Perish Twice

by Robert B. Parker

“Don’t worry how Sunny looks,” Spike said to her. “It’s her Meg Ryan disguise.”

  “Who’s Meg Ryan,” Mary Lou said.

  Two couples came into the restaurant and stood hopefully at the hostess station by the door. One of the men had a 35mm camera slung over his shoulder in a black leather case.

  “Excuse me,” Spike said.

  He stood and walked to the front and took four menus from the rack on the side of the hostess stand.

  The guy with the camera said, “Four, for lunch.”

  “Do you have a reservation?” Spike said politely.

  The man with the camera stared at the empty room.

  “We need a reservation?”

  “Always a wise idea,” Spike said. “Give me a minute. I’ll see what I can do.”

  He bustled around the room looking at tables and then went back and seated them at the first table near the door, put down the menus, and headed back to our table. When he passed the waitress, he tapped on the table. She nodded, sighed, dog-eared her page, put her cigarette out in her coffee cup, and went to take the orders.

  “You tell her?” Spike said to Mary Lou when he sat down.

  She shook her head.

  “We were so entranced by the way you charmed those customers,” I said, “neither of us could speak.”

  “I hate customers,” Spike said. “Mary Lou needs some help.”

  “I can talk,” Mary Lou said.

  “Good to know,” Spike said, and nodded toward me.

  “I am the CEO of a organization called Great Strides. We consult from a feminist perspective.”

  “Could you tell me a little more about that,” I said.

  “Certainly. We consult to corporate America, identifying and suggesting solutions to issues of gender-based discrimination. We serve as a resource for law firms, and we provide research support for both the public and private sector.”

  “Girls R Us,” I said.

  Mary Lou looked at me stonily. Spike grinned.

  “See, was I right how good you’d get along?” he said.

  “I don’t enjoy jokes,” Mary Lou said. She looked down at Rosie noisily working on her soup bone. “Nor, I must say, do I particularly enjoy dogs.”

  “We can eliminate the jokes,” I said. “The dog is family.”

  She nodded as if she expected no better.

  “Someone is following me. Last week my offices were vandalized. A threatening message was left on my answering machine.”

  “Which said?”

  “I would be killed. It was expressed in virulent sexist clichés.”

  “Was it a male voice?” I said.

  Mary Lou looked startled.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Rosie had stopped gnawing her bone and stood on her hind legs and put her forepaws on Spike’s chair. He reached down and scooped her up and sat her on his lap. She sat with her mouth open and her tongue out and panted slightly.

  Mary Lou said, “Spike, must you?”

  Spike said, “Yep.”

  “And what would you like me to do?” I said.

  “Protect me. Put a stop to the harassment.”

  “Why not the cops, get a restraining order.”

  “I don’t wish to open up my personal life to public scrutiny.”

  “Then you know who this is,” I said.

  “What if I do?”

  “Well, it is not something I do, but I probably could find a couple of guys to talk with the stalker force fully.”

  “Spike has already suggested that,” Mary Lou said. “I abhor violence and I will not be rescued by men.”

  In Spike’s lap, Rosie turned and lapped his nose.

  “I need a bodyguard,” Mary Lou said. “Spike recommended you.”

  “I’m flattered,” I said, “but I don’t really have the resources.”

  “Money is not an issue.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. “But I am essentially a one-woman shop. It takes more than me to do a first-rate security job.”

  “Couldn’t you hire people?”

  “Not women.”

  “I can’t have men.”

  “There are men who will protect you without violating your consciousness,” I said.

  “I can’t have men.”

  “Not even a tough fairy?” Spike said.

  Mary Lou shook her head. Spike grinned. I sat quietly and didn’t speak. Over the years I have found that a pretty good way to avoid being a dope.

  “Can you help me?” Mary Lou said.

  “I don’t know how,” I said. “One person can’t do it right.”

  We all sat quietly. Rosie had stopped lapping Spike. She put her paws on the table, rested her chin on them, and began to snore lightly.

  “I have no one else to ask,” Mary Lou said finally.

  I didn’t like Mary Lou much. She had about her the same narrow certainty that my mother had. And she didn’t think I was funny. And she didn’t like Rosie.

  “I have no one,” she said.

  Her voice was a little shaky.

  “How is the security at your office?” I said.

  “During the day it’s good,” she said. “There is a security guard in the lobby and my office staff is fifteen people.”

  “All women?”

  “Of course.”

  “How about at home?”

  “I live in a condominium in a secure building,” she said.

  “What floor?”

  “Fifth.”

  “How tall is the building?”

  “Ten stories.”

  I nodded.

  “Can you help me?”

  I sat and listened to myself breathe for a minute. I looked at Spike. He grinned.

  “This is just foreplay,” he said to Mary Lou. “She’s much too softhearted to turn you down.”

