The Jesse Stone Novels 6-9

by Robert B. Parker

  Jenn smiled.

  “Fucking my way to the top?” she said.

  Sunny shrugged. Jenn ate a crouton.

  “It’s worked great,” Jenn said. “I just recently got promoted from weather girl.”

  Sunny smiled.

  “Show-business opportunities are not unlimited in this market,” she said.

  “For sure,” Jenn said.

  “Did you come here because Jesse was here?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “You still love him?”

  “I think so.”

  “But you still…”

  “I’m still trying to fuck my way to the top,” Jenn said.

  “But…” Sunny said.

  “Jesse is like your ex-husband, you know? I can’t imagine life without him in it.”

  “But…”

  “Almost anything I know that matters, I learned from him,” Jenn said.

  Sunny waited.

  “I always needed to be somebody, and I always thought that what I had to offer was that I looked good and I could fuck,” Jenn said.

  Sunny smiled.

  “Most of us can,” Sunny said.

  “But I do,” Jenn said. “Jesse was always somebody, you know? He was always so self-sufficient and complete and…somebody.”

  “Except for you and drinking,” Sunny said.

  “Yes,” Jenn said. “I think I kind of liked the drinking. It was a weakness, made him more human, sort of.”

  “And you?”

  Jenn smiled and nodded.

  “I thought that was a weakness, too,” Jenn said. “You’ve had some therapy.”

  “Yes.”

  “One of my shrinks said if it weren’t for his weaknesses,” Jenn said, “me and booze, he would have been too complete, too…Jesse. If it weren’t for those weaknesses…”

  “Of which you were one,” Sunny said.

  Jenn nodded.

  “Of which I was one,” she said. “Without those weaknesses, I probably couldn’t have loved him.”

  Jenn moved her salad around with her fork, without eating any of it.

  “How about you?” Jenn said to Sunny.

  Sunny didn’t answer right away. She was looking out the window at the corner by King’s Chapel. The man was gone. She smiled without very much pleasure.

  “Richie didn’t have any weaknesses,” she said.

  21

  Being out of uniform,” Suit said. “Does this mean I’m a detective?”

  “No,” Jesse said.

  “If I was out of uniform and got a significant raise?” Suit said.

  “Might,” Jesse said.

  They were in New York, walking up West 57th Street.

  “We’re going to see Walton Weeks’s manager,” Suit said.

  “Tom Nolan,” Jesse said.

  “In hopes of detecting who killed Walton,” Suit said.

  “Yes.”

  “So how come, if I’m detecting, I’m not a detective?”

  They crossed Sixth Avenue with the light.

  “Department’s not big enough to have detectives,” Jesse said.

  “So I do detective work for patrolman’s pay,” Suit said.

  “Exactly,” Jesse said.

  They passed the back entrance to the Parker Meridien hotel across 57th Street.

  “Who’s going to be there?” Suit said.

  “With Nolan? The widow, and as much of the staff as he can get together.”

  “Current widow.”

  “Yes.”

  “We going to talk about the broad being pregnant?” Suit said.

  “We won’t introduce the topic.”

  “You think they know?” Suit said.

  “I mentioned it to the governor’s man, Kennfield,” Jesse said.

  “And you figure he blabbed.”

  “Yes.”

  They turned into a narrow building on West 57th Street.

  “And you kind of want to see if he blabbed to them,” Suit said.

  “I do,” Jesse said.

  “Always nice,” Suit said. “If you think a guy’s a jerk, and he confirms your suspicion.”

  “Always,” Jesse said.

  They rode the elevator to the penthouse and buzzed at the office door. A voice asked who they were.

  “Chief Stone,” Jesse said, “and Detective Simpson, from Paradise, Massachusetts.”

  Suit grinned.

  “Detective Simpson,” he murmured.

  After a moment the door clicked open and they went in. A well-groomed young woman showed them through a short reception area and into Tom Nolan’s office. It was a narrow room that stretched across the front of the building. A window wall looked out over a part of the West Side.

