Perish Twice E-Book

Robert B Parker

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: A None
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 270

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The Second Sunny Randall Mystery Sunny Randall comes to the aid of three very different women, with deadly consequences. Hired by prominent feminist Mary Lou Goddard to protect her from threatening phone calls and shadowy pursuers, Sunny must contend with Goddard's reluctance to reveal all she knows about the unwelcome attention bestowed upon her. When a member of Goddard's staff is gunned down, it's called a case of mistaken identity. And when the murder suspect is found to have eaten his own gun, two cases are settled, neither to Sunny's satisfaction. At the same time, Sunny must help both her dearest friend and her older sister, each of whom face wrenching personal battles. When the murder investigations lead her to the Boston underworld, Sunny's footing-despite backup from her close friend Spike and ex-husband, Richie - is treacherous at best.

Leseprobe

Sunny Randall comes to the aid of three very different women, with deadly consequences. Hired by prominent feminist Mary Lou Goddard to protect her from threatening phone calls and shadowy pursuers, Sunny must contend with Goddard’s reluctance to reveal all she knows about the unwelcome attention bestowed upon her.

When a member of Goddard’s staff is gunned down, it’s called a case of mistaken identity. And when the murder suspect is found to have eaten his own gun, two cases are settled, neither to Sunny’s satisfaction.

At the same time, Sunny must help both her dearest friend and her older sister, each of whom face wrenching personal battles. When the murder investigations lead her to the Boston underworld, Sunny’s footing - despite backup from her close friend Spike and ex-husband, Richie - is treacherous at best.

Robert B. Parker (1932-2010) has long been acknowledged as the dean of American crime fiction. His novels featuring the wise-cracking, street-smart Boston private-eye Spenser earned him a devoted following and reams of critical acclaim, typified by R.W.B. Lewis’ comment, ‘We are witnessing one of the great series in the history of the American detective story’ (The New York Times Book Review).

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Parker attended Colby College in Maine, served with the Army in Korea, and then completed a Ph.D. in English at Boston University. He married his wife Joan in 1956; they raised two sons, David and Daniel. Together the Parkers founded Pearl Productions, a Boston-based independent film company named after their short-haired pointer, Pearl, who has also been featured in many of Parker’s novels.

Robert B Parker died in 2010 at the age of 77.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR ROBERT B. PARKER

‘Parker writes old-time, stripped-to-the-bone, hard-boiled school of Chandler…His novels are funny, smart and highly entertaining…There’s no writer I’d rather take on an aeroplane’ – Sunday Telegraph

‘Parker packs more meaning into a whispered “yeah” than most writers can pack into a page’ – Sunday Times

‘Why Robert Parker’s not better known in Britain is a mystery. His best series featuring Boston-based PI Spenser is a triumph of style and substance’ – Daily Mirror

‘Robert B. Parker is one of the greats of the American hard-boiled genre’ – Guardian

‘Nobody does it better than Parker…’ – Sunday Times

‘Parker’s sentences flow with as much wit, grace and assurance as ever, and Stone is a complex and consistently interesting new protagonist’ – Newsday

‘If Robert B. Parker doesn’t blow it, in the new series he set up in Night Passage and continues with Trouble in Paradise, he could go places and take the kind of risks that wouldn’t be seemly in his popular Spenser stories’ – Marilyn Stasio, New York Times

THE SPENSER NOVELS

Sixkill

Double Deuce

Painted Ladies

Pastime

The Professional

Stardust

Rough Weather

Playmates

Now & Then*

Crimson Joy

Dream Girl (aka Hundred-Dollar Baby)*

Pale Kings and Princes

School Days*

Taming a Sea-Horse

Cold Service*

A Catskill Eagle

Bad Business*

Valediction

Back Story*

The Widening Gyre

Widow’s Walk*

Ceremony

Potshot*

A Savage Place

Hugger Mugger*

Early Autumn

Hush Money*

Looking for Rachel Wallace

Sudden Mischief*

The Judas Goat

Small Vices*

Promised Land

Chance

Mortal Stakes

Thin Air

God Save the Child

Walking Shadow

The Godwulf Manuscript

Paper Doll

THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

Split Image

Stone Cold*

Night and Day

Death in Paradise*

Stranger in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise*

High Profile*

Night Passage*

Sea Change*

THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

Spare Change*

Shrink Rap*

Blue Screen*

Perish Twice*

Melancholy Baby*

Family Honor*

ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

Brimstone

Poodle Springs

Resolution

(and Raymond Chandler)

