Caught in the Net

by Jessica Thomas

  Inside, I fed and watered the dog and thought longingly about a drink for myself. But I felt somehow both sweaty and chilled, with a heavy, raspy undercoat of sand. Better to make it first the shower, then the drink.

  Some minutes later I came back into the kitchen feeling a little more human, clad in warm pajamas and soft—very soft—slippers. I looked at Fargo and was envious. He had eaten most of his food, had some water and was sound asleep in his bed. He was neither upset about today nor worried about tomorrow. He was fed, warm, safe and on the side of the angels. I almost woke him up just to have some company, but I didn’t have the heart.

  Instead, I made a bourbon and water and took it into the living room where I could relax and prop up my sore feet on the coffee table. Mitch had assured me he would call at once if there was any news about Janet or from Sonny. I noticed that my phone message indicator was blinking to me that I had one call. I jumped to my feet, ignoring the soreness, and reached eagerly for the playback button. Janet, let it be Janet. Please.

  It was Sonny. “Hi. It’s Sunday about ten a.m. I stopped by the office on my way out, and this was on my voice mail. I thought you would be interested. I won’t be back till late tonight or tomorrow, so I’ll let you hear it now. See you later.”

  After a series of bells and whistles a man’s voice came over the speaker. It sounded sort of defeated. “Sonny? This is Bob Reynolds, Plymouth Police. Don’t ever even mention anything Irish to me again. The travel agent went and told Mrs. McKinney I was asking about them and they called my chief. He called me in and reamed me a new one. It seems he’s good friends with them. The chief and his wife went on that Wales tour and also on the London tour. Apparently everybody on the tour knew they were taking the ferry from Wales to Ireland, because Mrs. McKinney’s grandmother was going to be ninety or a hundred, and there was some big family reunion with relatives from all over.”

  There was a slight pause, more static, throat-clearing. I had the distinct feeling that Officer Reynolds would like to cry. Well, sorry, Bob, that’s the kind of day it’s been. The tape rolled on.

  “The chief and his wife went on the London tour with Mrs. McKinney a couple of years later, and she left early because she got a wire that her grandmother had upped and died on them. So she went to the funeral in Ireland. Sonny, they are upright citizens. They never even heard about the IRA. They wouldn’t know a criminal if they saw one. They have never loaned their boat to no one, much less to carry guns. The chief told me if I saw them driving down the street with a cannon tied to the back of their car, I was to assume they were going to a Fourth of July celebration, even if it was February. And I will be working the midnight to eight a.m. shift for the rest of my life.”

  I heard a brief burst of Sonny’s laughter, a click, then silence. I had to smile, even as my heart went out to the poor man. All his troubles for nothing! I didn’t need the tape to tell me the great IRA caper had been a fantasy with its outline cleverly sketched by Janet, and the colors all foolishly filled in by the rest of us.

  I thought of calling Mitch, but there was no point in bothering him. He would call whenever something happened.

  And when would that be? And what would it be? Tired as I was, I still felt edgy. I wanted this situation resolved, and there was not one single thing I could do to make that happen. I don’t deal well in that position. Unfortunately for my peace of mind and sometimes for the outcome of events, I am of the do-something-even-if-it’swrong school. But even I couldn’t think of anything to do tonight.

  The house was dead quiet. It seemed strangely empty. I had been getting used to having Janet around, or about to be around, or on the phone. I guessed I’d better get un-used to it. The old C&W song . . . alone again . . . naturally.

  I thought back to the afternoon. Had Janet taken my car keys by intent or accident? She would have taken the cigarettes and lighter from the dashboard, then locked the car and automatically have put the keys in her pocket for the walk back to our spot on the beach. She probably merely forgot to return them, just as I forgot to ask for them. Then, when she panicked at the thought of police and lawyers, she simply had them, ready to use.

  I wondered where Janet was on this cold, unwelcoming night. Still driving, hastening through the darkness, fearing every set of headlights that appeared behind her? Holed up somewhere in a motel for the night, waiting for the heavy knock upon the door? In jail, wondering if she would ever be free? In a hospital, hurt and alone? Wrapped around a tree in the fatal steel embrace of my car? None of my scenarios were happy ones.

