It was one thing to follow Geof around the police station, passively experiencing a murder investigation, almost enjoying it, in fact, since it was a fascinating process and the victims were nobody I mourned. How different it felt to be aggressively involved. With every question I asked, I ran the risk of losing friends and making enemies, and of combining all the answers to those questions into wrong, even hateful and potentially harmful conclusions. Who did I think I was, anyway?
I was my father’s daughter, a fact that could have been interpreted in less than flattering ways which I chose to overlook.
Nevertheless, I drove away from the bank feeling tired, discouraged, humbled, depressed. Which was more or less how Geof had described himself as feeling during the low moments of an investigation when all roads were cul-de-sacs that led back to the beginning.
I returned to the shoreline where I had moored the dinghy, I hauled the rest of my gear to the little boat, locked my car and rowed back to the Amy Denise. Halfway there, I remembered that I had neglected to stop at a grocery for supplies, I could only hope that my father had not already consumed the contents of the grocery sacks I’d helped him load the night he moved onto the boat. It seemed doubtful that he could have eaten all of it already: caviar, two pounds of Brie, imported pâté, biscuits in tins from England, fresh blueberries, raspberries and strawberries, chocolates, macadamia nuts, beef tenderloin, veal cutlets, new potatoes, Belgian ham, Spanish olives, Greek bread and Russian vodka. He’d been disappointed when we couldn’t locate any imported French butter; but I’d assured him there was margarine aboard, left over from the lobster feast that Geof and I had enjoyed. “Oh well,” my father said, followed by one of the few parental homilies he’d ever uttered: “We can’t have everything we want in life, Jennifer. Sometimes we must make do with what the fates provide.” To which he’d added thoughtfully, “That’s a good lesson to remember, my dear.”
Well, the fates had provided me with a gooney bird of a father. I rowed to the boat, tied the dinghy to the swim ladder, climbed up, awkwardly hauling my gear with me, swung my legs over the rail, stood on the aft deck and commenced to make do.
“Dad,” I said midway through dinner, “what did the police ask you before I got to the station last night?”
His consciousness seemed to float in from a great distance, perhaps from California. “Ask me?” He looked puzzled. “I told them how lovely the coast, the other coast, is this time of year. The sea lions come up, you know, and at other times, the whales.”
“I’m sure you did, Dad. I’m sure it is. Dad, did they want to know where you were last Sunday? Where you were a week ago Friday, and the following Saturday? Did they ask you questions like those?”
“What is today, Jennifer?”
“Monday.”
“We usually go to one of our clubs on Mondays, you know. There’s dancing on the patio until midnight, and oh, you’d adore the orchestra, I feel certain you would. You do like to dance, don’t you, Jennifer?”
“Why were you at the church yesterday, Dad?”
“Jennifer,” he said, unexpectedly alert, “you can’t expect me to remain on this boat all the time. Besides, it was an excellent chance to present my views to the media.”
“Views?”
“Yes, about how the town ought to rename that place Cain Harbor.”
“Dad! You didn’t say that to a reporter, did you?”
“No.” He was put out, “They all ran off after that nasty short loud man before I had the opportunity.”
“But how did you know about the event at the church?”
“I picked up a paper at the marina when I docked there Sunday morning. And I rented a car to drive into town.” He was answering questions more directly than in all the thirty years I’d known him. I pressed him while I had him.
“So when did you leave the church, Dad?”
He poked a forkful of veal into his mouth. I hoped he could remember the question long enough to chew, swallow, then deliver an answer; but I suspected I’d lost him. When his mouth was once more empty, he said to me, “Do you know, Jennifer, I saw oodles of people I knew at that church. Don’t you think that’s odd? But nobody was around after the service; I looked for all my old friends, but they’d gone.”
“I’m sorry.” I was, too, because I wanted somebody who recognized him to have seen him leave that church before Atheneum McGee was killed in it. I made another stab at a pertinent theme.
“You came to my office last Monday morning, but when did you actually get to town, Dad?”
He twirled a forkful of noodles into a fat, glistening ball and popped it whole into his mouth.
“Dad?”
“That weekend,” he said vaguely.
“You mean Sunday? Or do you mean Saturday? Where were you a week ago Saturday, Dad?”
He sighed and laid down his fork, obviously humoring me. “I told you, dear, I was staying at that motel where they don’t even furnish coffee and croissants and The Los Angeles Times in the morning. And let me think, I believe that after the groundbreaking ceremony, I stopped at The Buoy for a drink. Ran into some old friends there, too, but they were in a hurry to get someplace else. In a hurry is a funny thing to be on Saturday, don’t you think?”
I laid down my own fork and stared at him.
“You were at the groundbreaking ceremony?”
He smiled, but it held regret. “Do you think it was wise to wear black linen in the middle of the day? I would have thought it more appropriate for evening and for cooler weather, but then I suppose you know best about those things. Perhaps I’ll ask your stepmother, if you’d like me to.”
“But I didn’t see you there. Were you standing on the shore with the other spectators?”
“Oh my, no!” He was amused. “No, I had a rental car, you see, so I drove up to that old lover’s leap. It’s certainly become filthy, I must say, but one gets such a marvelous view of the whole bay from up there.”
“Lover’s leap?”
“Yes, dear, I wanted to see all the action.”
“You wanted to see all what action?”
“Jennifer, is there more veal? Really, you’re almost as good a cook as your mother, although one would never have guessed it from those dreadful grilled cheese-and-tomato sandwiches you used to burn as a child.”
“What action, Dad? Why were you expecting action?”
“And a little more noodles, if you please.”
“Dad.”
He looked at me, plainly exasperated. “All right then,” he said, “I’ll get it myself. Honestly, this liberation business is all right, but not in a man’s home.”
My father rose stiffly from the table to fetch a second helping, I remained, dumbfounded, at the table. For the first time in my life, I wondered if his famous vagueness was affected to further his own devious ends. The night before, Geof had laughed and said, “Trying to question your father is like trying to pin down a cloud. Just when you think you’ve got it, it floats off in another direction.”
He returned to the table in wounded silence and thumped down his plate with unnecessary force. I’d never get anything out of him now; he was angry, or pretending to be. And I was too tired to care. I washed the dishes when we finished, dried them and secured them in the cupboards. Then, after offering a “good night” to which there was no reply, I descended to the forward cabin. My father had tossed his life preserver on my bunk. I picked it up to fling it aside, but changed my mind and held it for a moment in my hands.
My father, I thought, wanting to wear a life preserver in a diving competition. My father, wearing a life preserver the night before at Liberty Harbor, so he looked like a bald weightlifter. My father, whose only real life preserver at the moment was a daughter who wasn’t helping much.
I laid the preserver on the other bunk, crawled into my own bunk and was quickly asleep. Toward morning, I came abruptly awake. I threw off my sheet, reached over for that life preserver and crowed: I’ll be damned, so that’s why!” And then the full meaning of what I had just realized struck me. After that, I didn’t sleep so well.
I could hardly wait for morning.