Appaloosa

Love and Glory

Double Play*

Wilderness

Gunman’s Rhapsody

Three Weeks in Spring

All Our Yesterdays

(with Joan H. Parker)

A Year at the Races

Training with Weights

(with Joan H. Parker)

(with John R. Marsh)

Perchance to Dream

*Available from No Exit Press

For Joan:

I too favour fire

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

is also great

And would suffice

– ROBERT FROST

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Copyright

1

My sister Elizabeth came to see me.

Elizabeth is three years older than I am. We aren’t close. We had spent too much of our childhood fighting over Daddy ever to be the kind of sisters that talk on the phone every day. To cement my conviction that Elizabeth was a pain, my dog, Rosie, didn’t like her either. Since Rosie likes everyone, including armed intruders, it seemed clear that Elizabeth was special.

“What kind is she again?” Elizabeth said. “A Boston terrier?”

“Bull terrier,” I said. “Rosie is a miniature bull terrier.”

“I thought she was a Boston terrier.”

“You want to see her papers?” I said.

“Oh, aren’t you funny,” Elizabeth said.

We were having coffee at the counter in my kitchen without Rosie, who had left us and was on my bed at the other end of the loft, watching us carefully with one black eye.

“So what brings you to South Boston?” I said.

“Is this really South Boston?” Elizabeth said.

“The yuppie part,” I said.

“Oh … this coffee is very good.”

“Starbucks,” I said.

“What is it?”

“Starbucks,” I said. “This particular one is from Guatemala.”

“Oh, write that down for me, will you?”

“Sure.”

I wrote Starbucks Coffee on a piece of notepaper and gave it to her. She stuffed it into her purse. I waited. She sipped some coffee. I looked at Rosie. Rosie’s tail stirred. But she didn’t change her mind about staying on the bed.

“Do you ever see your ex-husband?” Elizabeth said.

“Richie and I see each other every Wednesday night.”

“Do you do anything?”

“Do anything?”

“You know,” Elizabeth said, “sex. It’s all right to ask because I’m your big sister.”

“Then I guess it’s all right for me to say none of your business.”

“Oh don’t be so silly,” Elizabeth said. “Do you date other men?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Elizabeth, what the hell are we talking about here?”

“For God’s sake, I’m just asking if you have sex.”

“None of your business. Do I ask you about your sex life?”

“Oh, me, I’m an old married woman.”

“Elizabeth, you’re thirty-eight,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” Elizabeth said. “I’m just interested in what life is like when you can’t stay married.”

I got up and walked down the length of my loft, breathing deeply and carefully. I bent down and gave Rosie a kiss on the nose, and breathed some more and walked slowly back.

“We who can’t stay married prefer to keep our sex lives to ourselves,” I said.

“Oh, Sunny, honestly you’re so quaint sometimes.”

“Quaint,” I said.

The sun was almost straight up and it shone strongly through my skylight onto one of my paintings that stood unfinished on its easel.

“You’re still painting,” Elizabeth said.

“Yes.”

“Does anyone ever buy one of your paintings?”

“Occasionally.”

“Really?”

I nodded.

We sat quietly for a while. Elizabeth reached over and got the pot and poured herself some more coffee. She didn’t replace the pot. Just set it down on the counter near her where it would grow cold. It took some will, but I didn’t reach across and replace it. I didn’t want any more anyway.

“How’s Hal?” I said.

She carefully poured some milk into her coffee and stirred in two sugars, and put the spoon down and sipped from the cup.

“I think he’s cheating on me,” Elizabeth said.