  “Is he right?” Mary Lou said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  CHAPTER

  6

  JULIE, MY FRIEND since childhood, had a husband, a couple of kids, and an M.S.W. She did counseling and psychotherapy out of a small basement office in a house cum office building on Mt. Auburn Street in Cambridge, where she earned nearly as much money as she paid her nanny. Since my marriage to Richie had ended, Julie and I ate lunch together twice a week, usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays, usually at the Casablanca, sometimes at the Harvest, both of which were across the street and up a short alley from her office. We had started the practice when Richie and I had separated, probably because we both thought that she might be able to counsel me. We both recognized quite quickly that she couldn’t, and got me to someone who could.

  But we continued to meet, because we loved each other and because talking with another woman, whom you’d known all your life, is its own kind of therapy, even if I found myself more the therapist with Julie than the therapee.

  Julie had a glass of white wine before lunch. I had some Perrier. A drink in the middle of the day always made me sleepy.

  “How’s Richie?” Julie said.

  “You know, that’s always the first thing you ask me,” I said.

  “It’s always the first thing on my mind,” Julie said.

  “But maybe not on mine,” I said.

  “No?”

  I was silent. Julie smiled.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Richie’s fine,” I said.

  “He seeing anyone?”

  “I don’t ask.”

  “For God’s sake,” Julie said, “that’s inhuman.”

  “He doesn’t ask either.”

  “Are you?” Julie said.

  “Seeing anyone?”

  “Yes.”<
br />
  “You’ll be the first to know,” I said.

  “Sure you say that, but then you’re sleeping with that policeman, Brian something, for weeks and you don’t mention it to me.”

  “I forgot,” I said.

  “You see him anymore?”

  I shook my head.

  “He wanted more than I had to give,” I said.

  “Richie, still?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe it’s time to cut that cord.”

  “I think we have cut it. Now we are trying to see how else to be with each other.”

  “Jesus, Sunny, you are a persistent girl.”

  “Woman,” I said.

  Julie looked at me.

  “Oh God, Sunny, you’re not getting correct on me are you?”

  “I’ve taken on a new client,” I said. “She’s a professional feminist. And she’s raised my consciousness.”

  “A professional feminist?”

  I told Julie about Mary Lou.

  “Gee, send her to my house,” Julie said.

  “And send the bill to Michael?”

  “Exactly,” Julie said. “Is she a lesbian?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Julie ordered a second glass of wine.

  “How does Spike know her?”

  “How does Spike know anyone?” I said. “I think if I needed someone to play the flute for cobras Spike would know a guy.”

  “So how are you going to guard her by yourself?”

  “Meet her at home, take her to work, leave her there, pick her up at the end of the day, bring her home, leave her there. If she needs to go out on business, or in the evening, she lets me know and I go with her.”

  “Do you think it’s serious?” Julie said.

  “I have to think it’s serious,” I said.

  “Of course. But if it is serious, can you cover her by yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Couldn’t Richie find you someone?”

  “They have to be women.”

  “And a good woman is hard to find?”

  “A good woman who can shoot,” I said.

  “Ah,” Julie said and drank some of her white wine. “There’s the rub.”

  I hadn’t seen Julie drink during the day. Normally she had patients in the afternoon.

  “Everything all right with you?” I said.

  “Sure,” she said. “A little crazed maybe, but aren’t we all.”

  “Kids?” I said. “Michael? Patients?”

  Julie drank some more wine.

  “The mothers of small children are all crazy,” Julie said. “You know that.”

  “How about the fathers?”

  “The husbands of mothers of small children are probably driven crazy by their wives,” Julie said.

  “You driving Michael crazy?”

  “Sunny Randall, girl detective,” Julie said. “I’m just playing with words, we’re fine.”

  “Woman detective,” I said.

  Julie laughed. I laughed.

  “You’ve got to be careful hanging around Great Strides, Inc.,” Julie said. “Pretty soon you’ll stop wearing makeup.”

  “Not on dates,” I said.

  CHAPTER

  7

  I WAS DRIVING a forest-green Subaru station wagon that year, and Rosie was sitting in it with me outside Mary Lou Goddard’s condo in Chestnut Hill on a very nice November day when it was too cold and too leafless to be autumn anymore, but still bright and cheerful. I’d been there about two minutes when Mary Lou came out wearing a blue cloth coat and a white turtleneck sweater and big sunglasses. She didn’t look as good as I did. I was wearing low boots and the latest in cropped pants, black, and a black sweater with a scoop neck and some nice silver jewelry. My revolver was in my purse. My hair was in place—or almost—naturally blond, and newly highlighted from the hairdresser. All around I had Mary Lou by a mile. She was carrying a briefcase with a shoulder strap and she looked like she was in a hurry. She went around to the passenger side and opened the door and found herself nose to nose with Rosie, who was sitting in the passenger seat. Mary Lou made a flapping motion with her hand.

  “Shoo,” she said. “Backseat, shoo.”

  I said, “Get in the back, Rosie,” and she scooted over the armrest and into the backseat.

  Mary Lou brushed off the front seat, and got in.

  “I would prefer,” she said, “that your dog not accompany you.”

  “She likes to ride,” I said.

  Mary Lou closed her door and we were off. Rosie stood with her forepaws on the armrest between the seats and her hind legs on the backseat, and looked out through the windshield at what there was to see. Mary Lou sat as far from her as she could in the passenger seat and frowned. Rosie ignored her.

