Zero at the Bone (15 page)

Finally Cooper Driscoll interrupted his wife. “Lucy, can’t you get us something to drink? We’ll sit down here and get acquainted.” Obedient, but still talking, Lucy took their drink orders. Cooper wanted a Scotch on the rocks. Sophie asked for Perrier with lime.

Katherine hesitated when it was her turn. “Don’t worry about me,” Sophie said with a big conspiratorial grin in her father’s direction, “I’m used to being around drinkers. It won’t affect my iron resolve.” Katherine took her at her word and asked for a glass of wine. It might help her loosen up and get through dinner.

Cooper Driscoll walked to what was clearly his chair, a large La-Z-Boy, upholstered to match the green fabric on all the other furniture in the room. As he settled into the chair, he lowered his eyes and said, “My condolences on your father. You just let us know what we can do to help.” He let out a breath, as if he were glad to get that over with. “I never contacted you when your mother died. I’ve felt real bad about that. We heard about it from Travis Hammond. He’s kept me posted over the years about Leanne and you.”

He sighed and said in a voice that sounded more like the voice from the real man inside all that jocularity, “I’ve thought about Leanne so often. When we were kids, she always kept the pot stirred, made life interesting. Too bad she turned on us when she left Austin. I’ve missed her.” He shook his big head. “Now it’s too late, too late.”

Katherine knew how he felt. But she couldn’t let his version pass unchecked.

“She felt you had turned on her,” she said. “You and your mother.”

He looked up, as if jarred suddenly out of a reverie. “No, ma’am. Certainly Mother was real mad at the mess she was making of her life back then. She was concerned it reflected badly on the family. She maybe felt that way for a while, but all these years it was Leanne who refused to see us.”

Katherine looked down at her feet and, as if she were a bird looking down on earth from a great height, she saw the pattern of disrupted relationships in her family. This man missed his dead sister and had never made the hour drive to see her. Leanne, bitter to the death because her family had disowned her, had never tried to mend the rift. Anne Driscoll, a dying old woman, had made no moves to heal old wounds. And she, Katherine, perhaps the worst of all—pretending not to care about a father who loved her—it was all ludicrous and she didn’t want to play her part anymore.

She glanced up. Cooper was speaking, back to his hearty tone. “Well, Katherine—is that what you’re called now, or are you still Katie like when you were a little girl?”

“Katherine is fine.”

“And you call me Coop, like everyone does. Uncle Coop doesn’t sound right, does it, since we skipped knowing each other during your growing up?”

She nodded.

“Well, this must be real hard for you. I hear you came by the zoo yesterday to see Lester without knowing … what had happened. Did you have a chance to talk with him before that?” His deep-set eyes were totally encircled by skin so dark it looked charred.

“No. I didn’t,” she said, feeling the weight now of all those silent years. “I had gotten a letter from him inviting me to come, but when I got there he was dead.”

“A letter? Giving you family news and such?” he asked.

Katherine seemed to be caught constantly unprepared. If only she knew whether she could trust this man. Then she could ask for help in deciphering the photos and documents. But it was safer to trust no one.

“He just asked me to come talk,” she said.

“Sam says you hadn’t seen Lester at all since you and Leanne moved away.”

“Sam McElroy?”

“Yes, ma’am. He called last night, said you’d been in and might need some help taking care of things.”

“Oh. Nice of him,” she said, surprised.

“He said you haven’t seen Lester all this time,” he repeated.

“No,” she admitted, “I haven’t.”

He smiled, showing every one of his dazzling teeth. “Well, I’d like to catch up and know all about you. I know you graduated from Trinity and I know you’re a dog trainer with a successful business in Boerne, but that’s about all I know.”

“What Daddy means is you’ve done better than me,” Sophie said. “I flunked out of UT after one semester and have never been off the family payroll.”

Cooper protested in an injured tone that he didn’t mean anything of the sort.

Lucy appeared carrying a silver tray with four glasses on it. She set it down on the massive oak coffee table in front of her husband and handed out the drinks, each with a small hand-stitched napkin. Katherine was glad to get hers, a huge crystal wine goblet full of ice-cold Chablis. Lucy had also brought a plate of mushrooms stuffed with cheese and spinach. Katherine slipped one in her mouth. It was heaven and boded well for dinner, which she hoped would be soon. She was starving.

