“Jenny.” Geof spoke privately to me a few minutes later when we were outside again under the floodlights. It was going on eleven o’clock. “Of course I’ll let him go. I have no intention of allowing him to go to jail. But you understand that he was trespassing on plainly marked private property, and that it will be worse for him in the long run if I don’t put him through the usual drill. Because he’s your father, I’ll have to be extremely careful to see that he receives no preferential treatment.” He smiled slightly. “At least no overt preferential treatment.”
My father sat in the back of an ambulance, staring out the window at me like a puppy in a pet shop.
“I can’t bear this,” I said.
“Sure you can. Listen to me. This all depends on whether or not the owners of the mall decide to press charges. And since I’m the one who’s going to describe tonight’s events to them, you can be fairly sure they won’t do it.”
“I don’t want you to get into trouble.” In truth, I might have sacrificed anything or anybody to avoid this latest family humiliation.
He smiled. “I’ve been known to take care of myself. You want to come down to the hospital and then to the station with us, don’t you?”
“Yes. And no.”
“That’s what I thought.” He gave me the keys to his car. “Follow us then. And don’t worry any more than you absolutely have to, do you hear me? I’ll take care of your father. He is a funny old guy, isn’t he?”
“How nice of you to put that interpretation on it. Oh God, wait until the papers get wind of this. Wait until my sister hears about it. Lord, I guess I’d better call my stepmother in California. And our lawyers. And . . .”
“Don’t,” he said sternly. “Don’t break down now, I mean. He needs you.”
“You haven’t any idea of the irony of that statement.”
“I know all about that, Jenny,” he said. “I know how little he was there when you needed him. At the moment, that’s irrelevant, don’t you think? He’s your father. You’re his only functioning daughter. Sometimes life comes down to equations as simple and basic as that.”
“You have an overdeveloped sense of duty.” But I reached up to kiss him on the cheek. The hell with Webster Helms and Officer Ashley Meredith and all the others who were avidly watching us with sidelong glances. If there was anything I’d learned from my crazy family, it was if you’re going to make a spectacle of yourself, by God make a spectacle of yourself.
Then I followed my father to the hospital.
Four hours later, he was released into my custody. I couldn’t take him to stay at Geof’s house with me, because of the uproar that would cause—suspect rooms with top cop—so Geof drove us over there, I packed a few of my things, put my exhausted father into my car and moved onto the Amy Denise with him.
He was staying in the large aft cabin where Geof and I had unsuccessfully tried to spend one night. I moved myself into the forward V-berth. My father went quietly to bed without inquiring what I intended to do with him next. What I did was to climb to the bridge, start the engines and steer us to an out-of-the-way cove that I knew. I dropped anchor in the middle of it, out of shouting reach of the shore. Any reporter who wanted this story would have to find us first and then row through heavy chop to reach us. It was uncomfortably bumpy for us in that cove, too, but that was a small price to pay for refuge, no matter how temporary or illusory.
When I crawled into my narrow bunk it was five o’clock in the morning of another hot and cloudless day. There were, however, clouds on my internal horizon. They didn’t keep me from sleeping.
My travel alarm clock went off at seven. Work awaited, regardless of the fate of feckless and/or felonious fathers. The night before, in order to get to the Amy Denise anchored in Liberty Harbor Bay, we had had to take the Boston whaler back out again. Because the Citizens’ Watch Committee was convinced it had its man, they’d gone home, so there was no one to stop us. Geof had managed to delay the impounding of the Boston whaler for evidence, a sleight of hand he’d have to deal with when he faced his higher-ups in the morning. I had the queasy feeling I was corrupting an honest cop, one who might decide that the price of having me was not worth the loss of his integrity. But on this morning, I was practically, not philosophically, minded.
Rather than go to the considerable effort of winching the small boat up to the bridge of the Amy Denise, I had merely tied her to the aft deck and crossed my fingers. Now she was still there, bobbing happily in that way that Boston whalers have of seeming to say, “Let’s play.” I rolled up my business clothes in a plastic trashbag, then stuck my purse and briefcase in it as well, left my father a stern note on the refrigerator, and climbed down the swim ladder to the little boat. I was commuting to shore in a swimming suit. The whaler had an engine which my father the spy had chosen not to use the night before, opting, instead, for the stealthy silence of the oars; for once in my life, I followed his lead. No use advertising our comings and goings with any more noise than necessary. I rowed to shore, knowing a short walk would take me to a pay phone, which would get me a taxi, which would take me back to the marina so I could pick up my car and go to the office.
By ten, I was dry, dressed and walking in the door to be greeted by Faye Basil and Derek Jones.
“Just because you’re the boss,” my assistant said grumpily, “doesn’t mean you get to sleep ’til noon!”