Within the hour, it was clear that my presence was not only not a help to the Port Frederick Civic Foundation, but that it was a hindrance of awesome proportions. As if through some intuitive cue, the deluge of phone calls began as soon as I sat down at my desk and tried to focus on the work for which I was being paid.
My sister Sherry got to me first, the press having gotten to her first. She was strangely, uncharacteristically calm. “I don’t have anything to do with this,” she informed me in clipped tones. “I don’t have anything to do with him. I am leaving town. I am packing and going away to Europe on the next Concorde and I am taking my family with me. I am not hysterical, Jenny. Please note that I am not hysterical. I am merely leaving, that’s all. If they hang him, save me a piece of rope for old times’ sake.” Now that was more like the loving sister I knew so well.
“Bon voyage,” I said without bitterness. Any crisis was easier to handle with her out of the way. As for my ailing mother, there was no reaching her with this or any other news. It was going to be Dad and me, alone together on the deep blue sea.
Her call was followed in quick and frantic order by one each from two local newspapers, a TV station, three radio stations, the regional cable affiliate and a reporter from Boston who’d already got wind of the news. To each in turn I said politely, “No comment.”
“What’s your dad got against that town?” the reporter from Boston pressed. I was just tired enough to be goaded into answering her.
“This is his home,” I replied. “He loves it like any other native son.”
“Is this part of a conspiracy that includes the bankruptcy of Cain Clams?” she asked sharply.
“Oh, please,” I said in disgust.
“Have they charged him yet with the murders of that man Reich and that what’s-his-name McGee fellow?”
“No! And there is no reason for you to assume they will. My father had nothing to do with those tragedies. Please don’t jump to such awful conclusions.”
“I hear he was a champion archer at Dartmouth.”
“Oh, Lord,” I sighed. “He went to Brown for half a semester in his freshman year before he flunked out. To my knowledge he has never lifted a bow and arrow in his life.”
“But he’s a mean man with a wrench,” she said nastily.
I hung up on her, something I should have done several questions earlier. But she was the only ugly one among the dozen or so who called; the others were locals who knew me personally. They were courteous, apologetic, as kind as they could be considering the questions they had to ask. “It’s a terrible sign,” I said to Faye, “when reporters are kind and gentle with you. It means they like you, and they sure are sorry, but they’re going to crucify you because they think you’re guilty as hell. They think he did it, Faye.”
She reached across my desk to pat my hand.
I felt my eyes fill and quickly blinked.
“Your father,” she said sweetly, “wouldn’t kill a fly. Mainly because it would never occur to him to do it himself.”
I looked up at her in surprise, saw the kind twinkle in her eyes and began to laugh, I was still smiling, and feeling cheered, when the phone began its siren call again.
“Jennifer,” said Webster Helms with a new formality in his voice that boded ill for my family. “I was appalled to learn this morning that your father has been released instead of being held in jail where he should be. I am sorry, Jennifer, but the man is a menace to this community. I think it only fair to warn, you that I intend to do everything in my power to see that the full force of the law is brought to bear against him and that a full-scale investigation of his recent activities be launched by an independent, nonbiased investigator.”
“Are you reading that, Webster?” I said recklessly. “Or did you memorize it before you called?”
There was a moment of charged and angry silence on both ends of the line. Finally he said stiffly, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Jennifer.”
I let him hang up first.
Immediately, the phone buzzed again. I let it ring, I looked into the outer office where my staff was pretending to work on grants, investments and applications. Then I punched another outside line, first to let Ted Sullivan know where I’d taken his boat, then to call the First City Bank.
“Jack Fenton, please,” I said to the switchboard.
His secretary put me through immediately, her voice so tactfully devoid of expression that it told me hundreds of things I didn’t want to hear about how the average citizen was reacting to the news of my father’s arrest and release.
“I’m so sorry,” Jack said as soon as he came on the line. “What can I do to help you, Jennifer?”
“He didn’t do it, Jack. He didn’t do anything but play James Bond for a night.”
“I know that, my dear.”
“Oh,” I said, and leaned my forehead into my open palm. “Thank you for that, I’ll tell you what else you can do for me if you would: you can assume the authority for giving me an early vacation, and clear it later with the rest of the board.”
He clucked sympathetically. “Yes, it’s probably hell trying to work through all this.”
