Painted Ladies (6 page)

Susan turned and looked at me.

“I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time,” she said.

“I’m sure I will,” I said. “Rita’s a lot of fun.”

“And she’s so good-looking,” Susan said.

“She is,” I said.

Susan was quiet. I peeled my apples. Pearl snored.

“Do you think she’s better-looking than
moi
?” Susan said.

What kind of idiot wouldn’t know the right answer to that?
But in fact I did think she was better-looking than Rita, though the gap was maybe not as wide as I would imply.

“No,” I said.

“Do you think I’m better-looking than she?” Susan said.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Would you care to elaborate a bit?”

“Sure,” I said.

I tossed my sliced apples in a bowl with a little lemon juice to keep them from turning brown.

“You are the best-looking woman I’ve ever known,” I said. “Also, your hair is better than Rita’s.”

“Black hair is easier,” she said.

I measured some flour into another bowl.

“No doubt,” I said. “But it remains true. And if it didn’t, if none of it were true, would it really matter? We love each other, and we’re in it for the long haul.”

“Yes,” Susan said.

I sprinkled some nutmeg into the flour.

“So what difference does it make?” I said.

Susan nodded.

“You don’t think her ass is better than mine?” Susan said.

“No one’s is,” I said. “And I pay close attention.”

She nodded and turned back to the window. I broke a couple of eggs into my batter mix.

“What do you need to learn from this lawyer?” Susan said.

“I don’t know, really. It’s like what I do. I look into something and I get a name and I look into the name and it leads to another name, and I keep finding out whatever I can about whatever comes my way, and sometimes you find something that helps.”

Susan left the window and came and sat on a stool at my kitchen counter. She had on tight black jeans tucked into high black boots. On top she was wearing a loose aqua silk T-shirt, narrowed at the waist by a fancy belt.

“So what have you found so far?” Susan said.

I told her what I knew. She listened with her usual luminous intensity.

“The male version of Rita Fiore,” Susan said.

“How unkind,” I said.

“Horny?” Susan said.

“I was thinking of something a little more technical,” I said.

“Satyriasis?” Susan said.

“There you go,” I said. “Is it real, or just a term, like nymphomania, which ascribes an illness to behavior we disapprove of.”

“Both can be legitimate,” she said. “Though talking of nymphomania is sort of incorrect these days. But both are tied to a definition which depends to some extent on the observer’s view of normal and abnormal.”

“ ‘Nothing human is foreign to me,’ ”I said.

She smiled.

“Thank you, Mr. Whitman,” she said. “On the other hand, rape and murder are human, too.”

“Okay, we’ll give Walt some poetic license,” I said.

“To me it’s more a matter of degree, and effect.”

I poured some safflower oil into my big frying pan, and let it heat.

“Like booze,” I said.

“Yes,” Susan said. “You like to drink. But you can choose not to. You can stop when it’s appropriate. It doesn’t interfere with your work, or our relationship, or anything else. But if you had to drink and couldn’t stop and it was screwing up your life, and mine, then you have an illness, alcoholism, and you’d need help.”

“So if I’m that way about sex, have to have it, can’t restrain myself, force myself on people . . .”

“That’s just you being you,” Susan said.

“Wait a minute,” I said.

She laughed.

“I couldn’t resist,” she said.

“Maybe you have an illness?” I said.

“No doubt,” she said. “But your analogy is apt. If you are, so to speak, a sexual alcoholic, then you have an illness, and you need help.”

“Would someone like that be likely to seek help?”

“I don’t know. Most people with whatever problem don’t seek shrink help. I’ve had very few cases of either men or women with out-of-control sexual issues.”

“Would men be likely to seek help from a woman?” I said.

“They might,” Susan said. “It might excite them to think of talking about it with a woman. Are you thinking Prince sought help?”

“I don’t know. Certainly the college would have a shrink on retainer, wouldn’t they?”

“Most colleges do,” Susan said. “Why are you investigating Prince so carefully? He’s the victim.”

