Painted Ladies

by Robert B. Parker

  The third floor was open and full of desks, except along the Columbus Avenue side, where a series of half-partitioned cubicles marched in a fearful symmetry. The one where Winifred Minor had her desk had a higher partition than those on either side of her. Status! There was one at the far end that not only had a floor-to-ceiling partition but also a secretary outside. Deification. I stuck my head in the opening of Winifred Minor’s cubicle and rapped gently on the outer edge.

  “Yes?”

  I stepped in.

  “My name’s Spenser,” I said. “I believe you talked with Captain Healy on the phone. I’m just stopping by to follow up.”

  She looked at me as though she might be going to buy me.

  “Spenser,” she said, and wrote in a small notebook that was open in front of her.

  I nodded and put a little wattage into my killer smile. She survived it.

  “First name?” she said.

  I told her. She wrote that down in her little notebook. Then she looked straight at me and spoke. Her voice was very clear, and her speech was precise.

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “You know,” I said, “I don’t, either. These first meetings are awkward as hell, aren’t they.”

  She leaned back a little and folded her arms. She frowned, though it wasn’t an angry frown. She looked good. She had thick black hair that she wore long. She had Tina Fey glasses and was wearing a white shirt and a fitted black tunic with brass buttons. I couldn’t see what she was wearing below that because the desk was in the way. But what showed of her was very well made up, very pulled together, and hot.

  “Once we get to know each other,” I said, “we’ll be chattering like a couple of schoolgirls, but the first moments are always hard.”

  “Well,” she said in her clear, precise way, “you are not the standard cop.”

  I smiled and tilted my head a little in obvious modesty.

  “I know,” I said.

  She looked at me some more. I dialed my smile up a little higher. She smiled back at me.

  “Does this crap usually work for you?” she said.

  I grinned.

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “Well,” she said. “This is one of those times. Sit down. Tell me what you need.”

  Magnified by the fancy glasses, her dark eyes seemed even bigger than they probably were. She knew they were a good feature. She let them rest steadily on me. She didn’t blink. She sat and looked and waited.

  “Okay,” I said. “Right from the beginning, I want there to be no secrets between us.”

  She didn’t smile. But something sort of glittered in her eyes.

  “I’m not a cop. I’m a private detective.”

  “You were adroit at letting me think you were a cop, without actually saying so.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “So who is your client,” she said.

  “Nobody,” I said. “I’m the guy who was supposed to protect Ashton Prince when he delivered the, ah, ransom.”

  “And you are not satisfied with your performance,” she said.

  “No.”

  “What I know of the event, I don’t see what you could have done differently,” she said.

  I didn’t answer.

  “So,” she said, “the, ah, deceased is, in a sense, your client.”

  “You could say so, I suppose.”

  “What do you need from me?” she said.

  “I’d love to know who’s working on it from your end,” I said.

  “Me,” she said.

  “Bingo,” I said. “First at bat. What can you tell me?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Except there is a lot here you do not understand and cannot find out. You did the best you could. It was not enough. Were I you, I would leave it and move on.”

  “Can’t do that,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Were you ever a police officer?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you clear every case?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Was that always because there wasn’t enough evidence?”

  “No.”

  “Occasionally, was it because too many important people did not want the case cleared?”

  “Yes.”

  She was still leaning back in her chair with her arms folded. She nodded slowly. And kept nodding for a while.

  “You ever a cop?” I said.

  “I was with the Bureau for a while. Before that I was with the Secret Service.”

  “Protection?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I have children,” she said.

  “Husband?” I said.

  “No,” she said.

  I nodded again.

  “This job is regular hours,” she said. “Better pay, and good benefits.”

  “And fun as hell,” I said.

  “When you have children and you are a single parent, fun is not part of the equation.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “Can you tell me anything about any important people who might not want this case cleared?”

  “No,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Point me in any direction?”

  “No.”

  “You going to settle the claim?” I said.

  “Too early to say.”

  We sat and looked at each other. She knew I wasn’t going to take her advice. I knew she wasn’t going to tell me anything.

  “Your first name is Winifred?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t look like a Winifred to me,” I said.

  “Nor to me,” she said. “But which nickname would you prefer: Winnie or Fred?”

  I smiled.

  “Good-bye, Winifred,” I said.

  “Good-bye.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “Which you won’t take,” she said.

  “No.”

  She stood and came around the desk. She was wearing a skirt. Her legs were great. I stood. She put out her hand. I took it.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “Within reason,” I said.

  “Most of us, I suppose, do what we must, more than what we should,” she said.

  “Sometimes they overlap,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  We shook hands, and I left. I was glad her legs were great.

