Flush - Carl Hiaasen [77]
“I had nothing to do with torching the Coral Queen,” he said. “Please believe me—and please tell Abbey to believe me, too.”
And, in the end, we did.
Because my father had never lied to us about something serious. Whenever he screwed up, he admitted it right away. He always took the blame, the responsibility—and the punishment. Why would he change now?
Mr. Shine, our lawyer, was at the house when the detective and two deputies returned that afternoon with a search warrant. They snooped around for a long time, but they couldn’t find anything that connected Dad to the boat arson.
Lieutenant Shucker was visibly disappointed. “I ought to lock you up anyhow,” he said to Dad. “It’s crystal clear what happened—you had the motive, you had the opportunity….”
“Without evidence you’ve got no case,” said Mr. Shine, looking less mopey than usual. “I would kindly advise you to stop bothering my client.”
“Evidence?” the detective scoffed. “You want evidence? Just look at the brand-new casts on his hands—obviously he burned himself while he was lighting the fire.”
Dad angrily clacked his plaster paws together. “What a load of bull!”
“We’ll see about that. I’ll be back tomorrow with another warrant, Mr. Underwood, and a doctor to saw off those casts. If your fingers are barbecued, you’re goin’ straight to the slammer.”
“But what about the fist holes in our doors?” Abbey protested. “That proves he’s telling the truth.”
“Nice try,” Lieutenant Shucker said sarcastically, “but you could do the same thing with a tire iron.” Then he stood up to leave.
My mother had been sitting on the sofa, not saying a word. I figured she was just depressed, thinking about Dad returning to jail and how he might never get his captain’s license and how our quiet, seminormal life was a total mess again. That’s what I was thinking anyway.
But it turned out that Mom wasn’t depressed at all. She was merely waiting for the right moment to drop a little stink bomb on the snotty detective.
“Here, Lieutenant,” she said pleasantly, “you might want to take a look at this.”
She handed a computerized printout to Lieutenant Shucker, who studied it suspiciously.
“It’s the bill from the emergency room,” Mom said.
“Yeah, Mrs. Underwood, I can read.”
“From when my husband was admitted for severe injuries to both his hands.”
The detective frowned impatiently. “So? What’s your point?”
My mother is truly awesome in situations like that. Nothing fazes her. She stood beside Lieutenant Shucker and calmly pointed to a line of type on the computer receipt.
“He was treated for fractures, not burns. It says so right here, Lieutenant.” Mom smiled. “That’s my first point.”
The detective grunted.
“My second point,” Mom went on, “concerns the precise time my husband arrived at the hospital. See? It was 11:33 in the morning. Yesterday morning, Lieutenant.”
“Oh.”
“Approximately sixteen hours before Mr. Muleman’s boat was set on fire.”
“Yeah, I can do the math,” the detective grumbled.
“Which means my husband couldn’t possibly have been the arsonist,” Mom said, “unless you’d care to demonstrate how a person with all ten fingers sealed in hard plaster would go about striking a match.”
Lieutenant Shucker’s big round chest seemed to deflate. Mom led him to the front door, the two deputies skulking close behind. “Goodbye now,” she called after them, “and good luck solving your case.”
We waited at the window until they drove away. Then Abbey started whooping, and we all slapped high fives—me, my sister, Mom, Mr. Shine, even Dad with his lumpy five-pound casts.
“Donna, that was amazing,” he said. “Truly amazing.”
“Better than amazing!” Abbey crowed. “It was outrageous!”
“No, incredible!” I hollered. “Amazingly, outrageously incredible!”
Mom blushed. “We’ll see,” she said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
But Lieutenant Shucker never came back.
And later, when we learned who actually burned down the Coral Queen, we congratulated my mother all over again.