“Hal?”

“Yes. I think so, and, isn’t this funny, I want you to see if you can find out for sure.”

“Me?”

“You are being a detective these days, aren’t you?”

“Yes, of course, but …”

“I wouldn’t want to hire some stranger,” Elizabeth said.

“You want me to tail him? Get pictures? Catch him in the act? That sort of thing?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you just ask him?”

“Ask him? Don’t be ridiculous. Why in God’s name would he tell me?”

“Because you asked,” I said.

“No. I’m not asking that bastard anything. I am going to catch him.”

“You don’t want to maybe talk about this with him, see about professional help?”

“A shrink? They’re all crazy. It’s why they became shrinks.”

“Maybe not every one of them,” I said.

“And most of them are Jews.”

“Maybe not every one of them,” I said.

“I don’t want to discuss this anymore. Will you help me?”

“Of course. I was just trying to see if we could agree on the kind of help you needed.”

“Well it’s certainly not some crazy Jew,” Elizabeth said.

I thought about going down and lying on the bed with Rosie. Arguing with Elizabeth was futile. She was, as my father used to say about our mother, often wrong, but never uncertain. And like our mother she simply dug in deeper when her convictions were questioned. If they were actually disproved, she was entrenched for life.

“I’ll do whatever I can,” I said.

2

Elizabeth had graduated from Mount Holyoke and never recovered. It was where she’d learned to speak in that honkish WASP whine that she now found natural. And the fact that she had a Seven Sisters degree required her to marry an Ivy League guy. At twenty-one years and three months, in the summer after she graduated, she married a Dartmouth graduate named Hal Reagan, lived with him in the Back Bay while he went to Harvard Law School, and moved with him to Weston when he joined a downtown law firm, Cone, Oakes and Baldwin. He was now a partner, and at thirty-nine his prospects were bright and shiny. Or at least brighter and shinier than mine appeared to be.

My first decision was about my gun. It wasn’t a big one, a S&W .38 special with a two-inch barrel, and mostly I wore it on a belt, under a coat, so I could get to it quickly. On the other hand I didn’t expect a shoot-out with Hal, and since it was a glamorous October day with the sun gleaming and the temperature around seventy, I didn’t want to wear a coat. But I had been a cop and was now a private detective, and since I had been responsible for discomfiting some mean people, I had promised myself that I would never go without a gun. So I compromised, and plopped the .38 into my handbag, along with face maintenance and a few stray bills.

Rosie’s leash hung by the front door of my loft. When she saw me put the gun in my purse, she went immediately to the front door and stared bulletlike at her leash. I had no intention of taking her. It was hard enough to tail your own brother-in-law without bringing along a dog who, while beautiful, was, well, unusual-looking, and immediately recognizable. I would simply give her a cookie, pat her head, say bye-bye, and she’d be fine. Probably sleep on my bed much of the day. I slung my purse over my shoulder, firm in my resolve.

All my reading of Nancy Drew had left me with no real tips on tailing your sister’s husband. Hal would recognize me the minute he saw me. My first step was to try it from a car, where maybe he wouldn’t spot me. Which was why I was idling next to a hydrant across the street from the exit of the parking garage underneath the Cone Oakes offices on State Street. One of Hal’s partner perks was a free parking slot there, and if he was cheating on Elizabeth, he’d probably have to drive somewhere to do it. I wasn’t sure he was cheating on Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s convictions on almost anything were so ill founded that I had very little confidence in this one. On the other hand if you were married to Elizabeth, why wouldn’t you cheat on her.

Rosie was in the passenger seat, staring out the side window, alert for the appearance of a strange dog at whom she could gargle ferociously. Sometimes my resolve is a little shaky.

At five after twelve Hal’s silver-gray Lexus appeared in the exit slot. I had his license number from Elizabeth. He slipped his access card into the slot, the barrier rose, he drove out, and turned left onto State Street.

It was easier than it had any right to be. With me and Rosie behind him, Hal drove out of the city on the Mass Pike, and in a half hour we were in Weston.

