Twenty years ago, when I started preaching, I was expected to have a fresh sermon Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. It doesn’t matter how good a preacher you are, you’re going to run dry if you keep to that schedule. Thank you, God, most churches handle things differently now.
Unlike Tuesday nights, when you have a number of more secular and social classes to choose from, Wednesday night is worship and Bible study. You could choose from four or five adult Bible studies on Wednesday nights, and all our youth classes met then, too. Usually, this was time I enjoyed. I love my job, but it’s good to hear someone else’s take on the Christian walk.
Last night, the idea of sitting in any of the classes for an hour made me feel itchy all over. Like I ought to be someplace else, doing something else. I didn’t know what I could do, and that made it worse.
Worse yet was going out to my car with Annie Laurie at eight thirty—the soonest I could leave on Wednesday nights after all the meeting and greeting—neither of us having seen Jo anywhere in the halls. We thought she might be visiting in a friend’s car. She was. Alex’s.
Once we were all in our car (the wayward daughter, too), with the windows rolled up, I put the car into drive and said, “I thought I had made it plain that you weren’t to have anything to do with Alex until this whole mess was straightened out.”
Jo said, “Yes.”
I said, “Yes, what?” and squeezed past Mrs. Farmer, who will wait for an engraved invitation before she’ll venture into oncoming traffic.
She said, “Yes, sir.”
I said, “Jo, you know what I mean.”
Jo said, “Dad. Yes. You made it plain you didn’t want me to see or talk to Alex. You’ve been clear how you feel about me seeing Alex. What I don’t know is how your feelings fit in with your Christianity.”
If we hadn’t already been so close to home, I would have pulled the car over. Annie Laurie put a hand on my knee.
“Okay, explain that, please. The bit about my feelings and my Christianity.”
“All right. But just so you know, you are asking me a question, and I’m going to answer it honestly, and if you ground me for answering honestly, then you’re a Nazi.”
I said, taking a deep breath first (it didn’t help), “In the first place, Jo, you’re already grounded until your wisdom teeth come in, and that’s going to be when you’re around twenty-five—”
Annie Laurie said, “Actually Bear, Jo’s are coming in early. She’s going to have to have them out; I meant to tell you—”
“And in the second place,” I said, ignoring Annie Laurie’s helpful comment on Jo’s upcoming dental expenses, “we need to go over our World War Two history again if you think I’m being a Nazi—”
We pulled into the garage and Annie Laurie jumped out of the car saying, “I’m going to go walk Baby Bear while you two refight World War Two.”
I grabbed a bottle of water from the garage refrigerator on the way into the house. Jo, making a huge business of it, got a glass out of the cabinet, filled it with ice and tap water, and sat down in the easy chair Baby Bear favors. The tap water was her way of letting me know I was destroying the planet by way of disposable plastic bottles.
Jo said, “If you sit down instead of glowering over me, I’ll answer your question.”
Where does my girl get words like “glowering”? I can’t remember the last time she picked up a book that wasn’t required reading.
I sat down on the hassock in front of the fireplace. That put me eye to eye with Jo. She didn’t flinch.
Jo said, “Dad, will you please not interrupt—”
I said, “I never interrupt—”
“Like you just did? I’ll tell you when I’m done, okay? If you have a question, hold up two fingers. If I don’t stop, that means your question has to wait until I’m done.”
What she was doing was she was being snotty. Back when I read to Merrie and Jo, I used the two-finger method. If I hadn’t, we’d never have made it through a book.
Jo said, “And I’m not being snotty, either. I think your two-finger trick worked. So is that okay?”
I looked at my Jo, face like a heart, dark waves of hair falling halfway to her waist, her jeans too snug on her frail, slim body.
I said, “How am I not living up to my faith, Jo?” I really wanted her to tell me. I needed to know.
She said, “Okay, so you know how you used to read to us? Remember you read that book about how some German people fought back against the Nazis? How some people hid Jewish children, even though hiding them put their own children at risk? How the Nazis discovered some families that had hid Jewish children, and to make an example of them, the Nazis took away the Jewish children, and hung the family’s own children right in front of their eyes? Do you remember reading that to us?”