When Lucy left again to tend to dinner, Katherine told them that his information about her business being successful was out of date. She told them about how she had started the business in high school when she worked for a trainer and made extra money by raising and training golden retrievers. When she had finished her wine, she told them about her financial problems and the likelihood that she would lose it all in less than three weeks. She told them about Ra and admitted she had come to see her father because he had promised financial help.

“Well, damn. I sure know how that feels,” Coop said, leaning toward her and patting her knee. “We’re getting snake-bit by this economy, too. I’d help you out if I had a pot to pee in right now. May I ask if Lester left you enough to make a difference?”

“No. Travis Hammond tells me he died in debt. So I’m puzzled about what he was intending.”

“No life insurance or anything?” asked Coop.

“No.”

“Damned puzzling,” he muttered. “What are your plans?”

“I’m going to work at the zoo, starting tomorrow,” Katherine said. “I just talked about it with Sam McElroy.”

“Oh, that’s great!” Sophie squealed. “I’m there mornings, in the development office. We can have lunch. What are you going to do?”

“Menial stuff, I think. In the reptile house.”

Sophie rolled her eyes up and said, “Oy. Poor baby. Stokes is a Simon Legree. I’ve heard he has a fit if there’s so much as a fingerprint on the glass of one of the exhibits.”

Cooper leaned forward in his chair. “That’s what makes for a world-class reptile collection, little girl. We’ve got a second-class zoo here except for Alonzo Stokes’s area. Folks come from all over the world to see his collection. Only zoo in the world to breed bushmasters with any success. If you want to learn the zoo business, you can’t do any better than working for Alonzo Stokes, Katherine.”

Uncomfortable with so much talk about herself, Katherine felt compelled to ask him about his collection. He launched into what sounded like a canned presentation—stories he had told exactly the same way countless times. Each head in his collection had a story attached to it. He had hunted everywhere—Kenya, Botswana, India, Nepal, the Arctic Circle—but it seemed to Katherine he had learned nothing of those places except what could be shot there.

He stopped talking when Lucy automatically brought them a fresh round of drinks.

Sophie, who had been sitting on a zebra-skin rug with her head resting against the sofa and her eyes closed, took advantage of the lull. “How are things going?” she asked, looking up at Katherine. “Is it pretty grim settling your father’s affairs?”

“Well, I’m not sure. The police are keeping the body for a while, so I don’t know about a funeral. I’ve been trying to call Mr. Hammond today to … get some things squared away, but—”

Coop interrupted. “You couldn’t get him. I’ve been trying, too. But it figures. Deer season, archery only, opened yesterday. The ol’ boy must be out at his ranch—he insists on no phone, so he can escape his clients, like me.”

During the silence that followed, Coop took a cigar from a box on the coffee table. He held it up to Katherine. “Do you mind?” he asked, already sticking it in his mouth. Katherine shook her head. She did mind, but it was his house. And she was trying to decide how to broach the next subject.

As he fired up a lighter and applied it to the cigar, she said, “I’d like to see my grandmother while I’m here. I was wondering when might be a good time for me to visit her.”

Coop made quick, wet sucking noises as he drew on his cigar. “This really isn’t a good time for it, Katherine. She’s not well at all now, and I don’t know what kind of reception you’d get. At this juncture she’s not up to any … upsets.”

“But Dad, she might like…” Sophie began.

“You really don’t know much about it, Sophie,” he said sharply. “You haven’t seen her this past week. She’s deteriorated.”

Sophie’s fair skin showed a dark-red flush of blood under the surface. She lowered her head to hide the signs of embarrassment.

Katherine felt a rush of empathy for her—being rebuked like that. And she did not want to give in so easily. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked, aware of how harsh the question sounded.

Cooper puffed on his cigar. “Well, besides being eighty-one, she’s had a series of strokes. It’s left her with some paralysis on the left side. She’s been in and out of consciousness this week, mostly out.”

When Lucy’s voice crackled over an intercom to announce that Coop had a phone call, he got up from his chair. “I’ll take that in the office,” he said.

