by Hy Conrad
“It’s okay,” Callie assured him. “I know. Uncle Gil told me.”
“Told you what exactly?”
“He confirmed what I already saw. He says no one else knows. No other doctors or specialists. Is that true?”
Roger Oppenheimer checked the hallway, both directions. He would continue to check. “I’ve consulted specialists about this, without mentioning Buddy’s name. I visit the ranch once a week for monitoring. Callie, I owe your father.”
“Everyone owes him.” Spoken with a note of resignation. “Is that good or bad? I don’t know. We’ve heard it all our lives – how lucky we are to be Buddy McFee’s children.”
“I can’t speak to that,” said Oppenheimer. “I imagine it could be difficult.” His calm, understanding manner just irritated her more. “The nurse said you wanted to see me.”
“What’s his condition? Is he going to be all right?”
“I’ll take him off the respirator this afternoon and we’ll monitor him through the night. He didn’t take in a lot of smoke. I wrote on his chart that the event aggravated his asthma.”
“I thought he was done with that years ago.”
The ex-surgeon general glanced around. “Your father was pretty incoherent. The paramedics put it in their notes. The asthma was my way of covering.”
“I understand.”
“Someone’s going to have to tell him about the dog. That won’t be easy.” Callie had a feeling that job would become hers. “I can get a nurse to stay with him for a few days after he’s released, if you’d like.”
“I don’t know. We’ll see. Speaking of nurses…” She pulled the sleeve of Oppenheimer’s lab coat, moving him further into the room. “The nurse he has now,” she said. “Lindsey. Is she the best? I don’t mean to disparage anyone, but . . .”
“No, she’s not,” he replied bluntly. “The best nurses are attentive and curious and have a knowledge of general medicine almost as good as a doctor’s. Is that what you want?”
Callie thought. “I guess that’s not what I want.”
“You can decide what you think best. Lindsey shows up on time, makes no excuses and is perfectly competent.” Oppenheimer checked his clipboard. “Have you dropped by to see Gil?”
“Not yet.”
“He’s conscious now. I know he’s anxious to talk to you.”
“Thanks.” She glanced back at her sleeping, snoring father. “I’ll go see him now.”
The burn unit was on the same floor but in a newer wing, around the corner and through two sets of double doors. A woman doctor, Asian but with a British accent, escorted Callie past a row of therapy rooms and around another corner. “Mr. Morales is stabilized. He has a hydromorphone drip but he refuses to use it. He wants to talk to you first.”
“Me? Why me?”
“That’s what he said. His sister’s coming in from Houston. She should be here this evening – to see him and discuss treatment options.”
“Whatever he needs,” Callie said. “You hear about these new burn treatments. My father wants him to have the best.”
“We are the best,” the doctor informed her. Then a little more sympathetically: “I’m new to Texas. But the names McFee and Morales seem to carry weight. We even had a call from the governor.” In the old days, the governor would have shown up in person, Callie thought. “Mr. Morales is in a semi-private because they’re bigger in this ward, but he won’t have a roommate. That’s been made clear.”
Gil lay face up, both arms, from below the biceps to the hands, wrapped in bandages and propped up on pillows. One leg was also bandaged, with a gauze bootie on the foot. His face was shiny and bright, as if he’d suffered a bad sunburn. Gone was his short-cropped beard, replaced by a slightly less shiny section of skin. Like her father, Gil was hooked up to a vital signs monitor, but the respirator stood unused beside the bed. In the crook of his left arm was an IV drip with nothing going through it.
Gil’s eyes, brown marbles peering out from the red, focused on Callie. He said nothing as she took a visitor’s chair and moved it closer in. “Thank you.” Her words were heartfelt. “For trying to save Angus.”
“Your daddy loved him.” Speaking didn’t seem to add to his pain, at least not much. The brown marbles flitted over to the doctor. “Can you give us some privacy?”