I did remember. Thinking back on it now, it seems like reading Foxe’s Book of Martyrs to children, but I thought it was a good idea at the time.
Jo said, “I remember Merrie asking you if you thought those parents had done the right thing, because parents are supposed to protect their children, and you said yes, the German parents had done the right thing, even though their children died, and they died, too. You said a Christian had to love God more than anyone else, more than your father or your mother or your children, and that the way you show God that you love Him is to ‘trust and obey.’ You remember?”
What I didn’t remember was Jo paying attention during all this reading and discussing. In my memory, she was always dressing and undressing Barbie dolls or messing with the hair on her My Little Pony while I read at bedtime. Merrie was the one who was listening. I finished my bottle of water and crushed it in my hands.
“So, Dad. You don’t want me to spend time with Alex because even though you know it’s not true, some tiny little weasel part of your brain thinks, ‘Oh my gosh, what if he’s a murderer.’” Jo used a deep “dad” voice.
“See, you’re trying to protect me. You’re mad at me all the time, but it’s still your job to protect me.”
The “weasel brain” didn’t hurt, but the “it’s your job” did. It really did.
“But, Dad, that’s like being a bad German parent. Alex is my friend. This is the worst time in his entire life.”
All sixteen years of it. I noticed that Alex was Jo’s “friend.” I wasn’t hearing anything about love from Jo. That was good. Unless it was bad. Unless Jo wasn’t saying she loved Alex because she thought she loved someone else. Someone older.
“His dad is dead and he’s dead in a horrible way because dying from murder is way worse than dying from cancer or something normal. And Alex was already upset about his dad before the murder so things weren’t good between them and they can’t be fixed now.”
Echoes of Honey’s grief, that now things could never be put right.
“The police are all over Alex’s case because of … stuff. His mom is a wreck and Jenasy is being a complete”—a look at me—“witch. And this is when you want me to stay away from Alex? When he needs me most of all? And you know what? Even if Alex was a murderer—Dad, sit back down, he’s not a murderer; he didn’t kill his father, but even if he did—you know what the Bible says? You have to forgive him. You have to. Because if you don’t, God won’t forgive you. That’s what it says, Dad. You know what you say from the pulpit, ‘Hard truths.’”
I held up two fingers.
Jo considered, and then nodded. “Go ahead, I’m not done, but you can ask a question.” She lifted her planet-friendly ice water to her mouth, drank, and set her glass on the floor near her feet.
The kitchen door opened. Annie and the dog were back. Baby Bear leapt into the room, did a fast circuit of the family room, kitchen, dining room, and hall bath, then ran back to the family room and jumped up into Jo’s lap. He outweighs her by nearly a hundred pounds, but Baby Bear can’t stop longing for the three or so months of his life when he could be called a lapdog. Jo pushed him to the floor and he settled betwee
n her Doc Martens, got up, sucked down half of Jo’s water, secured an ice cube, and settled back down to make a mess. Jo always wore those heavy black Doc Martens on her delicate little feet because if someone stepped on her foot and she was wearing sandals, it could mean an injury. If someone stepped on the Doc Martens, Jo wouldn’t even notice. And no matter how hard Baby Bear tried, he couldn’t get them off her feet. He’d pretty much given up trying.
I heard Annie take a glass from the cabinet, and then the glug of wine being poured. On a Wednesday night. She came in and sat on the arm of Jo’s easy chair, her wine-free hand automatically stroking and twining through Jo’s dark hair.
I said, “Jo, what about ‘Obey your parents’?”
Jo threw her hands out; the poor child was dealing with density.
“Dad, shit, that’s it.”
I started to say something.
Jo said, “‘Shit’ is a vulgarity, not a profanity. Nana says you’re very vulgar.”
I let it pass.
