“You don’t think he missed you?”
“I know he didn’t. And to tell you the truth, though I loved him because he was my father, we were better off without him around. Less stress.”
“Then he suddenly dropped out of politics altogether,” I said. “Do you have any idea why?”
Trey thought about the question for a moment.
“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “But something happened. That year that he resigned, he had come home from Washington in the spring to gear up for fall elections. He’d always loved campaigning, but it was like something or someone had popped his balloon, you know. All the joy was gone. He could hardly get himself out of bed in the morning. Walked out on a big town hall meeting once, said he didn’t feel well, but he wasn’t sick.”
“Any idea what was on his mind?”
“I know he’d had a falling out with his old friend Hiram Chin. Dr. Chin always came and helped Dad with campaign strategy and fund-raising in California, but that year he didn’t.”
“What was the issue?”
“I was certainly not included in that information loop. But whatever it was, it knocked the foundations out from under my father.”
“Your father and Hiram Chin did become friends again.”
“After the accident,” he said. He needed no prompting to explain about the accident.
“That spring we’re talking about, Dad and my brother took a drive up toward Yosemite,” he said. “Harlan was just a couple of weeks out of rehab but he had already relapsed. He should have gone right back in, but the insurance only covered him for twenty-eight days in any two-month period, so he had to wait for his eligibility to kick back in. I’m sure Dad thought that some fresh air and a good talking-to would set Harlan straight. Mom was just happy to see Dad taking the initiative about something-anything-again, and getting out of the house.”
His hands balled into fists. “The car went off a mountain road and down a ravine.”
“Were they injured?”
“Dad had a seat belt on and came away with a broken collarbone and cuts and bruises. But Harlan, who never buckled up, was thrown clear. He broke both legs and had some head trauma. He doesn’t remember any of it. He was in a coma for a while, and when he woke up, he didn’t even know his name.”
“Why did the car leave the road?”
“Dad told the Highway Patrol that Harlan was driving and he probably fell asleep; he tested positive for pot. It’s a miracle that they survived. If a Forestry Service rescue crew hadn’t noticed the broken safety rail on the road right after they went over and gone looking, they might not have been found in that ravine until the next brush fire. You couldn’t see the car from the road.”
“Could Harlan have driven off the road intentionally?”
My question took him aback for a moment.
“I told you we always covered for Dad,” he said. “The truth is, Dad was driving that day, not Harlan. Mom knew right away that he had lied to the rescue team and the Highway Patrol; he would never let Harlan drive him anywhere, much less a mountain road. Yes, it was intentional, but Dad did it. When Mom confronted him, he said he wanted to take both of them out of the picture, release her and me from our burden.”
“But he wore his seat belt…”
“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
Hiram Chin’s question at the Malibu reception had new meaning for me. He wondered if his old friend had tried-a second time-to take his life.
“In typical Dad fashion, it was his fault but he came out pretty much unscathed; Harlan was in the hospital for a month. He still walks with a limp and has seizures, and of course, he came out of the hospital addicted to painkillers. He’s now legally disabled, a dependent.”
“Caring for him must be difficult for you and your mother.”
He smiled gently as he shook his head. “Every now and then the old Harlan manages to show through. He was always a funny kid, a great jokester. In some ways, he was the uninhibited kid I wished I could be. No, we’re okay. Except…”
I waited for him to decide whether he wanted to finish the statement. After a moment he looked up with a sad smile on his face.
“Except for health insurance. As soon as Harlan exceeded his lifetime limit on the policy my parents took out for him when he aged off Dad’s congressional coverage, he was shown the door by the insurance company, and no other insurer would touch him. Dad has been covering my brother’s medical costs since then. Now I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”
I let the last echo of those words fade before I asked, “Hiram Chin and your father reconciled after the accident?”
“Yeah.” He seemed to shake himself. “Dad got some consulting work through Dr. Chin. Traveled quite a bit, spent some time in Asia advising on someone’s art collection, a passion of his.”
“How did he come to work at Anacapa College?”
“Dr. Chin again. He recommended Dad to someone he knew on the executive search committee here.”
“With your father’s experience and credentials, I would expect him to aim at a major university.”
“Maybe this place suited him. I don’t think he wanted to work all that hard.” He held up his hands. “I doubt he’d work anywhere, frankly, except that, as my dad’s legally disabled dependant, Harlan was covered by the college’s group health plan. Until Dad died.”
I asked him if he knew Francis Weidermeyer, and he said he did, an acquaintance of his father. The two families had taken a trip together to China, Japan, and other parts of Asia when he was a teenager.
“So you know his son.”
“Son? As far as I know, he only has daughters. Three of them.”
Chapter 21
It had stopped raining by the time I left campus. If it would hold off for a while, I would be able to get in a good run before I dressed for dinner with Jean-Paul. As I drove Mike’s big pickup truck away from campus there were so many things on my mind, bits and pieces of information and raw speculation, schedules to devise and juggle, that I was in that state Mike would have called HUA-head up ass-not paying a lot of attention to my surroundings, sort of flying on autopilot.
At the four-way stop at the corner of Village Road and Main Street I paused long enough to see that I was the only car at the intersection, and made a right. Halfway through the turn I heard a single blast from a police siren, looked into my rearview mirror and saw a flashing red light atop a Crown Victoria close on my tail, a vehicle that was so obviously an unmarked police car it might as well have been painted black-and-white.
Thinking, Oh damn, caught this time, I finished the turn and pulled to the curb in front of Skip’s Diner, grabbed my purse and was fishing out my license when I heard knuckles rapping on my window. I rolled down the window and held up my license while I continued to rifle through the accumulated junk in the glove box, looking for the newest registration card.
I heard a chuckle, turned and saw the face of Detective Thornbury, lit by a wiseass grin, filling the driver’s side window.
“Appears you’re awfully damn familiar with this drill, lady.”
“Jesus, Detective,” I said, reaching for my wallet to put the license away again. “You startled me.”
“Didn’t that poh-leeceman husband of yours give you a get-out-of-jail-free card to show when you get pulled over?”
“I didn’t think I needed it this time,” I said. “If I got a ticket I was going to ask my old roommate’s husband to fix it. He’s very influential around here, you know.”
“So I hear.” Thornbury leaned his forearms on the frame of the open window. “Saw you go by, Maggie, wanted to talk to you.”