Robert B. Parker's Revenge Tour E-Book

Mike Lupica

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 338

Beschreibung

Robert B. Parker's PI Sunny Randall's newest case hits close to home in ways she never expected in her latest thrilling investigation. PI Sunny Randall owes a favour. Her landlord and former client, famous novelist Melanie Joan Hall, is being threatened and blackmailed, and it is up to Sunny and her best friend Spike to ensure her protection. But as Sunny looks into the identity of Melanie Joan's stalker, she learns that much of the author's past is a product of her amazing imagination, and her loyalty to her old friend is challenged as she searches for the truth. At the same time, Sunny springs into action when her aging ex-cop father, Phil, is threatened by a shady lawyer with a desire to settle an old score. Fighting crimes on two fronts, Sunny must use all of her savvy, and the help of her friends, in order to protect those she loves. And one thing is for sure with both of these cases: this time, it's personal.

Leseprobe

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FORROBERT 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’ – New York Times

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR MIKE LUPICA

‘Lupica, an award-winning sports columnist, author of 40 books, and longtime friend of the late Parker, nails the Sunny Randall character and the Boston criminal milieu that Parker created’ – Booklist

‘Lupica does justice to the work of MWA Grand Master Robert B. Parker in this splendid continuation of the late author’s Sunny Randall series’ – Publisher’s Weekly

‘Mike Lupica mixes a heavy dose of suspense with a shot of nostalgia, effortlessly delivering a relentless thriller that might just be the best book in the series so far’ – The Real Book Spy

‘Lupica mimics the heroine’s voice, much less distinctive than those of Parker’s other leads, with ease’ – Kirkus Reviews

This book is for Peter Gethers.

1

‘I don’t know why they just couldn’t leave well enough alone,’ Phil Randall said to me.

‘Dad,’ I said, ‘I’m pretty sure you said the same thing when they broke up the phone company.’

We were seated at a window table in The Street Bar at The Newbury, which had been the old Ritz before it became the Taj. Then one of the big hotel chains had bought the property and closed it down for a couple years and done a renovation that I was certain had cost more than Bill Gates’s divorce. When I’d learned the dollar figures on both of them, I’d idly wondered how my life would have turned out if I’d married one of those men, and not a child of the Boston Mob.

We were drinking martinis just because it seemed to be the thing to do. The quality of the martinis at The Street Bar hadn’t improved as much as the condition of the hotel, which really had needed one of those extreme makeovers. But the quality of the martinis hadn’t diminished, either. My father had told them to use Beluga Gold, informing me as he often did that you only live once.

‘Don’t get me started on phones,’ he said. ‘I liked the world a lot better when the only things I needed when I left the house were a gun and badge, and not an iPhone ninety-nine.’

He had been one of the best and most decorated detectives in the history of the Boston Police Department. And still thought of himself as a cop. And, bless his heart, always would.

‘Think you might be slightly off on your math there,’ I said. ‘I think we’re only working on the iPhone fifty at this point.’

‘I am making a larger point about the modern world,’ he said.

‘As you so often do.’

‘Let me tell you another thing about cell phones,’ he said, shaking his head disgustedly. ‘Text messaging is the devil’s handiwork.’

I grinned at him, an almost permanent condition for me when in his presence. ‘How do you feel about apps?’

‘App this,’ my father said.

He drank. I drank. It was the height of the cocktail hour, but I knew the bartender from when the place was still the Taj. So we had scored the best of the handful of window tables in the place. Every other table was occupied. So were the stools at the bar, on the other side of the room, to your left as you walked in from a lobby far more ornate than it had been before. No more masks. No more social distancing. Somehow it made everything in a wonderful old capital of the Back Bay feel new again, which is exactly what the owners of The Newbury had been shooting for, on a rather grand scale. I hadn’t priced out the rooms, but suspected that before booking one I would have had to sell jewelry if I wanted the weekend package.

‘And I frankly don’t understand why they had to move the entrance to the hotel around the corner,’ Phil Randall said.

‘If they hadn’t,’ I said, ‘we’d be sitting at The Arlington.’

‘Cute,’ he said.

