She took a sip. “Oh, good,” she said, “it’s cold. I hate it at room temperature, don’t you?” I said, “Let’s elope.”
“Just like that,” she said. “Because I like cold wine?”
“Well, there are other factors,” I said.
“Let’s eat first,” she said.
We ate. Largely in silence. There are people with whom silence is not strained. Very few of them are women. But Susan Silverman was one. She didn’t make conversation.
Or if she was making conversation she was so good at it that I didn’t notice. She ate with pleasure and impeccable style.
Me too.
She accepted another slice of the roast and put sauce on it from the gravy boat.
“The sauce is super,” she said. “What is it?”
“Cumberland sauce,” I said. “It is also terrific with duck.”
She didn’t ask for the recipe. Style. I hate people who ask for recipes.
“Well, it is certainly terrific with pork.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“What’s the matter?”
“You’re Jewish.”
“Yes?”
“You’re not Orthodox?”
“No.”
“Serving a pork roast on your first date with a Jewish lady is not always considered a slick move.”
She laughed. “I didn’t even think of that. You poor thing.
Of course it is not a slick move. But is this a date? I thought I was going to be questioned.”
“Yeah. That’s right. I’m just softening you up now. After dessert and brandy I break out the strappado.”
She held out her wineglass. “Well then, I’d better fortify myself as best I can.”
I poured her more wine.
“What about Kevin Bartlett? Where do you think he is?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. How could I? Haven’t you got any clues at all?”
“Oh yeah, we got clues. We got lots of clues. But they don’t lead us to anything. What they tell us is that we’re into something weird. It’s freak-land again.”
“Again?”
“That’s just nostalgia, I guess. Used to be when you got a kidnapping you assumed the motive to be greed and you could count on that and work with it. You ran into a murder and you could figure lust or profit as a starter. Now you gotta wonder if it’s political, religious, or merely idiosyncratic.
You know, for the hell of it. Because it’s there.”
“And you yearn for the simple crimes like Leopold-Loeb?”
“Yeah,” I grinned. “Or Ruth Judd, the ax murderess.
Okay, so maybe there was always freaky crime. It just seems more prevalent. Or maybe I grow old.”
“Maybe we all do,” she said.
“Yeah, but I’d like to find Kevin Bartlett before I get senile. You know about the kidnapping note and the hearse and the dummy?”
“Some. The story was all over the school system when they found the hearse behind the junior high. But I don’t know details.”
“Okay,” I said, “here they are.” I told her. “Now,” I said, and gestured with the wine bottle toward her glass.
“Half a glass,” she said. I poured. “That’s good.”
“Now,” I said again, “do you think he was kidnapped?
And if he was kidnapped, was it just for money?”
“In order,” she said, “I don’t know, and no.”
“Yeah, that’s about where I am,” I said. “Tell me about this group he ran with.”
“As I said when you saw me the other day in my office, I really know very little about them. I’ve heard that there is a group of disaffected young people who have formed a commune of some sort. Commune may be too strong a word. There is a group, and I only know this from gossip in the high school, which chooses to live together. I don’t want to stereotype them. They are mostly, I’ve heard, school-and college-age people who do not go to school or work in the traditional sense. I’ve heard that they have a house somewhere around Smithfield.”
“Who owns the house?”
“I don’t know, but there is a kind of leader, an older man, maybe thirty or so, this Vic Harroway. I would think he’d be the owner.”
“And Kevin was hanging around with this group?”
“With some of them. Or at least with some kids who were said to be associated with this group. I’d see him now and then sitting on the cemetery wall across from the common with several kids from the group. Or maybe from the group. I’m making this sound a good deal more positive than it is. I’m not sure of any of this or of even the existence of such a group. Although I’m inclined to think there is a group like that.”
“Who would know?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. Chief Trask, I suppose.”
“How bizarre is this group?”
“Bizarre? I don’t know. I hadn’t heard anything very bizarre about them. I imagine there’s grass smoked there, although not many of us find that bizarre anymore. Other than that I can’t think of anything particularly bizarre. What kind of bizarre do you mean?”
The wine was gone, and I was looking a little wistfully at the empty bottle. It was hard concentrating on business. I was also looking a little wistfully at Susan Silverman.
Neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor dark of night maybe, but red wine and a handsome woman that was something else.
She said, “What kind of bizarre are you looking for?”
“Any kind at all. The kind of bizarre that would be capable of that dummy trick in the coffin, the kind of bizarre that would make a singing commercial out of the telephone call. The kind of bizarre that would do the ransom note in a comic strip. Would you like some brandy?”
“One small glass.”
“Let’s take it to the living room.”
She sat where she had before, at one end of the couch. I gave her some Calvados and sat on the coffee table near her.
“I don’t know anything bizarre about the group. I have the impression that there is something unusual about Vic Harroway, but I don’t know quite what it is.”
“Think about it. Who said he was odd? What context was his oddness in?”
She frowned again. “No, just an idea that he’s unusual.”
“Is he unusual in appearance?”
“I don’t know.”
“Size?”
“Really, I can’t recall.”
“Is he unusual in his sex habits?”
She shrugged and spread her hands, palms up.
“Religious zealot?”
She shook her head.
“Unusual family connections?”
“Damn it, Spenser, I don’t know. If I knew, I’d tell you.”
“Try picturing the circumstances when you got the impression he was unusual. Who said it? Where were you?”
She laughed, “Spenser, I can’t do it. I don’t remember.
You’re like a hammer after a nail.”
“Sorry, I tend to get caught up in my work.”
“I guess you do. You’re a very interesting man. One might misjudge you. One might even underrate you, and I think that might be a very bad error.”
“Underrate? Me?”
“Well, here you are a big guy with sort of a classy broken nose and clever patter. It would be easy to assume you were getting by on that. That maybe you were a little cynical and a little shallow. I half figured you got me in here just to make a pass at me. But I just saw you at work, and I would not want to be somebody you were really after.”
“Now you’re making me feel funny,” I said. “Because half the reason I invited you in here was to make a pass at you.”
“Maybe,” she said and smiled. “But first you would work.”
“Okay,” I said. “I worked. I am a sleuth, and being a sleuth I can add two and two, blue eyes. If you half expected me to make a pass and you came anyway, then you must have half wanted me to do so… sweetheart.”
“My eyes are brown.”
“I know, but I can’t do Bogart saying ’brown eyes.” And don’t change the subject.“
She took the final sip from her brandy glass and put it on the coffee table. When she did she was close to my face.