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

“Did your mother ever tell you how we met?”

Fenway shook her head.

“Your mother was a brilliant painter.”

“I know.”

“I hear she had started selling her paintings again, before, you know.”

“Right.”

He sighed. “The company had just moved into a new headquarters building,” Ferris said. “It’s the one we’re in now, where Santa Clarita Street hits 326, and it was huge. I’d hired interior designers to arrange the space, but all the artwork they’d picked for the walls didn’t do it for me. So, one Saturday, I’m having breakfast downtown, and I decide to walk around. There used to be a little boho-type gallery over on Fourth, and I’m passing by, and I see it.”

Fenway looked at her father. He had a faraway look in his eyes, and a smile even touched his lips.

“It was a painting of the Three Sisters Rock Arches north of Point Dominguez,” he continued. “She captured the light perfectly, reflecting off both the rocks and the ocean. She got the color of the water absolutely perfect too. It was surreal, but at the same time, it was… I don’t really know. It spoke to me. It spoke to me the way a good jazz record speaks to me. The electricity I felt was like watching Nomo pitch the ninth of his no-hitter in ’01. It was special.”

He shuffled his feet. “I had to have that painting on the wall of the front lobby. The first thing everyone would see when they came in. I had to buy it.” He put his hands in his pockets. “And your mother was in the gallery. We talked about the painting, and the winding road to get to Three Sisters, and at the end of the evening I had a new painting and a date for the next night.”

Ferris smiled wistfully. “And I came home late one night from the office—what was it, ten, twelve years later? And Joanne was gone. And you were gone. And your clothes were all gone; all your toys, your bed, the spare couch in the playroom...”

He cleared his throat again. “Look, I worked a lot. I probably never paid attention to Joanne as much as I did the night I bought her painting. But she never gave me a reason why she left. She never told me why she took you. She moved a thousand miles away, for God’s sake. I wasn’t going to let her steal away in the middle of the night with my only daughter, and take my money, without at least an explanation.”

He folded his arms. “So, when I heard what happened to her a few weeks ago—and I’m not proud of this—the first thing I thought was, I’m never going to know.”

“I thought you’d moved on. You married Charlotte,” Fenway said quietly.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Fenway. The first thing I thought was, I’m never going to know. And just like that—it was like a blindfold being taken off. I realized I had a daughter whose childhood I had completely missed because I was so enraged at her mother.”

“And you want to make up for it.”

“Of course I want to make up for it. But I’m not stupid. I know I’ll never make up for it. But you were in a rough spot, and I could help. You were in a rough spot before, and I could have helped then, and I didn’t. But I will now.”

“It still hurts.”

“Yeah.” He paused. “Do you still want to go to dinner?”

She nodded.

“Good.” Nathaniel Ferris opened the rear door of the Mercedes, and she got in and slid over. Her father slid in next to her, and the driver started up the car.

Fenway enjoyed the smooth ride of the S500, although it made her feel like a poseur in her twenty-five-dollar dress from Target. The leather was buttery soft. She had her own air vents and seat controls. The sound of a gong followed by the quick yet mournful notes of a tenor saxophone filled the car before the music settled down into a four-note bass riff.

Fenway turned to her father. “Coltrane.”

“That’s my girl. Know the tune?”

“A Love Supreme.”

He smiled. “One thing that’s always going to stick with me is that Coltrane almost died from drugs, and then he turned his life around and he wrote this album. He had put out some great albums when he was high all the time, but then he cleaned himself up, discovered what was really important, and created this masterpiece. Probably the best thing he ever did.”

Fenway wondered where her father was going with this, but continued to listen.

“I had a blind spot for the last twenty years. I was as blinded by my anger toward your mom as Coltrane was blinded by his drugs. And I did some amazing things with my company. I even found love again. But I was blind to what was really important.”

They were quiet for a couple of blocks.

“Fenway, you remember when you were little, and you and I used to watch all those recorded Red Sox games from the ’86 season?”

“The season they went to the World Series,” Fenway said.