‘You’ve always thought so.’

‘You better believe it, kid,’ he said.

We raised our glasses at the same moment. He smiled at me. His smile was either elfin or impish, I’d never been able to decide which best described him. Truth was, the cute one was him.

‘At least the view from here remains the same,’ he said, staring across Arlington at the Public Garden.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘until they build that cell tower they’re thinking of building next to the statue of George Washington.’

‘Is that supposed to be funny?’

I said, ‘Apparently not.’

He wore a tweed Brooks Brothers jacket and a button-down blue shirt with the Brooks roll to the collar and a bright red silk tie and pocket square to match the tie. He smelled of bay rum. He was getting older; it was happening more quickly than I would have wished. Just not older to me.

I noticed him looking past me now at the entrance to the bar, frowning, as if suddenly putting his cop eyes to use.

‘What?’ I said, swiveling my head around.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just thought I saw someone I know.’

‘Friend or foe?’ I said.

‘Little bit of both,’ he said, then dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. ‘But then my vision isn’t what it used to be.’

‘Like hell it’s not,’ I said.

And we drank. I was so happy to be at this table, in this room, with him. I wasn’t all that keen on the male species these days. But Phil Randall was a notable exception. As was Spike.

It was as if my father were reading my mind.

‘How’s Richie?’ he said.

Richie Burke. Ex-husband.

‘We had dinner the other night,’ I said. ‘He wants to start dating again.’

‘Good!’ my father said.

‘I told him no.’

‘Why would you do something as shortsighted as that?’

‘Because I don’t want for us to get back together,’ I said. ‘At least not in that way. And it’s time for me to meet somebody new.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘a father can hope.’

‘Despite half a lifetime trying to put his father in jail,’ I said.

Desmond Burke. It was silly to think of him as being the head of the Irish Mob in Boston. At this point in time, he was the Irish Mob in Boston.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ Phil Randall said, ‘but you aren’t getting any younger.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Is there a right way for a girl to take that?’

I rose out of my chair just enough and leaned across the table to kiss him on top of his head. Yup, I thought. Definitely bay rum.

‘I just think you need a man in your life,’ he said.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘that’s it, you’re under arrest, in the name of modern women everywhere.’

He laughed. I laughed. As always, he made me feel that everything was going to be all right, whatever happened to be going on in my life.

‘I just remembered,’ he said, ‘you told me you had something you wanted to tell me about a new client.’

‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ I said. ‘A new old one. Like the hotel.’

‘And who might that be?’

‘Melanie Joan Hall,’ I said.

‘Your landlord?’

‘I think she prefers bestselling, world-famous author,’ I said.

‘Isn’t she the one who nearly got my baby girl killed that time?’

‘One and the same.’

‘So what’s the good news?’ my father said.

2

Before we left the bar I tried to correct the record with my father about what had actually transpired when I had first been hired by Melanie Joan Hall. She was being stalked by an especially creepy ex-husband with even creepier sexual tastes. But Richie and I had teamed up to finally take him down, and an equally dangerous friend along with him, when they tried to drug and assault me, not knowing I had shown up having taken an antidote.

‘Good times,’ Phil Randall said drily.

But Melanie Joan had shown her undying gratitude to Rosie the dog and me by allowing us to rent her four-story town house on River Street Place, where, legend had it, ship sails had been woven in the long-ago. Melanie Joan had once again fallen in love at that particular moment in her life and had gone Hollywood, something that seemed as inevitable to me as the phases of the moon. She wanted me to live in the town house rent-free. I told her I couldn’t do that. She finally established a ridiculously low figure as an alternative and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Saying no to Melanie Joan, queen of the bodice-ripping romance novels and founder of what called itself, without the slightest hint of irony, the Ardor Channel, was like trying to stop the rain.

So she had gone off years ago to, in her words, put even more tinsel in Tinseltown, and Rosie and I had lived at the foot of Beacon Hill ever since.

‘Tell me she doesn’t want her house back,’ my father said, ‘even though your mother has kept your room as you left it.’

‘Just neater, I’m guessing.’

‘There’s that.’