“It’s not that,” I said. “Well, yes, it is hell. And as long as this continues, and as long as I continue to hang around the office, this Foundation will suffer from lack of work and concentration. But that’s not the only reason I want the time off, Jack.” I was beginning to feel clear-headed for the first time that morning. “My father didn’t do any of the things people are assuming he did. You and I both know that as well as we know there’s no Santa Claus. But somebody did it, Jack. Somebody killed Reich. Somebody killed McGee. Somebody shot those burning arrows into Webster’s shack and somebody got to Shattuck’s vehicles. Maybe it’s one and the same person, maybe it’s not. But finding out who it is may be the only way I’ll ever clear my father in the mind and heart of this city.”
“Jennifer, the police . . .”
“Are having a tough enough time as it is,” I said bluntly, “because of the conflict of interest charges that are arising out of my relationship with Geof Bushfield.”
“A crusade is a lonely and dangerous undertaking,” he said slowly. “Sometimes crusaders don’t come home at all. And sometimes they find their holy pail is made of brass, and tarnished.”
I laughed softly. “My father would be so insulted, Jack, to think you considered him anything less than twenty-four-karat gold.”
The old banker chuckled, and I knew I’d won. “All right,” he said, giving me the feeling I’d just passed muster for a loan, “you do what you have to do. I’ll clear the road for you with the other trustees.”
“Thank you.”
“You be careful, young lady.”
“I will. Bless you.”
Next, I called the police station with every intention of informing Geof about what it was I intended to do. I was even going to ask his advice and enlist his aid in my quest.
“I’m taking a few days off,” I said, “until this thing gets straightened out or blows over.” And then I opened my mouth to tell him the rest of it. And couldn’t do it. At any rate, didn’t do it. “Geof,” I should have said, “I’m going to launch a little private investigation of my own to try to clear my father. Yes, I know it sounds like another vigilante committee—a group of one, in this case—but I’m, more personally involved than Web and his cohort. There’s not much left to my family name in the way of honor, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let them besmirch it falsely, I have to do this in the same way that I have to eat and sleep.”
That’s what I should have, might have, didn’t say.
Instead, I added lamely, “I’d better stay close to my dad to keep him out of trouble.”
“I agree,” Geof said, so understandingly he doubled my guilt factor to an eight point five on a ten-point scale. “You know, this may not be what you want to hear, but I kind of liked him, Jenny. It’s not as if he wants to be a failure as a father or a husband. Or a businessman. I mean, the crazy irresponsible things he does only make it appear that way. The truth is, he wants approval and success as much as anybody. If there ever was a man whose actions belie the true motives of his heart, it’s your dad.”
“I don’t think,” I said evenly, “that an acquaintance of a few hours gives you lecturing privileges. May I respectfully point out that you haven’t known him as long or as well as I have.”
“You may,” he said quickly, apologetically. “And God knows you should. Listen, keep in regular touch with me, all right? I promise not to preach, and I’ll keep you informed about what’s going on with our various and multitudinous investigations.” He sighed wearily, having not had much more sleep than I. My guilt factor rose to an even nine points.
But if I were to make an ass of myself, it seemed better, kinder, to do it alone. Better to do my searching and probing and questioning without burdening him with the need to give me an official “No,” or an unofficial “Okay, but I wish you wouldn’t.” Life was complicated enough for him now, with his connection to the Calamity Cains; better to leave him out of my activities as much as possible.
That was the good news part of my rationale; the bad news part was that the night’s crises had left me feeling allied with my father in an us-against-the-world sort of way, that world unfortunately including policemen. Maybe it was only the effect of exhaustion, but I felt separated from Geof by a fog of suspicion, accusation, conflict of interest and doubt.
“Jenny,” he was saying, “there’s one thing I want you to remember while you’re lying out there in the sun on that boat.”
“What’s that?”
“I love you.”
Bingo: ten.
Saying good-bye to him depressed me. But then I put it out of my mind, clicked my briefcase and purse closed, grabbed both of them and walked over to Faye’s desk. After a few words of explanation and instruction, I said, “Tell whoever calls that I am on vacation and cannot be reached. I’ll call you every day to check on things. But basically it’s in your hands, yours and Derek’s and Marvin’s. Frankly, I think you’ll get more done without me.”
She looked at me sadly, without arguing the point.
I left the Foundation, wondering if my bosses, the trustees, could any longer afford to keep as director someone whose name was so frequently associated with scandal. “Good-bye,” I said, looking back. I felt depressed all over again.