Almost everybody who meets Richie is intimidated by him. It isn’t size, though he’s big enough; it’s something in his eyes, and his voice, and how still he is when there’s no reason to move. But Richie didn’t intimidate Spike. As far as I knew nothing intimidated Spike, including things that should have.
“We always means his father and his uncle,” I said.
Richie grinned. “Thank you for interpreting,” he said. “Tell me about Antonioni.”
I did. When I was through Richie and Spike were both silent for a time. Richie poured a little wine into my glass, and a little into his own. He started to put the wine bottle down when Spike said, “Hey.”
Richie grinned and poured some into Spike’s glass. Spike nodded and raised the glass half an inch in Richie’s direction and drank some wine.
“You’re right,” Spike said to me when he put the glass down. “You need help.”
“And I don’t know if I have the right to ask for it,” I said.
“Because?”
“Well, how much can you ask a friend to do?” I said.
“You and I are more than friends,” Richie said.
“I know, that’s an even bigger problem. How can I ask you to help me, when we’re . . . when I’m not . . .”
Richie glanced briefly at Spike, and then took in a little air.
“Sunny,” he said. “There’s nothing about rights here. You need something from me, you get it, whether you’re sleeping with me or not.”
My eyes stung. Horror of horrors, was I going to cry? I breathed slowly.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Richie said.
A slow smile developed as he looked at me.
“Of course, afterwards,” he said, “if you were grateful . . .”
I sighed and looked at Spike.
“I’ll help, too,” he said, “and you won’t have to sleep with me either.”
“Easy for you . . .” Richie murmured.
Spike grinned.
“Just going along with the program,” he said.
Richie cut a wedge from a Granny Smith apple and ate it and drank some wine.
“First off,” Richie said, “what’s your goal?”
“I’ve been sort of making it up as I went along,” I said. “I’m not sure I’ve set a goal.”
“Well, let’s set one,” Richie said.
“Saving Millicent,” I said.
“From?”
“From Kragan, from Antonioni, if he’s part of it, from her parents, from herself.”
“The full bore, all out, hundred and ten percent save,” Spike said. “Save her from everything.”
“If I can.”
“Would the first step be to take out the people who are trying to kill her?”
“Yes,” I said, “and maybe, find out along the way if her parents are as bad as they seem.”
“You assume they want to kill her because Kragan knows she overheard him and her mother planning to kill a guy.”
“Yes.”
“And because it would lead, if she talked, maybe to implicating Kragan and Antonioni and their participation in her father’s gubernatorial ambitions,” Richie said.
“Yes.”
“So if we remove the motive, we remove the threat to the kid,” Spike said.
“What would you like to do, Sunny?”
“I’d like to blow the whole thing out of the water,” I said. “The sex, the murder, Patton’s run for governor, Antonioni, Kragan, all of it. Boom!”
Richie nodded slowly. He looked at Spike.
“How good are you,” he said.
Spike grinned at him. “About as good as you,” he said.
“That’s very good,” Richie said.
“I know.”
Richie looked at him some more.
“You want him in?” Richie said to me, staring at Spike.
“I trust him like I trust you,” I said.
“Well,” Richie said, “he’s got the build for it.”
“How sweet of you to notice,” Spike said.
“One rule,” Richie said, and he started to grin sooner than he wanted to. “There’ll be no kissing.”
Spike held his look for a minute and then he, too, began to smile.
“Damn,” Spike said.
Richie looked at me. Then at Spike. Than back at me. He raised his glass. We raised ours.
“Boom!” he said.
CHAPTER 50
There was an exhibit of Low Country realists at the Museum of Fine Arts, and, on the assumption that Kragan’s button men didn’t normally hang out there, I took Millicent to see it.
“Why do I want to look at windmills and cows and people dressed funny?” Millicent said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“But I mean, why would you? Why would anyone?”
“I like to look at them,” I said.
“Why? Look at this picture of this woman, why is that better than a photograph?”
It was a painting by Vermeer.
“Sometimes I like to look at photographs, too,” I said.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes,” I said, “I do. For a minute there I was doing my grown-up shtick. Avoiding the question by sounding wise.”
Millicent smiled.
“You didn’t sound so wise to me,” she said.
“But I was successfully avoiding the question.”
“‘Cause you don’t know the answer?”
I laughed.
“You know your grown-ups, don’t you.”
Millicent sensed an advantage and bored in. “So why do you like this stuff,” she said. “Because you’re supposed to?”
“No, I’m past doing things because I’m supposed to. I like it. I like the way the painting seems so luminescent. I like the tranquility, I like the way the thing lays out, everything so balanced—space and containment. I like the expression on the woman’s face, the details of the room.”
“You could get that in a photograph.”