‘You’re too old to move back home,’ he said.

‘And, in your view, not getting any younger.’

He waved for the check. I told him this one was on me. While we waited I explained to him that the Ardor Channel, the mention of which always made him giggle, was about to start shooting a new series based on Melanie Joan’s most recent book, the first one set in the modern world, one chronicling the adventures of the great-granddaughter of her signature character, Cassandra Demeter, the spunky and extremely frisky girl from the wrong side of the tracks in Boston who had made it into the thick of Brahmin society at the turn of the century. With and without her clothes on.

‘Your mother loves those books,’ my father said. ‘God save us and protect us.’

‘Melanie Joan is actually staying here at the hotel,’ I said. ‘I’m meeting her for dinner at Davio’s.’

‘You two walking over together?’

‘What, and spoil her entrance?’

‘She should have joined us for a drink,’ he said.

‘Would have cut into essential prep time for hair and makeup and wardrobe,’ I said.

‘Why does she need you this time?’

‘Says she has a problem only I can help her with.’

‘Hopefully not one that puts you in harm’s way.’

I sighed. ‘I can take care of myself.’

‘If I had a nickel,’ Phil Randall said.

When I’d signed the check, I saw him once again staring over at the entrance to The Street Bar again.

‘You okay?’

‘Never better,’ he said.

He had parked in a lot at Exeter and Newbury, saying the walk would do him good, he could get some air and walk off the vodka before he got into the car. I told him I was going to take a stroll through the Public Garden before making my way back to Davio’s.

I kissed him on the cheek when we were outside and standing in front of the new entrance to the hotel.

‘You’re sure you’re okay?’ I said.

‘I just told you I was,’ he said. ‘And you know I never lie to my baby girl.’

While I waited for the light to change on Arlington, I turned around, already smiling, expecting to see my father’s jaunty walk as he made his way down my favorite walking street in the whole city.

But he was already gone.

Wherever he was going, it wasn’t to his car.

And as for him never lying to his baby girl, it would turn out that there was a first time for everything.

3

Of course Melanie Joan had arranged for us to be seated at a table that seemed to be the exact geographic center of the front room, in the most visible and best-lit part of Davio’s. Of course she showed up a half-hour late.

While I waited alone at the table, I pondered the fact that this was what passed for a big night out for me these days, first with my father and now with the author of her current bestseller, Burning Excess.

When Melanie Joan did finally show up, I saw that she had on a bright red dress and a hat I could have sworn had been worn by the woman whose horse had recently won the Kentucky Derby, and won Spike a whole pile of money in the process.

It was like every entrance I’d ever seen her make, into any room, including the ladies’ room. I wasn’t sure how many people in the room knew exactly who she was. Just that she was Somebody. At least some of the women turning their heads to follow her slow progress toward our table on the arm of the manager, Armando, surely had to recognize their favorite author, whether they admitted that or not. It was unlikely that any of the men did. Martha Stewart probably had more male readers than Melanie Joan Hall did.

‘Please sit down!’ Melanie Joan commanded when I stood to greet her, rising up out of what must have looked to the room like a supplicant’s chair. ‘I don’t want everybody to think I’m having dinner with my daughter.’

She quickly air-kissed me in the general vicinity of both cheeks. I couldn’t identify her scent as easily as I had my father’s, just knew instantly that it was pretty damned wonderful.

We had been given a table for four. Melanie Joan took off her hat and placed it on the chair next to her. Somehow not a single hair was out of place after she did.

‘You look beautiful, Melanie Joan,’ I said to her.

She smiled, almost sadly, I thought.

‘What was it that Scott Fitzgerald said at the end of Gatsby?’ she said. ‘We beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly to our plastic surgeon.’

‘Pretty sure it’s borne back into the past,’ I said.

‘Oh, don’t I wish, darling.’

It had been more than two years since I’d last seen her, when she’d stopped in Boston on her last book tour. I assumed she’d had more work done since then, but, as always, it had been artfully done. Being a trained detective, I knewhow old she was, and at the same time knew how difficult she’d made it to find out her actual age online.

