Perish Twice

by Robert B. Parker

  “Usually that’s all they can do,” Julie said.

  “We a little mad at men tonight?” I said.

  “It’s the truth,” Julie said.

  “What’s the truth?”

  “Men are a pain in my ass,” Julie said.

  “Are you having trouble with Michael?” I said.

  Julie made a pushing-away gesture with her left hand and shook her head.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well at least it’s an interesting explanation.”

  Julie drank some Chardonnay and stared down the bar.

  CHAPTER

  11

  MOST DAYS WHEN we went to the gym, Spike worked out in his karate suit. He didn’t look like a karate person. He looked somewhat like a bear. I was in glossy coral tights in case someone might be glancing at me, and cutting-edge sneakers that went with the outfit. The gym was nearly empty, two or three trainers lounged around at the reception desk, and three women were running on treadmills. At the other end of the room, Spike was working on the heavy bag, and I was doing dips on the Gravitron, taking covert peeks now and then at myself in the mirror and being pleased that there was a little movement in the triceps as I pushed up. Strong girl. We talked sporadically as we paused to get our breath.

  “What do you know about Mary Lou?” I said.

  Spike went to the water fountain, took a long drink, and came back wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

  “Could you narrow the question at all?” Spike said.

  “Let me tell you how things have gone since I took her on,” I said, “and you can comment.”

  Spike began to move around the heavy bag.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  I told him, while he hit the heavy bag with jabs, hooks, combinations. When I got through, he stepped back from the bag, gleaming with sweat, his chest heaving.

  “Mary Lou is pretty certain about how everything should be,” Spike said. “She thinks that she should be a lesbian. And she is a, ah, practicing lesbian. But she also seems attracted to men, and she thinks she shouldn’t be.”

  “And does she give in to her attraction now and then?”

  “I believe she does,” Spike said.

  “And how does that fit into her certainties?” I said.

  Spike grinned.

  “I don’t know, but I’d bet—not well.”

  “Do you know any of the men in her life?”

  “No. She keeps them pretty well undercover.”

  “Then how do you know?” I said.

  Spike stared at me for a moment, and smiled widely.

  “Sunny, it’s me, Spike.”

  “Oh,” I said, “that’s how.”

  “Thank you,” Spike said, and turned his attention back to the heavy bag.

  “Does she have boyfriends that she doesn’t bring into your company?” I said. “Or is it more random.”

  “Random, I think.”

  “You mean she like picks men up in bars or whatever?”

  “More like that”—Spike did a series of karate punches to the bag—“like wham, bam, thank you, Sam.”

  I reset the Gravitron weight and did twelve pull-ups in necessary silence while Spike pursued the heavy bag relentlessly. I thought about Mary Lou’s sex life to the extent that one can think of anything while doing pull-ups. And thought about it some more while I was doing the rest of my workout. When both of us were finished, we went and had some juice in the little lounge by the front desk.

  “I like juice,” I said.

  “For breakfast,” Spike said. “Right now I’d like maybe three Bloody Marys.”

  “Here?” I said. “That would be like fornicating in church.”

  “Probably why I want them,” Spike said. “You got your sister straightened out?”

  “God no,” I said. “She’s started stalking Hal.”

  “Lot of that going around,” Spike said.

  CHAPTER

  12

  I WAS HAVING lunch with Elizabeth in her house in Weston. I was never at ease in a place like Weston. The houses were too far apart. The front walks were too long. There were too many trees. The streets were far too empty, and I always felt as if a hostile savage might be lurking.

  We were in her sunroom at a small table having pumpkin soup and a chicken Caesar salad, purchased for the occasion from the Fit as a Fiddle Gourmet Shoppe. Rosie wasn’t with me. Elizabeth’s home was much too spotless, and Rosie was certain to leave a black hair on a white surface, or vice versa, and I didn’t want to have to fight with Elizabeth about that while I was fighting with her about stalking her estranged husband.

  “Did Richie ever fool around?” Elizabeth said.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “And now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Aren’t you curious?”

  “Sure, but I manage it.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I manage it’?”

  Elizabeth’s scorn for anything she didn’t understand was profound. There was a great deal that she didn’t get, and if she accepted that, she might be forced to conclude that she was stupid. But inasmuch as she had graduated from Mount Holyoke, it wasn’t possible that she was stupid. So I must be stupid. I understood it. I almost admired how well it worked for her.

  “Divorce means that we both have the right to date anyone we wish.”

  “But don’t you want to know?”

  “Wanting to know doesn’t do me or Richie or our relationship any good.”

  “Oh God, don’t use that stupid word,” Elizabeth said.

  “Relationship?”

  “God, I’m sick of hearing it.”

  “Okay, how about I call it friendship?”

  “Friendship?”

  “Yes, Richie and I are friends. We’re working on whether or not we can be more than that.”

  “I would have thought that question was answered when you were divorced.”