Jo said, “Dad, I’m sorry I said ‘shit.’ But don’t you get it? That’s what Jesus was saying when he said that ‘Love me more’ thing. It’s seriously wrong to abandon a friend; to abandon Alex when he needs me more than he ever did before, that’s like, that’s going-to-hell wrong. And even if it wasn’t wrong, Dad, I will never leave Alex, Dad, he loves me, he believes in me.”
And then the tears, and the rush upstairs, and the slammed bedroom door, and there I sat, two fingers up. “Jo, do you know I believe in you? Do you know I love you?”
Twenty-one
The phone rang at six seventeen. In the morning. That’s too early for calls. I haven’t had my coffee at six seventeen.
Honey’s voice was strangled with tears. I couldn’t understand a single word except, “Bear, Bear!” and that wasn’t helpful.
I took the phone with me into the bathroom and began brushing my teeth while I waited for Honey to calm herself enough to become articulate.
When she finally did, I felt like a toad for being so callous.
“They’ve arrested HD. They’ve arrested my daddy for murdering Graham.”
Annie Laurie said she wanted a larger share of our household income as she was doing triple duty as a wife and mother, an educational program developer, and a preacher’s wife, which, she insists, is a whole different job from being a regular wife.
I gratefully accepted the mega-mug of coffee, milk, and dash of vanilla syrup, and the peanut butter and banana sandwich she was handing over, and said she was welcome to whatever she could squeeze out of the household books; since she kept them, she would know best how much that would be. Baby Bear begged to be taken along, and I promised him a ride as soon as I could manage it.
The police station isn’t but a ten-minute drive. The sandwich was finished and I drank as much from my mega-mug as I could before I got out of the car. HD’s Bentley was parked in a corner of the lot. Someone, Fredrick, I guess, had parked in such a way as to take up two parking spaces. Honey nearly ran into me as the station door swung open.
She wore no makeup and her red hair was pulled straight back from her face. She was wearing yoga capris, a sports top, and sneakers. She had a light jacket tied around her waist. My guess was the call had caught her right before her morning workout.
“Oh, Bear. I can’t stop. Daddy won’t say a word until he’s had his breakfast. I’m off to get him some. Could you sit with him until I get back? Mom couldn’t come. She’s home with a sick headache.”
I said I would. But when I got inside, no one I asked seemed to think it was a good idea for me to go past the public area of the police station. Finally, I called Wanderley on my cell and he had me buzzed in.
In the movies and on TV, police stations are loud, cluttered messy places. Not here. The large room I found myself in was clean and bright and ordered. It was quiet, too. Soft phone conversations and the hum of electronics.
Wanderley poked his head out of an office, acknowledged me, and ducked back in for more hurried words. Neatly uniformed men and women moved in and out of the room doing whatever it was they were doing, quietly and without much drama. The pretty officer with the ponytail recognized me from the Garcia house and gave me a wave. There wasn’t any sign of HD.
Wanderley emerged from the side office with a sheaf of papers in his hands and a grim expression on his face. His grin was gone. His shirt was rumpled and his sleeves were rolled up. There was dried mud on his boots. He didn’t offer to shake hands and he raised an eyebrow inquiringly.
“Honey asked me to sit with HD.”
“You can’t do that, Bear. He’ll sit alone until I can be in there with him, and I don’t have time to waste if he won’t talk.”
“Look, Wanderley—” I started.
He put a hand on my wrist.
“Bear? It’s Detective. It’s always Detective Wanderley in here. Understand?”
“Look, I don’t want to second-guess you—”
“You’re going to anyway, right?”
“I’m—”
“You don’t want to second-guess me, but you’re going to. You’re going to ask me why I have that frail old man locked up in an interrogation room. Right?”
“I’m having trouble picturing that poor old man—”
“You are too quick to judge. With the leverage a golf club would give him, Parker isn’t too feeble to brain a man. If he had adequate motive.”
“And, Detective, what motive do you suppose HD could have had to kill his son-in-law?”
“I don’t know.” That came out quick and flat. Wanderley was waiting for me to ask that next question.
“Well, then, why did you go off and arrest an old man with no motive? An old guy so feeble he has a chauffeur to get him around?”
