Hugger Mugger (16 page)

I
GOT UP
early, before the heat clamped down, and ran five miles through Lamarr under the wide-leaved trees. Back at the motel, showered, shaved, and happy with my breakfast, I got a cup of coffee to go and went to my room and sat on the bed and began to work the phones.

My first call was to the homicide commander of the Boston Police, my longtime friend and admirer, Martin Quirk.

“What the fuck do you want now?” Quirk said when they put me through to him.

“I've been away,” I said. “I wanted to call and say hi.”

“Oh Christ,” Quirk said. “The best thing we ever did was fire you.”

“You didn't fire me,” I said. “I got fired from the Middlesex County DA's Office.”

“We in the larger sense,” Quirk said. “We in law enforcement.”

“Jeez, since you made captain, you've lost a lot of that fun-loving warmth.”

“Whaddya want?” Quirk sounded tired.

“I'd like any information you can get me on a former FBI agent named Jon Delroy. He spells it J-o-n. Before he was with the Bureau he was in the Marine Corps. Currently he runs an outfit in Atlanta called Security South.”

“And why should I do this?”

“Because if I do it they won't tell me anything.”

“Like they'll tell me,” Quirk said.

“You're a captain. They'll pay attention to you.”

“Sure they will—city police captains really matter to the Feds.”

“Well, they matter to me,” I said.

“Where you calling from?”

“Lamarr, Georgia.”

“Good for you,” Quirk said.

I gave him the phone number and he hung up. It was Tuesday. Susan gave a seminar on Tuesdays from nine
A
.
M
. to eleven
A
.
M
. It was nine-fifteen
A
.
M
. I drank my coffee and read the Atlanta paper until ten after ten. Then I lay back on the bed and tried to empty my mind—see if an idea popped up into the void. Mostly I thought about Susan with her clothes off. This would solve nearly any problem I had, but it didn't do much for the case. At eleven-fifteen, I called her.

“I've been trying to empty my mind,” I said.

“I thought you'd already done that,” Susan said.

“And just when I think I've done it—there you are with your clothes off.”

“How do I look?”

“Like you do,” I said.

“I'll take that to mean stunning,” Susan said. “Are you doing anything else down there besides thinking of me with my clothes off?”

“Sometimes I sleuth a little.”

“And?”

“And I'm compiling the results.”

“Does that mean you're getting nowhere?”

“It's not exactly nowhere. I'm learning things. But generally I don't know what the stuff that I'm learning means.”

“Let me help you,” she said.

“Thank you, Doctor. Are you dressed?”

“To the nines. What do you have?”

“You remember the names of all the players?” I said.

“Of course I do,” Susan said.

“How could I forget. Penny Clive and her sisters won't talk to me. I'm not allowed in the house or the stables or anywhere they own anything. The ban is enforced by employees of Security South.”

“Are they still guarding the horse too?”

“I assume so. I can't get close enough to the horse or anybody else to find out. Both Clive husbands, Pud and Cord, have been tossed. They are now living together in Pud's former love nest in the heart of downtown Lamarr.”

“Isn't Cord the apparent pedophile?”

“Yeah. Out on his own he's like a lost lamb, and Pud, amazingly, has taken him under his wing.”

“Didn't you just mix a metaphor?” Susan said.

“Badly. Both men feel that Penny is the one who
gave them the boot. They feel that she's in charge and they also speculate that she has an intimate relationship with Jon Delroy, who runs Security South.”

“He runs it? Isn't that new information?”

“Yeah. Apparently he
is
Security South. And apparently his only client is the Clive family. Even some of Jon Delroy's credit card charges were paid by someone designated PC.”

“Penny Clive?”

“Could be. The charges appeared to be Security South–related.”

“How did you find that out?”

“Burglary.”

“Always effective,” Susan said. “Are you looking into Mr. Delroy?”

“Quirk's checking with the FBI for me.”

“What about the sheriff person, Becker?”

“Sheriff's deputy,” I said. “I think he's a good cop, and I think he's honest. But the Clives have a lot of clout, and I don't think he can go anywhere with this on his own.”

“Is he still using you to do it for him?”

“As best he can,” I said.

“They have that kind of clout even with the father dead?”

“I think it was the father's money that gave him the clout,” I said. “Now
they've
got it.”

“The three girls?”

“Yes, equally. I talked with the lawyer for the estate.”

There was silence on the phone line. I knew she was thinking. She'd have a very slight wrinkle between her
eyebrows. And she would seem to disappear into the thought process, so that if you spoke she might not hear you. It was amazing to watch and the result was often lovely. I imagined her thinking. Dressed to the nines.

“It's Delroy, isn't it?” she said.

“I don't know,” I said. “Might be.”

“But he's the wedge in.”

“Yes.”

“He's the one that doesn't make sense. How long has he worked for the Clives?”

“Maybe ten years, maybe longer.”

“Did your burglary turn that up?”

“It's an estimate. He was there when Pud joined the family, and he'd been there awhile.”

“So Penny was a young girl when he arrived.”

“I guess so—she's about twenty-five now.”

