Lulu bared her teeth, snarling. I told her to behave herself.
“What’s with the hammer, Clethra? Planning to install some drywall?”
“I-I was just so scared.” She was breathless, her teeth chattering. “I had this nightmare—that the killer was right outside the chapel. That he came back for me. And I was just … I felt so alone. I-I’m sorry I woke you. I just got so scared.” She sounded like a frightened little girl. She was a frightened little girl.
“There’s no need to be. A trooper’s at the foot of the drive.”
“I know that. I do. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.” She stayed there at the foot of the bed, trembling.
There was an extra blanket over my feet. “Here, put this around you.”
“Could I get in there with you, Hoagy?” she blurted out. “For a little while? Please? I just need to …” She let out a jagged sob. “I j-just need to be with somebody.”
It was pretty much Lulu’s call. She considered it a moment, weighing if this chilled, semi-naked semi-celebrity was any threat to her unhappy home. She stirred and had herself a leisurely stretch. Then she moved over to the rocker by the fireplace and curled up in it with a grunt. When push comes to shove she has a pretty good heart. Just don’t ever tell her I said that.
Clethra dove in gratefully. “Oooh, it’s so nice and warm in here,” she gasped, burrowing in. Her feet were two blocks of frozen hamburger.
I reached over and turned off the light. She turned on her side, facing me. I could see tears on her cheeks in the moonlight. And I could smell her. She smelled of the Crab-tree and Evelyn avocado oil bath gel Merilee kept in the guest bath. She inched closer to me, hesitant but insistent. I sighed inwardly and raised my arm. She immediately snuggled under it with her head on my chest. Then she broke down. I held her while she cried, stroking her hair, feeling the scented warmth of her there. I held her until she grew still and silent, our chaperone watching us carefully from the chair.
“Hoagy?” she whispered, after a long while.
“Yes?” I whispered back. I don’t know why. We were alone in the house. At least I sincerely hoped we were.
“I miss him.”
“I do, too.”
“There’s nobody in the whole wide world I can trust now. Not one person.”
“There’s Arvin.”
“I meant a grown-up.” She raised her head, her eyes searching my face. “There’s you.”
“I thought you said a grown-up.”
Her breath caught. She needed the words.
“There’s me,” I assured her. “And there’s Merilee.”
“I like her.”
“So do I.”
“You guys really have it all together, y’know?”
“You must be thinking of another couple.” I knuckled my eyes, yawning. “There’s Ruth,” I suggested.
“No way.” She shook her head vehemently. “I can’t ever trust her. Not after this.”
“You really think she had something to do with his death?”
“She caused it, Hoagy. By hating him so much. By hating us so much.”
“What about Barry?”
“What about him? Like, he’s never been for me. Not ever.”
“Has Marco?”
She reacted with surprise. “Marco?”
“Are you and he at all close?”
“Like, why would we be?”
“No reason. I just wondered.”
“Hoagy, is it okay if I stay out here for a while? I don’t want to go back to her.”
“Stay here as long as you like.”
“Even though I’m, like, an annoying little brat?”
“Even though you’re, like, an annoying little brat.”
She let out a giggle. “You weren’t supposed to agree with me.”
“My mistake. Sorry.”
“Will you still help me with my book?”
“If you want me to.”
“I want you to.”
Slowly, I became aware that she wasn’t lying completely still anymore. She was a living, breathing girl, her body warm and pliant against mine, stretching, arching … Her hand was on my stomach. My hand was on her round, firm hip. And she had nothing on under that shirt. And all I had to do was pull her over on top of me and …
“What are you doing, Clethra?”
“Nothing,” she insisted.
“Well, stop doing nothing.”
She lay still. From the chair I could hear Lulu snoring softly. Some goddamned chaperone.
“Did you and Arvin stay at Debbie’s Diner that whole time?”
“Well, yeah. Barry only left us there for maybe an hour.”
An hour. Was that enough time for Barry to get to the farm and do Thor and get back? Was an hour enough time to kill? “You didn’t go anywhere else?”