  9

  It was raining and very windy. I had swiveled my chair around so I could look out my office window and watch the weather. As I was watching, there was a sort of self-effacing little tap on my office door. I swiveled around and said, “Come in.”

  The door opened about halfway, and a woman peeked in with her head tilted sideways. She had gray-brown hair, and she was wearing glasses with metal frames that looked sort of government-issue.

  “Mr. Spenser?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t have an appointment,” she said.

  I smiled.

  “I can squeeze you in,” I said.

  “I could come back,” she said.

  I stood up.

  “Come in,” I said. “Talk to me. I’m lonely.”

  She opened the door all the way and sort of darted through it, as if she didn’t want to waste my time. I gestured for her to sit in a chair in front of my desk. She scooted to it and sat down. She was carrying a green rain poncho.

  “May I put this on the floor?” she said. “I don’t want to get your furniture wet.”

  “Sure.”

  She was kind of thin, and seemed to be flat-chested, although the bulky brown sweater she was wearing didn’t allow a definitive judgment. Her face was small. Her skin was pale. I saw no evidence of makeup. She put the poncho on the floor and perched on the front edge of the chair with her knees together. She smoothed her ankle-length tan skirt down over them. She folded her hands in her lap for a moment, then unfolded t
hem and rested them on the arms of her chair. Then she refolded them in her lap and sat forward.

  “Sometimes I think loneliness describes the human condition,” she said.

  “Actually,” I said, “I’m not lonely. I was just being, ah, lighthearted.”

  She nodded. We sat. Now that she had settled on what to do with her hands, she was motionless. I smiled. She looked down at her hands.

  “I’m Rosalind Wellington,” she said. “Ashton Prince . . . was my husband.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said.

  She nodded and looked at her hands some more.

  “They told me you were with him when he died,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She was silent. I waited. I could hear the rain splattering on my window behind me.

  “I have to know everything,” she said.

  “About?” I said.

  “I am an artist, a poet. Images are how I think. Perhaps even how I exist. I have to see every image of his death before I can internalize it.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I have to be able to imagine everything,” she said.

  “What do you know?” I said.

  “He is dead,” she said. “Can I say it? Murdered! With a bomb.”

  “What else do you want to know,” I said.

  “Everything. I need to know what the sky looked like. I need the smell of the roadside, the song of the bomb. Did it startle the birds and make them fly up? Did insects react in the grass? Was there any reaction from the universe, or did the ship sail calmly on? I need to know. I need to see and hear and smell in order to feel. I need to feel in order to make something of this. To create something that will rise above.”

  All this time she had not looked up from her hands.

  “He never knew what hit him,” I said. “He didn’t suffer.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “But give me details. I need images. The police tried to spare me. And I suppose in their earthbound way, they were trying to be kind. But they don’t understand. Was he badly disfigured?”

  I took in a deep breath and said, “He was blown into small bits unrecognizable as anything except blood spatters.”

  She hunched her shoulders and put her hands to her face and kept them there while she breathed deeply.

  Finally she said through her muffling hands, “Please go on.”

  I told her everything I could. I didn’t like it. I didn’t know if she was heroic or crazy. But it wasn’t a judgment I needed to make. People grieve in their own ways, and she had the right to get what she thought she needed. She listened with her face in her hands until I was done.

  “That’s all there is,” I said.

  She raised her face, dry-eyed, and nodded.

  “If I can make a great poem out of Ash’s death,” she said, “then perhaps he can, in his way, live on in the poem, and perhaps I can, too.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  She nodded sort of absently. Then she stood without another word and left.

  10

  It was very odd,” I said to Susan.

  We were sitting on her couch with our feet up on her coffee table. She was drinking some pink champagne I had brought. I was drinking some scotch and soda that she kept for me. We had conspired on a lamb stew for supper, and it was simmering in a handsome pot on Susan’s stove. Pearl was in the bedroom, asleep on Susan’s bed, which made it easier to sit with my arm around Susan. I was pretty sure that when supper was served, Pearl would present herself.

  “Very,” Susan said.

  The conspiracy on the lamb stew had been Susan putting out the pots and the cutting board and the utensils, and me cooking it while she sat at her kitchen counter and watched appreciatively.

  “She even alluded to ‘Musée des Beaux Arts,’ ”I said.

  “The Auden poem?” Susan said. “How’d she do that?”

  “She wanted to know if, in effect, the universe took note of the murder or if the boat ‘sailed calmly on.’ ”

  “Wow,” Susan said. “Isn’t that the poem which says ‘the torturer’s horse scratches his innocent behind on a tree’? Or something like that.”

  I leaned forward on the couch and took the champagne from the ice bucket and poured her a little more of it.

  “It is,” I said.