  With seven people in the room, it was crowded. Nolan sat behind a semicircular desk on the left wall, facing the windows. Four people sat in chairs in front of the desk, with the windows at their backs. At the far end of the office was a small white piano. In between were too many small tables, extra chairs, hassocks, and floor lamps. Suit went and stood beside the windows. Jesse stood near Nolan’s desk. Introductions were made: Lorrie Weeks, the current wife; Stephanie Weeks, the previous wife; Alan Hendricks, Weeks’s researcher; Sam Gates, Weeks’s lawyer.

  “Ellen Migliore now lives in Italy,” Nolan said. “So she isn’t here. There are other, less prominent people in Walton’s life, but I wasn’t sure how deep you wanted me to go in assembling the group.”

  “Ellen Migliore is the first Mrs. Weeks?” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  “This group is fine,” Jesse said.

  “As Mr. Nolan pointed out,” Jesse said, “I’m the chief of police in Paradise, Massachusetts, where Mr. Weeks and Ms. Longley were killed. The large young man by the window is Detective Simpson.”

  Suit nodded gravely to the assemblage.

  “First,” Jesse said. “We are sorry for your loss.”

  “May I ask a question?” Gates asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Paradise is a small town, is it not?”

  “It is,” Jesse said.

  “How big a police force do you have?” Gates asked.

  “Twelve,” Jesse said. “Plus me.”

  “Isn’t it usual for the state police to step in when there’s a big crime and a small, perhaps inexperienced, force?”

  “That’s quite common,” Jesse said.

  “But not in this case?” Gates said.

  “State police are standing by,” Jesse said.

  “But you’re running the investigation,” Gates said.

  “Yes.”

  “This is a rather important murder,” Gates said.

  “They all are,” Jesse said.

  “Touché,” Gates said. “Let me rephrase. This murder has created national attention.”

  “Murders,” Jesse said.

  “Of course, these murders have created national attention. Do you have the necessary resources?”

  “We do,” Jesse said.

  “Well, you’re confident,” Gates said. “I’ll give you that.”

  “Thanks,” Jesse said.

  “I assume you wish to ask us some questions,” Tom Nolan said.

  “I do,” Jesse said.

  He looked at Lorrie.

  “You arranged burial.”

  “Yes.”

  “Private ceremony?”

  “Yes, it’s how Walton would have wished it.”

  “Back here,” Jesse said.

  “Yes. This was home for Walton and me,” she said. “Mr. Lutz helped me with the arrangements.”

  “The girl, too?”

  “It seemed only decent. No one on her side of things seemed to care.”

  “So you buried her back here, too,” Jesse said.

  “Yes, it seemed the simplest arrangement.”

  “Lutz took care of that, too,” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  “You might have had some formal moment,” Stephanie said.

&nbs
p; Lorrie gazed at her blankly.

  “I was, am, in a state of some shock,” she said finally.

  Stephanie shrugged.

  The two wives looked somewhat alike. Dark hair, good bodies, expensive clothes, expert makeup. To Jesse, Stephanie looked maybe twenty years older than Lorrie. Otherwise there was little to choose between them.

  The two women looked at each other silently, until Lorrie spoke again.

  “I was just so grief-stricken,” she said. “I didn’t know what I should do.”

  “Hard to know what to do in these situations,” Jesse said.

  “Oh God,” Lorrie said. “This is so awful.”

  “I understand,” Jesse said to Tom Nolan, “that you have no next of kin for Ms. Longley.”

  “No,” Nolan said. “She didn’t list any when we hired her. No one has appeared?”

  “No.”

  “God,” Nolan said, “it’s all over the news. If there were parents or somebody, they must have heard.”

  “Weeks gets more attention,” Jesse said.

  Nolan nodded.

  “Still,” he said.

  Jesse shrugged.

  “Who inherits?” Jesse said.

