Rough Weather: A Spenser Novel

about Rugar.”
    “Yes. But there’s no sense to it,” Lessard said.
    “We have to make sense of it,” Mrs. Lessard said.
    “Do you have other children?” I said.
    “We have a daughter, in her second year at Princeton.”
    “Perhaps I should talk with her,” I said.

 
    It was late afternoon
and dark when Hawk and I finished running intervals at the Harvard track. We walked across the Anderson Bridge, waiting for our oxygen levels to renew themselves, and on up through Harvard Square and along Mass Ave to Linnaean Street. Susan was going to make dinner for us.
    “She actually gonna make it herself,” Hawk said, “or is she ordering it on the phone?”
    “Says she’s making it herself,” I said.
    “Ain’t that kind of dangerous?” Hawk said.
    “Yes,” I said.
    Susan was still with her last patient when we went into her house and up the stairs to Susan’s apartment, where we had changed into our sweats earlier. Pearl was pleased to see us again,and ran around the apartment with a squeaky toy in her mouth, which made her sound like the Road Runner.
Beep, beep.
    “She do that every time she see you?” Hawk said.
    “When you get out of the shower,” I said, “she’ll do it again.”
    “Nothing wrong with enthusiasm,” Hawk said, and went in to take a shower.
    While he showered, I fed Pearl, and when Hawk was finished and dressed, I went in and did the same thing. When I came out, Pearl ran around with her squeaky toy.
Beep, beep.
    “You right,” Hawk said. “She done that with me, too.”
    Then, glowing with health, both of us breathing normally again, clean, sober, and looking good, we had a drink.
    “Table been set already,” Hawk said.
    “She probably did it last night,” I said.
    “Plan ahead,” Hawk said.
    “Looks nice,” I said. “Tablecloth, crystal, flowers in the middle. Linen napkins.”
    “I eat dinner at your house,” Hawk said, “we stand at the counter and eat pizza from the box.”
    “I’m an informal guy,” I said.
    “She doing this ’cause I’m here?” Hawk said.
    “Whenever we eat together,” I said, “just she and I, she does this.”
    “She like to do things right,” Hawk said.
    “Yes.”
    “Me, too,” Hawk said.
    “Different things,” I said.
    “True,” Hawk said, “but you gonna do it some way, might as well be right.”
    Susan came in through the front door. Pearl dashed around.
Beep, beep.
Susan kissed her, and Hawk, and me.
    “I don’t mind you kissing the dog before me,” I said. “But Hawk?”
    “He was closer,” Susan said.
    “And better,” Hawk said.
    “Want a drink?” I said.
    “Will you make me a martini while I change?”
    “Up with lots of olives,” I said.
    “Two minutes,” she said, and went into the bedroom.
    I got up and mixed the martini in the shaker and put the olives in her glass. I didn’t add ice to the shaker.
    “She like it warm?” Hawk said.
    “No, but I don’t want the ice to melt and ruin the martini.”
    “She say two minutes.”
    “She thinks it will be two minutes. When she comes out, she’ll think it was two minutes.”
    “But it won’t be,” Hawk said.
    “Be about twenty,” I said.
    In fact, it was twenty-five. When she emerged from the bedroom in jeans and a sleeveless top, I put ice in the shaker and finished the martini.
    Susan took her drink to the couch and sat down beside Pearl and tucked her legs up under her. In the sleeveless top, her arms showed muscle definition.
    “Met a guy in western Mass,” I said, “named Weiss. Says you’re very beautiful.”
    “Weiss,” she said. “Is he a therapist?”
    “Yeah, in Ashfield.”
    “Springfield, really,” Susan said. “I remember him. He lives in Ashfield and sees patients in his home a couple of days a week.”
    “So you know him.”
    “I’ve met him. I never knew he thought I was beautiful,” she said.
    “He competent?”
    “Who cares?” Susan said. “He thinks I’m beautiful.”
    “He tells me that Adelaide Van Meer was probably molested sexually as a child.”
    “Does she say so?”
    “No,” I said. “But she tried to commit suicide, and when he talked with her in the hospital he formed an intuitive opinion.”
    Susan nodded. Pearl shifted so that her head hung off the couch and her feet stuck up in the air resting against the back of the couch. Susan rubbed Pearl’s stomach.
    “I don’t know him well,” Susan said. “Met him at a couple of conferences. I have no reason to question his