  “Perhaps Auden knew things that Rosalind doesn’t,” Susan said.

  “ ‘About suffering, they were never wrong, the Old Masters, ’ ”I said.

  “Can you recite the whole poem?” Susan said.

  “I believe I can,” I said.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  “You know,” I said, “she never asked me why I hadn’t done a better job of protecting him. She never asked if I knew who did it or if I thought we could catch them. Just wanted to experience it secondhand so she could make something out of it.”

  “Many people would have,” Susan said.

  “Many people,” I said.

  “How’d she feel to you?”

  “I know her husband has recently been murdered. I know grief makes people odd sometimes,” I said. “But she seemed to be dramatizing herself. She didn’t cry or, as far as I could tell, come close to it.”

  “One component of grief, as I know you know,” Susan said, “is ‘What will become of me?’ ”

  I nodded.

  “Perhaps that feeling has somewhat overshadowed her others,” Susan said.

  “Thank you, Dr. Silverman,” I said. “Would that be narcissism?”

  “Maybe,” Susan said. “To make a thing for her out of his tragedy.”

  She drank some champagne.

  “Or maybe it’s a way of coping bravely with unspeakable sorrow,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Susan said.

  “Are you shrinks ever certain of anything?”

  “Possibly,” she said. “Have you talked to Prince’s colleagues?”

  “Cops have. They say there’s nothing there.”

  “How about students?” Susan said.

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Office staff?” she said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Both offer insights often unavailable to colleagues,” Susan said.

  “Maybe I’ll go over there,” I said. “Talk to the coeds. Coeds can’t resist me.”

  “As long as you can resist them,” Susan said.

  “I value maturity,” I said.

  “You should,” she said. “Is that stew done?”

  “With stew,” I said, “if you cook it right, you have a done window of about six hours.”

  “That should allow time for sex,” she said.

  “If we hurry,” I said.

  “Good. I like lovemaking on an empty stomach.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Or a full one. Or one partly empty. Or—”

  She turned against me on the couch.

  “Stop talking,” she said.

  And gave me a large kiss.

  11

  The Department of Art and Art History at Walford was located on the first floor of a brick building with Georgian pillars beside a pond. The pond looked to me as if it didn’t belong there and had recently been created. But maybe I was being picky. Ponds are nice. The main office was right inside the front doorway, to the right. There were three women there. The presiding woman was tall and gray-haired, with thin lips and grim eyes. On her desk was a nameplate that said Agnes Phelen. Her desk was beside a door that led to the office of the department chairman. I knew that at once, because I am a trained investigator and the sign on the pebbled-glass door said Office of the Department Chairman. The other two women were much younger and looked more optimistic. Agnes looked at me with what appeared to be scorn, though it could have been suspicion.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  She didn’t look as though she meant it.

  “You may,” I said.

  She looked annoyed.

  “What would you like?” she said.
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  “My name is Spenser,” I said. “I’m a detective looking into the death of Ashton Prince.”

  “Dr. Prince,” she said. “A terrible shame.”

  “What can you tell me about him?” I said.

  “A fine scholar and a fine gentleman,” she said.

  “Anything unusual about him?” I said.

  “No,” she said.

  From the corner of my eye I saw the two other women look at each other.

  “You ladies tell me anything about Dr. Prince?”

  They both shook their heads, but there was a mutual smirk hidden somewhere in the head shakes.

  “He get along with everyone?” I said.

  One of the younger women said, “Uh-huh.”

  But it didn’t sound as though she meant it.

  “Never any trouble.”

  “Of course not,” Agnes said. “This is an academic office.”

  “Well,” I said. “He had trouble with someone.”

  “You know who killed him?” one of the younger women said.

  Agnes gave her the gimlet eye.

  “You girls have work to do,” Agnes said.

  They both turned back to their computers, sneaking sidelong looks at each other.

  “And I have work to do, too, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “You’re excused,” I said. “Is there a place around here to get lunch?”

  “We all use the faculty café,” one of the young women said. “In the basement of Sarkassian.”

  “Unless you are faculty or staff,” Agnes said, “I don’t believe you’re allowed.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  The younger women looked at me. I winked at them and left the office.

  12

  I found Sarkassian Hall on a circular drive opposite the library. I went to the basement and walked into the faculty cafeteria, trying to bear myself like a man thinking deeply about John Milton. No one paid any attention to me. I could have been thinking about Sarah Palin, for all they cared. It was eleven-thirty. I got a cup of coffee and a large corn muffin and sat at an empty table where I could see the door, and waited.

  I had finished my coffee and my corn muffin by the time the two young women from the art office arrived at twelve-ten. They each got a salad and carried it to a table at the other end of the cafeteria. I got up and walked over to them.