Rough Weather: A Spenser Novel

rich.”
    “In the early 1980s,” I said, “while she was married to you, Heidi was in Bucharest, Romania, with Harden Bradshaw.”
    “I know,” Van Meer said.
    “Talk about that,” I said.
    “We had a big fight,” he said. “She went to Bucharest. When she came back, we made up. In fact, that’s when Adelaide was conceived.”
    He sipped his drink. He was sedate. No guzzling.
    “What was the fight about?”
    “Oh, God,” he said. “I don’t know. We had fights all the time.”
    “You know she was cheating on you?”
    “Yes.”
    “With Bradshaw?”
    “Yes.”
    “Might it have been a fight about that?” I said.
    “Coulda been,” Van Meer said.
    “How’d you feel about that?” I said.
    Van Meer shrugged.
    “Hell, she cheated on me all the time, with anybody available,” he said, and sipped again.
    “How’d you feel about that?” I said.
    He laughed.
    “You sound like all of my many shrinks,” he said. “Why do you want to know all this?”
    “If I knew ahead of time what was important to know and what was not …” I said.
    He nodded.
    “Yeah,” he said. “I can see that.”
    He had another swallow. Like a lot of experienced boozers, he could go a long time before he began to slur his words. He held his glass up a little and looked at his drink.
    “Not too long after we got married, we had some wiring done at our new house,” he said. “She fucked the electrician.”
    I nodded.
    “She needed sex, and she needed variety,” Van Meer said. “She was fucking me while she was married to that art professor. She was fucking Bradshaw when she was married to me.”
    “Busy,” I said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Looking for Mr. Right?” I said.
    “Mr. Feels Good,” Van Meer said. “As far as I could tell, she fucked plumbers and limo drivers and delivery men, and for all I know doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs.”
    “One man would never be enough,” I said.
    “That is correct.”
    “And you could live with that?” I said.
    “Better than I could live without her,” Van Meer said.
    “And now you have to do both,” I said.
    Van Meer nodded and took another sip.
    “Yup,” he said.

 
    It was the Thursday
after Thanksgiving, the last day of Nov ember, with a gentle but persistent rain falling all along the south coast. In Padanarum, Hawk waited in the car for me while I went up on the porch and rang the bell for Harden Bradshaw. I could hear the surf from the waterfront side of the house. I could smell wood smoke, and when Bradshaw opened the door, I could look past him and see the fire burning on the big hearth in his living room.
    “You again,” he said.
    “Glad to see you, too,” I said. “May I come in?”
    “What do you want?”
    “Several things,” I said. “Like where your stepdaughter attended college.”
    “She went to Penn for two years before she dropped out,” Bradshaw said. “Before that she went to Miss McGowan’s School in Ashfield, western Mass,” he said.
    “Prep school?”
    Bradshaw nodded.
    “For young ladies,” he said.
    He sounded a little scornful.
    “Why’d she drop out of college?” I said.
    “You’ll have to ask her mother,” Bradshaw said. “Is that all?”
    “Can we discuss you and Heidi in Bucharest in 1984,” I said.
    “I have nothing further to say to you,” Bradshaw said, still blocking the doorway. He had on a plaid flannel shirt today, and wide-wale corduroy pants.
    “I wonder if she might have met a man named Rugar while she was there.”
    “I don’t know,” Bradshaw said. “I had nothing to do with the events at Tashtego. I have no idea where my stepdaughter is. I don’t know anything about this Rugar fellow, and I am quite frankly tired of you.”
    “Then you’ll be tired of dreaming,” I said.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Allusion to a song,” I said. “I could sing it all for you.”
    “I do not find you amusing,” Bradshaw said.
    “What a shame,” I said. “So you probably don’t want me to sing, either.”
    “I believe we’re through here,” Bradshaw said.
    “Before you go,” I said, “lemme tell you what I think. Youand Rugar were working out of the American embassy in Bucharest. I think you knew Rugar from there. I think maybe Heidi met him there as well.”
    “The American embassy in Bucharest is not a ma-and-pa store,” Bradshaw said. “Many people worked there. I didn’t know most of them.”
    “And yet nearly twenty-five years later, Rugar shows up at your wife’s home and kidnaps