Suture Self (7 page)

“They didn't make any promises,” Judith said. “How's Kristin? What's little Mac up to?”

“They're fine,” Mike said. “Kristin still has the queasies sometimes, but basically, she feels strong.”

Like a fifty-foot Douglas fir,
Judith thought, picturing her daughter-in-law.

“Mac wants to go back outside to play in the snow,” Mike went on, “but it's blowing too hard. Kristin took him out there a while ago, and the wind knocked him over. He made a perfect snow angel when he fell, though. Thanks again for the snowsuit you gave him for Christmas.” He paused, and Judith could hear Mac jabbering in the background. “Tomorrow, little fella, okay? Say,” Mike said into the phone again, “I wasn't going to mention this until I saw you, but now that I think about it, you're probably pretty bored, huh?”

“Well…” Judith glanced at Renie, who was gobbling cheese and pear slices. “Not exactly, but I may be later.”

“We're going to put Mac in preschool this fall,” Mike said, sounding like a typical proud papa. “There's a really good one about twenty miles down the highway. Kristin's been filling out the forms, and one thing they'd like to have is a family tree. Then, when the kid enters on the first day, there's his picture on this cutout of a tree, with information about all of his ancestors. Cute, huh?”

“Cute,” Judith agreed, though her voice had gone flat. “So you want me to put together a family tree.” She caught Renie's gaze; Renie choked on her pear.

“If you could,” Mike said. “Nothing fancy; I gather the teachers do the artwork and arranging. No real rush, either, though they'd like to have all this stuff by the end of the month.”

“The end of the month?” Judith frowned into the phone. “Why so soon? Mac won't start school until fall.”

“The teachers have to make the trees for about sixty
kids,” Mike said reasonably. “Of course, they have to decide if they'll accept Mac in the first place. But the earlier we get all this stuff done, the more likely he'll get into Little Einsteins.”

“That's the name of the school?” Judith gulped.

“Right. They don't take just any kid,” Mike said, pride still evident in his voice. “Of course, it's not cheap, but we can swing it. Education's so important these days. I mean, it's not like when I was a kid, and you sent me to Ethel Bump's place. All we did was string beads and finger-paint her furniture and roll around on our rugs.”

“That was day care, Mike,” Judith said over Renie's loud coughing fit.
You were there so I could work two jobs while Dan laid on the couch, starting his day with an entire bottle of blackberry brandy and working his way up to his first vodka at eleven in the morning.
“You did more than just play at Ethel's,” Judith continued. “You learned your numbers.”

“Not all of them,” Mike responded. “I always left out nine.”

“True.” Judith hung her head. “Okay, I'll see what I can do.”

“Great, Mom. Got to go. There's a message coming in on my fax. Love you.” He hung up.

“Family tree, huh?” Renie said, having conquered her choking.

Judith grimaced. “I've dreaded this for years.”

Renie offered her cousin a sympathetic smile. “Don't you think Mike knows that Dan wasn't his real father?”

“Define ‘real,'” Judith said with a frown.

“I meant natural father,” Renie responded, eating a piece of Havarti cheese. “Yes, I certainly know that
Dan raised Mike, that in spite of being a lousy husband, he was a pretty good dad. I also know that Mike has always felt that Dan really was his dad. But a year or so ago, I got the impression that Mike had figured it out. Do you remember? We were all having our pictures taken with little Mac, and Mike suddenly looked from the baby's red hair to Joe's, and since Mike himself has red hair and Dan was very dark, I got the impression that Mike finally realized the truth.”

“He's never said a word,” Judith asserted. “Not to me, not to Joe. But you're right, I think he must know, deep down. How much denial could he possibly have? I wanted to broach the subject with him then, but I kept putting it off. We'd already had one big conversation a couple of years ago, and it became clear to me that the truth would have altered his memory of Dan.”

“He was younger then,” Renie pointed out. “That was before he got married, wasn't it?”

“I can't remember,” Judith admitted. “I know, I tend to bury things, hoping they'll go away. But they don't.”

The phone rang again, this time on Renie's line. She responded in monosyllables, then hung up. “Security. His name is Torchy Magee. He'll be up in a few minutes, along with a cop.”