With a pair of tongs, I began to place the batter-coated apple rings into the hot oil.

“The fact that they planned ahead of time to kill him makes me wonder a little,” I said.

“Because they prepared the bomb and everything?” Susan said.

“Yeah,” I said. “They didn’t improvise that at the spur of the moment.”

“No,” Susan said. “Of course.”

“And,” I said, “more important, he’s all I’ve got. I don’t investigate him, and I may as well be sitting on the dock of the bay.”

“Yes,” Susan said. “It’s not so different than what I do.”

I took a few fritters out of the fry pan, added a little oil, let it heat, and placed a few more rings in there.

“Why so few at a time?” Susan said. “There’s room for more.”

“You crowd them and they don’t come out right,” I said.

“I didn’t know that,” Susan said.

“You would if you needed to,” I said.

“Would Rita?”

“Not as well as you would,” I said.

“Right answer,” Susan said.

“No fool I.”

T
he fax from Crosby finally arrived in my office on Monday morning. There were eight names on it. Three of them were women. One of them was Melissa Minor. I sat back in my chair. Melissa Minor. Minor wasn’t an exotic name. But it wasn’t particularly common, either. I could not remember, in the course of my lifetime, meeting anyone named Minor. And now on the same case in a matter of days I encounter two?

I swiveled around and picked up my phone and called Crosby.

“Spenser,” I said. “Thanks for the fax.”

“Maybe I’ll change the department motto,” Crosby said. “Stay mum and be helpful?”

“Needs work,” I said. “Can you get me the name of Melissa Minor’s mother?”

“Who’s Melissa Minor?”

“One of the students in Prince’s seminar,” I said.

“Oh, hell, I didn’t even read the list,” Crosby said. “When they sent it to me, I had my secretary fax it on over.”

“Sure,” I said. “Can you get me her mother’s name?”

“Yeah, they’ll have that.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Where they probably send the tuition bill.”

“Lemme know,” I said.

“Call you back,” Crosby said. “This is exciting. I almost feel like a cop.”

“Try to remain calm,” I said.

We hung up.

While I waited, I looked out my window at the corner of Berkeley and Boylston. While I’d been spinning my wheels, we’d settled into December, and every commercial enterprise that would support a Christmas decoration had several. It hadn’t snowed yet. But it was cold, and the young women who worked in the area were bundled up so that it was less fun to watch them walk by than it was in the summer. But it wasn’t no fun. And though my commitment to Susan was absolute, that was no reason not to survey the landscape.

The phone rang.

“Mother’s name is Winifred Minor,” Crosby said. “No father listed. Mother lives in Charlestown. Employed at Shawmut Insurance on Columbus Ave.”

“You know if the father’s deceased?” I said.

“Don’t know nothing about the father,” Crosby said. “I asked about that. Told me in the admissions office that when she filled out the forms she simply drew a line in the space where it said ‘father’s name.’ ”

“What’s the address?” I said.

Crosby gave it to me. I thanked him and hung up. I sat for a while, looking at nothing. Then I got up and walked around my office, which isn’t really big enough for walking. I stood at my window and looked down at Berkeley Street. Then I sat down again. The more information I got, the less I understood.

“Hello,” I said to no one. “Any Minotaurs in there?”

I
was lingering as inconspicuously as I could on the second floor of the Fine Arts building, outside the room where the “Low-Country Realism” seminar was finishing up. Since I was the only person in the corridor at the moment, I was about as inconspicuous as a wolverine in a hair salon. But, master of disguise that I am, I was carrying Simon Schama’s book on Rembrandt under my arm.

No one paid much attention to me as class let out. It was a no-brainer. There was only one tall blonde, and except for hair color, which is not immutable, she looked very much like her mother. She was wearing a thick white cable-knit sweater that looked a couple of sizes too big for her. Below the sweater were very tight black jeans. The jeans were tucked into high tan boots with white fur trim around the tops. If she was dressing like an artist, it was a successful artist. The boots cost more than everything I was wearing, including my gun. Over her left arm she was carrying a fleece-lined leather coat with a fleece collar. She had neither books nor a notebook. She was talking with the other two girls when I interrupted.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Melissa?”