Wanderley turned his back and dropped the stack of papers on a desk.
“He drove himself down here this morning. There’s no chauffeur I’ve noticed. You want to take a look at him?” He looked at me over his shoulder and took off down a hall.
“At HD? Yeah.” I followed. Take a look at—that sounded objectifying. I don’t use that word but I know what it means. Also: HD drove here alone?
Wanderley stopped in front of a closed door. He looked through the wired glass of the window, and gestured me forward.
“Can’t I go in? I don’t want to stare at him through—”
“You can’t go in. You want to see him or not? He can’t see you. The glass is one-way.”
I saw a clean, bare room. It held a conference table and six chairs and a vending machine. HD sat in profile at one of the tables. It wasn’t yet eight in the morning. HD was cleanly shaven, dressed in a tailored, dark suit with a blue shirt and a bright red power tie. His cropped white hair was slicked back close to his scalp. HD’s hands were spread out on the table. His index finger was tapping a slow measure; otherwise he was still. He didn’t look around. He didn’t look worried. He looked prepared.
Wanderley touched my shoulder and I stepped back from the window.
“You wanted to know why I arrested an old man with no motive, Bear? I arrested HD Parker because he walked into the station this morning and confessed to the murder of Graham Garcia.”
“No,” I said, “he did not.” But I already believed it. Walking in and confessing like that seemed just like something HD would do, from what I’d seen.
Wanderley looked at me.
“You’re not taking him seriously, are you?” I said. “Wanderley, Detective, from what I’ve seen, HD isn’t entirely—”
“He referenced Ash Robinson.”
I took another step back. Oh no. No, no, no, no.
Ash Robinson was the father of Joan Robinson Hill, a Houston socialite who died under mysterious circumstances in 1969. What is pertinent about the reference is that Ash Robinson, a rich oil baron, believed his son-in-law, Dr. John Hill, was responsible for Joan’s death. He tried to have his son-in-law convicted of murder by omission—failing to provide Joan with proper
medical care—but a mistrial was declared. Robinson had also set a detective on his son-in-law, and had discovered that Dr. Hill was having an affair. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Hill was gunned down in the front door of his River Oaks home. Rumors were rife that Robinson had contracted the murder, though he was never charged. It’s a complicated story, and none of the major characters come out of it well. In 1976, Thomas Thompson wrote a book about the case, Blood and Money, and it sold four million copies.
I looked through the window again. HD had crossed his arms on the table and was resting his head upon them. He looked calm and tired but he didn’t look crazy. Still …
“Wanderley, I’m not sure HD is all there.”
“I’m not, either. But I’m not a mental health expert. Neither are you. And crazy people do sometimes kill people. Or pay to have them killed.”
Wanderley’s eyes were steady on my own.
Honey took forever. I couldn’t imagine where she had gone for that breakfast. There are half a dozen restaurants five minutes from the station.
Sitting outside the interrogation room was the closest I could come to keeping my promise to Honey. I loped out to my car to fetch a paperback, and then sat on the hall floor, my back against the door. L. C. Tyler’s snarky British wit was doing a lot to distract me when Honey finally got back, an hour and thirty-five minutes later.
The bag she clutched was grease-stained and smelled of breakfast sausage.
“Did you drive to Luckenbach for those sausage biscuits?”
“To the Breakfast Klub.” She set the bag on the floor, slipped on her jacket, dropped her car keys in a pocket, and zipped the pocket closed.
“Why aren’t you in there with Daddy?” she asked.
“To the Breakfast Klub downtown? In rush-hour traffic?”
She retrieved her warm, greasy, fragrant bag and leveled a look at me.
“That’s what Daddy wanted, Bear, so that’s what I got. If I tried to make some substitute, we’d be sitting here until tomorrow or until I did get what Daddy wanted, so I skipped all the pleas and arguments and suggestions and drove all the way downtown, asked for Daddy’s special order, which isn’t on the menu, and got back here as fast as I could. Why aren’t you sitting with him?”
Faithful Unto Death Page 17