“If Joe had never been a cop,” Judith sighed, “and never gotten drunk that night in the bar with Herself, I wouldn't be in this quandary now.”

“Nonsense,” Renie retorted, cutting another slice of cheese and popping it in her mouth.

Judith didn't say anything for a few moments. She was reliving that terrible time when Joe had suddenly disappeared just weeks before their wedding. She'd only heard secondhand that he'd been shanghaied to Vegas by Vivian, and that, while he was still in a drunken stu
por, the pair had gotten married in a casino wedding chapel. It wasn't until many years later that Judith had found out he'd tried to call her later that same day. Gertrude had intercepted the call and never told Judith about it. Not hearing back, and feeling compelled to honor his commitment to Vivian, Joe had stayed married to Vivian for over twenty years. He'd felt sorry for Herself, he explained to Judith after they were finally reunited. She'd had two unhappy marriages already, and was trying to raise two small boys on her own. Then Vivian had given birth to their own daughter, Caitlin. Joe felt stuck, and he knew that Judith had married Dan McMonigle on the rebound. It was only after the children were raised and Herself had grown more passionate about Jim Beam than Joe Flynn that he had finally decided to make a break. There had been no need for an annulment. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Joe's marriage to Herself had never been valid. Taking vows while not in his sane and sober mind was only part of it; the Church didn't recognize the union because Vivian was still the wife of another man.

Meanwhile, Judith had lived a lie, at least as far as Mike was concerned. Joe didn't know that she was pregnant when he ran off with Herself. Judith had never told him, not until almost a quarter of a century later. Dan had raised Mike as his own, and perhaps his often antagonistic attitude toward Judith was a form of punishment for bearing another man's child. Whatever the cause, Judith had suffered a great deal during the nineteen years that she was married to Dan.

“But he was a good father.” She repeated the phrase so often that it was like a mantra. She could never make Dan happy, but she could honor his memory, especially in Mike's eyes.

“Yes, yes,” Renie said testily. “But Mike's a grown man now, he can handle the truth. It's not fair to Joe. It never has been, and I'll bet my last five bucks he resents it, deep down.”

Judith heaved a big sigh. “Yes, I know he does. I guess I'll have to bite the bullet.”

“It's about time,” Renie said, still testy. “Your problem, coz, is that you hate making decisions, you can't stand rocking the boat, you're absolutely terrified of change. Go ahead, make out that family tree, and fill in all of Joe's family. His brothers, his parents, the whole damned clan.”

“I never knew his mother,” Judith said, as if her early death might give some excuse for abandoning the project.

“Do it,” Renie barked. “I'll help.”

Before Judith could respond, a burly, uniformed man in his late fifties poked his head in the door. “Mrs. Jones?” he said in a gravelly voice.

“Here,” said Renie, raising her left hand. “You're Torchy Magee?”

“Yes, ma'am,” the security guard responded as another, much younger man in a patrolman's uniform followed him into the room. “This is Johnny Boxx, that's with two
xx
's, right, Johnny?”

“Right,” replied the young officer with a tight little smile.

“He's fairly new to the force,” Magee said, swaggering a bit as he nodded at Judith and approached Renie's bed. “Me, I was a cop for over twenty-five years before I retired a while back. Arson, vice, larceny, assault—I did it all, and have the scars to show for it.” He chuckled and gave Johnny Boxx a hearty slap on the back. “Yessir, see this?” He pointed to a
long, thin scar on his right cheek. “Attacked by a knife there.” Magee rolled up his left sleeve to reveal another scar. “Shotgun, just below the elbow. Hurt like hell. I was wounded three times, here, in the shoulder, and just above my ear. Got a plate in my head to prove it.”

“My,” Renie said, keeping a straight face, though Judith could tell it was an effort, “you've had some bad luck.”

“Just doing my job,” Magee responded. “That's not all, either. I got my nickname, Torchy, when I was in arson. Look, no eyebrows.”

Sure enough, Magee's forehead stretched from his eyes to the bald spot on top of his head. “What happened?” Judith asked.

