The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [149]
“You look like you need one. You shouldn’t drink so much.”
“You’re telling me.”
Tugging at his boxer shorts, he walked to his opened front door, glanced out. In horror, he grabbed at the doorway, staggered back to the huge power saw on the hall floor and picked it up. “My fucking magnolia tree! I fucking sawed down my fucking magnolia tree!” Hurrying outside, he stared aghast at a lawn full of leafy branches and fat cut logs.
Picking up his blue linen shirt, Annie followed him from his house to the small yard. “You are definitely Sgt. Daniel Hart of the Miami police?”
He sank down onto the raw tree stump with the saw in his lap. “I was,” he said obscurely. Gesturing ruefully at chopped up sections of tree trunk, he added, “This was my dad’s house. My dad planted that magnolia tree the day I was born. Twenty-six years old.”
Annie raised her Claudette Colbert eyebrow. “Castration anxiety?”
Hart growled. “What, you’re a shrink too?”
Smiling despite herself, she took the saw from his lap and set it down beside him. “No, but I’ve got a friend who’s a shrink. She’d say there was some reason you chopped up your dad’s big tree and gave yourself alcohol poisoning today. Is it your birthday? That can be depressing. Mine was two days ago.”
“I already know that. I spent a year on fuckin’ Jack Peregrine’s life.” He sat morosely on the stump and rubbed his temples. “Yeah, sawing up the tree, that could be a kill-Dad thing. Dad was a cop, full time; you dropped a towel on the bathroom floor, you got chucked in the slammer. But I’d say…” He glanced around his yard. “Chopping this magnolia is more about my ex-wife Melissa. We’re divorced.”
Annie gestured around the yard. “This’ll bring her back?”
He glanced up. “You always so sarcastic?”
She shrugged. “Most of the time.” A large pink fuchsia lay on the ground, ripped out of its pot; carefully she replanted it.
“Thanks,” he acknowledged. “So where do you get off razzing me? You’re divorced too.”
She sat across from him, balancing on a pile of logs. “Not because I’m sarcastic.” The stars were so bright she could see the thin lariat-braided bracelet that clasped his wrist. She smiled at him. “Well, maybe it was because I’m sarcastic. But actually I’m not divorced.”
He looked disappointed. “You’re not?”
Oddly she felt she had to explain. “Not yet…One more week. Didn’t you get all my messages?”
“About your upcoming divorce? Nope.” He tilted the beer bottle, drank from it.
“You’re pretty sarcastic yourself.” Impatient, she tossed him his blue shirt. “I meant the six messages I left to tell you I’ve got the Queen of the Sea, that Inca statue that belongs to Cuba. My dad actually had it. You drop the charges against him and I’ll give it to you. It’s in my hotel room.”
He nodded. “I like the hotel room part of it.”
Her blush surprised her. “Don’t be funny.”
Pulling his arms through the shirtsleeves, he rubbed at his curls. He was, Annie thought, very good-looking and (unlike Brad) he didn’t seem to know it.
He said, “I wasn’t being funny. I think what’s going on between us is more the light-hearted repartee of incompatible people destined for—well, I don’t know what we’re destined for. We’ll have to sit here and find out.”
She smiled, grew embarrassed, held out her watch to show him the time. “It’s midnight. So if you want to cut this deal, let’s do it. I’m sort of in a hurry to get my dad out of that hellhole Golden Days.”
“That’s for sure.” He shook his head. “Don’t put me in there. Drink?” He held out the bottle.
“No. In St. Louis, in the airport, why didn’t you tell me who you were? What kind of game are you playing?”
He stood slowly, groaning loudly, setting the chain saw down on the tree stump. “Okay, you want to get tough? You’re subject to criminal charges for aiding and abetting. On Ficus Avenue, you and Rafael Rook deliberately ignored my order to halt. Not to mention you knocked me down on purpose.”
She