“Maybe he’s just going home,” I said to Rosie.

But he wasn’t. He turned off of the Post Road about two miles from where he and Elizabeth lived and pulled into the driveway of a big yellow colonial house. I drove on past and as I did I saw the door of the two-car garage roll up and Hal’s Lexus drive into the empty slot next to what looked in a fast glance like a green Miata. Around a bend, I U-turned and parked as far around the bend as I could and still be able to see the house.

“If it’s a client,” I said to Rosie, “he wouldn’t have a garage door opener and he wouldn’t park in there and close the door behind him.”

Rosie showed no sign of disagreeing. On the other hand, she showed no sign of hearing me either. She was intent at the side window. If a dog didn’t pass, maybe there’d be a squirrel and Rosie could throw herself about in the car snarling and barking and snorting.

“I should catch them in the act,” I said. “Get a picture.”

Rosie remained on squirrel alert.

Hal had every reason to be a jerk. He was a rich kid, an only child of indulgent parents. He’d gone to Dartmouth and Harvard, and had become, at an early age, a partner in the city’s biggest law firm. Inexplicably, however, Hal wasn’t a jerk. I kind of liked him and had always wondered why he’d married Elizabeth.

“No,” I said.

Rosie looked at me startled.

“Not you, my little petunia,” I said. “I’m saying no to myself.”

If Rosie could have shrugged, she would have.

I stayed put and at about twenty to four, the garage door rolled up and Hal’s Lexus backed down the driveway and pulled away. I let him go. When he was out of sight I drove down and pulled into the driveway, cracked all the windows so Rosie would have enough air, got out, locked the car, walked to the front door. The sign on the mailbox said Simpson. I rang the bell.

After maybe two minutes, which is a long time if you’re waiting at a front door, a woman opened the door wearing jeans and a white shirt. The tails of the shirt were hanging out. She was bare-foot and without makeup. Her hair looked as if an attempt had been made at it, but not an extended one.

“Are you Nancy Simpson?” I said.

“Yes.”

“My name is Sunny Randall,” I said, and gave her one of my cards. “I’m a detective. I’m also Hal Reagan’s sister-in-law.”

The woman took my card and looked at it without reading it.

“Hal Reagan?” she said.

“Yes. He just left.”

“I don’t wish to talk with you anymore,” Nancy said and closed the door.

I didn’t contest the issue.

3

I was back in my loft again, filling in a little of the background on my current painting, when my doorbell rang and Hal Reagan came up.

“Sunny,” he said. “What the hell’s going on?”

“You’ve spoken with Nancy,” I said.

“Did you follow me out there?”

“Yes.”

Rosie rushed down from her place on my bed and capered about. Hal reached down to pat her, but there was no resolve in it. He was obviously thinking of other things.

“You got a drink?” he said.

“Of course.”

“Bourbon—rocks.”

I made it for him and poured myself a glass of wine. We sat at the kitchen counter.

“She’s a client, Sunny.”

“No, Hal, she’s not. You know it and I know it.”

“You can’t prove she’s anything more.”

“I can,” I said. “It is only a matter of time and persistence.”

He drank some of his bourbon.

“Did Elizabeth put you up to this?”

“Yes.”

Hal had played lacrosse at Dartmouth and still looked athletic. His hair was beginning to recede, and his short haircut made no effort to hide the fact. I liked that about him. His suit was expensive. His cologne was good. He wore a Rolex watch.

“Why’d you speak to Nancy?” Hal said.

“I had to establish there was a woman there. I knew when I told her who I was she’d call you and you’d come by.”

“And she did, and I did,” Hal said. “You told Elizabeth.”

“No.”

“Why not?’

“I wanted to hear what you had to say.”

“Does it matter?”

“If it didn’t, I wouldn’t wait to hear it,” I said.

“You know Elizabeth,” Hal said.

“All my life.”

“Would you want to be married to her?”

“No. It’s one of several reasons I didn’t marry her.”

“And I did.”

“And you did.”

Hal took in some air, and let it out slowly.