  And I can tell you that it is a very difficult exercise in mental calisthenics suddenly to categorize your lover as quite possibly a killer, a murderer. You think of butterfly kisses and soft caresses. You see warm laughter playing around the lips and in the eyes. You remember shared showers and fast, hard hugs. You recall the silly banter and the serious conversations. You recollect again and again how she said she loved you—and you believe that—but you also wonder how she would have felt about you if you’d owned a liquor store in Plymouth.

  The phone rang and I jumped about a foot. It was Mitch. Janet had apparently beaten the roadblocks at the bridges. No car matching mine had tried to cross. There was no report of anyone seeing my car anywhere along Route Six. They were now checking secondary roads. A multi-state alarm was now out for the car, he informed me. Great. I had visions of what shape it would be in when—if—I ever got it back.

  Continuing his update, Mitch added that Sonny had called. He was in Stamford, Connecticut and gathering some interesting information, but would go into details upon his return tomorrow. He was sorry about my car and about Janet, of course. Of course. Looking back, I thought Sonny had been suspicious of her for a while now. I realized that I had been, too, but my suspicions had floated just below the surface of my conscious thought. I’d been too busy teetering along the edge of love to let them come into my waking thoughts.

  Naively, I had insisted on pursuing the gun-running possibility because that’s what I had wanted to believe. I wished to God I had listened to my brain instead of my hormones. Do some people actually do that?

  I had another drink and a TV mystery dinner while I watched a nice impersonal account of the Mexican War of the 1840s on The History Channel. I actually became interested in how many future Civil War generals had learned their trade as junior officers in that conflict. Then I must have dozed, for when I opened my eyes, German Messerschmidts were diving across the sky, and I didn’t think they had been around in the 19th century. It must be time for bed.

  So I let the dog out, and right back in. Fargo will happily swim in 38-degree water, but the first drop of rain sends him scurrying for his bed. We retired shortly. I was sapped and stiff and depressed. Then and there I resolved to cut the smoking all together, drink only spring water and eat nothing but plain yogurt and crabgrass for the rest of my life. My performance that afternoon had been pitiful.

  Surprisingly, I fell fast asleep on those happy thoughts and slumbered late and soundly until Fargo woke me the next morning with a rather desperate look in his eye.

  A cold but bright, sunny day revealed itself, flashing little coded messages on the leftover raindrops on the grass. A mug of hot strong coffee helped both my attitude and my ambition. I lifted the phone off its wall cradle and began to make a series of calls. I was not looking forward to any of them.

  First of course, was to the police station, where I was startled to hear Mitch answer. “God, Mitch, don’t they let you go home and sleep at night?” I asked.

  “Not these days,” he sighed. “We’re really short of people. Sonny’s away. Palmer’s out with a broken ankle. Sanchez is in some little village in Portugal looking up his ancestors, and the chief is over at Mass General with his wife—she’s got some sort of heart problem. Serious, I think.”

  “I didn’t even know Pauline was ill. I’m sorry to hear that. She’s such a nice woman. I’ll have to call her when she gets home. Isn’t Captain Ander
s there somewhere? He should be some help.”

  “Yeah, he’s here. Buried under the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and Investor’s Daily and stuck on the phone to his broker. Seems the stock market opened today with a resounding fart.”

  I laughed. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. I take it there’s no news? I mean news for us.”

  “Nary a word anywhere. Sorry.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’ll drop your car off after lunch if that’s okay.”

  “No rush, Alex.” He added morosely, “Keep it as long as you need. Believe me, by the time I get out of here, it’ll be time to trade the car.”

  We hung up and I moved on to call number two, this time Aunt Mae. Janet would not be going to the Herb Center with her this afternoon. It was not an easy call. Naturally, I had to give her a brief recap of all that had happened. She was sympathetic but not gushy, thank God, and even offered to call my mother, “before she hears it on the news or from someone in town, dear. We can’t have her learning it second hand, you know. She’d be terribly worried about you.”