But to be in the age range she very much wanted people to think she was, only sneaking up on AARP, her first novel would have to have been published when she was in the third grade.

It was clear, once the small talk began, that she would be taking her time telling me why we were here, despite having made it sound like a matter of life and death.

‘How’s your cute, better half?’ she said.

I grinned. ‘Rosie?’

‘You know who I mean.’

Apparently everybody except our waiter wanted to talk about Richie Burke tonight. Somehow he was with me even when he wasn’t, as if we were together even when we were not.

‘Richie’s fine. And no, we’re not.’

‘Not what?’

‘Not doing what you were about to ask if we’re doing.’

‘And what about your other other?’

‘If you are referring to Chief Stone,’ I said, ‘he is currently doing what I’m not doing with Richie with a red-haired vixen named Rita Fiore.’

‘The lawyer?’ Melanie Joan said. ‘I believe I used her one time.’

‘Well, now Jesse is.’

‘Now, now,’ she said. ‘All’s fair in sex and war.’

She ordered a cosmopolitan and insisted that I join her. From past experience, I knew it was best to acquiesce. And I’d always thought cosmos were yummy. I knew she would get to what she needed to get to at her own pace. Hey, I thought. She’s the writer.

Melanie Joan raised her glass when the drinks arrived and proposed a toast to strong, single women.

‘Yes, to us,’ I said, feeling as if I ought to chime in.

‘I was only talking about you,’ she said.

She put down her long-stemmed glass then. And in that moment, she was no longer the glam queen of Fem Lit and burning loins, as the sculpted and perfectly made-up face turned almost solemn.

‘So,’ she said.

She was staring past me, as if something completely fascinating were happening at the raw bar.

I waited.

‘I really am afraid I’m in trouble again, Sunny,’ she said.

‘Tell me about it,’ I said.

‘I’d rather not,’ she said.

‘Force yourself,’ I said.

‘We can talk about it after dinner.’

‘I can manage both,’ I said. ‘I’m the kind of multitasker that makes young multitaskers aspirational.’

‘It’s not funny!’ she said in a voice loud enough that I saw people at the nearest tables do some head-swiveling.

‘I’ll be better able to judge that when I know what “it” is,’ I said.

She lowered her voice now, leaned forward. Fewer lines in her forehead than when I’d last seen her. I hadn’t given in to Botox. Yet.

‘Someone has accused me of literary theft,’ she said.

I let that settle for just a moment before I said, ‘Who?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What do they want?’

‘I don’t know that, either.’

Piece of cake, I thought.

4

We were back at The Newbury in her penthouse suite, having walked back from Davio’s, where I was afraid Armando might be considering a career change or perhaps even witness protection after seeing how little of our black cod each of us had eaten.

Now Melanie Joan was on her couch, feet up, sipping a brandy, telling me again how awful it all was.

‘I feel as if that was well established before we left the restaurant,’ I said.

‘Don’t be snarky.’

I smiled. ‘Make me.’

At least she smiled back.

‘I did not steal the idea for Cassandra!’ she said, and not for the first time.

Cassandra Demeter, of course. The character Melanie Joan talked about as if she were quite real, and who had made her quite famous. And stupidly rich.

‘I believe you,’ I said, also not for the first time, not that it seemed to provide any consolation.

Even with all of her theatrical starts and stops, I now knew Melanie Joan’s problem. Someone had contacted her via email, telling her that the novel that had put Melanie Joan on the literary map had originally been written by someone else.

‘This awful person told me that Cassandra is somebody else’s work and he can prove it,’ she said. ‘And that there would be no new character for the new TV show if I hadn’t stolen the idea for Cassandra in the first place.’

‘The great-granddaughter,’ I said. ‘That new character.’

‘Destiny,’ she said.

It was the name of the great-granddaughter, not an assessment of her current circumstances.

A sigh came out of Melanie Joan now that sounded more mournful than a country song. She might have started crying if she wasn’t worried about what it might do to her makeup.

‘Has anybody ever accused you of plagiarism before?’ I said.

‘Don’t use that awful word!’

She took a big slug of brandy.