“Like, how could we? We didn’t have a car.”
“That’s right, you didn’t. And how long did you have to wait for us by yourself after Barry came back for him?”
“Maybe half an hour.”
“What did you do?”
“Um, I went to the ladies’ room, did some magazine grazing at the drugstore … Shit, I don’t remember. Why?”
“Just curious,” I said, thinking she sounded vague and evasive. Or was that just my imagination?
“Geez, you don’t think I killed Thor, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think, Clethra.”
We were silent then, her chest rising and falling more evenly as she started to drop off. But as soon as she did she let out a startled yelp and was awake again, remembering it all. “Hoagy, if I tell you something will you promise not to hate me?”
“I promise.”
She sniffled. “Mom never beat me and Arvy. Not really. I-I just said that to piss her off. Kind of a shitty thing to do, I guess.”
“Kind of.”
“I’m sorry, Hoagy.”
“I’m not the one you should be apologizing to.”
“I know. But I’m still sorry.” Her eyes were searching my face again. “It hurts, Hoagy. It really, really hurts.”
“I know it does, Clethra. And it’s going to keep hurting for a long, long time. But eventually you won’t feel it anymore. In fact, you won’t feel anything at all.”
“What do they call that?”
“Being middle-aged.”
“Sounds a lot like being dead.”
“It’s very similar, except it doesn’t last as long.”
“Hoagy?” she said drowsily.
“Yes, Clethra?”
“You take some getting used to.”
“So do you.”
She held her face up to mine. “G’night, homes.”
I kissed her on the forehead. “Goodnight, sweetheart.”
She lowered her head to my chest and slept. We both slept.
Seven
IT WAS THE SOUND of dishware breaking downstairs that woke me. The morning sun was streaming in the windows, and I was alone in the bed. Not so much as a trace of Lulu. A moment later I heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and then the door swung open and Clethra Feingold burst in carrying a breakfast tray, Lulu scrabbling along behind her, tail wagging happily. Dogs, it has been my experience, always wake up in a good mood.
“Well, well, what’s the occasion?” I said, sitting up.
“I thought it was time for me to start earning my keep,” Clethra replied brightly, up as a pup herself. Her hair was brushed, her cheeks flushed. She had on a flannel shirt and jeans. The top button of the jeans was unbuttoned, as were the bottom buttons of her shirt—the better to show off her belly button ring. “Um, there was this little white milk pitcher? With, like, these daisies on it? I hope it wasn’t too valuable …”
“What, that old thing?” That old thing had originally belonged to Merilee’s great-grandmother and had been handed down from daughter to daughter ever since. Merilee would weep. “Not to worry.”
Clethra set the tray down on the
bed next to me. There was orange juice. There was coffee. “I didn’t know how you took yours,” she said, meaning the coffee.
“Black is fine.” I took it from her and sipped it.
“How is it?”
I really did try to answer her, but no way. Not without airmailing it all over Aunt Patience’s quilt, which would have meant the ruination of Merilee’s second heirloom of the morning. I’d never tasted coffee quite like it before. But I certainly knew what to call it—Mocha Drano.
“It sucks, doesn’t it?” she agreed sheepishly. “I wasn’t sure how your coffeemaker worked, and I don’t usually make—”
“It’s fine,” I croaked. “Really.”
She sat on the edge of the bed, wringing her hands, suddenly very unsure of herself. “I-I put some food out for the cat. Lulu seemed hungry, too, only all I could find was the cat’s food. Where do you keep Lulu’s?”
“I’ll take care of her. You’re in much too fragile a state to know the truth.”
“Actually, I’m fine,” she insisted. “Last night was a big, big help. You’re a sugar, even though you try to pretend you’re not.”
“Actually, I’m flavored with NutraSweet.”
“Anyway, thanks. I mean it.”
“No problem. That’s what collaborators are for.”
She swallowed nervously, poking at the quilt next to my leg with her finger. “That’s what we are, huh?”