  I was grateful, for the offer—it would be one less difficult call— and for her parting words. “I know you must be terribly disappointed and unhappy, my dear child, but you must try not to feel any guilt. You have only been present at the end of this sad tale. You were not involved in any of the events that led up to it. Remember that.”

  I would try, I promised. Aunt Mae’s advice was always sage and to the point. I wondered if she’d consider giving me a weekly appointment. God knows I could use it, and at least we’d keep the money in the family.

  One more call. This one to Larry Cole, my insurance agent, whose attitude would lead you to believe every claim was paid for out of his own pocket, denying food to his hungry wife and kinder. When I was put through to him, I decided to try and keep it simple and brief. “Larry, I just wanted to let you know, my car’s been stolen. Yesterday about four in the afternoon, over on the beach turnaround down past the Truro lighthouse.”

  “Oh, hell. Do the police know?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Well, that’s a right move anyway. They’ll be on the lookout. Where did you report it? Provincetown? Or just Truro?”

  “They both know. So do the State Police.”

  “Oh, good thinking. Probably just teenagers joyriding. It’ll turn up soon. At least I hope so, maybe even undamaged.” Larry looked at every dollar as if it were the last one he would ever see. “No idea who it was, of course?”

  “Yes, it was a friend of mine named Janet Meacham.”

  “Some friend! How did she get in it? Wasn’t it locked? Where do you think she went? How do you know it was her—she?”

  “She had the keys. I had given them to her earlier to get something from the car. She hadn’t given them back when she decided to leave. She just drove off. And I can assure you I wish I did know where!”

  “Oh, well now, Alex, this doesn’t sound like a theft we’d necessarily be responsible for. I imagine she just kind of borrowed the car.” He sounded relieved. “Not that she shouldn’t have asked you, of course,” he added quickly, “but I’ll bet she brings it back any minute and good as new!” He would consider it good as new if two doors and the steering wheel were missing.

  “Larry, I say again, it is stolen. The police in about ten states are looking for it. The young woman is wanted for questioning in a double murder.”

  There was a long silence. “Stay in touch, Alex. Let me know when it—ah, turns up.” He did not say goodbye.

  I graduated to a beer and lit my third cigarette. Well, at least I was still counting them. Anyway, I was under a lot of stress. This was no time to add to it by trying to break a habit. And beer had various nutrients, I had read. I still planned to improve and purify my lifestyle, but today was not cut out for harping on minor health issues, I reassured myself.

  Suddenly, for some reason I wondered if Terry smoked. Probably, with a long holder like Franklin Roosevelt. He sounded effete. I did not like Terry. I actively disliked Terry. I realized I was not in the least sorry he was dead, told myself I should feel guilty—and didn’t. He’d had everything handed to him, and the first ripple in his life had tossed him on his ass.

  I wondered why he’d joined the Coast Guard? Probably the two Coasties he’d met in the bar were gay and told him how easy it was to pick up guys when you were good looking and wore a uniform, I thought sourly.

  Terry was everything Janet longed to be. Sophisticated, Ivy League, suave, clever, self-confident on the surface and—at least at one time—rich. Had she only realized it, she was worth ten of him. I was morally certain that if someone had sent Janet to Yale for three years and then told her she’d have to handle the fourth pretty much on her own, she’d have graduated if she’d had to earn money cleaning the men’s room at the local bus station.

  It was strange. Terry had a head start on life that most people would have envied. And he couldn’t handle one setback. Janet had overcome a number of fairly serious adversities. She had even managed to save $20,000 on a CG salary, which couldn’t have left much for fun or life’s little luxuries. Her life was finally moving smoothly toward what she wanted most—that damned restaurant— and she blew it over some naive idea that the kind of upper class person she wanted to become wouldn’t rat on a friend. And it wouldn’t even have been ratting. All she had to do was disassociate herself from an incident that was all Terry’s fault in the first place.