“Certainly. A few minutes, no more.” She finished checking the monitor then retreated, turning as she reached the door. “Ms. McFee? Let someone know as soon as you leave. We really need to start his drip.”
Callie promised, then waited until the door was closed. “Uncle Gil, what happened?” Gil motioned with his head, very slightly, toward a tumbler of water on the bedside table. Callie lifted it to his mouth and positioned the straw.
He took a deep draw followed by a deep breath. “What took you so long? Your brother’s been here and gone.”
“An accident on the 183.”
“You should’ve taken the 35. I wanted to be alert for you, but you’re not making this easy. You didn’t use GPS?”
“It kept saying 183. Uncle Gil, I’m sorry.”
He took another sip and eased back on his pillow. “Dinner last night. Felix Gibson came over. A few of his staff.”
Callie knew Felix Gibson the way she knew most of her father’s cohorts. On Buddy’s resignation, he had taken over as attorney general. Felix was up for election now on his own and, barring any catastrophe, had a lock on a full term.
“Dinner did not go well. Your daddy was…” He searched for the right words. “…in a mood. Memory problems make him angry. And stubborn and antagonistic. Man had a mind like a steel trap. Now it’s a steel sieve.” Gil grinned at his own joke and winced.
“You think they got suspicious?”
“Hard to say. I tried to blame it on the whisky, but Felix is cagey. And his staff – scary bunch of shitheads, not like the old good old boys. I wound up picking a fight with them, as a distraction. A long evening where everyone pretends to be drunker than they are.”
“What does this have to do with the fire?”
“Maybe nothing. I don’t know. It started in his study, the inner sanctum. That’s the room with the most damage, making me naturally suspicious.” Gil returned to the straw and took another long draw. “This morning I wrote up the notes from last night. I shot them off to your daddy. Couple minutes later he came storming to the back of the house. Said I must’ve been drunk. The meeting didn’t happen that way, he said. Said I’m an idiot. I’m jeopardizing the reputation he’s built for over thirty years. I swear, Callie, if I didn’t love the man so…”
“Was he… in a mood?” She wondered if this was going to be the euphemism they used from now on.
Gil tried to relax his face. “It’s not like a light switch, you know, on or off. Sometimes he’s aware of his lapses. Sometimes he makes up new memories, just as real as anything. Sometimes he’s in the past. It’s not distinct. You can’t always tell.”
“And this meeting with Felix Gibson. What was it about?”
“Really, honey? You’re asking me that?”
“You’re the one who mentioned it.”
“It was about something that happened years ago. That’s all I can say.”
“Something you covered up years ago?”
“Not covered up. Helped people see reason.”
“And you think Felix or one of his men came back and set the fire? Why? To destroy any records?”
Gil lowered his voice from a rasp to a half-rasp. “Lawrence always kept his original notes, on his yellow pads, to cover his ass. He kept them locked in a file cabinet. A wooden file cabinet, unfortunately. I saw when I went in to get Angus. All destroyed.”
“Did anyone know about his notes? Did Felix know?”
“Who knows what anyone knows? Or suspects? Is it just coincidental? The morning after Lawrence goes off the rails, his records go up in smoke?” Gil squirmed and let out a soft groan. “I swear, my arms itch like the dickens. God damn.”
“Yeah, we do,” he finally agreed. “There’s a remote by my left hand. You can hit the button up to three times at once. Why don’t we try one?”
Callie found the small, square remote. It consisted of an LED clock and a single button. She pressed the button once, as instructed. “It may take a minute or two.” She returned to her chair on the other side and waited, wanting to take her cue from Gil. Whenever he was ready.
“Sometimes he realizes his condition and doesn’t want to believe it.”
“Is that what happened this morning?”
Gil nodded. Just knowing the drug was on its way made him breathe easier. “Buddy was half making sense, half not. Paranoid, like I was the one messing with his head. It took time to calm him down. Made him take a little shut-eye on my sofa. An alarm went off and I smelled smoke. We took the quickest way out, through my doors then around to the front.”