‘Okay, let’s back up,’ I said. ‘Whose content is it that you are supposed to have taken?’

‘He won’t say,’ I said. ‘Just that he has proof.’

‘You know it’s a man who’s been contacting you?’

‘I just assumed,’ she said. ‘They’ve caused most of the problems in my life, haven’t they?’

Now I sighed.

‘Don’t you use that tone with me,’ she said.

The bottle of brandy was on the coffee table between us. I imagined myself grabbing it and drinking from it straight.

‘Are you aware of something called Guerilla Mail?’ Melanie Joan said.

Actually I was. It was an encrypted mail provider that had come up in a case I’d worked the previous year in Los Angeles involving a noted agent, and former boyfriend of sorts, named Tony Gault.

‘And you got this email last week?’ I said.

She nodded.

‘May I see it?’

‘I trashed it,’ she said.

‘Untrash it, please,’ I said.

‘I’m quite sure I deleted it after I trashed it.’

‘I’ll go into your mail later and un-delete it,’ I said. ‘For now, why don’t you just try to remember it as close to word for word as you can?’

Now she reached for the bottle of brandy. She had offered me some before. But I knew enough about myself to know that if I started drinking brandy with her, this might turn into a sleepover.

‘This person said that they knew what I had done and that I knew what I had done,’ Melanie Joan said. ‘And the pain I’d caused because of what I’d done, and not just to the original author.’

‘And whoever this is,’ I said, ‘they’re looking for money?’

She put her head back and closed her eyes and now looked every minute of the age I knew she was.

‘I’m just assuming,’ she said, ‘even if the turgid prose concluded with me being told that in the end, it was going to cost me more than money.’

She got up and walked to the window, glass in hand, and stared at the lights beyond the park.

‘I simply cannot have this at this stage of my life,’ she said. ‘Or, for that matter, any stage of my life. For a writer, even the suggestion that you might have done something like this really is a fate worse than death.’

‘But you didn’t do it,’ I said.

She wheeled to face me.

‘It won’t matter!’ she snapped. ‘It will be as if I’m wearing a scarlet letter.’

Then she told me the story of a noted romance novelist who had once been caught ripping off an even more famous and successful romance novelist. I was vaguely aware of both names.

‘What happened?’ I said.

‘The woman who got caught had to write a big check is what happened,’ Melanie Joan said. ‘She announced that a psychological disorder had made her do it, and got by with that well enough to resume her career, even though sales were never the same after that.’ Melanie Joan seemed to sag. ‘And then she died.’

She sat back down on the couch.

‘Please promise me that you’ll make this go away,’ she said. ‘You must understand that for a writer, this is like being MeToo’ed.’

There were more questions that I knew needed to be asked. A lot more. I knew there was much she was not telling me. But I could see her starting to shut down. So I told her we would revisit this in the morning. She made me promise again that I would make it go away, the way I had once made her ex-husband go away, and for a long time. I told her I would try. She said that I had to do better than that.

I took the elevator down and walked around the park and up to Beacon before making a left on Charles, and then past the Charles Street Meeting House toward home. I stopped at one point and turned around, thinking that someone might be following me. But saw no one.

Probably just my imagination.

What happened when you hung around with a writer?

Occupational hazard, for both of us.

5

Melanie Joan’s current agent, Samantha Heller, was in my office over P. F. Chang’s at ten the next morning, for the meeting she had requested and one to which I had readily agreed. It had been only one night with Melanie Joan, but I was already looking for as much backup as I could find.

Samantha was very pretty and if she was somewhere in my demographic, she was carrying it off very well. If I knew that Melanie Joan went through agents the way she did husbands, Ms. Heller had to be aware of that fact as well. But she seemed to be one sharp cookie.

Could even women call other women cookies anymore?

Maybe Samantha would know.

She was blonde, and taller than me. I’d always wanted to be taller than me. She was wearing a short leather jacket and jeans and also had a better figure than I did. We hadn’t even started working together yet and I was wondering if I needed to hate her.

‘Having known some of Melanie Joan’s previous representatives,’ I said, ‘you’re not exactly what I expected.’