  “I’m sure you would,” I said. “But the divorce actually made the question possible.”

  Elizabeth laughed a nasty little dismissive laugh. It was a laugh I’d heard before. She laughed it when she didn’t understand what was being discussed. It used to chill me into silence when I was small, and Mother thought Elizabeth was the smart one. It didn’t chill me anymore.

  “Hal came to see me,” I said.

  Elizabeth offered me some rolls from a small basket lined with a blue-and-white napkin. I took one.

  “What did the slimy little prick want?”

  I smiled.

  “Hal’s not so little,” I said.

  Elizabeth had put her spoon down on the table and was leaning forward.

  “What did he want?” she said.

  “He said you were stalking him. He wanted me to get you to stop.”

  “Stalking him? That bastard! I’ll stalk him right into his grave. That sonofabitch.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Elizabeth’s eyes were shiny. “I’m not going to sit quietly back while he dumps me for some floozy. If he’s going to keep fucking her, he’s going to have to face me whenever he gets through.”

  “What’s your goal?” I said.

  “Goal?”

  “Yes. What are you trying to accomplish?”

  “What I said. I’m going to make both of them suffer.”

  I nodded and had some soup. It was pretty good.

  “You tell our mother and father?” I said.

  “No. Did you when your marriage went to hell?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “Mother said she was very disappointed and wished I had come to her before it was too late so she could have straightened us out
.”

  “Oh God.”

  “Daddy said I was a grown woman, and would do what was in my best interests and do it well. If I needed anything I should let him know.”

  “He didn’t disapprove?”

  “Don’t you know your own father?” I said. “He hasn’t disapproved of anything either of us has done since we were born.”

  “Well I don’t want you telling them.”

  “It’s your story, you tell it when you want to,” I said.

  I finished my soup. Elizabeth cleared the soup dishes away and brought the salad. The sunroom buzzed of interior design. It was like an otherwise attractive woman in stage makeup. Everything was exaggerated, and decorative. I wondered how often she and Hal had sat here in the ornate sunroom in the elaborate house and talked about anything. It was hard for me to imagine talking about anything of substance with Elizabeth, yet Hal had dated her, married her, and lived an extended time with her. They must have had some sort of relationship.

  “What is it you miss most about Hal?” I said.

  “That’s a dumb question,” Elizabeth said.

  “Give me a smart answer,” I said. “Even it out.”

  “I’m going to get every dime he’s got.”

  “You talked with a lawyer yet?”

  “No.”

  “Who do you talk with?”

  “I haven’t talked with anybody. Why would I go around blabbing about this?”

  “Elizabeth, there’s nothing shameful about a marriage breaking up. It happens all the time.”

  “I don’t remember you bragging about it,” Elizabeth said.

  I was remembering ever more clearly why I didn’t spend much time chatting with my sister.

  “The breakup isn’t shameful,” I said. “The thing is whether you go about it decently or not.”

  “Decent shmecent,” Elizabeth said. “I’m going to make that bastard suffer.”

  “And yourself,” I said.

  “What?”

  “What you’re doing demeans you, Elizabeth. It allows him to govern your life. He goes out on a date. You have to follow. He doesn’t go out. You can stay home. Who is in charge here?”

  “That sonofabitch can’t treat me this way,” Elizabeth said, and her face began to clench and tears formed and she cried.

  Oh shit!

  CHAPTER

  13

  I WAS IN Mary Lou’s office at 8:10 in the morning looking down at a dead woman. She had a bullet hole over her right eye and another one in her left cheek. Her head lay in a large pool of blood, which had soaked into the carpet and dried almost black. She seemed about Mary Lou’s age, and when she was alive might have looked a little like Mary Lou.

  “Should we call an ambulance?” Mary Lou said.

  I shook my head.

  “She’s dead,” I said.

  “How can you tell for sure?” Mary Lou said.

  “I can tell,” I said. “Have you called the police?”

  “No. As soon as you dropped me off, I came in and found her, and called you on your car phone.”

  “I was two blocks away,” I said. “Who is she?”

  “Gretchen Crane, my research assistant.”

  A silent uneasy group of women began to gather outside the office door in the part of the office where most of them worked at desks without partitions. Several people carried paper cups of coffee. Which was what I had been on my way to get when Mary Lou had called me. I went to the phone and dialed police headquarters and asked for homicide and reported a murder.

  In five minutes two uniforms arrived and told everybody to leave everything alone. In ten more two homicide detectives came by, accompanied by four crime-scene specialists, two EMTs, and a man from the coroner’s office. Gretchen was pronounced dead.

  Yellow tape was strung, pictures were taken, a chalk outline was made around the body. One of the detectives began to question the women in the office. The other one, a detective named Farrell, talked with me, and with Mary Lou.

  “The victim usually here this early?” Farrell said.

  “She is usually here by six A.M.,” Mary Lou said.

