On Monday, I returned to the more mundane, but more immediately rewarding world of foundation work.
When I walked into the office, I found my staff gathered around that morning’s paper, which contained the first printed word of the weekend’s death and destruction. Faye Basil’s expression was maternal, concerned. “Jenny,” she said, “are you all right?” I assured them all that I was. My assistant director, Derek Jones, wanted to know who killed Reich, as if I were privy to secret information. “Do the police know something they’re not telling?” Derek demanded.
“If they do,” I said, “they’re not telling me, either.”
“Why would anybody want to harm the project?” asked Marvin Lastelic, our part-time controller. He looked hurt, as would many people in this town when they considered that same question. “It’s a good thing for everybody!”
“I don’t know, Marv.”
The paper headlined: HARBOR PROJECT SABOTAGED, with a subhead that read like my own thoughts: Foreman Killed, Buildings Ablaze, and Vandalism Spell Trouble for Renovation. The first paragraphs detailed Reich’s plunge into the bay and the subsequent discovery of the slice in his brake line. Inside, there was a full-page spread of photographs from the groundbreaking.
“There’s you with the Reverend Eberhardt.” Faye Basil pointed at one of the pictures. Hardy and I grinned at each other as at some private joke, all hair, teeth and eyeballs. She said, “My, he’s nice-looking.”
“Here’s the one I like.” Derek chuckled. He pointed to a group picture that had been snapped at the exact moment when our committee fully comprehended the magnitude of the danger roaring toward us. It was funny, if inadvertently so. The photographer must have shot it seconds before he dropped his camera on the pier and joined the committee in our dive for safety. (One of the humorous ironies of that afternoon had been the anguish of the press corps who’d been in the news for once—while most of their equipment floated uselessly to the bottom of the bay. “Up a creek with a Pentax,” as one camerawoman had mourned.) There we all were, all ten of us: one face was openmouthed in. disbelief; another was dumb with shock; a third looked as if the devil himself were approaching in a pickup truck. As for me, if there had been a caption above my head, it would have read, “Oh shit.”
Derek’s finger moved down to a photograph of the police bringing Reich’s truck back up to the surface of the bay. “Jeez,” he said, and whistled. “When we promise publicity for the groundbreaking of Liberty Harbor, we deliver.”
“Jenny,” Faye interrupted, “the media are after you, I’m afraid. There are messages for you to call the Port Frederick Times, WKYZ, WNAB . . .” She held up a sheaf of pink slips and waved them under my nose, “And a couple of papers in Boston, or maybe they were TV stations . . .”
“They want to interview you as an eyewitness,” Marvin Lastelic said proudly. Marv was the oldest one of us on the Foundation staff; he was honest, loyal and dedicated. “I looked for you on the morning news shows, but I couldn’t find you.”
“I skipped town, Marvin.”
“So how is the detective?” Derek, ever impudent, grinned.
“Busy,” I said repressively. “As we all should be. Faye, I’ll take those messages now.” As I Hipped through them, I had an odd sensation that my staff was holding its collective breath. Then I came to the last pink slip. “Oh Lord,” I groaned. “My father called.”
They exchanged glances they meant to be discreet. It was no secret that James Damon Cain III was contentedly living out his forced retirement in Palm Springs, on the fat of the trust funds his father had left him and which the company bankruptcy had not touched.
“Did he say what he wants?” I asked Faye.
Again, those discreet glances that should have told me something.
“Uh,” said Faye.
“What?” I demanded, “What?”
“He’s here, Jenny,” Derek said.
“Here?” My voice rose in dismay. “In Poor Fred?”
“No . . .” Faye’s hazel eyes drifted toward the closed door of my office. “He’s here now . . . in your office.”
“Oh God, give me strength,” I moaned.
On cue, as if he’d been listening—which I doubted since my father had never really grasped the fact that entire hemispheres of people proceeded with their lives in his absence—his remarkable face appeared around the door. It was a deeply tanned face framed by a movie-star sweep of silver hair that brushed the collar of his open-neck golf shirt. You’d have sworn this was the American ambassador to the Court of St James, or Gary Grant’s twin brother. I’d known strangers to walk up and ask for his autograph, just because he looked as if he ought to be famous.
He was famous, all right, at least in Port Frederick.
Death and arson faded from my mind as I faced the more immediate dangers posed by the walking, talking disaster I called “Dad.”
“Jennifer, my dear,” he said, “how lovely to see you!”
Faye, despite all she knew about him, sighed.
I slumped within my sophisticated executive suit. I felt shrunken to ten years old again, and wishing my beautiful father would recognize my existence apart from his own. If he knew what I’d been through that weekend, he didn’t give a clue.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, thoroughly depressed. “How’s tricks?”
We pecked cheeks.
He followed me into my office and took the chair across from my desk. He’d never seen me at work before, but he didn’t comment on that, either.
“I nearly drowned this weekend, Dad,” I said ruthlessly. “And then I was nearly incinerated.”