  “The estate has not been settled yet,” Gates said. “And it’s reasonably complicated. But there are substantial bequests to all three wives.”

  “Is there one person whose bequest is more substantial?” Jesse said.

  “Lorrie receives the largest share.”

  “Anyone else in there but the wives?”

  “There are small bequests to various staff members, and a modest bequest to Alan Hendricks.”

  Jesse looked at Hendricks. He was a handsome young man, with close-cropped hair and olive skin. He was taller than Jesse, and slender, with big black-rimmed glasses.

  “You were Weeks’s researcher,” Jesse said.

  “Yes. Walton was very active on the phone, but I did much of the fieldwork.”

  Jesse nodded. From his place by the window, Suit was taking notes. If ever we have detectives…

  “What’s happened to Weeks Enterprises?” Jesse said.

  “TV and radio, we’re doing a retrospective,” Nolan said. “You know, the best of…same with the newspaper column.”

  “Then what?”

  Gates stepped in.

  “Once the estate is settled,” Gates said, “we’ll proceed in consonance with the wishes of the estate.”

  “Who is, in terms of the shows and the column?” Jesse said.

  “Lorrie, unless there’s something untoward.”

  “Such as?” Jesse said.

  “A problem in settling the estate,” Gates said. “Extended litigation. Walton Weeks is a public franchise, and like all such, the franchise depends on currency and continuity. If Walton Weeks were off the market for an extended time, his value would diminish substantially. For everyone.”

  “Do you plan to litigate?” Jesse said to Stephanie Weeks.

  “No. She got him away from me fair and square,” Stephanie said. “She’s earned it.”

  Lorrie looked at Stephanie but said nothing.

  “What are your plans?” Jesse said to Hendricks.

  “I hope to continue Walton’s legacy,” Hendricks said. “In some capacity or other.”

  “Why all this interest in the estate?” Gates said.

  “Just assembling information,” Jesse said.

  “You think his inheritance would be a motive?” Gates said.

  “We’ve drawn no conclusions,” Jesse said.

  “Do you have a theory of the crime?”

  “The same gun killed Walton Weeks and Carey Longley,” Jesse said. “We speculate that it was used by the same person or persons.”

  “That’s it?” Gates said.

  “Yep. Anyone know why he was in Boston?”

  No one answered.

  “Mrs. Weeks?” Jesse said to Lorrie.

  “Just said he was going up on business,” Lorrie said.

  “How long was he going to stay?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “You didn’t worry about it when he was gone for a while?”

  “He was often gone for a while,” Lorrie said. “Our marriage was not about keeping tabs.”

  “Did he do that when you were married to him?” Jesse said to Stephanie.

  “Yes. Usually he was with a woman. Toward the end of our marriage the woman was her.” Stephanie pointed at Lorrie with her chin.

  “Oh, like you were Miss Stay-at-home Faithful,” Lorrie said. “You were pretty busy yourself.”

  “Weren’t we all,” Stephanie said.

  Lorrie reddened.

  “Hendricks put a hand on her forearm.

  “Ladies,” he said. “Ladies. This isn’t the time, ladies.”

  Everyone was silent. Jesse waited. No one spoke.

  “Does anyone have any thought on who might have wanted to kill Walton Weeks and Carey Longley?”

  No one spoke. Jesse waited.

  Then Hendricks said, “Maybe somebody only wanted to kill one of them and the other one died as a by-product.”

  “Possible,” Jesse said. “Any idea which was the target?”

  “Well, certainly Walton was the most prominent,” Hendricks said, “and after his death he was…displayed more prominently.”

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “That’s true. Anything else?”

  No one spoke. Jesse smiled pleasantly at them.

  “We will probably need to talk to each of you individually,” Jesse said, “in the course of the investigation. We’re not handy to each other, so it may take some travel. But we can phone and fax and e-mail. It’s a small department, but we’re very modern.”

  No one said anything. Jesse gave out his card to those who didn’t have one.

  “Detective Simpson, do you have anything to add?”

