questions. Said when he hit a tree, remember, not long after he got here? State patrol handled the whole thing. He kept asking me why you were down at the department. It was almost as if he knew something was wrong with Doc Finn’s accident.”
Tom pulled out his small notebook. “Almost as if he knew something was wrong, huh?”
“Oh, Tom, for heaven’s sake. Doc Finn was Jack’s best friend.” My tone grew hot and defensive. “And anyway, Jack wanted to talk to you.”
Tom pushed his chair back from the table. “Well then, maybe we should oblige him. Care to take a walk across the street?”
“You’re going to interrogate my godfather?”
“I’m just going to ask him a few questions.”
“Tom!”
“Trust me, Goldy, your godfather is a wily old coot. He can read people the way preachers recite Bible verses. If he even sniffs this is an interrogation, he’ll lawyer up faster than you can say, Glory Be.”
I gritted my teeth and reached for my trench coat in the hall closet. While Tom waited for me on the porch, I felt a pang of guilt that we were going over to Jack’s with the intention of…well, what ever it was we were intending to do. I dashed back into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Sauternes, a little seventy-five-dollar-a- bottle number that a grateful client had given me. So far, I hadn’t had the heart to open it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Tom asked me when I appeared on the porch with the wine.
“I’m taking Jack this bottle—”
“Put it back.”
“Can’t I just—?”
“Absolutely not. Y’ever hear of the old saying, ‘Beware the gift giver’?”
“I can give Jack something if I want to!” I retorted. “I just brought him bread this morning!”
“He sees us coming? With you holding that? He’ll think,
“Tom!”
“You trust me on this, or not?”
Well, of couse I did. I put the bottle back. But I felt my nerves becoming even more frayed…and they’d been unraveling ever since Tom had arrived home.
“Tom, Gertie Girl, come in.” Jack’s tone was grateful as he opened his massive door, a large sculpted oak number that he had picked up at a salvage yard.
And so we entered Jack’s Jumble, as Arch called it. My godfather kept saying he was renovating, but as yet, there were few visible signs of improvement, either on the exterior or the interior. I could see why the persistently rainy weather would have prevented him from putting up new cedar-shake shingle siding, which was what he claimed he intended to do. But on the inside, he had no excuse that I could see. Fishing and carousing tended to derail motivation, in my view.
As we stepped into the gray-walled foyer that still showed the rectangular outlines of the previous owner’s pictures, it was clear Jack hadn’t made much progress. He’d gutted the first floor, so that instead of having a parlor, dining room, and who-knew-what-all Victorian-type rooms, he now had a big, open space. In the far-left corner, he’d put state-of-the-art appliances into what was going to be an open-plan kitchen…but he still had no cabinets or countertops. My feet gritted across the hardwood floors that Jack had uncovered when he’d torn up the old green- and-brown shag carpeting. As far as I knew, Jack had not made a move to refinish the floors, or even to call someone to get an estimate to have them done.
“Thanks for coming over.” He was trying to sound cheerful, but his voice was as forlorn as the long, high- ceilinged room that, he’d told me, would eventually double as both living and dining room. The whole area contained only a few pieces of furniture that Jack had bought from the local secondhand store, while his “good furniture,” as he called it, stayed in storage.
“Sit,” Jack invited us, sweeping his hand toward a threadbare, Victorian-style maroon velvet couch that had seen better days, I guessed, in a brothel. On each side of the couch, and in front of it, stood out-of-context teak Danish-modern tables that, more than the couch, had seen much better days. And then there were the two director’s chairs that looked as if they’d been fished out of a well, back when Orson Welles had been a director.
Tom sat in one of the director’s chairs, while I took my place at the far end of what I affectionately thought of as the johns’ couch.
Tom grinned. “I can see you’ve been keeping your nose to the remodeling grindstone.” He liked Jack, and the feeling was mutual.
“Can’t rush these things,” Jack commented. He gestured to an open bottle of scotch on the table, where there were also, I noted, three glasses, a carafe of water, and an ice bucket. Next to these cocktail fixings was a yellow legal pad and a pen, two lawyerly accoutrements that Jack had never been able to give up. “Drink?”
To my astonishment, Tom replied, “Sure.” I blinked, and tried to catch Tom’s eye. I had never once witnessed him take a drink from someone he wanted to question. He was always circumspect, if not downright wary.
“Gertie Girl?” Jack asked. “Same as usual?”
“With a lot of water, please, Jack. I’ve already had some sherry.”
“Tom?”
“Straight with a bit of ice, thanks, Jack.”
“Well, Tom-boy.” Jack shook his head. “You must really suspect me of doing something.” So, Tom was drinking and Jack was acting suspicious, and I was left to wonder what was going on. Muttering unintelligibly to himself, Jack poured us each a couple of fingers of scotch, added some water and ice to both, and handed them across. “Trying to throw me off guard, eh, Tom? Drink my scotch, see if you can get me to drink more than you do, loosen up my tongue, find out what I know about Doc Finn. Is that it?”
“Hey, neighbor, back off a bit,” Tom replied. He took a long swig of the proffered drink. “I know you were friends with Finn, and I’m sorry he’s gone.” Tom paused. “Goldy said you wanted to talk to me, that’s all.”
“I do.”
When no one said anything, Tom sipped his drink again and said finally, “So, you know anyone who wanted to hurt Doc Finn? Did he have any enemies?”
Jack surprised me again, this time by putting his head in his hands and starting to sob.
“Jack, Jack,” I said. I moved over next to him and put my arms around his heaving shoulders.
“This is my fault,” he howled. “It’s all my fault.”
I looked at Tom helplessly. Tom, in turn, gave me a warning glance that I knew meant—
“It’s not your fault, Jack,” I protested. “It’s the fault of the person who—”
“Goldy!” Tom shouted.
“Person who what?” Jack asked. He didn’t seem to be crying anymore, and he’d picked up the pen he’d put by the legal pad.
I took a deep breath and settled back into the lumpy couch. In front of the couch was a large picture window that had been put in by a previous owner, so Jack had a perfect view of our house. I resolved to look at our house and say not a word. If Tom and Jack were playing some kind of cat-and-mouse game, I didn’t have a rule book.
“Why is Doc Finn dying all your fault?” Tom asked gently.
“He was murdered, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” Tom replied. “Is that your fault?”
Jack shook his head. “It’s too complicated,” he said, his somber mood reasserting itself. He threw down the pen.
“I work all day at complicated,” Tom commented.
“Can you tell me how he was killed?” Jack asked.
“No can do, you know that, Counselor.”
