Hugger Mugger

by Robert B. Parker

  I paid. We left.

  THIRTY-NINE

  "YOUR INSECURITY WAS pathetically obvious," Susan said when we were alone walking up Powell Street. "The way you grabbed that check." "I feared emasculation," I said.

  "And had you waited for her to pick it up," Susan said, "we'd have grown old together sitting there in the booth."

  "You have any thoughts?" I said.

  "Based on an hour of observation?"

  "This isn't a clinical situation," I said. "We have to make do."

  "I have no thoughts," Susan said, "but I can give you some guesses."

  "Guesses are good."

  "Well, she's not as stupid as she seems. Brief hints of intelligence slip through the hippie mumbo jumbo."

  "Not many," I said.

  "No. I didn't say she was brilliant. And mostly she recycles things she's heard. But it is not uncommon, for instance, for fathers to encourage their daughters to marry men against whom the fathers can compete successfully. She may have simply heard it said, but she understood it enough to apply it to her husband."

  "If it's true," I said.

  "I told you these are guesses."

  "What else?" I said.

  I was trying to breathe normally, as if the climb up Powell Street were easy. And I checked Susan closely. Her breathing seemed perfectly easy. Of course, I was carrying eighty or ninety pounds more than she was. And I'd been shot several times in my life. That takes its toll.

  "She's full of anger."

  "At?"

  "At her husband, at men, at Penny, at a world where she is marginalized, and probably at the guitar player who dumped her."

  "Can I believe what she says about Penny?"

  "No way to know," Susan said. "Her anger may be accurate, and well founded, or it may be a feeling she needs to have for other reasons."

  "Do you think she loves poetry and beauty and peace and flower power?"

  "I think she hates being ordinary," Susan said.

  "You think she loves her daughters?"

  "She left them when the youngest was, how old?"

  "Fifteen."

  "And she moved to the other side of the continent and she sees them rarely."

  "So if she does love them, it's not a compelling emotion."

  "No."

  "And the money she didn't inherit?"

  "It would have helped her to be not ordinary."

  "It will support her daughters," I said.

  "One thing you can count on," Susan said, "and this is an observation, not a guess: Whatever it is, it's about Sherry."

  "All of it," I said.

  "Every last bit."

  "I'm more confused than before I talked with her," I said.

  "And you came all the way out here to do it."

  "Well, you came out too."

  "Every dark cloud," Susan said.

  We reached California Street. Susan paused for a moment.

  "I'm willing to give in first," she said.

  "You need to rest a little?" I said.

  "Yes."

  "Thank God," I said.

  We stood on the corner watching people get on and off the cable cars. We were in the heart of Nob Hill hotel chic. The Stanford Court was behind us, the Fairmont across the street. Up a little past the Stanford Court was the Mark Hopkins, where one could still get a drink at the Top of the Mark. In the distance, the Bay was everywhere, creating the ambient luminescence of an impressionist painting. It imparted a nearly romantic glow to litter in the streets and the frequent shabbiness of the buildings. Behind us, below Union Square and along Market Street, there were so many street people, and they were so intrusive, that I didn't want Susan to walk around alone… Being Susan, of course, she walked around alone anyway, in the great light.

  "What's confusing you most?" Susan said.

  "There's so much conflicting testimony from so many unreliable witnesses."

  To the right, down California Street a little ways, was Chinatown, with its pagoda'd entrance, everything a Chinatown should be. And way down, on the flat, was downtown, which was everything a downtown should be. Even when no cable cars were in sight, the hum of the cable in the street was a kind of white noise as we talked.

  "And yet there are some things which seem clear when I listen to you talk about it."

  "Like it's clear that I don't know what I'm doing?"

  "Like everything changed after the father's death."

  "Maybe it was naturally, so to speak, the way it is now, and he prevented it."

  "Or maybe someone else has stepped into his place and reshaped it," Susan said. "Either way, he was the power and now he isn't. So who is?"