As soon as he was gone, Sophie scooted closer to Katherine’s feet. “He tends to take over a conversation,” she said softly, “but later we can talk about the real stuff. He zonks out after dinner.” She pointed at the empty glass sitting on the coffee table and rolled her eyes.

“I haven’t always lived at home,” Sophie said. “This is temporary. I’ve just had a messy divorce. But I lived in Dallas while I was married to this shithead for ten years. You ever been married? Or lived with anyone?”

“No,” Katherine said. “I was close once, but he objected to dogs in the bedroom.”

They both laughed.

“Well, I’m taking a vow of celibacy from now on,” Sophie said. “Celibacy and poverty—makes life simpler.”

Katherine was wondering if dinner would ever come. She looked surreptitiously at her watch. It was eight-thirty, and she was accustomed to eating at six.

The call finally came. Lucy appeared in the door ringing a little silver bell. Katherine and Sophie followed her to a small breakfast area off the kitchen, where she had set an elegant table. Mirrored place mats and lots of silver reflected the light from five tall glass oil lamps in the center of the table.

Coop came in looking flustered. “Sorry, ladies. Business,” he said.

They sat down at the table while Lucy brought in a platter with rosemary-scented beef tenderloin surrounded by little roasted potatoes and thin green beans. Katherine was ravenous.

“I hope you like it rare,” Lucy said, adding a basket of cinnamon rolls and an open bottle of Beaujolais to the table.

“Yes. Oh, yes. It looks so good,” Katherine said just as the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Sophie said, grabbing a potato and popping it whole into her mouth as she left the table.

Lucy began to cut succulent slices of the meat with a carving knife. Before she had a chance to serve it, Sophie returned breathless and flushed. “Katherine, a Lieutenant Sharb is here from the Austin Police. He says he needs to see you immediately on urgent business.”

As she rose from the table, Katherine looked wistfully at the slices of beef tenderloin, her mouth still watering with hunger. That uneaten meal she would remember as the most desirable she had ever seen.

11

KATHERINE’s hunger simmered as she waited for the policeman to get down to it. Sharb sat forward on the edge of a large easy chair, his face unshaven or shaved so long ago it didn’t matter. One blunt thumb relentlessly ruffled the edges of the notebook resting on his knees while the other thumb snapped the button on the end of his ballpoint pen—in and out, in and out.

They were sitting in a dark-paneled room with the door shut. Sophie had called it the library when she ushered them in, but Katherine was still looking for the books. Other than a stack of old
National Geographics,
there was’t anything that even resembled a book.

Long after Sophie’s footsteps had faded away, Sharb remained silent, only his nervous thumbs showing any sign of life. If this was standard police procedure to make people talk, it was damned effective, Katherine thought. So uncomfortable was the silence, she had to hold her tongue between her teeth to keep from speaking. Did he somehow know about her trip to the self-storage place last night? Had he found out about the envelope her father had left? It was clear something new had come up.

Finally, as if he’d made some sort of decision, he gave the pen button one last big click and began. “Miss Driscoll, I need to know why you called Travis Hammond fifteen times today and left urgent messages on his machine.”

Katherine was nonplused by the question. Something had happened, something bad. “What’s happened?” she blurted out.

“Let me ask the questions. What was so urgent that you needed to talk to him about? And don’t tell me it was routine matters in connection with settling your father’s estate. I listened to your messages on the tape. You sounded angry and upset.” He sat totally still now, hands at rest, the concentrated force of his attention on her.

She had to answer the question. She didn’t want to because in the back of her mind lurked the fear that it might turn out to be somehow incriminating to her father. But the grim set of Sharb’s black-stubbled jaw left her no choice. He was the law, however unappealing.

“In my father’s checkbook registers,” she said slowly, “I noticed that every month for the past twenty-nine years, as far back as I found records, he paid almost half his income to Travis Hammond. For the past five years that amounted to thirteen hundred dollars a month. I wanted to know what it was for.”

Sharb allowed a sound, half-hiss, half-whistle to escape his lips.

“The canceled checks were stamped by the Bank of Belton, into an account there, endorsed by Travis Hammond,” she added. “I called him to ask what the payments were for.”