“And I was wrong,” he said.

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what about Nancy?”

“Ahh,” Hal said.

“Ahh what?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Well, is she someone you care about?”

“Yes.”

“You could ask Elizabeth for a divorce.”

“Oh God.”

“You could move out and let your attorney serve the papers.”

“I couldn’t do that. Sunny. We’ve been married seventeen years.”

“Or you could follow your present course, cheat on her in her hometown, two miles from her house, until she catches you.”

“Which I guess she has.”

“She thinks you’re having an affair, but I’m the one who’s caught you.”

“But you’ll tell her.”

“I’m trying to decide that now,” I said. “What would you like me to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you like the status quo?”

“Christ, no,” Hal said. “Why would I?”

“It allows you to punish your wife without leaving her.”

“You think that’s all Nancy is? A way to punish Elizabeth.”

I shrugged.

“I care about Nancy,” he said.

“Not enough to leave your wife.”

“Well I can’t just …”

“Why not?”

He shook his head. I waited. He shook it again.

“It’s just such a mountain to climb,” he said.

“Swell,” I said.

“I guess … you should do whatever it is you would do … if Elizabeth weren’t your sister.”

“This is what I would be doing,” I said. “One of the charms of being self-employed is you can try to do the right thing whenever you want to.”

Hal shook his head.

“Elizabeth couldn’t say that,” he said. “And if you said it, she wouldn’t understand you.”

I didn’t comment. Rosie sat on the floor transfixed by the small but nevertheless real possibility that we might move from booze to food.

“She has probably never thought about doing the right thing in her life,” Hal said. “Almost forty and still judges people by where they went to college.”

“And quite harshly,” I said.

“She is the queen of doesn’t-get-it.”

“I know.”

“She can’t like a painting unless some museum guide has told her it’s good.”

“Hal, I know Elizabeth’s faults as well as you do. And I am ready to agree with you that they are numerous. But I don’t want to sit here while you enumerate them, okay?”

“You don’t even like her,” Hal said.

“That’s got nothing to do with it,” I said. “Family is family.”

He nodded slowly, less to me than to himself.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said.

“Are you prepared to go back home to Elizabeth and be monogamous?”

“No.”

“Do you want some kind of counseling? I could ask Julie for a referral.”

“No.”

“Will you tell her you are leaving her?”

“I can’t.”

“We could tell her together,” I said.

“How would we do that?”

“I could call her,” I said, “ask her to come over.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hal said.

“Or I can simply report to Elizabeth what I have observed, and leave it to the two of you to work it out.”

“We can’t work it out. You know what she’s like. For crissake, I don’t even love her.”

“I have laid out all your options, Hal. Either choose one, or I’ll choose one for you.”

“God, you’re cold,” Hal said, “like your old man.”

“You wanted to get caught,” I said. “You got caught. Now you have to do something.”

Rosie stood up suddenly, and moved around my chair. The tension in our voices made her nervous. I reached down and she put her front paws on the stool rung and raised up on her back legs so I could pat her reassuringly. Hal breathed in and out audibly. I waited. He breathed some more. I waited some more. He took in a lot of air and breathed it out with a kind of a snort.

“Call her,” he said. “Have her come over.”

4

When Elizabeth came into my loft and saw Hal there, her face tightened. Rosie had, of course, gone to the door with me, and when it turned out to be Elizabeth, had, out of habit, given a desultory tail wag. Elizabeth ignored her. Rosie seemed to expect no less, and went back down to the other end of the loft and got up on my bed.

“What’s he doing here?” Elizabeth said.

“Visiting my sister-in-law,” Hal said. “Something wrong with that?”

“Do you want any coffee?” I said.

“No. What’s he doing here?”

“I have my report to make and I thought both of you should hear it.”

“Report?”

“Yes. You asked me to investigate your husband. I did. I’m reporting the results.”

“Well for God’s sake did you catch him or not?”

I said, “Do you want to speak to that, Hal?”

Hal’s hands were clasped on the countertop in front of him. He stared at them for a moment. Then he looked up and looked straight at Elizabeth and said, “She caught me.”

