The Jesse Stone Novels 6-9
Page 35
“I think it’s disgusting,” Amber said.
“What I do care about, though,” Jesse said, “is that they are people, and that this matters to them in some way, and they probably shouldn’t be talked about like a couple of barnyard animals.”
Amber stared at him for a moment, and then shrugged and sank a little lower into the armchair.
“I was just asking,” she said.
Jesse went to the bar and made himself another drink. He looked at Jenn. She held up her half-full glass and shook her head. The doorbell rang. It was Molly, in uniform, with a heavy, fur-collared jacket on. She had a folded newspaper in her hand.
“You seen the paper today?” she said when she came in.
“No delivery today,” Jesse said. “Snow, I suppose.”
Molly handed it to him. She looked at Amber.
“Section two,” she said. “Below the fold.”
Jesse turned to it.
FLA. CRIME FIGURE KILLED
Louis Francisco, the reputed boss of organized crime in South Florida, was found shot to death today in the parking lot of a Miami restaurant.
Jesse read the story through without comment. A driver and a bodyguard had also been killed. Neither was named Romero. No arrests had been made. So far police had no suspects. Jesse gave the paper to Jenn and looked at Amber. Then he looked at Molly. She shrugged. Jesse nodded. He put his drink on the bar and walked over to Amber and sat on the hassock where Jenn had sat.
“Your father’s dead,” he said.
She looked away from the television screen and stared for a time at Jesse. Then, finally, she shrugged.
“Sooner or later,” she said.
Jesse nodded. MTV cavorted on behind him.
“Who killed him,” Amber said.
“You’re so sure he was killed,” Jesse said.
“Yeah. How else’s he gonna go? He ain’t much older than you.”
Jesse nodded.
“It bother you?” Jesse said.
“That somebody killed him? No. He was a rotten bastard,” Amber said. “Both of them were rotten bastards.”
“You’re not alone,” Jenn said. “We will see that you’re okay.”
Amber was annoyed.
“I know that,” she said. “And I got money, too.”
“Yes,” Jesse said. “You do. And no one’s going to come back and bother you now….”
Jesse grinned at her.
“Except maybe me,” Jesse said, “if you don’t behave.”
“I’m not scared of you,” Amber said.
“No, why would you be,” Jesse said.
“So who shot him, it say?”
“It doesn’t say.”
Molly looked at Jesse, and then at Amber and then back at Jesse.
“I think we can talk about this in front of Amber,” Jesse said. “She’s certainly an interested party.”
“For crissake,” Amber said. “He was my old man, okay?”
Molly nodded.
“You have a thought?” Molly said to Jesse.
“Guy had a beef with Francisco,” Jesse said. “Took out two bodyguards and the boss in a public parking lot in the middle of Miami and disappeared. We know anybody like that?”
“Crow?” Molly said.
“A sentimental favorite,” Jenn said, and then looked like she shouldn’t have said it.
Molly blushed. Jesse saw it. Molly? And Crow? He smiled to himself. It’s like being police chief in Peyton Place.
“I’d guess Crow,” Jesse said. “Solved a lot of problems that way. He’d double-crossed Francisco twice. That meant Francisco would try to arrange Crow’s death. Also frees up Amber here from fear of custody or kidnapping.”
“You think that’s why he did it?” Amber said.
Jesse looked thoughtfully at her for a moment.
“Yeah,” he said. “I think so.”
She smiled for maybe the first time since Jesse had met her.
“Okay,” Molly said. “Gotta go home. We’re cooking supper in the fireplace. It’s a family tradition. Every year, first snowfall, we cook supper in the fireplace.”
“Hardy pioneers,” Jesse said.
“You bet,” Molly said, and turned up her collar and left.
The three of them were quiet. Jesse walked over and put his arm around Jenn.
“Molly and Crow?” he said.
Jenn looked up at him and winked. Jesse nodded. Jenn lifted her face toward him and Jesse kissed her.
“Jesus,” Amber said. “Can you wait until I’m out of the room to start necking.”
“Guess not,” Jesse said. “You want supper?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay, if you people don’t start doing it on the kitchen table.”
“Promise,” Jenn said.
Jesse picked up his drink and they walked into the kitchen. Amber sat at the table while Jesse and Jenn put out the food that Daisy had packed.
“God,” Amber said. “Crow is so cool.”
• • •
For a complete list of this author’s books click here or visit
www.penguin.com/parkerchecklist
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
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
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
THE SPENSER NOVELS
Rough Weather
Now & Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
; The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
THE JESSE STONE NOVELS
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER
Resolution
Appaloosa
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
Published by the Penguin Group
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Copyright © 2009 by Robert B. Parker
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Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Parker, Robert B., date.
Night and day / Robert B. Parker.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-01605-3
1. Police chiefs—Massachusetts—Fiction. 2. Sex crimes—
Investigation—Fiction. 3. Voyeurism—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.A686N53 2009b 2008054245
813’.54—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either
are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously,
and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses,
companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone
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publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for
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http://us.penguingroup.com
For Joan:
Only you beneath the moon
and under the sun.
