The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [18]
Both D. K. and the sheriff had known Jack from his childhood; neither of them believed anything he said.
The sheriff told Sam that, two weeks earlier, in Savannah, her brother had been arrested for swindling a retired couple; he’d taken their certified check for ten thousand dollars as a deposit on a historic landmark home located on (the aptly named) Bull Street. He’d offered to sell this couple the 1880 mansion cheaply ($1.6 million) because he was dying. On vacation from the West Coast, knowing nothing of Savannah, they’d believed him.
Caught and thrown in a holding cell, Jack faked epilepsy and was rushed to the hospital. In an orderly’s outfit he escaped from the ER unit. Hot-wiring a Corvette in the staff parking lot, he headed for some reason home to Emerald.
The sheriff warned Sam, Clark, and Annie that if Jack did get back in touch with them and they failed to notify the authorities, they would be subject to criminal charges.
In an effort at French cynicism, Annie asked, “Is there a reward and can a relative collect?”
“Annie, we’ll split it.” The sheriff admitted he was still burned because, a long time ago, he had paid twenty-five dollars to join Jack’s motorcycle gang, a club handicapped by its failure to secure even a single motorcycle to ride around on for more than one evening’s illicit joyride. “Let him go,” the sheriff warned the teenager.
“No problem.” Annie, congratulating herself on having cut her father dead, expressed the hope never to see him again.
Later that evening, Sam lamented her failure to do something to help Jack. Clark mildly noted that Jack appeared to be more in need of a criminal lawyer than Sam’s devotion. “You’re like a blind mole bumping along the sides of a black hole. By black hole, I mean for example, your old girlfriend Jill dumping you after seven years. I mean your brother Jack leaving you to deal with your mother.”
Sam agreed that love was blind. “Give me a break, Clark. You’re always saying, ‘Look on the bright side.’ Well, if you love somebody, well, maybe you can’t see where you’re going and maybe there’s no light ahead, but that doesn’t mean you don’t keep going.”
Clark ran the stems of his glasses back and forth in his hair. “Sam, doesn’t it worry you that you sound like the government’s old policy in Vietnam?”
“I’m making love, not war. And I plan to keep going.”
“Well, I’m out of here,” said Annie, determined not to let her father’s sudden intrusion upset her. “The only place I’m going is Paris.” As she walked through the morning room, she paused automatically at the huge jigsaw puzzle of the blue sky that still sat, unfinished, on the mahogany table. The puzzle was more than half-filled now, connected from its edges toward the hole still in its middle. Studying the scattered blue bits of cardboard, she slid two of them together.
Sam came up beside her, the old Shih Tzu in her arms. “I keep thinking I should throw this stupid puzzle away but I can’t bring myself to do it. You know, your dad had a rough time in this house. Think about being locked in a closet, hour after hour, like our father did to Jack. Our father the judge. Boy, was he ever a judge.”
The front door bell rang its old three-note melody. It was D. K. Destin with his wife Dina, of Dina Destin’s Barbecue. She was