Rough Weather: A Spenser Novel

breakfast.
    “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” I said.
    “And what was gained from this venture?” she said.
    “The considerable satisfaction of giving Clark a big smack,” I said.
    “That’s why your right hand seems swollen.”
    “I deserve it,” I said. “The uppercut was showing off. Another minute or so and he’d have run out of oxygen.”
    “It didn’t seem to bother you earlier this morning,” Susan said. “Does it hurt?”
    “Only if I punch somebody.”
    “Which you do much less of these days,” Susan said.
    “I’m maturing,” I said.
    “But not aging,” Susan said.
    I smiled at her.
    “You’re thinking about earlier this morning, aren’t you.”
    “Hard not to,” Susan said.
    I was chopping onions.
    “Is there a pun in there?”
    “Not unless you are a lecherous pig,” Susan said.
    “Oink,” I said.
    “And bless you for it,” Susan said. “You might have learned some things. You said Heidi Bradshaw acted strangely.”
    “The fight excited her,” I said.
    “Fights can be exciting?”
    “There was something wrong with her excitement,” I said. “Her eyes. There was something going on in her eyes.”
    “Like what?” Susan said.
    I mixed the chopped onions with the clams.
    “Like I was peeking in a window and seeing something terrible,” I said.
    “I guess you had to be there,” Susan said.
    I nodded. I cubed some boiled red potatoes, skins and all, and stirred them in with the chopped clams and onions.
    “There’s something else, now that I’m thinking about it,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said. “I think there is.”
    “You know what it is?” I said.
    “Yes,” Susan said. “If you’re reporting accurately.”
    “I always report accurately,” I said.
    She nodded.
    “I know,” she said. “Heidi’s behavior is inconsistent with all the things that have happened.”
    “Wow,” I said.
    Susan smiled.
    “Harvard,” she said, “Ph.D.”
    “Yet still sexually active,” I said.
    “You should know,” Susan said.
    “I should,” I said. “Right after the kidnapping you remarked that her reactions seemed odd, but we both know that shock can cause all sorts of behavior.”
    “Yes,” Susan said. “But the shock should have worn off by now. Her current behavior should be far more genuine.”
    “Cocktails in the atrium,” I said. “A new companion.”
    “Or bodyguard,” Susan said. “However ineffective.”
    “I wasn’t too effective, either,” I said.
    “Hard to decide that,” Susan said, “without knowing exactly what you were supposed to effect.”
    I nodded.
    “And it seemed like an inside job,” I said.
    “You’ve always wanted to say that, haven’t you?”
    “Detectives are supposed to say stuff like that,” I said. “And it had to be inside. Rugar wouldn’t have taken a job without knowing the layout. Who was where. What the security was. What time things were happening.”
    “You think Heidi was involved in kidnapping her own daughter?”
    “If that’s what it was,” I said.
    “What it was?”
    “I’m just noodling,” I said. “But what if the kidnapping was a head fake. What if the real business was something else?”
    “What?”
    “The murder of the clergyman … or the son-in-law … or a scheme to extract ransom from somebody, like Adelaide’s father.”
    “And you think Heidi could be involved?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s why I’m noodling. It doesn’t have to be Heidi. It could be anybody who knew what was going on. Maggie Lane, the famous conductor … Adelaide.”
    “Wow, you are noodling,” Susan said.
    “Better a theory,” I said, “than nothing.”
    “Theory is no substitute for information,” Susan said.
    “They certainly didn’t teach you that at Harvard,” I said.
    Susan smiled.
    “No,” she said. “Some things I know, I learned from you.”

 
    Lydia Hall College
was north of New York City, near Greenwich, Connecticut. About a three-hour drive from Boston, unless you stopped at Rein’s Deli for a tongue sandwich on light rye. So it was almost four hours after I left home that I was in the alumni office talking to a very presentable woman named Ms. Gold.
    “At various times,” I said, “her name has been Heidi Wash-burn, Heidi Van Meer, and currently, Heidi Bradshaw.”
    “Marriages?” Ms Gold said.
    “Yes,” I said. “All to men of substance, I believe.”
    Ms. Gold smiled.
    “The best kind,” she said. “And what is your interest?”
    “You