1
JESSE STONE sat in his office at the Paradise police station, looking at the sign painted on the pebbled-glass window of his office door. From the inside it read FEIHC, or it would have, if the letters hadn’t been backward. He tried pronouncing the word, decided he couldn’t, and stopped thinking about it. On his desk was a glamour head shot of his ex-wife. He looked at it for a time, and decided not to think about that, either.
Molly Crane came from the front desk and opened the door.
“Suit just called in,” she said. “There’s some kind of disturbance at the junior high school and he thinks you and I ought to come down.”
“Girls involved?” Jesse said.
“That’s why he wants me,” Molly said.
“I understand,” Jesse said. “But why does he want me?”
“You’re the chief of police,” Molly said. “Everybody wants you.”
Jesse glanced at Jenn’s picture again.
“Oh,” Jesse said. “Yeah.”
Jesse stood, and clipped his gun to his belt.
“Though you sure don’t dress like a chief,” Molly said.
Jesse was wearing a uniform shirt, blue jeans, Nikes, a dark blue Paradise police baseball hat, and a badge that said Chief. He tapped the badge.
“I do where it counts,” he said. “Who’s on the desk?”
“Steve,” Molly said.
“Okay,” Jesse said. “You drive. No siren.”
“Oh, damn,” Molly said. “I never get to use the siren.”
“Maybe when you make sergeant,” Jesse said.
There were two Paradise police cruisers parked outside of the junior high school.
“Who’s in the other cruiser,” Jesse said as they got out of the car.
“Eddie Cox,” Molly said. “He and Suit have seven to eleven this week.”
They walked into the school lobby, where a thick mill of parents was being held at bay by two Paradise cops. Most of the parents were mothers, with a scatter of fathers looking oddly out of place. When Jesse came in they all swarmed toward him, many of them speaking to him loudly.
“You’re the chief of police, are you gonna do something?”
“I want that woman arrested!”
“She’s a goddamned child molester!”
“What are you going to do about this?”
“Do you know what she did?”
“Did they tell you what happened here?”
Jesse ignored them.
He said to Molly, “Keep them here.”
Then he pointed at Suit and jerked his head down the hallway.
“What’s up,” Jesse said when they were alone.
Simpson’s real name was Luther. He was a big kid, with blond hair and a round face. He wasn’t as young as he looked, but he was young. He was called Suitcase after the baseball player, Harry “Suitcase” Simpson.
“This is weird,” Suit said.
Jesse waited.
“Mrs. Ingersoll,” Suit said, “the principal. Christ, she was principal when I was here.”
Jesse waited.
“There was some kind of after-school dance yesterday,” Suit said, his voice speeding up a little. “Eighth-grade dance. And before the dance, Mrs. Ingersoll took all the girls into the girls’ locker room and picked up their dresses to see what kind of underwear they had on.”
Jesse stared at Suit for a time without speaking.
Then Jesse said, “Huh?”
“That’s what the girls claim.”
“Why did she do that?” Jesse said.
“Don’t know,” Suit said. “But when the girls got home a lot of them told their mothers, and . . .” He gestured toward the crowd.
Jesse nodded.
“Where’s Mrs. Ingersoll?” Jes
se said.
“In her office.”
“You ask her about this?” Jesse said.
“She called in and said there was a disturbance. So we came down here and found what you see. It was like a damned lynch mob. We sort of wrangled them into the lobby, and Mrs. Ingersoll went in her office and won’t come out, which is when we called you . . . and”―Suitcase looked a little uncertain―“because of the, ah, nature of the alleged crime, you know, we thought Molly should come, too.”
Jesse nodded.
“How about the girls?” Jesse said.
“That got, ah, checked?” Suit said.
“Uh-huh.”
“I guess they’re in class,” Suit said. “I haven’t had time to do a lot of investigating. Me and Eddie had our hands full with the parents.”
Jesse nodded.
“Isn’t this swell,” he said.
Suit shrugged.
Jesse walked down the corridor to the lobby. The crowd of parents was silent now, standing in angry vigil.
“Get them down to the auditorium,” Jesse said to Suit. “Get the names of their daughters and ask the girls to go there, too. You need help, call Steve, tell him to send some.”
“You gonna talk to Mrs. Ingersoll?” Suit said.
“Yep.”
“Then you coming to the auditorium?” Suit said.
“Yep.”
“You know what you’re gonna tell the parents?”
“Not a clue,” Jesse said.
2
JESSE BROUGHT Molly with him when he went into Mrs. Ingersoll’s office.
“Chief Stone,” Mrs. Ingersoll said when he came into her office. “How lovely to see you. And this is?”
“Officer Crane,” Jesse said.
“How do you do, Officer Crane,” Mrs. Ingersoll said.
Molly nodded.
Mrs. Ingersoll smiled brightly.
“Have you dispersed those foolish people?” she said.
“We’ve asked them to wait in the auditorium,” Jesse said. “And we’ll ask their daughters to join them there.”
“My goodness,” Mrs. Ingersoll said.
“Tell me about this situation,” Jesse said.
Mrs. Ingersoll was sitting behind her big desk. The desktop was immaculately empty.
“Situation? Chief Stone, I fear that it overstates things to call it a situation.”
“Tell me something,” Jesse said.
“I have very little to tell,” Mrs. Ingersoll said. “I’m not angry at these parents. They are concerned with their children’s well-being, as am I.”