  "A number of different people say Penny, and they say so in pretty much the same terms."

  "As Sherry," Susan said.

  "Yes."

  "As an outside observer, let me suggest that there is one thing which hasn't changed."

  "Suggest away," I said.

  "The security company."

  "Security South," I said. "Jon Delroy. You like him for it, don't you?"

  "He was there when the father was alive. He is there now," Susan said.

  "Pud suggested that Delroy and Penny were involved sexually."

  "What do you think?"

  "At the time I thought it was preposterous. She's adorable. I was kind of offended."

  "And now?"

  "Now… well, we only know what we know. Delroy's still there, and several people say that Penny has the power."

  "Life is full of heartbreak," Susan said.

  "Luckily I have a fallback position," I said.

  "You certainly know how to turn a girl's head with your slick talk," Susan said.

  "The truth of the matter is," I said, "you are my position. Everything else in life is fallback."

  Susan smiled and bumped her head once against my shoulder.

  "You okay to walk down to the hotel now, old fella?" she said.

  "Wait a minute, you were the one wanted to tarry awhile."

  "Pity," Susan said. "I took pity on you."

  We began to walk downhill on California Street, toward Stockton.

  "We don't have to leave until tomorrow. What would you like to do the rest of the day?"

  "I don't know, what would you like to do?"

  I smiled.

  "Oh," Susan said. "That."

  I smiled some more.

  "Afterwards can we shop?"

  "Sure," I said. "If you're not too tired."

  "I'm never too tired to exercise my rancorous capitalism."

  "Nor I to display my rampant machismo," I said.

  "A match made in heaven," Susan said.

  We turned right on Stockton Street and went into the hotel.

  FORTY

  SUSAN AND I had hugged for an extended period at San Francisco Airport, before she got on a plane to Boston and I flew off to Georgia. Now, looking for my car in the Atlanta airport, I imagined that I could still smell her perfume and maybe taste her lipstick. Missing her was a tangible experience. I was already homesick for her, and by the time I retrieved my car and drove down to Lamarr I was quite sad, for a man of my native ebullience. I sang a little to cheer myself up, but "I'll hurry home to you, Lamarr, Georgia" didn't have quite the right ring. It was hot even at night, and by the time I walked from my car to the hotel, my shirt was soaked with sweat. I made a drink in my room, and sat on the bed and sipped it, and thought about Susan. I had another drink, and when it was done, I rinsed out the glass, put away the bottle, took a shower and went to bed, and lay awake for a long time. In the morning, after breakfast, I got a call from Martin Quirk.

  "Jon Delroy," he said.

  "Yes, sir."

  "FBI has no record of him ever working for them."

  "Ah hah," I said.

  "Ah hah?"

  "It's a detective expression," I said.

  "Oh, no wonder I was confused," Quirk said. "Then I ran him past the Marine Corps. They have a Jonathan Delroy killed on Guadal
canal. They have Jon Delroy, a lance corporal, currently on active duty. They have a Jon Michael Delroy, discharged 1958."

  "My guy's around forty," I said.

  "That's all the Delroys they got," Quirk said.

  "Ah hah, ah hah," I said.

  "That's what I thought," Quirk said.

  I hung up from Quirk and called Dr. Klein. The woman who answered said he would call me back. I said no, that doctors did not have a good track record on calling back promptly and I would prefer to stop by. She asked if it was an emergency. I said yes, but not a medical emergency. That confused her so deeply that I was transferred to the doctor's nurse. After a lot more give-and-go with the nurse, I got an agreement that he would see me after hospital rounds and before his first patient. But only for a moment. The doctor was very busy. She recommended I get there by ten.

  I did. At eleven-fifteen Klein came out of his office and grinned at me, and jerked his thumb to come in.

  "So, you got by the guardians," he said.

  "Barely."

  "They're very zealous."

  "Me too," I said.

  "What can I do for you?"