She only made things worse for herself, at least from where I was sitting, by smiling a winner of a cover-girl smile.

‘I’m told I sound much older on the phone,’ she said.

‘Your predecessors were, ah, slightly more mature, as I recall,’ I said.

She held the smile. ‘Spoiler alert,’ she said. ‘They ended up being just more ugly divorces for MJ.’

‘Kind of her thing.’

Samantha Heller said, ‘She thought I might be better suited to tap into the zeitgeist.’

‘I’ve always wondered,’ I said, ‘if that was something you could actually do.’

She laughed. Her Prada bag had been dropped casually next to one of my client chairs. Her Golden Goose sneakers had the proper worn-in look, as if they’d first been worn by her mother. Whether we could actually work comfortably together was yet to be determined. But I could see already we could shop together.

Forget about hating her. I was starting to think it might be love. I asked how she became an agent. She laughed again and said, ‘Practice, practice, practice,’ then told me she had bounced around a bit after college, before taking an entry-level job at McArdle and Lowell, Melanie Joan’s publisher. She’d finally become an assistant to Melanie Joan’s editor, then when Melanie Joan had fired yet another agent, it seemed like a natural fit for her to make the switch.

‘Forget about me,’ she said. ‘MJ made you sound like some sort of superhero.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘but my best friend is. His name is Spike.’

‘I think Melanie Joan mentioned him,’ she said. ‘He’s gay, right?’

‘He tries not to make a big thing out of it.’

‘She says he has everything except a cape.’

‘He brings the cape out for Halloween, unless I beg him not to.’

I asked her how she came to this moment. ‘At the agency or in life?’ she said.

‘Life,’ I said.

‘I am a child of the Upper East Side of New York City,’ she said. She smiled again. ‘I’m almost proud to say.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That old place.’

‘Dalton,’ she said. ‘NYU, because I didn’t make the cut at Columbia, but couldn’t bring myself to leave the big, bad city. Only moved to Boston because I had a shot at McArdle and Lowell. Finally did the agent thing at Quill. Our agency. Graduated from there to a master’s degree in Melanie Joan Hall.’

‘What’s your ultimate goal?’ I said.

‘Other than world domination?’ she said.

I offered her coffee. She said tea if I had some. I told her that she was in luck, I had tea pods for my Keurig. I made a cup for her and Dunkin’ decaf coffee for myself. I’d already had so much caffeine in me this morning I’d considered challenging my Peloton trainer to a fistfight.

I heard her phone chirp from inside the bag. She didn’t grab for it as if it might go off. Before long we’d be picking out furniture.

‘How much did she tell you?’ Samantha asked.

‘Enough to know how frightened she is,’ I said. ‘About somebody coming after her this way, even more about it getting out.’

‘Even though she says it’s a lie,’ Samantha said. ‘We both know it is a lie, right?’

‘I think “know” might be a bit strong,’ I said. I put air quotes around know. ‘But I’m ever hopeful.’

Samantha smiled again. ‘For better or worse,’ she said, ‘Melanie Joan swears she has always written her own breathless prose.’

‘I thought it was deathless prose.’

‘Have it your way,’ she said.

She had blue eyes the color of sapphires. As hurtful as the notion was, I saw her as a younger version of me. Blonder. And taller. God damn it.

‘What I’m trying to wrap my head around,’ I said, ‘is that if she is being blackmailed, why no demand?’

‘This has only been going on for a week or so,’ Samantha said. ‘For now, MJ feels as if this person is more interested in scaring the living shit out of her. And succeeding, I might add.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Based off of my time with her last night, mission accomplished.’

‘It really is as if she’s being stalked all over again,’ she said, ‘before you rescued the fair maiden that time.’

‘She told you about that?’

‘She tells everybody,’ Samantha said.

The phone chirped again. This time she reached in, looked at the screen, nodded, casually tossed it back into the bag. Obviously even her steely will had limits. Sometimes I could go as long as two or three minutes without checking from whom a missed call had come.

‘Not important?’ I said.

‘Depends on who you ask,’ she said. ‘The great and powerful Richard Gross is trying to reach me. MJ’s lawyer. And manager. You’ve heard of him.’

