Say No to Murder by Pickard

Author:Pickard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 1985-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

chapter

20

“Jenny.” Geof spoke privately to me a few minutes later when we were outside again under the floodlights. It was going on eleven o’clock. “Of course I’ll let him go. I have no intention of allowing him to go to jail. But you understand that he was trespassing on plainly marked private property, and that it will be worse for him in the long run if I don’t put him through the usual drill. Because he’s your father, I’ll have to be extremely careful to see that he receives no preferential treatment.” He smiled slightly. “At least no overt preferential treatment.”

My father sat in the back of an ambulance, staring out the window at me like a puppy in a pet shop.

“I can’t bear this,” I said.

“Sure you can. Listen to me. This all depends on whether or not the owners of the mall decide to press charges. And since I’m the one who’s going to describe tonight’s events to them, you can be fairly sure they won’t do it.”

“I don’t want you to get into trouble.” In truth, I might have sacrificed anything or anybody to avoid this latest family humiliation.

He smiled. “I’ve been known to take care of myself. You want to come down to the hospital and then to the station with us, don’t you?”

“Yes. And no.”

“That’s what I thought.” He gave me the keys to his car. “Follow us then. And don’t worry any more than you absolutely have to, do you hear me? I’ll take care of your father. He is a funny old guy, isn’t he?”

“How nice of you to put that interpretation on it. Oh God, wait until the papers get wind of this. Wait until my sister hears about it. Lord, I guess I’d better call my stepmother in California. And our lawyers. And . . .”

“Don’t,” he said sternly. “Don’t break down now, I mean. He needs you.”

“You haven’t any idea of the irony of that statement.”

“I know all about that, Jenny,” he said. “I know how little he was there when you needed him. At the moment, that’s irrelevant, don’t you think? He’s your father. You’re his only functioning daughter. Sometimes life comes down to equations as simple and basic as that.”

“You have an overdeveloped sense of duty.” But I reached up to kiss him on the cheek. The hell with Webster Helms and Officer Ashley Meredith and all the others who were avidly watching us with sidelong glances. If there was anything I’d learned from my crazy family, it was if you’re going to make a spectacle of yourself, by God make a spectacle of yourself.

Then I followed my father to the hospital.

Four hours later, he was released into my custody. I couldn’t take him to stay at Geof’s house with me, because of the uproar that would cause—suspect rooms with top cop—so Geof drove us over there, I packed a few of my things, put my exhausted father into my car and moved onto the Amy Denise with him.

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