The drip was starting to have its effect. Gil told her about getting to the front lawn where Sarah was waiting. Buddy had tried to go back inside to find Angus and had gotten close enough to inhale a few lungsful of smoke before stumbling out. That’s when Gil ran in. He barely made it out, without the dog, collapsing on the lawn just as the firetrucks pulled up the drive.
“It could have been an electrical fire,” Callie suggested. “It’s an old house. Maybe Angus chewed on a wire or tipped something over.” Gil grunted, unconvinced. “What else could it be?”
The question hung in the air like a cloud. “You’re probably right. The fire department will figure out the cause.” Gil tilted his head toward the remote control. “One more.” He watched, almost hungrily, as she pushed the button. “Thanks.”
“I can do another.”
“Let’s not go crazy.” He smiled then his mouth turned serious. “Calista. You should come home.”
“Home? You mean the ranch? To live?” She took in a gulp of air. “No. Why, for God’s sake?”
“I won’t be out of this place for a while. When the house gets a structural okay, you can take him home. It’s an old stone building. I doubt most of it was affected.”
“I am not moving… For one thing, Dad would never go for it.”
“What are you talking about? He’d love having you home. He’s mentioned it.”
“What about State and Yolanda? He can live with them.”
“They only have the office as a guest room. And your dad needs supervision. Last week he went wandering down Hacienda Road in the dark. Had no idea where he was.”
“You never told me.”
“I found him on a tree swing in the Thornbecks’ front yard. Can you imagine Yolanda and the boys dealing with that? And him in a strange environment?”
Callie had to concede the point. “You’re right, he’ll be better at home. Sarah can move back in. And there’s this nurse dealing with Dad – Lindsey something. Look, even if I wanted to take care of him, I have a job.”
“It’s not just taking care. You don’t see it, but he’s more manageable when you’re around. Sarah can come full time, while you’re at work, and if we have to let her in our secret, we will. As for a nurse, I think not.”
“What about my life?”
“Since when do you have a life?”
It would have been more hurtful if it hadn’t been true. “That’s my new resolution, to get a life.”
“Calista, this is your father. It’ll be good for you, too. Just until I come home.”
“Just until?” Callie could sense the invisible wedge. At first it would be temporary, then once the wedge was in the crack… “What happened between Dad and me is not the whole… I can’t be my own person around him. No one can. No disrespect to you or to Mom. But this is not the long-term solution you want.”
“Who said long-term? Just until I scab up nice and regain the use of my limbs. It could be longer if they have to do skin grafts. C’mon.” He did his best to look pitiful and reasonable, a man with both arms and hands bandaged, with a bandaged leg and second degree burns across his face, a man who had gone back into a burning house to try to rescue her dog.
When she didn’t respond, the sweetness in his brown marbles hardened. “It’s payback time, Callie. You owe him this.”
CHAPTER 18
With her jaw clenched and her hands gripping the wheel, Callie turned left from the road onto the drive. As always, the canopy of oaks framed the view, but the full view was blocked by a fire department pumper, its hose snaked along the gravel. She assumed that other response vehicles had been on the scene and that this was the last.
Okay, not too bad, she thought as she drew closer. Most of the damage was on the ground floor. The windows of her father’s study had been blown out, the frames burned away and the smoky openings in the stone facade circled in black. The front hall windows were in the same condition and the charred remains of the front door lay splintered in the doorway, several pieces of it lying in a shallow pool of water. The room on the other side of the front hall, the day room, had fared better. The windows were gone, yes, but the soot around them wasn’t as thick and there was no smoke, at least none that she could see.
To one side of the drive were State’s car and a large SUV, red and white with “Fire Marshal” printed on the side. She had expected a few news vans. Even a small fire at Lawrence “Buddy” McFee’s home would be news. But Gil must have said something to the first responders. There wasn’t a reporter in sight – except her, she reminded herself.
