Kip sauntered by, sneaked a peak at Chrissy, then winked at me, guy to guy.
Granny had shown up with a wicker basket filled with food and home remedies, from essence of cherry plum flowers to essence of rye whiskey. In the next fifteen minutes, Chrissy downed three bowls of conch chowder, half a loaf of Bimini bread slathered with smoked swordfish, and a pot of chicken and dumplings, all washed down with a half jar of Granny's moonshine.
"A week of my cookin', and you'll be fit as a fiddle," Granny told Chrissy as she ate.
"I have a gargantuan appetite," Chrissy said between bites, "but I have to watch it. The camera puts on five pounds."
"And I'll put on another ten," Granny promised. "You like country ham with biscuits and sausage gravy, maybe some corn chowder with heavy cream, bread pudding for dessert?"
"Sounds great. Usually I eat bean sprouts and tofu with black coffee."
"Ye gods! No wonder I can see your hip bones."
I cleared my throat. "Granny, I think the fainting is due to stress, not malnutrition."
"Stress! You been listening to them shrinks again? You didn't hear anything about stress when I was a girl."
"When you were a girl, Freud wasn't old enough to masturbate."
"Don't sass me, Jacob, or I'll put you across my knee. And don't talk dirty around Kip."
"Kip? When I asked if he was ready for my lecture on the birds and the bees, he told me-"
"I'd seen the director's cut of Basic Instinct," Kip interrupted. "Plus a double feature of Showgirls and Kids. Next question."
"Jacob, what kind of a uncle are you?" Granny asked, grilling me with her black-eyed glare.
"A totally awesome one," Kip said, in my defense.
"A child shouldn't learn about sex from the movies," Granny said in a stern Dr. Joyce Brothers tone.
"I didn't," Kip said. "When Uncle Jake was dating that stripper from the Organ Grinder, I used to listen to them."
"Kip!" I shouted, trying to shut him up. "She was an exotic dancer, not a stripper. And you shouldn't eavesdrop. It's an invasion of privacy."
"Jeez, Uncle Jake. You two were so loud, I had to sleep on the back porch."
"She was teaching me Spanish," I said.
"I'll bet," Granny fumed.
"Uncle Jake's telling the truth," Kip said defending his Tio Jacobo. "I kept hearing her yell, ' Ay, Dios! Ay, Jesus, Maria, y Jose! ' Then, after a few minutes, she'd get real quiet and sing 'Ave Maria.' "
"Criminy!" Granny stomped around the living room for a few moments, getting her ornery look. "We'll talk about this later, Jacob." Then she turned to Charlie. "What do you think. Doc? Why's this sweet young girl always fainting?"
"How would Charlie know?" I asked in my smart-ass tone. "He's never had a patient who lived."
"Jacob Lassiter!" Granny was fuming now. "You didn't get that smart mouth from my side of the family."
"No, ma'am. I get my law-abiding nature from those moonshining, tax-evading, cousin-marrying kin of yours."
"That does it! One more word, and I'll brain you with a rolling pin!"
I retreated from the kitchen, taking Chrissy with me to the living room. Fifteen minutes later, she was asleep on the sofa, an old quilt pulled up under her chin. I sat on my haunches against the wall, just below an aerial photograph of South Dade, torn apart by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Kip sank into a beanbag chair, circa 1971. Charlie Riggs paced in front of the sofa, puffing on his pipe, waves of sweet cherry smoke drifting toward me.
"She's real pretty, Uncle Jake," Kip said. "Kind of like Elle Macpherson in Sirens."
"What in tarnation is that?" Granny demanded, carrying some coconut cake from the kitchen.
"The Sirens sang songs that lured ancient sailors to their deaths on the rocks," I said.
"Sounds like the women you're usually involved with," Granny replied. "There was that Gina Florio, who married rich and fooled around poor. There was that English psychiatrist who was crazier than her patients, then there was that Baroso persecutor woman."
" Prosecutor, Granny. She was an assistant state attorney."
"Same difference. Sirens all of them."
"We could fill Jake's ears with wax," Charlie Riggs suggested.
Granny gave him a sideways glance.
"Odysseus had his men fill their ears with wax so they couldn't hear the Sirens' song," he explained.
"Better blindfold him, too," Granny said. "You watch yourself, Jake. Every time you get involved with these birds with the broken wings, you find trouble with a capital T."
"And that rhymes with P, and that stands for 'pool,' " Kip sang out.
"Indeed," Doc Charlie Riggs said. " Ubi mel ibi apes. Where there is honey, there will be bees."
"I asked you folks over here to help me, not trash me," I said.
"I'll order a blood work-up on her," Charlie said, looking down at the sleeping Chrissy. "It may be as simple as hypoglycemia, and Granny's advice would be right. A better-balanced diet would help. But, while you're at it, get a drug screen done."
"Why?"
"No reason. No reason at all. But if you ask for my advice, follow it!"
"Okay, okay. Why is everybody on my case today?"
"Because we love you, Uncle Jake," Kip said.
"Good. I feel like a hug."
Kip came over and jumped into my arms. He was tall and gangly, and I hoisted him up so he could wrap his legs around me. "I love you, too."
Charlie harrumphed his displeasure at the display of emotion and said, "I already have the hospital records and I've talked to the doctors and nurses."
"Yeah?"
"Nothing special. They had Harry Bernhardt hooked up to an EKG. The ventricular fibrillations are clearly visible in the squiggles. Looks like a nine on the Richter scale. No doubt about the cause of death. Lethal dysrhythmia."
"Maybe we ought to have a cardiologist take a look," I said.
"Sure, if you want. I've double-checked everything in the autopsy report. Harry Bernhardt's heart was soft and flabby, four hundred five grams. Microscopically, there was some separation of myocardial fibers. His grossly fatty liver weighed three thousand one hundred twenty-five grams, suggesting excessive alcohol consumption. His blood alcohol at death was point nine. He had a four point five percent carbon monoxide hemoglobin saturation, which could be expected in a cigarette smoker."
"The son of a bitch would still be alive if he took better care of himself," I said. "He would have survived the shooting."
"Don't start whining about that again," Charlie said. "The cause of death may have been a heart attack, but the heart attack was caused by your client shooting him."
"Walk me through it."
"What?"
"Harry's last moments on earth. Would he know he's dying? Would he be conscious?"
"When the ven fibs start, the heart muscle quivers, and no blood is being pumped. He'd suffer cerebral anoxia almost immediately. Figure about ten seconds of consciousness."
"Enough to say something," I said.
"Like Mel Gibson in Braveheart, just before they chop off his head," Kip blurted out.
We all looked at him, waiting.
"Free-dom!" he shouted, loud enough that Chrissy stirred on the sofa.
"Then what?" I asked.
Charlie shrugged. "Harry's heart monitor starts ringing like a slot machine hitting jackpot. The Code Blue team gets there in a matter of seconds. They work on him. He has some agonal reflexes, maybe a few audible gasps, some limb and axial skeletal contractions, regurgitation of the gastric contents into the upper airway. They can't revive him."
"Did he say anything to the doctors or nurses?"
"Not a word. I asked them. He was just trying to breathe and dying in front of their eyes."
I was picturing the scene, Harry dead in the ICU, Chrissy on her way to jail, and me heading home, the aroma of Chrissy's perfume on my clothing.
"Why did she shoot her own father?" Kip asked innocently.