  "Tell me when the results of Walter Clive's DNA tests came back," I said.

  "That's all you want?"

  "Yep."

  "I could have told you that on the phone."

  "And when would you have called me?"

  "Certainly before the end of the month," Klein said.

  He pushed a button on his phone.

  "Margie? Bring me Walter Clive's file, please," Klein said into the speakerphone. Then he looked at me and said, "I've been keeping it handy until I figured out how to resolve the questions about his DNA results."

  "I'm going to help you with that," I said.

  Margie came in with the folder. She looked at me with the same deep confusion she'd displayed on the phone and then went back to her post. Klein thumbed through the folder and stopped and looked at one of the papers in it.

  "I got the test results on May twentieth," he said.

  "How soon did you notify Clive?"

  "Same day."

  "Are you sure you're a real doctor?" I said.

  "I called him at once," Klein said. "I remember it because it was so unusual."

  "So he knew the results on the twentieth."

  "Yes."

  "He's the only one you told?"

  "Yes."

  "Could anyone else have known?"

  "He could have told someone."

  "But nobody at the lab or in your office?"

  "No. He used a pseudonym. I've told you all this before."

  "If the pseudonymous report was in his file, how hard would it be to figure out whose it was?"

  "It wasn't in his file," Klein said. "I kept it, along with Dolly's results and Jason's, in a sealed envelope in my locked desk until long after he was dead."

  "Do you remember when he died?"

  "Couple months ago."

  "He was killed on May twenty-second," I said.

  Klein sat back in his chair. On the wall behind him was a framed color photo of three small boys grouped around a pretty woman in a big hat. Next to it was his medical degree.

  "Jesus Christ!" Klein said.

  FORTY-ONE

  WHEN I PULLED back into the parking lot behind my motel, a smallish black man in a baseball cap got out of a smallish Toyota pickup truck and walked toward me. "Mr. Spenser," he said. "Billy Rice, Hugger Mugger's groom."

  "I remember," I said. "How is the old Hug?"

  "Doing good," Billy said. He looked a little covert. "Can we talk in your room?"

  "Sure," I said.

  We went up the stairs and along the balcony to my room. Billy stayed inside me near the wall. The room was made up. The air-conditioning was on high, and it was cool. Billy looked somewhat less unhappy when we had the door closed behind us.

  "You mind locking it?" he said.

  I turned the dead bolt and put the chain on. The venetian blinds were open. I closed them.

  "There," I said. "Privacy."

  Billy nodded. He sat on the neatly made bed, near the foot, leaning a little forward, with his hands clasped before him and his forearms resting on his thighs.

  "How'd you know I was here?" I said.

  "Everybody knows you're here."

  "Does everybody know why?"

  "Everybody be wondering," he said.

  I saw no reason to dispel the wonder.

  "What can I do for you?" I said.

  "I don't know who else to talk to 'bout this," Rice said.

  I waited.

  "I mean, I talked with Delroy and he told me to just do my job and not go worrying about stuff I had no business worrying about."

  "Un-huh."

  "But damn! Hugger is my job. It is my business to worry 'bout him."

  "That's right," I said.

  "I can't talk to Penny 'bout it. She knows about it and ain't done a thing."

  "Un-huh."

  "And nobody broken no law, or anything."

  "So why are you worried?"

  "They ain't guarding him," Rice said.

  "Security South?"

  "That's right. They around all the time, and they keeping people out of the stable office and away from Mr. Clive's house and like that. But nobody paying no attention to Hugger, except me."

  "They used to guard him closer?" I said.

  "Used to have somebody right beside his stall."

  "Anybody say why they don't anymore?"

  "No. Like I say, Delroy shooed me away when I said something to him."

  "Must think he's no longer in danger," I said.

  "Why they think that?" Rice said. "The horse shooter killed Mr. Clive trying to get to Hugger."

  "Maybe," I said.

  "What you mean, maybe?"