Her brother stood by the open rear hatch, a uniformed fire official by his side, both of them bending over something in the rear section. They straightened up just as Callie got out of her truck.
“Callie.” State rushed over to meet her. “Where have you been?”
“To see Dad and Gil of course. And then…” For the second time today she’d been caught in traffic, this time on the 35. “Sorry. Is Angus still here? He’s not in the back of the truck, is he? I’m not sure I want to see.” She backed away and balled her fists. “Does that make me bad, not wanting to say good-bye to the poor old boy? I should say good-bye.”
“No, no, no.” He opened his arms and she fell into them. “It doesn’t make you anything. Angus was a good boy.”
“He was.” The tears were welling, but she didn’t have time for this indulgence. Later maybe, alone, over a few glasses of wine. She pulled out of his embrace. “Tell me he’s not in the truck.”
“Someone from the vet’s office took him away. They’ll want to know how to… You don’t have to decide now. This isn’t the time.”
“How to dispose of his remains? Is that what you were going to say?”
“They need to know about burial or cremation.”
“Cremation of a burned dog? Oh, my God, I can’t even think about that.”
“I had the same reaction,” State said and stepped back toward the SUV. “The chief and I were going over stuff. Want to join us?”
“Sure.” It would be a welcome distraction. Okay, not welcome, but a distraction.
The fire marshal, a middle-aged, folksy man with an overhanging stomach, introduced himself and offered his condolences. In the open rear of the chief’s SUV were a computer tablet, some half-filled-out forms and State’s trusty notepad and pen. Off to one side Callie noticed a longneck bottle of Lone Star, open and half-empty. State took a swig and offered her the rest. “There’s more in the pool house fridge if you want your own.”
She was surprised. “You’re not on duty?”
“I am. But they make exceptions when it’s your house on fire. Or they should.” Having a beer on duty was probably as close as State would get to showing stress.
Callie took the longneck and finished it off.
The fire marshal cleared his throat. “My men checked the smoke detectors. They were the old type – not hardwired. The three that should’ve worked had rundown batteries and were useless. The one in the dining room finally went off.” He shrugged. “T
he good news is the damage was limited. Water damage as much as fire. We’ll get the structural engineer in as soon as we can. The bad news is we don’t have a clear cause, so the arson boys – excuse me, arson officers – will need time before anyone can resume residency.”
“Arson?” Callie asked.
“That’s their title,” said the chief. “Until we have a clear cause, everything is arson. Most household fires start in kitchens or bedrooms. Up north in chimneys. A fire like this, in a home office where no one’s a smoker… I’m thinking electrical.” He went on to outline the current situation, the rooms affected, the estimated intensity, the personnel involved and their estimated time of departure. He entered something on his tablet. “We’ll keep the pumper here for another hour, in case of a flare-up. I know you hired a private security firm. That’s your right. But the study itself is off-limits. To everyone, including you two.”
“Security firm?” Callie asked.
“On Gil’s specific, insistent instructions.” State regarded the empty beer bottle. “Want another?”
“No, I’m fine. Can we go inside?”
The fire marshal gave his permission, once more warning them about the study. They gave him custody of the empty bottle and walked through the doorway puddle into the entry hall. The first thing Callie saw were the blackened remains of the parquet floor their mother had found in a classic Beaux Art hotel in Paris that was undergoing renovation. After several onslaughts of Texas charm, she’d persuaded the owner to sell her the old floor, then had it shipped over and installed piece by piece in the grand entry hall. For years after, she made the children take off their shoes before coming inside. Now it was just square pieces of charcoal. An armed guard in a private security uniform sat in a folding chair just outside the study door, examining his phone.
“Uncle Gil hired security?”
State nodded. “Seems like overkill. The department’s putting a patrol car at the front posts, 24/7, but Gil insisted on his own.”
