The Reluctant Coroner by Paul Austin Ardoin (distant reading txt) 📖

She had a dream where she was in her bed—but it was in her bed at her mother’s house in Seattle. It was raining, and she sat up, lightning flashed, and Lana was standing at the foot of her bed with a big Dirty Harry-style gun.

“You’re nothing but a dirty whore,” dream-Lana sneered, and fired the gun with a blinding muzzle flash.

Fenway woke with a start. It was still light outside. She checked the time; it was almost six. She had enough time to find a dress in her closet, do her hair, and get ready. She shook the cobwebs out of her head. She didn’t feel she was ready to talk to her father, but she didn’t want to spend the night in, either. She was wary of being alone with her thoughts of Lana, and getting shot, and her Russian Lit professor swarming her mind.

She was ready a little after seven thirty. Fenway picked a high-necked, purple A-line dress with long sleeves, with a hem ending at her knees. There was a shift dress in her closet she liked more, but she thought it was a little too casual for Maxime’s. It also needed to be ironed, and she didn’t have the time. She put her hair up and remembered she had left her Red Sox cap, with the bullet hole in the bill, in the office.

There was a knock at her door at about seven-forty. It was her father.

“Hi, Fenway.” He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “You look beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking a step back. He was in the same suit and tie she had seen him in during the meeting before lunch. “Did you just get off work?”

“Yes. No rest for the wicked.”

Fenway gave a tight smile. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yes. Are you sure you’re okay? After the day you’ve had?”

“I napped. And it will be good for me to get out of the apartment and take my mind off this.”

“I’m glad. Plus, I have a surprise for you.”

“Today has been full of surprises; I’m not sure I can handle another one.” They stepped out and she locked the door behind them.

“I think you might like this one.”

They walked down the stairs to the parking lot. There was a black Mercedes S500 in the visitor’s space, which Fenway assumed was his car; there was a man in a dark suit behind the wheel, who was probably Ferris’s driver. But in her assigned parking space—which had been empty up to this point—was a silver Honda Accord. Her father went over and stood next to it.

“Surprise.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a black car remote and key.

She balked. “You got me a car?”

“Now look, I know you think I’m trying to buy you off with this—”

“Well—”

“Let me finish,” Ferris said.

Fenway clamped her mouth shut.

“You literally just got to town, Fenway. You’ve barely had time to unpack, and you’ve been dumped in the middle of this time-sucking investigation. You’re going to have to get to City Hall every day, you have to interview people all over the county, you’ll probably have to drive to see the M.E. in San Miguelito; you can’t have the sheriff constantly shuttling you around. And I know you, you’re stubborn enough that you’d take the bus, but that won’t work with how much time this investigation is going to take. And this way, you don’t have to spend the time you don’t have haggling with some dealership and spending three hours filling out paperwork.”

It was all true, Fenway had to admit.

“Now, I was going to buy you a Lexus, or a BMW, but Charlotte thought you’d think it was too showy, and everywhere your fancy car went, people would look at it and think I bought the coroner’s office. Plus, she said you wouldn’t want the insurance payment on an expensive car.”

Fenway didn’t want to admit Charlotte was right.

“So, I got a deal on this Accord. Now you’ll have to indulge me a little, it is the top-of-the-line model; great sound system, leather seats, navigation, all the safety features. But no one’s going to look at a Honda and think I bought you off, right?”

“I guess not.”

“So, look, if you don’t want it, if you think you shouldn’t take it, I understand. Drive it until the investigation is over, then give it back to me. I can always use a car like this in my fleet. You need a car right now, and I hope this helps get you and me off on the right foot.”

Fenway had conflicting emotions. She knew her father could buy his way out of most situations—and he hadn’t lifted a finger to help either her or her mother in the last twenty years, with his lawyers making sure he paid almost nothing in child support or alimony. She wasn’t sure if he was genuinely trying to help or not.

Whatever her father’s reason, Fenway realized she needed a car. She needed to find and follow up on the evidence, and she couldn’t keep relying on Dez and McVie to drive her around. She suspected her father, as he often did, had an ulterior motive, but she needed a car too much to refuse.

Fenway nodded. “Thanks, Dad. I do need a car for this investigation. It’s the kind of car I would have picked for myself.” She paused. “I probably would have gotten one that wasn’t fully loaded, because I can’t afford it, but I do appreciate it.”

“You’re very welcome.”

Fenway looked at the car for a minute. She had been good at the fake smile so far this evening, but she couldn’t do it for any longer.

“Dad?”

“Yes?

She looked back to her father. “Why now?”

Nathaniel Ferris stopped and looked down at the ground.

“I mean—I appreciate the car, Dad. I need it. And I really needed someplace to go after what happened with Mom, so I appreciate you helping me find the apartment. But—why now?”

“I guess because you’re my daughter.”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “But I was your daughter before. I was your daughter when Mom and I had to go on food stamps. When Mom took the shelves out of the kitchen pantry and slept on a cot because she could only afford a one-bedroom.” Fenway was looking back at the car, and her voice was getting stronger. “I was your daughter when you didn’t show up at my high school graduation. I was your daughter when I was valedictorian at Western. And you didn’t show up to that, either.”

“No,” he said softly. “No, I sure didn’t.”

“I had to work two jobs during college to be able to afford my crappy little Nissan Sentra. And the day I bought it, mom told me you bought a jet. A jet! A ten-million-dollar jet, all the bells and whistles, can get you from coast to coast in six hours. And I had to struggle to get a Sentra that could barely get me up to Bellingham.”

Ferris looked down.

“I can count on one hand the number of times I saw you after we left. Why?”

He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure I have a good answer for that. I know I was really mad at Joanne.”

“We were on food stamps, Dad.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said lamely.

“What did you think was going to happen? Mom couldn’t afford to keep fighting your lawyers even though everyone knew she’d get enough to keep us comfortable, even if she didn’t get half of everything.”

He was quiet.

“Did she cheat on you?”

He started pacing slowly.