiding him through the lobby, it was an effort for Doug to keep his legs moving in the same direction. Danny, the elevator operator, took the key from Doug’s hand after he had fumbled it out of his pocket. On the sixteenth floor, Danny escorted him to his apartment, unlocked and opened the door, and led him to the couch. “Why not rest here for a little while, Mr. Connelly?” he suggested.

Doug felt a pillow being placed under his head and the top button of his shirt being opened and his shoes being removed.

“Just a little under the weather,” he mumbled.

“You’re fine, Mr. Connelly. Your keys are on the table. Good night, sir.”

“’Night, Danny. Thanks.” Doug fell asleep before he could say anything else.

Five hours later he did not hear the constant ringing of the landline phone on a table only a few feet away from the couch or
the equally insistent buzzing of the cell phone in his breast pocket.

Finally, in the waiting room reserved for families with patients in surgery, Hannah, her face ashen, put her cell phone away and folded her hands in her lap to keep them from trembling. “I’m not going to try him again,” she said to Jack. “Let him sleep it off.”

7

D
ouglas Connelly woke up at nine Thursday morning. He grunted and opened his eyes, momentarily disoriented. The last thing he remembered was getting into the car. Then blurry images formed in his mind. The doorman holding his arm . . . Danny taking the keys from him . . . Danny putting a pillow under his head.

The head that was splitting now.

Awkwardly, Doug sat up and swung his feet onto the floor. Leaning his hands on the coffee table for balance, he managed to pull himself up to a standing position. For a moment he waited until the room stopped spinning, then he made his way into the kitchen, where he took a half-empty bottle of vodka and a can of tomato juice from the refrigerator. He poured them half and half into a juice glass and gulped it down.

Kate was right, he thought. I shouldn’t have bought that bottle of champagne last night. Another possibility pushed through the fog in his head. I’ve got to be sure that the bottle that jerk Majestic sent over to the runner-up beauty queen didn’t end up on my bill.

Doug moved slowly into his bedroom, shedding his clothes with every step. It was only after he’d showered, shaved, and dressed that he bothered to check his phone messages.

At 2
A.M.
Sandra had tried to reach him. “Oh, Doug, I feel terrible. I just went over to thank Majestic for the champagne and the
sweet things he said about me, and he begged me to sit with him and his friends for just a minute. Before I knew it, the sos-men-elee, I mean whatever they call that guy who opens the wine, came over with the bottle Majestic had sent over and said you had to leave. I had a lovely time with you an—”

Connelly pressed the delete button before Sandra had finished speaking. He could see that the next message was from Jack, and the one after was from his daughter, Hannah. Well, at least
she
doesn’t ride me about how I should sell the plant every time she talks to me, he thought.

When he realized that Jack’s call had come in at 5:10
A.M.
and Hannah’s call twenty minutes later, he knew something was wrong. Blinking his eyes to try to focus and sound sober, his finger unsteady, he pushed the button to return the call.

Hannah answered on the first ring. In a monotone she told him about the explosion, about Gus and about Kate’s severe injuries. “Kate just came out of surgery to relieve the pressure on her brain. I can’t see her yet. I’m waiting to speak to her surgeon.”

“The plant is gone!” Doug exclaimed. “Everything? You mean everything, the factory, the showroom, the museum, all the antiques?”

Hannah’s voice unleashed her pent-up anger and heartbreak. “Didn’t you get our calls? Your daughter may not survive!” she screamed. “If she does, she may be brain damaged. Kate may be dying . . . And you, her father, ask about your godforsaken business.”

Her voice became icy. “Just in case you want to stop by, your daughter is in Manhattan Midtown Hospital. If you’re sober enough to get here, ask for the post-op waiting room. You’ll find me there praying that my only sister is still alive.”

8