“Missy,” she said, as if the correction was automatic.

“Missy Minor,” I said. “Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

“Who are you?” she said.

“My name is Spenser,” I said. “I’m a detective.”

“Is it about Dr. Prince?” Missy said.

The two girls with her were both shorter than Missy. One wore a sweatshirt with a Red Sox logo. The other had on a short plaid skirt and cowboy boots.

“Yes,” I said, and turned to the two other girls. “What are your names?”

“Sandy Wilson,” the one in the sweatshirt said.

“Bev DeCarlo,” the other one said.

“I don’t know anything,” Missy said.

“Me, either,” Sandy said.

“I told the other policeman I don’t know anything,” Bev said.

“Don’t be so hard on yourselves,” I said. “You had class with him for nearly a semester. I’ll bet you know a lot.”

“I gotta go,” Missy said. “I got another class.”

“At five o’clock?” I said.

“Gotta go,” Missy said, and walked away.

“The other cop just came and talked to the class after Dr. Prince was killed,” Bev said. “He didn’t tell us anything.”

“We read about it in the papers,” Sandy said. “It’s very awful.”

“Yep,” I said. “If we could talk, maybe you could help.”

“Help?” Bev said.

“More I know,” I said, “more chance there is I’ll catch the bastards.”

“We were going down to the pub,” Sandy said. “You wanna come along?”

“Okay with you, Bev?” I said.

“Sure,” she said. “Actually, you’re kind of cute.”

“Everybody tells me that,” I said.

T
he pub was in the student union, off the student cafeteria. A sign at the door said
Proper ID Required for Service.
It was neat and clean, with a lot of glass and stainless steel. It didn’t look like a pub. It looked like the cocktail lounge at an airport. There was music I didn’t like that was playing in the room. But it was discreet enough so we could talk. Things were slow still, and the room was two-thirds empty.

Bev and I had a beer. Sandy had a glass of chardonnay.

“Thank God it’s evening,” Bev said.

We drank. They drank faster. They were nearly through the first drink by the time I got to my interrogation.

“Did you like Dr. Prince?” I said.

“Well, sure,” Sandy said. “I mean, the poor man.”

“You don’t need to like him because he was killed,” I said. “Did you like him when he was alive?”

They looked at each other. It was apparently a harder question than I had expected. While they looked, I got the waitress and ordered another round.

“I always had the feeling,” Sandy said after the drinks came, “that he was, like, looking through my clothes.”

Sandy was slight, with brown hair and glasses and nice eyes.

“Face it,” Bev said. “He was a cockhound.”

Bev was dark-haired and somewhat zaftig, with a slight almond shape to her eyes.

“He ever make an attempt on your virtue?” I said.

“He made an attempt on everyone’s virtue,” Sandy said.

“He succeed much?” I said.

“Not with me,” Sandy said firmly.

I looked at Bev. She grinned at me. Both girls had emptied their glasses again. We got another round. Sometimes it went easier with booze.

After the waitress left, I said, “How about you, Bev?”

She nodded slowly.

“We had a night,” she said. “He seemed like he was in a hurry.”

“How so?” I said.

“It was like . . . you know, not a lot of foreplay.”

“Slam, bam, thank you, ma’am,” I said.

Bev laughed.

“Exactly,” she said. “It was like once he got me into bed, he wanted to get it over with and move on somewhere.”

“Probably the next girl,” Sandy said.

Bev smiled again.

“Like I said, he’s a cockhound . . . was.”

“He, ah, friendly,” I said, “with others in the class?”

“Others?” Sandy said. “The only other girl in class is Missy. He wasn’t interested in the boys.”

“Was he friendly with Missy?” I said.

“Sure,” Sandy said.

I could hear the wine in her voice.

“How friendly?”

“She liked him,” Bev said.

“She was sort of his girlfriend, I think,” Sandy said.