Читать книгу Blood Orange - Drusilla Campbell - Страница 11

Chapter 5

Two white cars with Union-Tribune logos on their doors were parked against the curb, and television vans blocked Miranda Street in front of the Cabot house. On the edge of the park neighbors and busybodies stood and stared and gossiped.

Between phone calls to the police and David and the appearance of the first reporter, Dana had hung a sheet over the broken window in the living room. Now there were police in the house and strangers under the olive tree, some of them flicking cigarette butts into the beds of white impatiens. Bailey loved every minute of it. While Dana sat on the stairs in the entry, the little girl kept up a vivid commentary from the dining room, where she stood on a chair watching the street through a pinched-back corner of the blinds.

The eleven o’clock news would show her elfin face peering out at the world as if the daughter of the man defending Frank Filmore were herself a prisoner.

“Daddy’s home,” Bailey cried as she jumped off her chair and ran across the tiled entry to the front door, ponytail flying. Dana grabbed for her arm. Screaming, Bailey twisted away. She was agile, too fast for Dana and twisty as a morning-glory vine climbing a fencepost. David opened the door and Bailey leapt for him. On cue, the flashbulbs flared, shutters clicked, and the video cams pressed forward.

David kicked the door shut behind him. His color was high, and his eyes flashed when he grinned at Dana and brushed back the thick hank of black and silver hair that had fallen across his forehead.

He loved being in the middle of things.

He lifted Bailey into his arms and held her. “What a scene, huh?”

“You squeeze,” Bailey cried, shoving her hands against his chest.

Sweat beaded his forehead.

Dana said, “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t call them.”

“Roses? Big old red cabbage roses? Jesus Christ, Dana, can you think how that sheet’s going to look on TV?”

“It’s the only one big enough to cover that window.”

“I had to park a block away. Felt like a tight end making it through the crowd to the door.”

“DaddyDaddyDaddy.” Bailey put her hands on David’s cheeks and turned his head so he looked at her. “The s’cream man banged Moby and a rock crashed—”

David looked at Dana. “Ice cream?”

“Moby got broke.”

“How’s he do—?”

“Mr. Cabot?” The speaker was a moon-faced young police officer in a beige uniform stretched tight across his muscular chest and shoulders. “Patrolman Ellis.” The men shook hands, and as they began to talk Dana headed for the kitchen.

She had already explained to the police about the white van and Moby and how she had left the dog for the night at the emergency clinic and come home just before five, driving fast all the way because while sitting in the clinic she had remembered the sound of shattering glass. Something thrown from the white van had broken the large, triple-arched window at the front of the house. No, she told the police, she did not get the license number of the van. No, she could not say how many passengers were in it or what they looked like. There was a bumper sticker on the back fender, driver’s side; no, she did not remember what it said.

While Patrolman Ellis had asked Dana questions, Bailey tugged and hung on his arm. “The s’cream truck hurt Moby.”

Ellis—no wedding ring, a bachelor unused to a nagging, dragging child—looked at Dana with eyes that cried, Get this kid off me.

Bailey patted Ellis’s hand as he tried to write down Dana’s answers. “Policeman, policeman, policeman,” she chanted excitedly. “Policeman, policeman, policeman.”

Dana sat on the couch in the living room and watched him suffer.

He managed to ask about the rock. “And you picked it up.”

“Moby Doby got hurt.”

“Of course I picked it up.” She had not thought about fingerprints. “I saw the rock and the paper around it—”

“What did you do after you read the note?”

“I called 911 and my husband.”

The boy cop made her feel guilty for doing what any person would, and she disliked him for ignoring Bailey. Television, she realized, had given her unrealistic expectations of police officers.

Dana hoisted Bailey onto the counter beside the sink. Bailey immediately began banging her heels against the cupboard, chanting, “Brown s’cream, white s’cream, pink s’cream,” and so on through all the colors she knew, which were blessedly few.

Above the sink and along the speckled granite counter, a line of square windows the size of playpens overlooked a wide redwood deck and back garden separated from an alley by a six-foot wall overgrown with Carolina jasmine. To the right there was another wall and a gate between the garden and the driveway. A Union-Tribune truck was parked in front of the garage, and a man with a camera snapped pictures of the back of the house. The pots on the deck needed watering, Dana noticed. News at Eleven: Dana Cabot neglects her garden. She yanked the blinds down, plunging the kitchen into gloom.

“How you holding up, Number One?” David asked as he entered the kitchen. He kissed the top of her head.

Gratefully she turned and laid her head against his chest. She timed her breathing to match his and relaxed a little.

On the counter, Bailey held out her arms. “Me, Daddy, me, me, me.”

“Come ’ere, Buckaroo.” He held them both easily.

In college and as a pro, David had a reputation for being a quarterback who stayed cool in the pocket as three-hundred-pound, corn- and potato- and pork-fed Nebraska farm boys barreled down on him with mayhem in their eyes. She had worried about him before games. He’d told her, “They won’t run me down if we don’t let them.” A team, he believed, could do anything if it worked together.

“How’s Moby?” he asked.

“He’ll be okay. He’s in Emergency.”

“Shit, that’ll cost—”

She pressed her palms against his chest. “Please, David, don’t start with the money.” He would never see the bill; she would pay off the vet in installments.

Bailey tugged on David’s earlobe hard enough to make him wince. “The window got broke and the policemens came ’cause the s’cream man wrote a bad note. I saw all the letters.” She made a down-mouth, shook her head, and sighed. “No B.”

For once Dana was glad that her seven-year-old daughter could not yet read. She asked her husband, “Did you see it?”

He nodded. “We’ll talk about this later. You two go upstairs—”

“I want s’cream.”

Dana scooped chocolate ice cream into a Babar bowl knowing that in thirty minutes she would regret giving her daughter sugar, but she could not face the inevitable screams if she played tough mommy right now. Choose your fights, or at least postpone, she thought as she settled Bailey at the counter with a dish towel tied around her neck.

“Eat up, Sweet Pea.” She put the ice cream carton back in the freezer. “What happens next?”

“I guess I have to talk to the cameras.”

Oh, you’ll hate that, she thought sarcastically and then felt mean-tempered and small. The limelight was his natural environment.

“I wish you wouldn’t encourage them,” she said. “Some ambitious kid reporter’ll be over tomorrow wanting to write a feature story about the family of the poor beleaguered defense attorney.”

“I’m going to turn this around, Dana.” He gripped her shoulders. “Whoever threw that rock doesn’t scare me.”

“But he scared the hell out of me. And what about Bailey?”

“It’ll take more than a rock and a note to get me off the Filmore case.”

She wondered if he had even heard her say his daughter’s name.

“What’s more, we’re going to make this work to our advantage. Filmore can’t get a fair trial in a city where—”

“He killed that child,” Dana said, whispering. “You know he did.”

“The evidence is lousy, Dana.”

Bailey banged her heels into the chair leg and clanged her spoon against the side of her empty dish. David said, “Hey, Bailey, you want to come outside with me and talk to the cameras?”

She cheered and lifted her arms, swinging her spoon wildly.

Dana took it from her. “No, David.”

“You come too.”

She shook her head and turned her back on him, staring down into the stainless-steel sink, where she saw a blurred reflection of herself and was thankful the image was unclear. “You’re using her.”

He waited a beat. “If you’re not coming out, make me some eggs, will you?”

“At least wipe the ice cream off her face.”

“And bacon if you’ve got any.”