A half turkey sandwich, stewed prunes and the soup bowl arranged on a plate looked almost festive. Whether Harriet agreed or not, after wasting most of her breakfast, she'd eat every bite, if Dina had to play the choo-choo game with the spoon.
As she whisked the plate from the counter, it seemed to levitate, then descend to the floor in slow motion. The dish split on impact. Soup whooshed up like lava; the bowl flipped over on its rim. The sandwich disassembled itself, and prunes bounced and cavorted on the linoleum.
"Oh, no-o-o." Dina's wail was punctuated by the spoon tinking off the floor. She slumped against the refrigerator. Hot tears rose and spilled over.
This morning, the VW flooded when she'd tried to start it. Prior to that, Harriet's blood pressure was taken three times, before the reading stuck long enough to chart it. Instead of refilling the oxygen machine's reservoir, she'd drenched it and the carpet with distilled water. By the grace of God, five dogs and a cat were groomed without serious injury or casualties.
Phil edged around the cabinet and sniffed at a prune shotput into the dining room. He grimaced, then advanced on the splot of turkey peeking out from under the toe kick. At Harriet's whisper-yelled "Dina! Are you all right?" he snatched his prize and skedaddled for the hallway.
No, was the correct answer. "Better than the plate I dropped," would suffice, because no one literally falls apart from anxiety. It just feels that way.
Twenty-eight hours ago, Jack was in the shower when Dina and Harriet left for a doctor's appointment. He'd made a list of Belle deHaven's neighbors and friends to interview, saying he'd be lucky if many were home and willing to talk to a private investigator.
Since then, he hadn't called, hadn't answered his cell phone or office phone. TLC's boarding information had Jack's office phone, as did the other files she'd taken. The only A. D. Meadows in the phone book hung up the minute Dina mentioned Jack's name.
Posing as a local veterinarian's assistant, she'd called the animal shelter and obtained Jack's unlisted home number. A recording informed her it was out of service. Neither of Park City's hospitals had admitted anyone named McPhee. The emergency room clerk refused to confirm or deny he'd been treated.
"My stars and garters, will you look at this mess?" Harriet chided. "I've told you and told you what happens when you get in too big of a hurry, but will you listen?"
Eyes closed, her head tipped back, Dina breathed, "Just
don't, Mom. Okay?" Next on the agenda would be a demand to define "don't," then a lecture on the frustrations of mothering a selectively deaf child. "Please," she said. "Sit down at the table and I'll fix you another plate."
"I didn't want the first one. I told you, I'm not hungry."
Dina's teeth clenched. "Fine. No problem. Stand there until you fall down in a coma, then I'll call the goddamn paramedics again."
A gasp, shuffling steps, the muttered "The thanks I get" soliloquy were adaptations of a hoary melodrama. Dina hated fighting obstinance with meanness. She'd read the how-to books, the pamphlets, seen the videos. Be cheerful. Be positive. Be firm. Embrace the depths of self-understanding, enlightenment and personal growth the caregiving experience afforded.
She chortled at the thought, then laughter rolled out in waves. She imagined her mother staring at her, the lunatic who'd overtaken the asylum. Still chuckling, she brushed the hair from her face and peeled herself off the fridge. As she stepped over the broken, splattered dishes to fetch clean ones, Harriet said, "I'm as mad at McPhee as you are, you know."
Dina laid half of her own sandwich on a clean plate, then spooned out another serving of prunes. "Why would I be mad at him?"
"For moving in and taking over like he owns the place, then off he goes with nary a goodbye." She huffed. "Dog and all, same as that brother of yours."
Rare digs at Randy were actually convoluted apologies. Why fence-mending was direct most of the time and oblique at others was as bizarre as twisting mutual concern about Jack into anger.
"Jack and Phil were invited to stay with us." Dina set the plate and soup bowl between Harriet's elbows. "Randy dumped the dog he never once fed, watered or cleaned up after, on you."
"He loved that dog," Harriet countered. "Randy's heart nearly broke when it died. Nor's it his fault that his career has him traveling all the time."
Aliens from Planet Zirko, Dina thought, kneeling to swab the mucky floor. That's what anyone eavesdropping on this conversational doublespeak would assume we are. Unless other mothers and daughters, maybe even fathers and sons, communicated like a radio bringing in three stations at once and none of them in English.
Underlying the static and gibberish was fear. Not that something might have happened to Jack. The certainty something
had.
And Dina could do nothing save worry about a man she didn't know well enough or long enough to phone his friends, relatives, business acquaintanceslet alone have the slightest idea where his apartment was located.
The only one who knew that was tentatively accepting spilled prunes as a food source. As if Phil ever barked, much less could draw Dina a map. Whatever the mutt's ancestry, Lassie hadn't lived in the same zip code.
"Sweetheart," Harriet said, quietly. "McPhee's all right. I'm as sure as I can be."
"Then why hasn't he called?" Dina pushed the trash can back under the sink and slammed the cabinet door. Her mother wasn't aware of Monday's crosswalk incident. Jack had told Harriet that Belle deHaven was his ex-wife, but not about being questioned by a homicide detective.
"Your daddy used to go on benders now and then."
Dina bristled. "He did not!"
Harriet sighed and trolled her spoon back and forth in the bowl. "Earl wasn't much of a drinker, but men bottle things up inside. When they can't hold any more, they pour them into a glass."
She looked up at Dina. "Remember him saying he never had headaches, except once in a blue moon?"
Oh, yeah. One of those "if I had a dollar" things that would endow a nice trust fund. Dina anticipated what was coming, before Harriet said, "It closed down years ago, but the Blue Moon down on Cleburne Avenue was where Earl took his troubles."