  “No, sir,” Suit said.

  Jesse nodded and smiled at them all again.

  “We’ll be in touch,” he said.

  22

  I like those women,” Suit said in the car driving north through Connecticut.

  “In the carnal sense?” Jesse said.

  “Of course not, I’m, like, almost a detective for crissake,” Suit said. “I think if we push them a little, they will explode and a lot of stuff we don’t know will come flying out.”

  “There’s usually tension between ex- and current wives,” Jesse said.

  “You speaking from experience?” Suit said.

  “Only way to speak,” Jesse said.

  “So what do you think about those people?” Suit said. “Seems to me they were all living off of Weeks and now he’s gone, they’re scrambling to see what’s left.”

  “Why do you think so?” Jesse said.

  “Couple of things. One: Of course anytime the milk cow dies everybody starts worrying about where they gonna get milk,” Suit said.

  Jesse nodded. The car went up the Charter Oak Bridge over the Connecticut River, with Hartford on the left.

  “Second thing,” Suit said. “Nobody seemed to be mourning the guy much.”

  “Sometimes after a murder,” Jesse said, “people seem flat and without feelings. It’s shock mostly.”

  “You know what kind of guy he was?” Suit said.

  “No.”

  “Anyone say anything about him?” Suit said.

  Jesse, from the passenger seat, glanced over at Suit and nodded slowly. Driving, his eyes on the road, Suit didn’t see him nod.

  “Not that I can remember, Detective Simpson,” Jesse said.

  “Nobody did,” Suit said. “I went over my notes last night in the hotel. Nobody said they loved him. Nobody said the world lost a great man. Nobody said they’d miss him.”

  “Hendricks said he wanted to carry on Walton’s legacy,” Jesse said.

  “What’s that mean?” Suit said.

  “I think it means he wants Weeks’s job,” Jesse said.

  Suit nodded.

  “And the wi
fe, the current one,” Suit said. “She didn’t even claim the body.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “And she didn’t worry when he didn’t come home, and she didn’t even come up when she heard he was dead. Nobody came up. The lawyer, the manager, the researcher guy. I think we’ll find that Lutz did all the arrangements.”

  “Hendricks,” Jesse said.

  “And the ex-wife,” Suit said.

  “Stephanie,” Jesse said.

  “That’s why I take notes,” Suit said. “I can’t remember anybody’s name.”

  “Whatever works. What about Stephanie.”

  “She implied that maybe the wife…”

  “Lorrie.”

  “That Lorrie,” Suit said, “might have been fooling around and didn’t care if Weeks came home.”

  “She didn’t quite say that,” Jesse said.

  “I think that’s what she meant,” Suit said.

  “We’ll see,” Jesse said.

  “We gonna stop up here in Vernon at that deli.”

  “Rein’s,” Jesse said. “Yeah, tongue sandwich on light rye.”

  “Tongue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cow tongue?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Jesus,” Suit said.

  They turned off Route 84 at the proper entrance.

  “Did I miss anything?” Suit said.

  “In New York? No. Or if you did we both did,” Jesse said.

  “I don’t think we did,” Suit said.

  “One suggestion, though,” Jesse said. “Based on my years of experience.”

  “What?”

  “The fact,” Jesse said, “that you liked those women for evidence doesn’t mean you couldn’t also like them in the carnal sense.”

  “Wow,” Suit said as he pulled the car into the parking lot in front of Rein’s Deli. “No wonder you got to be chief.”

  “It’s a gift,” Jesse said.

  23

  How is it?” Jesse said to Sunny on the phone.

  He sat with a drink at the bar in his living room, in front of his picture of Ozzie Smith.

  “Better than I feared,” Sunny said. “I was prepared to be sympathetic. We’re both women and she was raped.”

  “The sisterhood is strong,” Jesse said.

  “You’ll never understand,” Sunny said.

  “No,” Jesse said.

  He held the glass away from him and looked at the smooth whiskey and the clean ice. He drank some.