“That’s what we are,” I affirmed, wondering just exactly what was going on. Was this her trolling for a new daddy? She did have me here all to herself. And she had already worked her way into my bed. What next? Bust up a second family? First the mentor, now the pupil? Or was this all my sick imagination? After all, she was eighteen and alone and the roof had just caved in on her. I took her soft little hand and squeezed it. “And we’re friends as well. Thor was my friend, and you’re my friend. Okay?”
She nodded, blushing, and lingered there clutching my hand. “I guess you’ll be wanting to get dressed and stuff.”
“And stuff.”
“Cool.” She released my hand and got to her feet. “I’ll start your breakfast.”
“What am I having?” I asked warily.
“Irish oatmeal. I found it in the pantry. That okay?”
“Only if you’re going to join me.”
“I don’t do the breakfast thing.”
“Then forget it. No way.”
“But—”
“That’s my deal. Take it or leave it.”
She rolled her eyes—the all-suffering teenager bit. “Well … okay,” she said with great reluctance, as if this were some totally major sacrifice. Then she smiled at me quickly and went back downstairs.
I showered and shaved and doused myself in Floris. I dressed in the suit of dark brown wide-wale corduroy I’d had made for me in Milan. I wore an aged blue denim shirt and Fair Isle cashmere knit tie with it, the suede balmorals from Maxwell’s, Thor’s bracelet. By the time I made it downstairs a pair of Major Crime Squad investigators had shown up to paw around in the bottom of the pond some more. And the Irish oatmeal, which was on high heat, had boiled over and was streaming across the floor like high-fiber molten lava. Clethra was busy in the parlor watching That Girl with Mario Thomas and Ted Bessell. I turned the stove down and mopped up the spilled oatmeal and dumped Clethra’s pot of coffee down the kitchen sink, which had been draining rather sluggishly of late anyway. Then I made some genuine coffee and leafed through the stack of faxes her editor had sent. That morning’s coverage of the murder in the New York newspapers: SNIPPED AND DIPPED screamed the Post. THE FINAL BLOW cried the Daily News. LEGENDARY AMERICAN AUTHOR DIES IN RURAL CONNECTICUT POND yawned the Times. Also three faxes of her own devising: “Are we still on?” asked the first one. “How soon can you deliver?” asked the second one. The third one declared: “We’ll stand by her no matter what, if you know what I mean.” Oh, I knew what she meant, all right. Even if we’re sitting on the killer’s very own confession was what she meant. And no doubt hoped. Which explained why the woman liked sending faxes so much. The whirring noise helped drown out that nagging sound of Maxwell Perkins spinning in his grave. I tore the faxes up into tiny pieces and threw them out and put the phone back on the hook. Would have been unprofessional not to.
It started ringing right away—crazed, feverish producers for Hard Copy, A Current Affair and Inside Edition offering me up to $750,000 for the exclusive story of Thor’s last days. When I said no they immediately asked to speak to Clethra. When I hung up on them the crazed, feverish producers for Paula and Diane and Katie called offering me a sober, responsible network face time with Paula and Diane and Katie, like this somehow beat out three quarters of a mil and the chance to appear on the same show as Bob Barker’s sex slave. When I hung up on them a crazed, feverish editor of The New York Times Book Review called asking me if I’d contribute a twenty-five-word remembrance of Thor Gibbs for a special tribute they were putting together. So far they’d lined up Erica Jong, Bret Easton Ellis, Jerry Seinfeld, Simpsons’ creator Matt Groening and supermodel Naomi Campbell. I said no to this, too. I said no to everybody. If the grand-high-exalted Tina Brown herself had called and asked me out to lunch I would have said no.
Then Dwayne Gobble checked in. “Just wondered if you’ll be wanting me this morning, Mr. H,” he said, his voice over the phone somber and respectful. “I mean, I figured maybe you folks would be wanting to be alone today …”
“Let’s make it tomorrow, Dwayne. The police are still poking around. Oh, and Dwayne?”