She smiled. "How many he left there, I couldn't say. Doubtful any, though bar dogs aren't fools, aside from being drunks. But whenever six o'clock on a Friday or four on Saturdays came and went without him, I knew 'twas a blue moon."
So had Dina, minus the specifics. It's just easier for a kid to block out funny smells and a snarled, slurry "Lemme alone, DeeJee" than admit her white knight, her enduring first love, had flaws in his armor. Later, when she was a teenager, those faults and others proved her old man was a hypocrite who had no right to tell her how to live her life.
"Daddy never called to tell you he wouldn't be home?"
The spoon clinked in the now empty bowl. "We had an understanding. I trusted Earl to be where I believed he was. He trusted me not to check up on him." She chuckled. "In all those years, Earl Wexler was the only customer the bartender didn't call to the phone. Not once."
The reassurance was lovingly given, but temporary. After Harriet lay down for a nap, Dina washed the dishes, waffling between hope Jack had crawled in a hole somewhere to recover from the worst, gut-rippingest, skull-splitting hangover of his life, and the fact nearly twenty-nine-and-a-half hours was too long to be drowning his grief.
She started when Phil butted her hip. "Prunes working their magic, huh?" He trotted into the dining room, turned and panted back at her. "Keep your legs crossed a sec, till"
Soft thumping sounds wended from the entry. The storm door's pneumatic closer seldom engaged the latch. Sometimes, the air trapped between the storm door and solid wooden one made haunted-mansion noises.
Phil's head pivoted from Dina to the door. She flipped suds off her hands and jumped off the footstool. Those ghostly bumps in the night had never rattled out, "Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits."
Jack's fist was raised for another chorus when Dina yanked open the door. Rumpled, bag eyed, his five-o'clock shadow a sandy, nascent beard, he grinned as though she were the best thing he'd seen in recent memory. "Hi, kid."
"Damn you, McPhee." As he stepped inside, her sniff test detected fermentation, but not the alcohol variety. "Where in the hell have you been?"
"Missed me, didja?"
"No." She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him. His clothes stank, and he smelled riper than a farmer that still plowed behind a mule, and Dina couldn't have cared less.
Jack held her, his chin propped on her head, exhaustion as palpable as his heartbeat. "I'm sorry you were so worried."
"Not me. I knew you were okay. It's Mom who's been a nervous wreck."
"Uh-huh."
"And Phil."
"Uh-huh."
"I might have been a little concerned, but with work and everything
" Dina stepped back, feeling foolish, probably because she was making one of herself. "And well, you know, to be honest, it's not like we're close friends or anything."
He nodded, a sly glint in his bloodshot eyes. "It's a wonder you recognized me when you answered the door."
"Darn right, the way you look." She gave him the up-and-down. "I hope you have a great dry cleaner. That suit's a wreck."
"I'm a wreck. The suit's totaled." He glanced at the hallway. "I'll tell you all about it after I grab a shower. That is, if it won't wake your mother."
"The water won't. The singing? From what I heard yesterday morning, you should stick to humming."
He chuckled, then bent down and kissed her cheek. "You're a hard woman, Ms. Wexler."
Fingering the side of her face, she watched him stride out to the garage for a clean change of clothes. No, I'm not hard, and neither are you. I don't know why, but I have a feeling that, until a few days ago, we were both a whole lot better at faking it.
* * *
Soap, a tankful of hot water and a shave did not make Jack a new man. Just a cleaner, nicer-smelling version of the rapidly aging one McGuire had streeted after the twenty-four-hour custodial hold expired.
A cab to the impound lot conveniently located as far from the police station as the city limits allowed, then bailing out the S-10 ate another couple of hours.
He'd be a liar if he said the experience was worth the grin on Dina's face when she saw him. But it was close. Real close, as a matter of fact.
Everything permeated with Eau de Jail was crammed into a garbage bag. The pair of black lace-ups rode the bubble for a moment. Jack cautioned himself against getting carried away.
"It's only Wednesday," he said, rinsing shaving cream and stubble down the sink drain. "The way this week's going, you may need 'em for an arraignment before it's over."
Dina, bless her, had fixed them each a thick turkey sandwich and monster glasses of iced tea. Jack started to sit down at the table, then motioned at the patio door. "Our conference room must be ninety-five in the shade, but maybe we ought to take this picnic out there."
A round metal table between their lawn chairs held their drinks. The chair's webbing creaked and bowed like a hammock under Jack's weight, but was sturdier than it appeared. The triangular work of turkey Dina had sculpted immediately drew hungry flies and Phil. The first recognizable food Jack had seen since yesterday vanished without a crumb.
Smiling, she inquired, "Want another sandwich?"
Six, please, Jack thought, but declined. He doubted if Harriet napped away the afternoon. If his campout on the living-room floor was an indication, she was a light sleeper and a restive one, despite all the medication she took.
"My day in the twilight zone," he began, "by Jack McPhee." He summarized being taken into custody, the mounting evidence against him and his attorney's advice against providing a DNA sample unless McGuire obtained a search warrant for it.
"Steve Trujillo is a smart guy for a lawyer," Jack said, "but you aren't bluffing when you're holding aces. The preliminary autopsy report indicated that Belle was about four weeks' pregnant. It isn't mineguaranteed. Steve was concerned the DNA wasn't just for a paternity test."
"Why else would the police want it?"
"Don't know. But as Steve reminded me, I don't recall touching that backdoor facing, either. There's no way crime-scene techs found anything inside the house with my genetic fingerprint. Outside? Extremely doubtful, but Steve was afraid of another connecting dot."
Jack reached for his glass. "He was also daring the prosecutor to ante up a homicide charge, or release me."
"Stand by for the second of what'll probably be a million whys." Dina waved her sandwich. "So why, already?"
"Formal charges render the search warrant moot. The cops could swab my appendix, if they wanted to."
