Daddy's Gone a Hunting

42

Over the weekend, Jack Worth had called Douglas Connelly every day to inquire about Kate’s condition and had received the same answer: “No change.”

On Monday evening when Jack made the call, Doug’s new girlfriend, Sandra, had answered. “Kate has a fever,” she explained. “Doug is staying there with Hannah for a while. We’ll have a late dinner. The poor man is so upset and, between you and me and the lamppost, I think Hannah is being rotten to him. I’ve seen it. You’d think she was the only one heartsick about her sister. I told Doug that he should out and out tell her that they should be emotionally supporting each other.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Jack Worth said, even as he sarcastically raised his eyes. “Douglas Connelly loves his girls to death.”

“I mean he told me that he never remarried, because he was afraid that a stepmother might resent them. Now, I ask you, wasn’t that a big sacrifice for a handsome, generous man like Doug to make?”

Sandra’s voice had become indignant.

He couldn’t have had a carload of bimbos all these years if he had been married, Worth thought. Just the way I got stuck, he’d have been divorced and would have had to split his assets. Doug was never going to do that. “He made a great sacrifice for his girls,” was his answer to Sandra, his voice dripping with sincerity.

When he hung up, Jack Worth felt uneasy. It was all very well that Doug had figured out a scenario where Kate had been lured to the complex by Gus Schmidt because Gus intended to let her die in the explosion, but would it hold water? And if Kate came out of the coma with all her senses, would she go along with that story? If she did, everything would be A-OK. But if she didn’t, Doug would be out the millions in insurance for the antiques, to say nothing of the value of the rest of the complex. He’d be left with a piece of land that was worth lots of money but nothing compared to the total value of the furniture, the buildings, the equipment, and whatever else he could throw at the insurance adjustor.

But Gus Schmidt’s wife had practically admitted that she thought Gus and Kate had planned the explosion. The ironic part of what Lottie had said is that if Kate recovers and can wiggle out of it, Gus will be blamed. And Lottie’s mouthing off about how bitter Gus had been at the Connellys will end up helping them collect the insurance.

Jack Worth looked around at his colonial-style home, which had been tastefully decorated by his then-wife, Linda, before she had walked out fifteen years ago, when Johnny was three years old. She hadn’t told him she was leaving him. She had just cleared out, taking Johnny with her. She’d left a note on the table. “Dear Jack, I’ve struggled to make this work, but it can’t, and it won’t because you’re always having your dirty little affairs with employees at Connelly’s. I’m filing for divorce. My parents back me up completely. I’ll stay with them for a while until I get my own place. My mother is happy to mind Johnny while I’m at work and when he’s not in preschool. Good-bye, Linda.”

Linda was a nurse in the neonatal unit at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. She was still there, but now she was married to a gynecologist, Theodore Stedman. When he was twelve, Johnny, John William Worth Jr., had asked that his name be changed to John William Stedman so that he wouldn’t feel different from his two little brothers.

“And besides, Dad,” he had explained to Jack, “I don’t see very much of you.”

“Well, you know how it is, Johnny. I’m a pretty busy guy.”

Johnny was eighteen now and was the quarterback on his high school football team. Jack knew that his son was playing a big game tonight and he momentarily debated about attending it. Then he shrugged. It was getting colder and he didn’t feel much like sitting on freezing metal bleachers, rah-rahing for the home team. Especially since his son couldn’t care less if he was there.

He debated about taking a ride up to his condo in Connecticut near the Mohegan Sun Casino, where he could try his luck at the blackjack table. But he didn’t feel lucky tonight and instead decided to go out to the local pub, where he could sit at the bar, get a good steak, have a couple of drinks, and watch the ball game on the oversized television. And who knows? He might get lucky with one of the many women who hung out at the pub.

Jack smiled and thought that this would be a satisfactory answer to a very unsettling day. He was reaching into the hall closet for his jacket when the phone rang. It was Fire Marshal Frank Ramsey. “I’m very glad I caught you, Mr. Worth,” he said. “We can be over at your place in twenty minutes. It’s very important.”

“Of course, come right over,” Worth said. Slowly he hung up the phone and sank into a chair. He stared straight ahead as he tried to guess what was so urgent that those marshals needed to see him right away. Keep cool, he told himself. You have nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing.