Family Honor

by Robert B. Parker

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “I thought you’d never ask. I’m trying to save her and the only way I can is to solve the crime she’s a part of, and I can’t solve it if I’m taking care of her all the time. And I can’t take the risks I would normally be willing to take, because all of a sudden I have to worry about her.”

  “You’ve always had to worry about Rosie,” Julie said.

  “Yes, but if something happened to me, Richie would take her and in a little while she’d be fine.”

  “Dogs are good that way.”

  “But who would take Millicent?” I said.

  “She does have a mother and father,” Julie said.

  “She can’t be with them,” I said.

  Julie stared at her wine. The bar was crowded. The two bartenders were busy.

  “And Richie can’t take her.”

  “No. Why would he? He barely knows her.”

  “That was true of you when you took her.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Wasn’t it?” Julie said.

  “There was no one else to do it,” I said. “And it had to be done.”

  I had a second glass of wine. Julie had a third.

  “Too bad you and Richie can’t work it out,” Julie said.

  “Maybe we will,” I said.

  “Tell me again why you’re not together?”

  “Well for one thing he won’t give up the family business.”

  “And neither will you,” Julie said.

  “Me?”

  “How many people in your family have been cops?”

  “Besides my father?”

  “Un huh.”

  “Two uncles, and my grandfather.”

  “Un huh.”

  “I’m not a cop.”

  “Sure.”

  “Always a damned therapist,” I said.

  Julie was quiet.

  “So maybe there’s some fault on both sides,” I said. “It still means that one of us needs to change to be with the other one.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  I shook my head.

  “I can’t think about that now,” I said. “I have to figure out what to do with Millicent.”

  “How about private school?”

  “Private school costs a lot of money.”

  “Maybe you can get money from the parents.”

  “I can’t send her away now. She’s in too much danger.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I think when those men came to my door, they weren’t trying to take her back to her parents. I think they were going to kill her.”

  “Because?”

  “Because of what she saw,” I said.

  “The man with her mother?”

  “Yes. There are some big-league players involved.”

  “And Richie can’t help you?”

  “I don’t know if he can or can’t. But I’m pretty sure he shouldn’t.”

  “Because you’re separated?”

  “Yes. I won’t live with him, won’t sleep with him. But I can ask him to take care of me, help with anything I can’t handle myself?”

  “You talk as if sleeping with someone were a tradeoff for something else,” Julie said.

  “It just isn’t right for me to have it both ways.”

  “What’s Richie think?” Julie said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe you should ask him,” she said.

  CHAPTER 44

  I was sitting with Bob Anderson in a frosted-glass cubicle in the detective unit in the Framingham Police Station.

  “Humphries,” Anderson was saying, “the plumber got killed on Route 9.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He had a mailbox at one of those private mail services, wife didn’t know anything about it, except the bill came this month. And since he’s not around to pay it, the wife gets it. Well, she says she’s got no use for a private mailbox and she wants to cancel it and the service says fine, but you need to clean the box out. So she does and all she finds is this big fat envelope. And when she opens it she figures she better bring it to us, which she did, and I thought you might want to take a gander.”

  “I do,” I said.

  Anderson slid the envelope toward me. It was a big one, whatever the next bigger size is to 8 1/2 by 11. It was addressed to Kevin Humphries, care of the private mailbox service. It was full of pictures and the pictures were of Betty Patton and a man having sex. Having sex doesn’t really do them justice. They were having every variety of sex mammals were capable of having. I looked at the pictures for a time, turned a couple of them upside down, or maybe right side up, I couldn’t be sure.

  “This is, I take it, the late Kevin Humphries,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “You know the woman?” I said.

  “Nope. You?”

  I shook my head.

  “Doesn’t look anything like your client, does it?”

  I shook my head again. Anderson shrugged.

  “Who’s seen these pictures,” I said.

  “Mrs. Humphries,” Anderson said.

  “And maybe a few guys in the station,” I said.

  “Maybe all the guys in the station,” Anderson said.

  “And nobody knows the woman?”

  “That’s what they say,” Anderson said. “Just like you.”

  “Well,” I said, “she gets credit for inventive, whoever she is.”

  “Yeah. The picture of them in the rocking chair, I’m not exactly sure what they’re doing . . . you?”

  “Well, not specifically,” I said, “though I recognize the general, ah, thrust.”

  Anderson smiled.

  “You know what I’m betting, Sunny?” he said.

  “What?”

  “I’m betting that you do know who that woman is, and sooner or later, when it suits with whatever you’re working on, that you’ll tell me.”

  “Really?” I said. “Could I have a copy of these pictures?”

  “Sunny,” Anderson said, “there’s forty-one pictures there. Evidence in a murder case. You know I can’t give you any.”

  “I only need one,” I said.

  Anderson nodded.

  “I got to go wash my hands, Sunny. You better not even think of taking any of those pictures while I’m gone. ‘Cause I got them counted.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Anderson got up and walked out of his cubicle. I looked at the stack of photographs. They weren’t Polaroids. They were good-quality color photographs. I counted them. There were forty-two. I selected one that showed Betty Patton clearly and full face in a completely compromising pose. I put that picture in my purse and put the other forty-one back in the envelope, and crossed my legs and folded my hands in my lap. In a couple of minutes Anderson came back. He walked to his desk, picked up the envelope and counted the pictures.

  “Forty-one,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Does anything about those pictures bother you?” I said.

  Anderson grinned at me.

  “Aside from that,” I said.

  “Like who took them?” Anderson said.

  “Yes. If they were taking pictures of themselves wouldn’t they set the camera up on a tripod and use some sort of timer or remote?”

  “That’s what people usually do.”

  “These pictures are taken from different angles at different distances,” I said. “And some of them seem to have been taken seconds apart from different angles and distances.”

  “So maybe there’s a third party,” Anderson said.
/>
  We looked at each other. Neither of us seemed pleased with the image of a third party with a camera lurking just outside of every picture.

  “I guess there would have to be,” I said.

  “You suppose Humphries kept that private mailbox for anything else?” Anderson said.

  “Well, he wouldn’t want his wife to see these pictures,” I said. “Did he get other mail there?”

  “No.”

  “How about the handwriting on the envelope?”

  “Wife says it’s his. Our guy says it matches other samples of his handwriting.”

  “So he rented the box to hide these pictures,” I said.

  “Looks like.”

  “If it were just his wife why wouldn’t he just hide them in his office? They were separated. She says that she never went there.”

  “Un huh.”

  “If the woman in the pictures had money these would be a good basis for blackmail.”

  “Your client got money?” Anderson said.

  “On the other hand, the picture taker could use them for the same purpose.”

  “One wouldn’t preclude the other,” Anderson said.

  “‘Preclude,”’ I said. “Wow.”

  “Impressive, huh?”

  “And accurate,” I said. “One would not preclude the other.”

  “Still be nice to know who the photographer was.”

  “It couldn’t hurt,” I said.

  “Too bad, I only got forty-one of those pictures,” Anderson said. “‘Cause if the broad in the pictures turned out, just by a crazy chance, to be your client, and you had one of the pictures you might be able to use it for leverage.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “‘Course you gotta wonder,” Anderson said, “would a woman who’d pose for pictures like this care about being blackmailed?”

  “Maybe her husband would.”

  “Or maybe it’s just vanity,” Anderson said. “Maybe she told everyone she was a real blond.”

  CHAPTER 45

  I was going to find something that Millicent liked to do if I had to invent a new pastime. Which was why we were sitting on two Alden fiberglass rowing shells, side by side on the river, twenty yards from shore, with a cold wind blowing at us.

  “Have you ever rowed a boat?” I said.

  “No.”

  Millicent was trying so desperately to balance that she could barely speak.

  “Good,” I said. “This is nothing like that, and if you had you’d just have to unlearn it.”

  Millicent said “yes” as minimally as possible. She looked entirely miserable in her yellow life vest.

  “Okay, first, just let the oars rest on the water . . . That’s right . . . Now rock the boat. Go ahead. See how long the oars are? You can’t tip over with the oars spread like that.”

  Millicent shifted her weight a millimeter. The shell didn’t tip.

  “Good, now we’ll just sit here a bit until you get used to it. We have as much time as we need. There’s no reason to hurry.”

  We sat. It was early October and everything along the river near the boat club was still green. Cars moved steadily along the parkways on both sides of the river. People ran along the sidewalks next to the river, running the loop around the upper Charles where it bent toward Watertown, using the Larz Anderson Bridge to cross the river in one direction and the Eliot Bridge to cross in the other. We stayed in close to shore, out of the current, just far enough from land to keep the oars from hitting.

  “Okay,” I said, “see, you’re not going to tip over.”

  “Yet,” Millicent said between her teeth.

  “Now, when you row, you want the blades to dip in, but not too deep, and of course to come out of the water entirely, but not too high. Watch me.”

  I rowed across the river and back staying where she could see me without turning. I remembered when I had first learned to row these boats. It was like sitting on a needle. I knew she wouldn’t turn.

  “Okay, now look at my hands, see how they are? It’s all in the way you roll your wrist. See? Again. See?”

  Millicent nodded very carefully, her head barely moving.

  “Now you do it,” I said.

  “Where shall I row?”

  “Just roll your wrists first, see how the blades turn?”

  She tried it, rolling her wrists maybe a half an inch.

  “Let’s practice rolling the wrists so that the oar blades are vertical, then horizontal, vertical, horizontal, that’s right. If you feel like you’re losing your balance just let the oars drop onto the water, there, yes, like that.”

  We practiced that for a while. I wasn’t having a nice time. I had housebroken Rosie faster than I was teaching Millicent to row. But it was the first thing she’d shown any interest in. She’d seen the college teams rowing on the river and said that it looked like it might be nice. I had pounced on it like an ocelot. I used to row, I said, in college. She said, Really? I said, Yes. She said, Could you teach me. And here we were.

  “It’s the legs,” I said, “that do the real work in rowing. You get the push off the big quadriceps. It’s why the seat is like that. See, you lay out over the oars like this and then pull them toward you while you drive with your legs.”

  I demonstrated and my rental shell shot halfway across the river. I returned to her, backstroking, stern first.

  “You can try that now. Look around and make sure it’s clear because the first stroke will send you a pretty good distance.”

  She did as I told her and caught a crab with her right oar and almost fell out of the boat.

  “Oars in the water,” I said. “Oars in the water.”

  She did what I told her. The boat steadied. I looked at her. Her face was gray with fear and concentration.

  “Everybody almost falls in,” I said. “Try it again. Remember about rolling the wrists.”

  The gun at the small of my back was not appropriate to single-shell rowing, and I felt like we were two ducks sitting out there on the river in plain view. But I was goddamned if I was going to let Cathal Kragan bury us alive. And I was pretty sure he wouldn’t be looking for us out on the river.

  “Okay,” I said, “I’ll be right beside you, go ahead, don’t press, let the oars into the water pull, extend your legs, good, roll the wrists, good.”

  We slid out across the dark water.

  “Again,” I said, “pull, push with the quads, roll wrists, relax. Try it with your eyes closed so that you get the full feel.”

  I felt like a single mother. It was too much to try and bring Millicent up and protect her and find the guys who wanted to kill her and figure out what was going on with her parents. I needed help and much of the help I needed was the kind that men usually were better at than women. The kind that Julie couldn’t really give. The kind that Spike was good at, but how fair was it to ask him? The kind that Brian Kelly could give me, but he was a cop. He had his own agenda. My father? Daddy, I’m grown up and on my own but could you help me do my job? Richie? No, I won’t sleep with you, but could you risk your life for me? Did getting help mean selling out? I didn’t mind getting help from Julie. Why was I having the vapors about getting a different kind of help from men? I was getting really sick of I-am-woman-hear-me-roar. Maybe if you’re really integrated, you asked for the help you needed and got it on your own terms.

  “Sunny,” Millicent said as we sat side by side in the middle of the river and let the shells drift, “I’m sick of this. I want to go home.”

  Like that.

  CHAPTER 46

  Millicent was wearing an oversized bathrobe and drinking hot chocolate at Spike’s kitchen table. The sleeves of the robe were turned up. Her hair was fluffed from the shower and she smelled of soap and shampoo and looke
d maybe twelve. Rosie sat on the floor beside her feet, looking up with her mouth open and her tongue lolling. If I didn’t know better than to anthropomorphize dogs, I’d have said Rosie was smiling at Millicent.

  “Did you like the rowing?” I said.

  “It’s awfully hard,” she said.

  She rubbed Rosie’s chest absently with the toe of her right foot.

  “I know, but it’s sort of like riding a bicycle. Once you get the balance, it’s not so hard.”

  “I know, I could feel that.”

  “Do you think you’ll want to do it again?”

  “Yes.”

  I was quiet. Millicent drank some hot chocolate.

  “Your mother was having an affair with the plumber,” I said.

  “The plumber?”

  “Yes, the one you said looked like an Italian Stallion.”

  “Him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? My mother? Did he tell you that?”

  “I found pictures of them.”

  “Pictures?”

  “Yes.”

  “You mean, dirty pictures? Like I found?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jesus. It’s like she sees a camera she yanks off her clothes.”

  “Some people like to pose,” I said.

  “With plumbers?”

  “Sometimes what seems a drawback to one person seems an asset to another.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe his being a working-class guy was his appeal.”

  “Well, it’s sick,” Millicent said.

  “Yes,” I said. “It probably is.”

  I took a deep breath. “We’re never going to get to where we need to go,” I said. “If you can’t trust me to tell you the truth . . . The plumber was shot to death.”

  “Shot? You mean murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think it was my mother?”

  “It happened after she talked with Cathal Kragan about somebody who would have to be killed.”

  “But there must have been a bunch of people killed since then.”

  “Sixteen,” I said. “In Massachusetts. He’s the only one we can connect to your mother.”

  Millicent looked at me without saying anything for a moment. The red smudges faded. She shrugged.