“Still a young girl,” Susan said.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Even when her father was alive she was running the shop on a daily basis. She is very different than her sisters. She's a young girl, but she's a tough young girl.”

“Do you think Pud and Cord are right, that it was she who forced them out?”

“The problems in their marriages didn't change. What changed was that Walter Clive died.”

“And Penny took over.”

“Un-huh.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I don't have a Harvard Ph.D.”

“And I do,” Susan said.

“And neither of us knows why she did it.”

“Or even for sure, if.”

“I couldn't have put it better,” I said.

“I know. What about the mother?”

“Sherry Lark?”

“Yes.”

“Might it serve you to talk with her?”

“I don't know. She's not around. She's an airhead, and a faraway airhead at that. She lives in San Francisco.”

“Might it serve you to go to San Francisco? Mothers are often good sources of information about their children. Even airhead mothers, of whom there is a formidable contingent.”

“Even in Cambridge?” I said.

“Especially in Cambridge.”

“If I go to San Francisco,” I said, “might you join me?”

“I might.”

“Open your golden gate, don't make a stranger wait . . .”

“Stop singing,” Susan said. “You remember the case you had when you were home? Kate and Kevin?”

“And Valerie Hatch,” I said. “And her kid Miranda and her mother's dog, Buttons.”

“Stop showing off. That case reminds me a little of this one.”

“Nobody down here, that I know of, has a dog named Buttons,” I said.

“No, but the more you get into the case, the more things are not what they appear to be.”

It was nothing I didn't know, but it was worth
reminding me of. It is hard to go through life assuming that things are not as they appear to be. Yet in Susan's work, and in mine, that is the norm. It always helps to be reminded of it.

“As we discuss this,” I said, “could you undress, and tell me about it garment by garment?”

“Absolutely not,” Susan said.

“You are so inhibited,” I said.

“And proud of it,” Susan said.

We were quiet for a moment. Then Susan spoke again and her voice had the sort of lush shading it took on sometimes when she was playing.

“On the other hand,” she said. “As we've just discussed. Things are not always as they appear to be.”

“This bodes well for our rendezvous by the Bay,” I said.

“It do,” Susan said.

S
USAN AND
I got a room at the Ritz-Carlton on Stockton Street, at the corner of California Street, halfway up Nob Hill. She was in the room when I got there, having come in from Boston an hour and ten minutes earlier than I had from Atlanta. She had gotten her clothes all carefully hung up, with a space between each garment so that they wouldn't wrinkle. She had her makeup carefully arranged on every available surface in the bathroom. She was wearing one of the hotel-issue robes, which was vastly too big for her, and she smelled of good soap and high-end shampoo. The clothes she had worn on the flight were already hung up. But underclothes and panty hose and magazines and packing tissue were scattered around the room like confetti after a parade. Workout clothes and sneakers and white sweat socks were laid out carefully on the bed. Along with half a bagel, and two PowerBars.

I was not used to being away from her as much as I'd been lately, and when I got the door closed, I put my arms around her and closed my eyes and put my cheek against the top of her head and stood for a long time without speaking while my soul melted into her. I knew we weren't the same person. I knew that it was good that we weren't. I knew separateness made love possible. But there were moments, like this one, of crystalline stillness, when it felt as if we really could merge like two oceans at the bottom of the world.

“We're pretty glad to see each other,” I said.

“We should not be away from each other this long.”

“No.”

“Do you still want phone sex?” Susan said.

“I think I'd prefer the real thing,” I said. “Now that I'm here.”

“The real thing is good,” Susan said.

“Except there's no room for it,” I said, “unless we go lie down in the hall.”

“I'll make space,” Susan said, “while you rinse off in the shower.”

When I came out of the shower the bed was cleared off and turned down. From the minibar Susan had made me a tall scotch and soda, and poured herself half a glass of red wine.

I picked up my drink and had a pull. It was lovely, pale and cold.

“No bathrobe?” Susan said.

“They're always too small,” I said. “I guess they want to discourage people my size.”

“Well, I don't,” Susan said, and took off the bathrobe.

We spent a long time reuniting, and finally when we were lying quietly on our backs together with my arm under her neck, I said, “I'm very encouraged.”

“Yes,” she said.

We were quiet again for a long time, listening to the music of the spheres, and the occasional sound of the cable cars going up and down California Street. Then I took my arm from under her neck and got up and made myself a new drink, and brought it and her wine back to the bed. Susan wriggled herself sufficiently upright on the stacked pillows to drink wine. I handed her the glass and sat beside her with my back against the headboard.

“Have we been here together since I was out here looking for you?” I said.

“Fifteen years ago?”

“Um-hmm.”

“I'm sure we have.”

I was pretty sure we hadn't, but what difference did it make?

“Hard times,” I said.

“I don't think about those times,” Susan said.

“Ever?”

“I treat it as something that never happened.”

“But it did happen.”

“Not to the people we are now,” Susan said.

“Well,” I said, “who am I to argue mental health with a shrink?”

“You are the shrink's honey bunny.”

“That'll do,” I said.