Self-preservation is a primordial instinct. It stokes feats of superhuman strength and endurance, miraculous cures, heinous crimes and political scandal. If the unvarnished truth were Jack's salvation, the decision would be academic.
It wasn't. Explain the stakeout at the deHavens, and he had to cite the Calendar Burglar. Do that and McGuire would ask why Jack believed the thief would hit that house, that night. Relating the kennel setup implicated Ms. Pearl, Angie Meadows, and Cherise Taylor impersonating Belle deHaven.
Above all, giving up Dina Wexler in the process would enlarge the frame to include her. Christ, even if it magically erased Jack from the suspect listwhich it wouldn'the couldn't do that.
Dina was a thief, a smart aleck, wore kids' department clothes, stuffed tissues in her shoes so they wouldn't fall off and snored in her sleep. Instead of assuming the best about a woman, then reality skewing the image, Jack had known the worst about her almost from hello.
It was like Harriet's damn fall-out-of-a-well analogy. Except the bottom kept sinking from under Jack, and he couldn't climb out with a friggin' crane.
"I didn't kill Belle deHaven," he said. "Your blind side that she was deadmurderedflattened me like a Mack truck. We loved each other. It just wasn't the kind you marry for, or can stay married for without losing the best parts of it."
McGuire's index finger and thumb imitated the world's smallest violin.
"Nice, ol' buddy. You don't want to hear me out? Fine. Charge me and add my name to the arraignment schedule."
His former classmate and friend had the grace to look contrite, but said, "Do I need to buy a machine sandwich and a soda? Or is there a chance I'll make it home for supper tonight."
By his girth, skipping meals wasn't a habit. Trading insults would amuse squad members monitoring the video feed in an adjacent room. As they preach in cop school, it wouldn't de-escalate the situation.
"I was working from approximately ten Sunday till approximately two Monday. By law, at Monday's interview and now, that's all I'm compelled to tell you. My mistake was trying to cover my ass without disclosing my client or nature of the case. Instead, I should have let it hang."
"Exigent circumstances," McGuire replied. "They allow statutes prohibiting a licensed investigator's breach of confidentiality to be waived without prejudice."
"Uh-uh. That's why loopholes bear an uncanny resemblance to nooses. Bottom line, what you have on me satisfied the judge who issued the search warrants, but the gaps are big enough for the Mack truck that keelhauled me to drive through."
Jack scooted to the edge of the chair and rested his forearms on the table. "It's what's missing that exonerates me, Andy. A Lone Ranger print on an exterior door frameinteresting. No lifts taken off any doorknobs or interior surfaces? Including the breaker box shut off before or shortly after Belle died? Makes no sense."
"So you gloved up."
"After I touched the door facing? Come on."
McGuire's eyebrow raised. "And you're admitting you knew the electricity was off. That wasn't in the press release."
"Didn't have to be. You showed me the prelim photos, remember? When was the last time you used portable halogens inside a house?"
"Six weeks ago."
Startled, Jack cursed himself for conclusion jumping, then recalled a squib in the newspaper. "A homeless guy that croaked in an abandoned shack doesn't count."
"You asked "
"Yeah, and here's another one. Earlier, you said the patrolman was responding to trouble calls at the residence."
"Did I?"
"How many calls? From whom? What time?"
"None of your concern."
"Well, the waterproof jogger's report wasn't one of them. You'd have thrown that at me from the get-go." Along with any neighbor's complaint of a suspicious person or persons skulking around the deHavens' backyard.
The motion detectors might have initiated a silent alarm to the security company. When no one answered at the house, a trouble call might have been forwarded to dispatch.
Jack said, "That leaves Carleton deHaven requesting a check-the-well-being on his wife."
"If you say so."
"Well, if not, when Belle didn't arrive in Little Rock as scheduled, I'd say that's more than passing strange. Wouldn't you?"
"I might."
"Still is, considering she should have landed eight hours before that well-being check." Jack sucked his teeth. "Kinda makes me wonder if it took that long for Mr. Airtight Alibi to realize it would seem more than passing strange, when his wife turned up dead."
"DeHaven is in the clear. Mrs. deHaven missed her flight. When the next and last of the day was weather-delayed, he assumed she'd opted to drive down."
"Missed her flight?" Jack repeated. "Shit yeah. She didn't live to make it to the airport."
"Sounds like a lefthanded confession to me, bud."
"Think, for God's sake. I had no reason to kill my ex-wife. The prenup gave deHaven five hundred thousand of them."
"How do you know?"
"She told me. I told her she was nuts to sign it."
"She didn't listen to you."
"She rarely did." Jack's advice on marrying Carleton deHaven at all was also ignored.
"You can't possibly believe I left a print, gloved up, killed Belle with a registered .38, sat in my car for an hour and a half, then hid said murder weapon in a drawer, hired a neighbor to clear out my whole friggin' apartment and moved inmoved somewhere else."
"Sure, I can." McGuire splayed his hands on the table and stood up. "Your motive is the oldest one in the book."
"What motive? I don't"
"Soon as we take a DNA swab and the wee, tiny bun in Mrs. deHaven's oven turns out to be yours, the prosecutor may up the charge to capital murder."
Cops lied. The more adept and experienced the investigator, the more he loved the irony in lying to extort the truth. To Jack's knowledge, Andy McGuire had dealt most every card off the top of the deck. And still was.
"Belle was pregnant?"
"Funny, her husband said that same exact thing. Except he isn't the father. He had a vasectomy years ago. The lab confirmed he's still shooting blanks."
McGuire picked up the handcuffs. "Since I'm 99.9 percent sure God isn't the daddy, either, whose little cabbage do you reckon it is?"
Jack sat there, stunned. His mind whirled a hundred revolutions per second. One thought clicked into place. "An attorney," he said. "I'm invoking my right to counsel."
14
"Shit, the" Dina yanked her hand off the saucepan's metal handle. Homemade tomato soup slopped over. The burner's jets crackled, licking at the spill, welding it to the side of the pan.
She abruptly turned off the burner and spun around. Stretched on tiptoes, she batted at the sink faucet. A practiced jab at the spigot with a wooden spoon sent cold water streaming over her palm. The burn crossing from the base of her index finger to the heel of her hand wasn't serious. Just stupid and careless.
Harriet had owned the copper-bottom cookware set so long, Paul Revere might have forged it, then leaped on his horse to holler, "The British are coming!" It was certainly manufactured before heat-resistant handles were invented.
"And a long time after pot holders were, you idiot."
The cold water's supposed power to soothe the sting did the opposite. Deciding her skin wouldn't blister, or if it did, it served her right, Dina shut off the tap and towel patted her hand.
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 w
ere 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."
Let Sleeping Dogs Lie Page 17