  She sounded sort of annoyed, as if Farrell should know that and had no business asking.

  “There’s an empty carton that looks like it used to be Chinese food, on the desk,” I said.

  “I noticed that,” Farrell said. “Some chopsticks on the floor under the desk.”

  “So maybe she was working late, having a little supper, and was killed last night.”

  “M.E. will tell us eventually,” Farrell said. “You’re Phil Randall’s kid.”

  “Yes.”

  “You used to be on the job.”

  “For a bit.”

  “Phil’s a stand-up guy,” Farrell said.

  “Do I need a lawyer,” Mary Lou said.

  It was as if she wanted to be part of the conversation.

  “I don’t know,” Farrell said. “Do you?”

  “I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you meant,” Mary Lou said.

  “So why would you need a lawyer?”

  “The police are not usually very sympathetic,” she said, “to sexual diversity.”

  “The victim was sexually diverse?”

  “No, I was speaking of myself.”

  “You’re sexually diverse?”

  “Are you being deliberately obtuse?” Mary Lou said. “I’m a lesbian.”

  “Do you have any thoughts on who might have killed Ms. Crane?”

  “No. None at all.”

  “You, Sunny?”

  “Well, Ms. Goddard was being stalked.”

  “Sunny,” Mary Lou said, “that’s privileged communication.”

  “You and I have no privilege, Mary Lou.”

  “Everything I have said to you has been in confidence.”

  “Has it occurred to you yet that this was a mistake? That the victim was supposed to be you?”

  “Me?”

  “This woman bears some resemblance to you. She’s in your office. It’s in your best interest to talk about the stalker.”

  “This is a murder case, Ms. Goddard,” Farrell said. “No secrets.”

  “I wish to call my attorney.”

  Farrell sighed.

  “It’s your phone,” he said. “Sunny?”

  “Sunny, you are not to reveal a single thing.”

  “This man may have murdered your friend,” I said, nodding at the chalk-striped remains of Gretchen Crane.

  “I don’t know that,” Mary Lou said. “When I do know who killed her, I’ll decide what we will say.”

  “I can stall,” I said, “but sooner or later I’ll have to tell what I know.”

  “If you do so without my permission, you are fired.”

  “And if you don’t,” Farrell said, smiling, “we’ll yank your license.”

  “Give me a couple of days,” I said to Farrell. “It is detrimental to my professional future if I get fired by a client for blabbing to the cops.”

  Farrell nodded and smiled.

  “It’s pretty detrimental to get your license pulled,” he said.

  “Give me a little room,” I said.

  Farrell nodded.

  “I like your old man,” he said. “You used to be on the job. Come see me tomorrow.”

  “That’s as much room as you can give me?”

  “That’s a lot of room for somebody holding back the name of the prime suspect in a homicide.”

  Mary Lou was reading her Rolodex and dialing her lawyer.

  “When you put it that way,” I said, “I guess it is.”

  “So you’ll be in tomorrow,” he said.

  “Ye
s,” I said. “I will.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  THERE WERE STILL a couple of cops in the outer office when I sat in the inner office with Mary Lou and her lawyer, a small perky woman with a beaky nose who looked a little like a smart chicken. The lawyer’s name was Rosalyn Gelb. It was nearly noon.

  “First of all, Mary Lou,” I said, “I am in an untenable position. I have no legal right to withhold information from the police, nor do I think I should.”

  “Had I wished the police to know my business, I would have gone straight to them. Whatever you know you found out while you were in my employ. The information belongs to me.”

  “I’m sure Ms. Gelb will tell you that your argument has no legal basis,” I said.

  Ms. Gelb nodded.

  “New law is made all the time,” Mary Lou said. “You do not have my permission to reveal any information you gathered on my time.”

  “Second of all,” I said, “this is a murder investigation, and probably a high-profile one. Reputable white woman, associated with a prominent feminist, killed in her downtown office. They will want to kill this case. I know the homicide commander, Martin Quirk. If he thinks you are holding out on him in this case, he will tear your life apart.”

  “I expect Rosalyn to insulate me from that.”

  Ms. Gelb didn’t look very happy.

  “Third of all,” I said, “why in hell don’t you want me to tell them about Lawrence B. Reeves?”

  “Because I don’t,” Mary Lou said.

  “Is there anything you can tell me about him? Do you know him?”

  Mary Lou sat in silence, her arms folded across her chest.

  I looked at the lawyer.

  Ms. Gelb said, “I’ll do whatever I can to help you, Mary Lou. But I’m inclined to agree with Ms. Randall.”

  Mary Lou sat with her arms folded and her mind made up.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll try to find a way around this, and if I can’t I’ll give you as much warning as possible.”

  “At which moment,” Mary Lou said, “you are no longer employed by me.”

  I had nothing else to say. Apparently nobody else did either. After a long minute of silence I got up and walked out and went home.