“Yessir?”
“The tabloid TV shows may start phoning you.”
“No shit, man. They, like, already have, but I … Wait, can you hang on a sec?” I heard a muffled exchange before Dwayne said, “In a minute, Mom, okay?” Sounding weary and annoyed. “Sorry about that, Mr. H. Where was I?”
“The tabloid TV shows.”
“Oh, right. Told ’em all to get fucked. Mr. Gibbs was a great man. Man like that, you’re supposed to treat his death with reverence, not try to cash in on it.”
“You’re a good man, Dwayne.”
“Be seeing you tomorrow, Mr. H. And please give my best to Clethra.”
I left the phone off the hook after that. Served up the porridge, put out the maple syrup and honey. She came when I called her and flopped down at the kitchen table, twirling her hair distractedly around her index finger.
“Dwayne sends his best.”
She played with her food, her plump lower lip stuck out. “He’s a lot smarter than I expected. Reads a lot of serious books. He even reads you.”
“I make for a nice break from the serious stuff.”
“He said I should try reading you. Should I?”
“Not if you intend to become a healthy, productive member of society.” I tried her oatmeal. Not too terrible, actually. Would be perfect in between those troublesome loose bricks in the chimney. “He thought we’d want to be alone today.”
Her eyes sparkled at me with flirty mischief. “Do we?”
“That’s entirely up to you. We could start working together.”
She set her spoon down, her breakfast untouched. “Like how?”
“Like I could ask you questions and you could answer them.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” she allowed. “Only, I wanna talk about you first.”
The old role reversal bit. I’ve gotten it from every single celebrity I’ve ever worked for. They need to know they can poke and prod at me the same way I’m poking and prodding at them. It makes them feel less vulnerable. “If you’d like,” I agreed.
“Okay, how long have you and Merilee been together?”
“Twelve years, off and on.”
“Like, how come?”
“How come the off or how come the on?”
“The off, for starters,” she said.
“Sometimes we can’t stand to be together.”
“Okay, how about the on?”
“Som
etimes we can’t stand to be apart. Eat your oatmeal.”
“It’s boring.” She curled her lip at it.
“Do you want me to make you something else?”
“How come you two won’t get married again?”
“Why, have you been talking to my father?”
She let out a giggle. “Do you get it on with other girls?”
I finished my oatmeal, somehow, and put the bowl down for Lulu to lick. She doesn’t care for oatmeal, but she likes to reserve the right to change her mind at any time. In this sense she is very much like a cat or the head of a film studio. “Other girls?”
“Like when you and her aren’t getting along, I mean. Do you?”
“Not lately, no.”
“Does Merilee?”
“Get it on with other girls?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I wouldn’t know. We respect each other’s privacy.” I poured myself more coffee and sat back down with it. “Why, did Tyler go out on you?”
“All the time!” she flared, her little fists clenching. “He’d, I’m like, bail on me because he had this big paper due, okay? So I’d show up at some party somewhere, okay? And there he’d be with some bitch—like his tongue down her throat and everything, okay? One time it was one of my best friends even. I mean, that’s just so shitty.”
“What if you wanted to see another guy?”
“I’d be straight up about it.”
“What if he minded?”
“Then I’d tell him, like, Tyler, you’re being a dick, okay? I’m my own person, okay?”
“Did you tell him you were seeing Thor?”
“No way!” she replied sharply. “I mean, me and Tyler were history by then.”
“He didn’t know about you and Thor?” I persisted. “Before it all blew up in the press, I mean.”
“That’s right,” she said, her eyes avoiding mine across the table.
She wasn’t telling me the truth. This much was obvious. Meaning what? That she’d continued seeing Tyler even after she and Thor had become a famous couple? Or that Tyler knew her relationship with Thor had begun earlier than she and Thor had admitted—like when she was still sixteen? Not that this mattered, of course. She and Thor had never actually had sex.
The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy Page 16