  "Just that we haven't caught the killer. So we don't know anything for sure."

  "I been sleeping in the stable with Hugger," Rice said.

  "Family?" I said.

  "Me? I got a daughter, ten years old, she's in New Orleans with my ex-wife."

  "You got a gun?"

  "Got a double-barreled ten-gauge from my brother."

  "That will slow a progress," I said. "You know how to shoot it?"

  "I've hunted some. Everybody grow up down here done some hunting."

  "What's he hunt with a ten-gauge, pterodactyl?"

  "Maybe burglars," Rice said.

  "So what do you want me to do?" I said.

  "I don't know. I'm worried about the horse. You seemed like somebody I could tell."

  "There a number I can reach you?" I said.

  "Just the stable office, they can come get me. Don't tell them it's you. You ain't allowed in there."

  "Who says?"

  "Penny, Delroy, they say nobody's supposed to talk to you or let you come near the place."

  "But you're talking to me."

  "I'm worried about Hugger."

  "I think Hugger will be all right," I said.

  "You know something?"

  "Almost nothing," I said. "But I'm beginning to make some decent guesses."

  "I'm going to keep on staying with him," Rice said. "Me and the ten-gauge."

  "Okay," I said. "And I'll work on it from the other end."

  "What other end?"

  "I'm hoping to figure that out," I said.

  FORTY-TWO

  I SAT WITH Becker in his office. The air-conditioning was on and the blades of a twenty-inch floor fan were spinning in the far corner. We were drinking Coca-Cola. "Two days before Clive was murdered," I said, "he learned for certain that he was the father of Dolly Hartman's son, Jason."

  "Learned how?" Becker said.

  "DNA test results came back."

  "Hundred percent?"

  "Yes."

  "So he's got another heir," Becker said.

  He was rocked as far back as his chair would go, balanced with just the toe of his left foot. He had taken his gun off his belt and it lay in its h
olster on his desk.

  "His will mentions only his three daughters."

  "Suppose if he'd lived longer that would have changed?"

  "The timing makes you wonder," I said.

  "There's other timing makes you wonder," Becker said. "Kid's about what? Twenty-five?"

  "Dolly says she had an affair with Clive early, and then disappeared until Sherry was gone."

  "Slow and steady wins the race," Becker said. "You figure one of the daughters scragged the old man to keep him from changing his will?"

  "Or all three," I said.

  "Why not pop the kid, Jason?"

  "Old man is readily available," I said. "And if he included the kid, before they knocked the kid off, then his estate would be in their lives."

  "You like one daughter better than another?"

  "Well, that's sort of sticky," I said. "I figure Stonie or SueSue would be willing to do it, but would have trouble implementing. I figure Penny could implement all right, but wouldn't be willing."

  "How about our friend the serial horse shooter?"

  "Billy Rice came and told me that there's no more security on the horse."

  Becker frowned a little. It was the first expression I'd ever seen on his face.

  "Rice is the groom?"

  "Yes."

  "Well," Becker said. "Been couple months now."

  "I know, but it's a valuable horse, and there's still security on the stable area and on the house. But no one's paying any special attention to the horse. Except Billy, who's sleeping in the stable with a ten-gauge."

  "Case a hippopotamus sneaks in there," Becker said.

  Becker let his chair tip forward. When he could reach the holstered gun on his desk, he tapped it half around with his forefinger so that it lined up with the edge of his blotter.

  "So it seems like they're not expecting anyone to try to shoot their horse," I said. "Why would that be?"

  "Might be that the horse shooter is a Clive," Becker said.

  "And the whole horse shooter thing was a diversion?" I said.

  "Except it went on for quite a while before the DNA results came back."

  "How about this?" I said. "The killer or killers find out ahead of time about the paternity thing. They know Clive is going to have DNA testing done. They put the serial horse shooting in place so that if it turns out wrong, and they have to kill him, it'll look like a by-product of the horse shooting."