  “While you are in my employ,” Mary Lou said, “I would prefer that you leave your dog at home.”

  I was scanning our surroundings, checking the rearviews, trying to see in all directions at the same time. If you’re going to be a bodyguard, you can’t operate on the assumption that there’s no danger.

  “Love me,” I said, “love my dog.”

  “Are you saying if I employ you I have to put up with your dog?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She thought about it, and, apparently, came to some conclusion.

  “Is that a rifle in the backseat?” she said.

  “No. It’s a shotgun.”

  “Isn’t there a danger that your dog will make it shoot by mistake?”

  “There’s no round in the chamber,” I said.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Mary Lou said.

  “There are shotgun shells in that tube there, under the barrel, but none are up in the chamber where they can be fired. In order to shoot, I pump one up by that wooden handle there near the front. That puts the shell in position and cocks the gun.”

  “So until you do that the gun is harmless.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Do you have another gun?”

  “Yes. I carry a revolver.”

  “You are carrying it now?”

  “Yes.”

  A maroon Pontiac sedan had been behind us all the way since we left Mary Lou’s place. In Brookline, at the light, I turned left up Chestnut Hill Avenue. The Pontiac kept going straight. I went up over the hill to Cleveland Circle and turned right onto Beacon Street, and headed into town that way. Nobody else made me nervous.

  “Why did you choose to go this way?” Mary Lou said.

  “I wanted to be sure no one was following us.”

  “Did you see someone?”

  “No. I’m just being careful.”

  Mary Lou nodded. I think she approved of careful.

  “How did a young woman like you become a, ah, security person?”

  “In fact, I’m a private detective,” I said. “My father was a policeman. I was on the force for a while and then decided to go private.”

  “A woman on the police force must have a difficult time,” Mary Lou said.

  “It’s a pretty high-testosterone outfit, the cops, and I imagine there were judgments made about me based on gender rather than performance. But my problem wasn’t gender. I just can’t seem to work for anyone.”

  “Aren’t you working for me?” Mary Lou said.

  “No,” I said. “I’m working for me.”

  “If that is so, how can I trust you?”

  “Because I’m trustworthy.”

  Mary Lou stared at me for a while. Rosie was panting gently between us with her mouth open and her tongue out. She appeared to be smiling a big smile, but I suspected that was a matter of anthropomorphic projection.

>   At Harvard Street I picked up the Pontiac again. He was idling on a hydrant on Beacon Street, just past the intersection, and when I went by him he fell into line behind me. And he must have driven like hell when I turned off at Chestnut Hill Ave because Harvard Street is not a thoroughfare. He tagged me clumsily along Beacon Street all the way to Kenmore, where we crisscrossed onto Commonwealth and headed downtown. Maybe he wasn’t clumsy. Maybe he wanted to be seen, so Mary Lou would know she was being followed. Then why had he let us go when I’d turned off Route 9? Maybe he was ambivalent. Maybe I didn’t know all there was to know.

  I could make out enough in the rearview mirror to know that the driver was male, and to read his license plate numbers. Mary Lou did not appear to notice the Pontiac, and I saw no reason to mention it for now.

  Mary Lou had her offices in Park Square. I pulled up in front of her building while Mary Lou got out of the car. Rosie immediately hopped into her place in the front seat. Mary Lou held the door open to talk to me, without a thought as to what might happen if Rosie hopped out and cavorted in the downtown traffic. I held Rosie’s collar.

  “I’ll be here all day. You can pick me up at six.”

  “If your plans change,” I said, “call my cell phone.”

  “My plans rarely change,” Mary Lou said and closed the door.

  The Pontiac had pulled in behind us halfway back down the block. I watched him in my rearview mirror as Mary Lou walked across the sidewalk. There was no sudden movement in the car. Mary Lou disappeared into her building. I picked up my car phone and dialed Marge Quinn, a woman I knew at the registry. She said she’d call me back in a few minutes. As I was hanging up, the Pontiac pulled away and drove down St. James Avenue. I followed him.

  “See how this works,” I said.

  Rosie had slid down onto the floor in front of the passenger seat and was lying in a position that could not have been comfortable, snoring. Companionship. I was following the Pontiac along Commonwealth Ave, going west, when my phone rang.

  “Sunny? It’s Marge. The car you asked me about is registered to Lawrence B. Reeves, in Cambridge.”

  She gave me an address on Brookline Street, which was, I knew, on the other side of the B.U. Bridge, near the river. In about ten minutes we were there, a two-family house, up and down, with yellow clapboard siding, and maroon-toned asphalt shingles on the roof. The Pontiac pulled into the driveway and parked. A middle-aged, middle-sized man carrying maybe a little too much weight got out wearing an ill-fitting double-breasted brown suit with a prominent chalk stripe. He was balding and what hair he had left was long and pulled back in a ponytail. He had on small round eyeglasses with gold wire frames. I pulled my Subaru up behind him, blocking the driveway. From the floor of the backseat I got my camera bag and took out a 35mm with a zoom lens and automatic everything.