“What do you mean?”

“She caught me. She found me with another woman.”

Elizabeth took a step backwards.

“Who?” she said.

“No one you know.”

“What were you doing?”

“Elizabeth, please.”

Elizabeth sat down suddenly on a straight chair by the kitchen table. She began to cry.

“How could you do that to me,” she said.

“For God’s sake, Elizabeth, it’s not just about you.”

“Do you love her?”

“I …”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know.”

Elizabeth’s hands were both clenched and resting in her lap. She began to pound them slowly against her thighs.

“Goddamn you,” she said. “Goddamn you, goddamn you, goddamn you.”

“Elizabeth, we have to talk.”

She was crying hard now with her head down and her eyes squeezed almost shut. She pounded the tops of her thighs steadily.

“We have to talk,” Hal said again.

Elizabeth shook her head.

“Elizabeth.”

“Get away,” she said. “Get away from me.”

Hal was standing. He stared at her for a moment, then he shook his head.

“Fuck this,” he said, and walked out of my loft.

Elizabeth looked up as he walked out and closed the door, and her sobbing escalated to a wail. At the far end of the room, on my bed, Rosie licked her nose nervously. I got off the counter stool and went and sat across the table from Elizabeth. I didn’t know what to say. Elizabeth wailed some more. I wished I could feel sorrier for her. Maybe sibling rivalry runs deep. Or maybe there was something self-absorbed and annoying about her grief. I was sure that Richie and I had ended our marriage more gracefully. I waited quietly. After a while she stopped wailing and looked straight at me.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose you love seeing your big sister humiliated.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” she said.

“You can probably control what happens to you,” I said.

“Control? How can I control him? How can I control what other people do?”

“You can control how you react,” I said.

“Don’t you goddamned lecture me, you couldn’t hang on to your husband either.”

“I’m not sure it’s about hanging on,” I said.

“Don’t give me that crap. You and I both know where the bucks are, you want money, you find a man.”

I looked down the room at Rosie. Now that the wailing had stopped, Rosie was stretched out on her side with her eyes closed and her legs sticking out and the tip of her tongue showing. I envied her.

“Would you like to stay with me for a while?” I said.

“With you? Here? Where would I sleep?”

“The couch folds out,” I said.

“The couch? Please.”

“Just thought you might not want to be alone.”

“That sonofabitch will not drive me out of my house,” Elizabeth said.

I nodded.

“Elizabeth, when Richie and I broke up I found talking to a psychiatrist very helpful.”

Elizabeth stood up suddenly and headed for the door.

“Well,” she said, “I’m not you, thank God.”

It was one of the few things we agreed on.

5

It was 11:05 in the morning, near Quincy Market. I was at the very back table in Spike’s restaurant with Spike and a woman named Mary Lou Goddard, to whom Spike had just introduced me. There was no one else in the restaurant. A lone waitress sat at a table against the far wall, drinking coffee, smoking, and reading Vogue. On the wall above her was one of the several signs that said thank you for not smoking.

“What about the waitress?” I said to Spike.

“Only need one until noon.”

“She’s smoking.”

“Oh, you mean THANKYOUFORNOTSMOKING? That’s just when there’re customers.”

“What are we?”

“Guests of the management,” Spike said. “Tell her your situation, Mary Lou.”

Mary Lou was maybe fifty. She had short graying hair and a square face. She wore a black beret pulled down to her ears, and a black turtleneck sweater. She looked as if she had spent her life smoking Gauloises and reading Proust. And enjoying neither. She eyed me as if she wasn’t enjoying me too much.

“Don’t worry how Sunny looks,” Spike said to her. “It’s her Meg Ryan disguise.”

“Who’s Meg Ryan?” Mary Lou said.

Two couples came into the restaurant and stood hopefully at the hostess station by the door. One of the men had a 35mm camera slung over his shoulder in a black leather case.

“Excuse me,” Spike said.

He stood and walked to the front and took four menus from the rack on the side of the hostess stand.