“Let's put it this way,” Torchy Magee responded with a chuckle and a wink, “when you're investigating an arson case, you should make sure the fire is out first.” He chuckled some more, a grating sound, then turned to Renie. “Okay, little lady, let's hear all about what you saw from this third-story window.”

“‘Little lady'?” Renie curled her lip.

“Well…” Torchy shrugged. “In a manner of speaking.” He rested one foot on Renie's bed frame. “So what'd you see?”

“I was standing by the window,” Renie began, eyeing Torchy's foot with annoyance, “when I saw Mr. Kirby leave through the front entrance.”

Officer Boxx held up a hand. “How did you know it was Mr. Kirby?”

“I'd just met him,” Renie replied. “He was wearing a trench coat, he had a beard, it wasn't that hard to identify him three floors up.”

“Sounds right to me,” Torchy said. “Go on, Mrs. J.”

“Mrs.
Jones
,” Renie said with emphasis. “Anyway,
he'd just started toward the parking lot when a beige car, a mid-sized sedan, came from out of nowhere and struck Mr. Kirby down.”

“Heh, heh.” Torchy chuckled. “Now, Mrs.…Jones, a car can't come out of nowhere. Which direction?”

Renie looked exasperated. “I was watching Mr. Kirby. You know damned well a car can come from three directions out there—the parking lot, the main drive into the hospital, and the ambulance and staff area off to the right of the main entrance. That is, my right, from my point of view, through my window.”

Torchy's expression had grown serious. “Through this window.”

“Yes.” Renie's patience appeared to be wearing thin.

“Tell us about the car,” Officer Boxx inquired. “It was a beige medium-sized sedan. Any idea how old or what make?”

“Very clean,” Renie answered, “so I thought it was fairly new. It was shaped like so many cars these days, especially the Japanese imports. Bill and I have a Toyota, about the same color as the car I saw. In fact, our car looks like every other car these days. Sometimes I get mixed up in a parking lot and try to get into the wrong one. My husband and I call our Toyota Cammy. Except Bill says Cammy is a boy. I don't agree. Cammy's a girl.”

“Can't you tell by looking underneath?” Torchy laughed aloud at his joke.

“I never thought of that,” Renie said with a straight face and a flashing eye.

“License plate,” Boxx put in. “Did you get any kind of look?”

“Ah…” Renie bit her lip. “I didn't notice.”

The young policeman frowned. “Do you remember if it had in-state plates?”

Her eyes half closed, Renie seemed to be concentrating. “Yes, I think so. I can see it from the rear as it headed toward the parking lot. I'm a very visual person.”

“Huh?” said Torchy.

“I'm a designer, an artist by trade,” Renie explained. “I see more than most people do, but sometimes I don't realize it until later.”

“But you didn't see any letters or numbers,” the policeman prompted.

“No.” Renie looked chagrined.

“So this car went where after hitting Mr. Kirby?” Torchy inquired.

“Toward the parking lot,” Renie replied. “You can't see much of the lot because of those evergreen trees and shrubs. Anyway, I was riveted on Mr. Kirby.”

“How is he?” Judith broke in.

“Kirby?” Torchy turned around. “Broken leg, bruises and so forth. Kid stuff.” The security guard touched his head, presumably where he'd been shot. “He'll live.”

“That's more than his wife did,” Renie declared. “She never got out of this place alive.”

“Now, now,” Torchy said in a soothing tone. “That was a different matter.”

“How different?” Judith asked.

“Well,” Torchy began, then paused and scratched his bald spot, “she had an operation. And then…well, maybe she was taking some stuff on the side. You know.” He winked again.

“Actually,” Renie said, “we don't know. Mr. Kirby doesn't think his wife was taking ‘stuff on the side.' Have you talked to him, Security Officer Magee?”

Torchy gave a little jump. “Me? Why, sure. That's
my job. But what do husbands know about what wives do when they're not with the old man?” He winked a third time. “Or the other way around, for that matter. Besides, she was an actress. You know what those theater people are like.”

Renie held up a hand. “If you wink again, I'll have to kill you. Yes, I know something about theater people. But the real question is, what do you know about the untimely deaths of three well-known local residents in this very hospital? Isn't that your business?”