‘I spent a lot of time on a case in Los Angeles last year,’ I said. ‘They call him Gross Points out there, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘I’m impressed.’

‘I’ve been known to check out The Hollywood Reporter,’ I said.

‘Look at you,’ she said.

‘Richard Gross has only been repping Melanie Joan for a few years, right?’ I said.

‘For a while I was afraid she might marry him,’ she said.

‘What’s he like?’ I said. ‘Gross.’

She laughed. ‘Gross,’ she said.

‘You two don’t get along?’

Samantha said, ‘Richard doesn’t think she needs an agent, having now been blessed to have him in her world.’

‘I’ll bet he can tap into the zeitgeist,’ I said.

‘Only if he thinks there really are points for him on the back end,’ she said.

The phone chirped again. She ignored it again, and drank more of her tea. ‘So what do you think you can do?’ Samantha asked. ‘Before things escalate.’

‘Sounds as if that happened as soon as she got the email,’ I said. ‘And just so we’re clear. You are convinced there is no possible way that she stole material, even when she was just getting started.’

She ran a hand through her hair. Mine had been that color once, in a shade I thought of as the original Sunny.

‘Is it possible that there is someone out there who conceived a character they think strongly resembles Cassandra Demeter?’ she said. ‘Sure. Even when we send one of Melanie Joan’s books out in Hollywood, and even though it’s someone as well-known as her, we sometimes hear there are three other people pitching something similar.’

‘But if it is true,’ I said, ‘the injured person waited a long time to get even, right?’

‘And must think they have a good reason to somehow get even with her,’ she said. ‘A very good reason.’

Now it was my phone, the landline on my desk, ringing. The noise was loud enough to startle us both.

‘Sunny Randall,’ I said when I answered.

‘He’s been in my room!’ Melanie Joan shouted from her end of the call, right before Samantha Heller and I were on our way to The Newbury.

6

She was waiting for us when we got out of the elevator at the penthouse level, twitchy as a hummingbird, dressed in workout clothes I knew weren’t cheap, just because nothing Melanie Joan Hall owned ever was.

The baseball cap she was wearing had ardor written on the front.

‘It took the two of you long enough!’ she snapped.

‘Melanie Joan,’ Samantha said, her voice calm. ‘We were at Sunny’s office. It’s on the other side of the park. We felt it was quicker to walk. Or run, to be more precise.’

‘We’re here now,’ I said.

‘Well,’ Melanie Joan said, ‘hooray for both of you.’

We walked down to her suite, at the end of a long hallway. She used her key card to let us all in. I knew it was challenging in the world of key cards to break into a hotel room. But my friend Ghost Garrity, who had elevated breaking and entering into an art form, had explained to me one time that if you could get your hands on a used card to start the process, it wasn’t as difficult as you might think.

‘Look!’ Melanie Joan said, pointing dramatically at the coffee table where her bottle of Emperador, specially ordered for her by The Newbury, had rested the night before.

In the middle of the table was a copy of Burning Excess, her latest book, red paint that was apparently supposed to look like blood splashed across the cover, a sharp-point paring knife driven into the book.

Samantha Heller started to reach down and I told her not to touch anything, just in case prints had been left, though I doubted that they had.

Melanie Joan told us that she’d just come back from her morning walk when she found the book and the knife.

‘It wasn’t there before you left?’ I said.

‘Of course it wasn’t!’

‘Have you called hotel security?’ I said to Melanie Joan.

‘I called you!’ she said. ‘Do you think I want to read about this on Page Six?’

We were in Boston and Page Six was the gossip section of the New York Post. But we both knew what she was saying.

‘We should get them up here,’ I said.

‘Absolutely not!’ she said. ‘Once something like this gets out, people will immediately want to know why someone would do something as hideous as this.’

I knew that I would have to talk to the hotel, and sooner rather than later, because they’d want to look at footage from the video cameras I knew had to be situated in the hall. But I also knew that if you were tech-savvy enough to manufacture a key card at a high-end hotel, then you could get yourself a jammer for the cameras. I’d seen it done before, and not just at places like The Newbury.