The guy with the camera said, “Four, for lunch.”

“Do you have a reservation?” Spike said politely.

The man with the camera stared at the empty room.

“We need a reservation?”

“Always a wise idea,” Spike said. “Give me a minute. I’ll see what I can do.”

He bustled around the room looking at tables and then went back and seated them at the first table near the door, put down the menus, and headed back to our table. When he passed the waitress, he tapped on the table. She nodded, sighed, dog-eared her page, put her cigarette out in her coffee cup, and went to take the orders.

“You tell her?” Spike said to Mary Lou when he sat down.

She shook her head.

“We were so entranced by the way you charmed those customers,” I said, “neither of us could speak.”

“I hate customers,” Spike said. “Mary Lou needs some help.”

“I can talk,” Mary Lou said.

“Good to know,” Spike said, and nodded toward me.

“I am the CEO of a organization called Great Strides. We consult from a feminist perspective.”

“Could you tell me a little more about that,” I said.

“Certainly. We consult to corporate America, identifying and suggesting solutions to issues of gender-based discrimination. We serve as a resource for law firms, and we provide research support for both the public and private sector.”

“Girls R Us,” I said.

Mary Lou looked at me stonily. Spike grinned.

“See, was I right how good you’d get along?” he said.

“I don’t enjoy jokes,” Mary Lou said. She looked down at Rosie noisily working on her soup bone. “Nor, I must say, do I particularly enjoy dogs.”

“We can eliminate the jokes,” I said. “The dog is family.”

She nodded as if she expected no better.

“Someone is following me. Last week my offices were vandalized. A threatening message was left on my answering machine.”

“Which said?”

“I would be killed. It was expressed in virulent sexist clichés.”

“Was it a male voice?” I said.

Mary Lou looked startled.

“Of course,” she said.

Rosie had stopped gnawing her bone and stood on her hind legs and put her forepaws on Spike’s chair. He reached down and scooped her up and sat her on his lap. She sat with her mouth open and her tongue out and panted slightly.

Mary Lou said, “Spike, must you?”

Spike said, “Yep.”

“And what would you like me to do?” I said.

“Protect me. Put a stop to the harassment.”

“Why not the cops, get a restraining order.”

“I don’t wish to open up my personal life to public scrutiny.”

“Then you know who this is,” I said.

“What if I do?”

“Well, it is not something I do, but I probably could find a couple of guys to talk with the stalker forcefully.”

“Spike has already suggested that,” Mary Lou said. “I abhor violence and I will not be rescued by men.”

In Spike’s lap, Rosie turned and lapped his nose.

“I need a bodyguard,” Mary Lou said. “Spike recommended you.”

“I’m flattered,” I said, “but I don’t really have the resources.”

“Money is not an issue.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “But I am essentially a one-woman shop. It takes more than me to do a first-rate security job.”

“Couldn’t you hire people?”

“Not women.”

“I can’t have men.”

“There are men who will protect you without violating your consciousness,” I said.

“I can’t have men.”

“Not even a tough fairy?” Spike said.

Mary Lou shook her head. Spike grinned. I sat quietly and didn’t speak. Over the years I have found that a pretty good way to avoid being a dope.

“Can you help me?” Mary Lou said.

“I don’t know how,” I said. “One person can’t do it right.”

We all sat quietly. Rosie had stopped lapping Spike. She put her paws on the table, rested her chin on them, and began to snore lightly.

“I have no one else to ask,” Mary Lou said finally.

I didn’t like Mary Lou much. She had about her the same narrow certainty that my mother had. And she didn’t think I was funny. And she didn’t like Rosie.

“I have no one,” she said.

Her voice was a little shaky.

“How is the security at your office?” I said.

“During the day it’s good,” she said. “There is a security guard in the lobby and my office staff is fifteen people.”

“All women?”

“Of course.”

“How about at home?”

“I live in a condominium in a secure building,” she said.

“What floor?”

“Fifth.”

“How tall is the building?”

“Ten stories.”

I nodded.

“Can you help me?”