“Were you?” He brightened as if I’d said a particularly clever thing. “Well, you’re looking fine now, dear. Do you know, there is no decent accommodation in this godforsaken burg? I’ve had to resort to a Ramada, if you can believe it.”
“How awful for you.”
“They don’t even turn down the bed linens at night!” He shook Ms gorgeous head over the slovenliness, not to mention the sheer inconsiderateness of it all “I’m so glad I didn’t bring your stepmother.”
One small step for mankind, I thought ungraciously.
“And how is your mother?” He was unaware of the incredible tactlessness in his conversational juxtaposition of the two women, one of whom he’d left for the other. “Is she doing well, Jennifer?”
“As well as can be expected,” I said in a dead-steady voice, “when one is comatose most of the time.”
“Good, good.” With my father, you were never sure if you were part of the conversation, because he never actually replied to anything that was said to him, but just carried on wherever his ephemeral mind led him. It was a lovely land my father inhabited, and one where no one else was admitted. He said, “Well, I thought I’d drop by Jack Fenton’s office at the bank this afternoon and offer my assistance.”
“I beg your pardon?”
’They’ll want the family to be part of it, of course,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was going on about. “And I do have all that valuable experience with major building projects.”
“Major building projects?” I stared at him. “You mean the canning plant you had built that threw us into bankruptcy? Is that the valuable experience you’re talking about, Dad?”
“Of course, dear.” He smiled, taking from my question only those words he chose to hear. “They’ll want me for an advisor of sorts, I expect. I’m a bit surprised I haven’t heard from Jack before this.”
“Dad?” I waited until I thought I had his eye, “What are you talking about, Dad?”
The fine gray eyes drifted toward the window and out to sea again. “They might have named it Cain Harbor,” he said with an unmistakable trace of miff. “The plant was just up the road, after all, and the family has been awfully important to this town.”
“You can say that again.” And if he didn’t, all those employees he had betrayed would. I was beginning to get a familiar sinking feeling that I associated only with my father. With a sense of dread, I said, “You’re not talking about Liberty Harbor, are you?”
“Such a meaningless name, no connection to history at all,” he replied, conveniently ignoring three hundred years of black struggle. “Now Cain Harbor . . . that has some snap!”
“Snap,” I said like a stunned parrot. “Dad, you haven’t come back just to get involved with Liberty Harbor . . . have you? Is that what you’re saying?”
His eyes focused for a brief instant.
“Of course,” he said petulantly. “I wish you’d pay attention, Jennifer. They’ll need the backing of some of the more influential families, don’t you know. It seems to me a small thing I can do for my hometown.”
“Noblesse oblige,” I murmured, reeling.
“I want you to get the press on the phone,” my father said firmly, as if they were one entity with one telephone. “And let them know that Jimmy Cain is back in town!”
I couldn’t speak. It was all I could do not to laugh hysterically. As I struggled to maintain sobriety, he gazed benignly out the window, smiling to himself at some private amusement. And suddenly I felt protective toward this loopy person who was my father. No way would I deliver him into the hands of reporters to whom he would be tasty front page copy. I could see the headlines; calamity caw returns! No, he and the town must be spared that ordeal. Besides, if he made the papers again, my sister would go bonkers, and that would further complicate my life.
“Dad.” I was brilliantly inspired. “As long as you’re here, how would you like to stay on a boat?”
He seemed to think it over.
“Is it a nice one?” my father said.
At that moment, Faye put through a phone call from Webster Helms, the project architect.
“Jenny!” His voice, always reedy, was registering on this day in the higher ranges of hysteria. “I’ve called an emergency meeting of the advisory committee. My office. Conference Room. Two o’clock.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Got to nip this in the bud!”
“Fine.”
While she had me, Faye put through another call.
“Thought you’d like to know,” Geof said in evident disgust, “that thanks to the shortsightedness of yours truly, Belzer got his own fingerprints all over Reich’s truck. It’s useless to us in that way now.”
“Um.”
“Jenny, are you there?”
“Sure.”
“You sound preoccupied. What’s going on down there that’s more engrossing than murder?”
“I don’t believe you’ve met my father,” I said.
The next call was one I made, and with it I got Dad fixed up with a place to stay that was more to his liking. The Amy Denise was no billionaire’s yacht, but it was nicely appointed for a boat its size. Even though there would be no “one to turn down his sheets at night, the idea of staying on a boat offered just enough social cachet, with a hint of daring, to tickle my father’s fancy. Furthermore, Ted Sullivan professed delight at having a guest aboard to look after his boat for a while.
“I hope it will be a short while,” I told Ted.
“I’m sure you do,” he said with toll understanding. “Just keep me posted as to where he takes her.”
“I will. Ted.”
But what to do in the meantime with my dad?
“Derek!”
His trim blond head appeared in my office doorway.
“Drive my father to the bank, will you?” I said. “And personally escort him to Jack Fenton’s office.” If anyone could keep Jimmy Cain out of trouble for the rest of the day, the banker could.
“Gotcha,” said Derek, with a knowing nod.
Finally, I was able to turn to Foundation business. For the first time since Friday morning, life seemed a little more under control.