For now, I was making the assumption that if somebody had risked making a delivery like this, that person was no amateur. Or, in the words of my sainted father, had brass ones.

‘We may need bodyguards for the rest of your stay in Boston,’ Samantha Heller said.

‘Sunny has guarded me before,’ Melanie Joan said. ‘She can do it again.’

No no no, I thought.

Fuck no.

But then Samantha Heller, bless her heart, threw me a life preserver.

‘We’re going to be fighting a two-front battle here, Melanie Joan,’ she said to her client. ‘I’m not sure Sunny can handle this all herself.’

I wondered if Melanie Joan even heard the tone Samantha was using, someone so much younger than she was speaking to her the way she would a child.

‘Job one is keeping you safe,’ Samantha continued. ‘Then Sunny has to find out who is behind this nastiness. And as formidable a presence as I can already see that Sunny is, she really can’t do both.’

In that moment, she sounded like my agent.

‘Sunny did both before,’ Melanie Joan said.

‘Back then,’ I said, ‘we both knew who was after you. Wedidn’t need to establish a list of suspects. We had our guy from the start.’

Dr John Melvin. Psychiatrist. Ex-husband. Stalker and kink. Recently turned down yet again, as emphatically as ever, by the state’s parole board. It had become a very nice habit with them.

‘Have you heard from your ex lately?’ I said.

‘No,’ Melanie Joan said. ‘And may my ex never be an ex-con.’

‘Have you?’

‘Have I what?’ she said, perhaps already moving on to her next thought.

‘Heard from John Melvin.’

‘I hadn’t heard from him in years,’ she said. ‘He used to write me when he first got to prison. But out of the blue, a couple months ago, a mean letter arrived at my home in LA.’

‘What did it say?’

‘That one day we would meet again, in one way or another.’

‘That was it?’

‘Oh,’ she said, waving her hand, ‘there was some silliness at the end about me continuing to enjoy my success while I still could.’

Samantha Heller said, ‘You never mentioned that to me.’

‘I didn’t think it was worth mentioning, with him locked away,’ Melanie Joan said.

Samantha Heller looked at me and did a quick, subtle eye roll.

‘And now I want that book out of this room this instant!’ Melanie Joan said, staring at it the way she would a cockroach.

‘For now, it’s evidence,’ I said. ‘I’ll bag it before I leave and get it to a friend of mine with the cops.’

We walked into the next room, a small dining area, and sat at the table. I had Melanie Joan take me through her morning. She said she had taken her morning walk down Newbury to Mass Ave. and then back up Boylston. Then again. Proudly pointing out that she made sure to walk at least three miles a day whenever possible.

‘I don’t keep the weight off by wishing it away,’ she said.

‘Few can,’ I said.

She gave me a look that would have been far more withering if she weren’t once again asking me to save her from the bad guys.

‘Snarky as ever,’ she said.

‘Chronically,’ I said. ‘Happily. Proudly.’

She kept going, saying she’d finally stopped to pick up a latte at the Starbucks on the corner of Boylston and Berkeley. She said it was the morning and the sidewalks were already crowded with people going to work, and she saw no reason to be afraid, not knowing that she would become terrified as soon as she was back in the suite and saw the book. Had called me immediately, the stakes having been raised, and exponentially, in that moment.

‘Maybe it is John,’ Melanie Joan said. ‘Maybe this is some kind of act of vengeance from prison. He knows that every time he has applied for parole, I have written a letter reminding the board of what he did to me. And tried to do to Sunny.’

‘I could make a call to the prison,’ I said. ‘All prison calls are recorded.’

‘But wouldn’t he have been the one who waited an awfully long time to get even?’ Samantha said. ‘Like the author of the email to our author?’

‘Revenge is a powerful, and sustainable, emotion,’ I said. ‘And motivator.’

‘He hates us both,’ Melanie Joan said. ‘And Richie, too.’

I said, ‘I’m going to have to start somewhere. Might as well start there. He could easily have hired someone to send that email. Perhaps he has even figured out a way to send them himself on Guerilla Mail, and hired someone to leave the book here.’