  All that, of course, assumed that it was true. And I had discovered lately that with Janet, that assumption was not automatic. No family in New Hampshire. No girl Terry. No Boston job or apartment. I had thought I was getting to know her so well. Now I wondered who Janet was. And how many Janets there were.

  Much as I hated to think it, Janet’s school counselor—homophobic or no—had been right on the button.

  I got up to take another beer from the fridge and the phone rang. I spun to grab it, tripped over the dog, and went down in a heap, swearing. I finally disentangled myself, heaved to my feet and lunged for the phone. “Yeah?”

  “Darling! You’re panting. Have you been jogging or something?”

  “And hello to you, too, Mom.” Was the entire world trying to improve my physical condition? “No, I was not jogging. I fell over the dog.”

  “Oh, goodness. Is he all right?”

  I heard him jump onto the living room couch. “I assume so. He has retired to the couch to recover. I’m all right, too, mother. Thanks for asking.”

  “I’m glad, dear, don’t be grumpy. I’m sorry about your car and your friend. I just wanted to tell you . . . I have to go to work this afternoon, but I’d be glad to run you up to Hyannis to pick up a rental tomorrow. And if you need a car today we can work something out with mine.”

  “Oh, thanks, Mom, that would be great. I have Mitch’s car for today, but tomorrow it would be really helpful to get a rental.”

  “Okay, then I’ll see you around ten in the morning. And, Alex, your Aunt Mae filled me in on a little background here, so I know it must be extremely upsetting to find that Janet is involved in this situation. But thank God it came to light now rather than sometime in the future. Later it might well have affected your life much more deeply, in more ways than one.”

  “I know, Mom. I thought of that. See you in the morning. Thanks.” I felt my eyes begin to burn, and I reflected briefly that I was lucky in my family. They did not judge my personal or professional life, they were there when I needed them, and they loved me.

  You couldn’t ask for a whole lot more. I compared them to Janet’s un-lovely bevy of relatives and wondered how different her life might have been if she’d had my family. One part of me insisted there would have been a 180-degree difference. But another small, sad inner voice told me Janet’s life would probably have ended in some sort of disaster no matter who she called Mom.

  I shoved the chair back with a determined scrape and stood up. “Come on, Fargo. You going to sleep all day? You k
now you promised to take me to the beach!” On the way to the back door I grabbed my camera, jacket and his leash. I tried hard to pretend it was just another day, but I found no film-worthy scenes at Race Point. The sun-filled day and deep blue water held no charms. Fargo’s antics produced no laughter. A couple walking with arms entwined did not soften my heart. I was nervous and irritable. Obviously, when I felt like this, only one thing would help: food. It was nearly two o’clock, and I’d had nothing to eat since my small, low fat, though gourmet (well, the label said it was) TV dinner the night before.

  I decided to return Mitch’s car before I ate. I really hated to keep it any longer, even if he didn’t actually need it. On the way to the police station I filled the tank and picked up a six-pack of his favorite brew, which I stashed behind the passenger seat, out of sight. I put Fargo on his lead and we went inside to learn that Sonny had not yet been seen and nothing had been heard of Janet.

  “Any idea at all where she might be?” Mitch pocketed his keys. “Could she have had friends somewhere up-Cape?”

  “She’s somewhere between here and Seattle. That’s all I know. I have no idea about any friends or where they might be. Maybe Chatham, she said she was stationed there. And as I said, maybe Norwalk, Connecticut. I don’t even want to think about it, Mitch. I can’t make sense of anything about this whole situation. Thanks for the car. Look on the floor when you get in.” I winked at him.

  “Oh? Oh. You didn’t need to do that, but thanks.”

  “My pleasure. Anything new from Himself?”

  “Not since this morning, and I can’t say I’m sorry. I’m gonna be high on his shit list.”

  “Why, Mitch!” I laughed. “You? What did you do, make a coffee ring on his blotter?”

  “You can laugh. He’s not your sergeant. No, as soon as he heard about Janet running yesterday, he told me to search Janet’s place, to see if she left a gun, money, any information where she went. You know, the usual. And he said put up some crime scene tape. Anything there was now evidence.”