“You were absolutely fascinated they had a pitcher named Oil Can Boyd. He was probably the ace of that great pitching staff. You kept asking me, who would name their kid ‘Oil Can’?”

Her father turned the music down a little. “Oil Can pitched some great games, but I read an article a few years ago and he said he was high on weed, or cocaine, or crack for every single game he pitched. It even started in Little League for him. How screwed up does your perspective have to be when you need to get high before every game you pitch?”

His voice turned wistful. “He was a great pitcher, but I always think how great he would have been if he had cleaned himself up. He could’ve had a masterpiece of a season that would have been his equivalent of A Love Supreme. If he hadn’t been so messed up, I might not have had to wait another eighteen years for them to win the World Series.”

“I remember reading that article, too, Dad,” Fenway said. “I remember how I couldn’t believe his parents named their kid ‘Oil Can.’ It never occurred to me how ironic it was that I was questioning a guy’s weird name, when you named me ‘Fenway.’ And then I found out ‘Oil Can’ was just his nickname.”

They got to the restaurant as the first section of A Love Supreme concluded—Fenway’s favorite part, where Coltrane plays the main riff in every single key. They walked up to the hostess stand, and the maître d’ nodded to her father and took them to a table in the back secluded from the rest of the restaurant.

“This is your usual table?” She sat down across from him.

Ferris bobbed his head noncommittally, acknowledging both that this was his usual table, and that he knew Fenway was too self-consciously spartan to be impressed by it. “You have any special dietary restrictions? Vegan? Gluten-free? Anything like that?”

“No, nothing special. And anything here would have to be better than the fast-food chicken sandwich I ate on the way to the M.E.’s today.”

“Well, the chilled corn soup here is phenomenal, and I recommend the pheasant. Although the lamb is good, if a bit heavy. And the steaks, of course, are excellent.” He called the server over and ordered an old fashioned with some rye bourbon Fenway hadn’t heard of before. The server complimented him on his choice before disappearing.

Nathaniel Ferris soon lost his sadness from their earlier talk, and settled into his let-me-show-off-my-daughter mode. He introduced Fenway to Eric The Sommelier—Fenway heard it as if he were a great Viking wine leader. Ferris agreed to a couple of expensive glasses of German Riesling to go with the pheasant he ordered, and appeared both surprised and delighted with Eric The Sommelier’s non-wine suggestion of a coffee-infused pale ale to go with the chilled corn soup. “Do they let you keep being a sommelier if you recommend beer with the starter?” Ferris hooted. Eric The Sommelier provided a big belly laugh in return. Fenway smiled, trying to keep her eye-rolling internal. Her father ordered his second old fashioned.

Fenway had to admit the pale ale with the chilled corn soup was fantastic. She thought of the corn chowder her mother would make on chilly Seattle days.

After they cleared the plates and flatware from the starter course, and they brought her father his third old fashioned—he had chosen against the beer—Fenway cleared her throat. “Dad, first of all, I want to say thank you. This is a great place. And I’m glad you and I have a chance to reconnect.”

“Uh, oh. We’ve entered the business discussion portion of our evening.”

“Look, it’s just you and me now. No police interrogation room. No hulking security guy.”

Nathaniel Ferris leaned forward. He must have been feeling quite good with the bourbon flowing in his veins. “I know! Rob is huge, right? I bring him to some negotiations with me when the other guys are really trying to put one over on me. One time, I had him stand behind me and crack his knuckles, and just stare at the guy. Rob is so old-school.” He laughed. “Poor guy didn’t know what to do. He thought he was in a mafia movie. And everyone pays their rent on time in the building, too.”

Fenway tried to get her father back on track. “Right, so, just you and me. But let’s be serious for a minute. If I had known Carl Cassidy had gotten killed in that accident six months ago, I might have been able to talk my way out of that situation with his widow earlier today. But I didn’t know anything, and that made her angrier. Angry enough to shoot at me.”

That seemed to sober him up a bit. “Fenway, I’m so sorry. I never for a minute thought you’d be in danger. I thought maybe some people would be like, ‘oh, he’s