Rough Weather: A Spenser Novel

you know as well as I do,” he said, “that the game we play has neither winners nor losers. There are only the quick and the dead.”
    “I know that,” I said.
    “Makes the game worth playing, perhaps.”
    “Especially for the quick,” I said.
    “ ‘Only when love and need are one …’ ” Rugar said.
    “ ‘And the work is play for mortal stakes … ’?”
    “You know the verse,” Rugar said.
    “You assumed I would,” I said.
    “I did,” Rugar said.
    “We quick are a literate bunch.”
    “Let us hope it continues,” Rugar said.
    He nodded gravely to Susan.
    “Perhaps we’ll chat again,” he said.
    We watched him walk back across the lawn toward the house. Susan hugged herself.
    “God,” Susan said. “It’s as if there’s a chill where he’s been.”
    “If I remember right, at the depths of Dante’s Inferno,” I said, “Satan is frozen in ice.”
    “It’s as if Rugar has no soul,” Susan said.
    “Probably doesn’t,” I said. “Got a couple of rules, I think. But soul is open to question.”
    “Does he frighten you?”
    “Probably,” I said. “If I think about it. He’s pretty frightful.”
    “But … that won’t influence what you do,” she said.
    “No.”
    The day had darkened. I looked up. Clouds had begun to gather between us and the sun. The day was still. There was no wind at all.
    “Gee,” I said. “He really does leave a chill.”
    Susan glanced up at the sky and shrugged slightly. When she was focused on something, it was hard to get her off it.
    “Do you think it’s a coincidence that he’s here and you’re here?” Susan said.
    “Hard to figure how it wouldn’t be,” I said.
    “But do you think it is?” Susan said.
    “No. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”
    “So if it isn’t,” Susan said, “what does it mean?”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “So you’ll just plow along,” Susan said, “doing what you do, and awaiting developments.”
    “Yuh,” I said.

 
    By the time I had mastered
my tuxedo and clipped on my bow tie (fashion titan though I was, I had never accomplished the art of the bow tie), the view through the tall windows was gray. The skies were dark and low. The ocean was nearly the same color and very still. It took a long stare to see the line where the horizon traced between them. There was still no wind, but there was something in the atmosphere that suggested that some wind would be along.
    I had a foot up on an ivory-colored hassock and was putting a short .38 revolver into an ankle holster when Susan came down the hall in a white dress that fit her well. She looked like she was receiving an Academy Award for stunningness. I took my footoff the hassock and put it on the floor and shook the pant leg down over the gun.
    “Wow!” I said.
    She smiled.
    “I thought much the same thing when I looked in the mirror,” she said.
    “How about me?” I said.
    “I thought you’d say ‘Wow!’ too,” she said.
    “No, my appearance,” I said. “Don’t I remind you of Cary Grant?”
    “Very much,” Susan said, “except for looking good.”
    “That’s not the way you were talking an hour ago,” I said.
    “An hour ago,” Susan said, “you were seducing me.”
    “Which wasn’t that difficult,” I said.
    “No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”
    We stood together, looking out at the gathering weather.
    “I thought the storm was supposed to miss us,” Susan said.
    “You can’t believe the weather weenies,” I said.
    “What’s left,” Susan said.
    “Don’t get existential on me,” I said.
    She smiled and looked at me carefully.
    “You seem so unlikely a person to own his own tux,” Susan said.
    “It’s hard to find my size in the rental stores,” I said.
    “Or anywhere else, I would imagine,” Susan said. “Did you tie that bow tie?”
    “I don’t know how,” I said. “If I bought one, could you tie it for me?”
    “I don’t know how,” Susan said.
    “The things you do know,” I said, “more than compensate.”
    “Well, no one can tell if it’s a clip-on anyway,” she said.
    We looked out the window some more.
    “What is the plan?” Susan said.
    “We meet in the chapel,” I said, “at four. We stay with Heidi Bradshaw, sitting in her pew during the ceremony and being handy during the reception.”
    “The chapel,” Susan said.
    “I think on other days it’s a library,” I said. “But Heidi’s party planner has chapelized it for today.”
    Far out to sea, a vertical