“Well, not of this woman,” I said. “It was done in the seventeenth century; they didn’t have photographs.”
“So this would be the only kinds of pictures there were.”
“That’s right,” I said. “The only way they had to fix anything in time, so to speak.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“Well, one of the reasons to look at stuff is to learn what things mean.”
“I don’t have to like stuff I don’t like.”
“No,” I said, “you don’t. But it’s probably better to base your reaction on knowledge than on ignorance.”
“What difference does it make? Whether I like it or not?”
“The more things you like, the more opportunities to be happy.”
By now we were sitting on a little bench, and so intent on our conversation that we had stopped looking at the paintings.
“Okay,” Millicent said, “that’s what I asked you before. Why should I like that picture?”
“There’s no should here. I am pleased by how well Vermeer did what he did. But if you’re not, once you’ve looked at it thoughtfully, then you’re not.”
“Well, you’re a painter, so maybe it means more to you.”
“Probably does. But I’m also pleased when I see old films of Ray Robinson, or listen to Charlie Parker, or read Emily Dickinson.”
“I don’t know who any of those people are.”
“Yet,” I said, “but now you know who Vermeer is.”
Millicent shrugged. We sat for another moment, looking at the painting.
“You love Richie?” Millicent said.
; “Jesus,” I said, “what is this, your morning for impossible questions?”
“Well, either you do or you don’t,” Millicent said. “What’s so hard about that?”
“I do,” I said, “I guess.”
“You act like you do,” Millicent said. “You and him ever have sex?”
“Since the divorce?”
“Yeah?”
“No.”
“How come?” Millicent said.
“It sends the wrong message, I think.”
“But you’d like to?”
I could feel myself blushing.
“I don’t know why, but this is embarrassing me,” I said.
Millicent smiled happily.
“So you’re not so perfect.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” I said.
“You having sex with that cop?”
“Brian?” I said.
“Yeah, Brian whatsisname.”
I felt myself blushing more. It was annoying. Why didn’t I want to talk about this?
“I guess that’s between me and Brian,” I said.
“How come you won’t tell me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to.”
Millicent was radiant with triumph.
“You’re always asking me stuff,” she said.
I took in some air.
“I have never slept with anyone I didn’t care for,” I said. “Like most adults I have sex with people I do care for.”
“So you care for Brian the cop?”
“Yes, I do.”
“So . . .?”
I smiled.
“You won’t allow me my modesty, will you.”
“You have had sex with him.”
“I guess you’ve got me,” I said.
Millicent was still intense.
“Say so,” she said.
“Yes, I have,” I said.
Millicent looked relieved. The tension went out of her shoulders. I felt like there had been a test. I wondered if I’d passed. Did she need to know I’d tell her everything? Was she trying to take me down a peg? I felt as if I needed another take on this conversation, as if I had botched most of my lines on the first take. But it was over, and the quality of satisfied closure in Millicent let me know that going over the same ground wouldn’t do her any good. I’d noticed in the last few years that getting it said just right didn’t do much for anybody but the sayer. What she had gotten was my genuine reaction. Revision wouldn’t help. Help with what? I wished some sort of supershrink would leap out of a phone booth and explain to me just what the hell was going on. But none did. They never do. The bastards.
CHAPTER 51
I drove out to see Betty Patton through a much-too-early snowfall. The snow was accumulating on soft surfaces and melting as it hit the roadway. The streets were therefore wet and shiny as I wound through the west of Boston boondocks, and the lawns gleamed whitely. It wouldn’t last long; this kind of snowfall never did, and its transience was probably part of why it was so pretty.
I had already checked with Brock Patton’s office at the bank. He was there, though, of course, in a meeting where he was deciding the course of Western civilization, and could not be interrupted. I didn’t mind. I just wanted to be sure I could talk to Betty Patton without him. John Otis opened the front door for me as formally as if I had never had a tuna sandwich with him on Parker Hill. He turned me over to Billie who was just as formal, and she led me down the hallway to a conservatory at the back of the house. Apparently the library, where I’d been before, was Brock’s domain. Betty Patton rose from her little writing desk when I came in and walked toward me stiffly to shake hands. Billie left us.
“Please sit down, Miss Randall,” Betty said.
I did. The floor of the conservatory was stone and I could feel the heat radiating gently up from it. Outside the glass walls, the light snow fell straight down, onto the long meadow that sloped down to the river. The room was furnished with sort of fancy garden furniture as if to emphasize the connection between the room and the out-of-doors. There were a lot of plants around. Since the only thing I know about plants is a dozen yellow roses, I didn’t know what kind they were, but they seemed to be flourishing.
Betty Patton returned to her writing desk and sat and half turned in her chair to face me. She sat very straight, her hands folded in her lap. Her hair was perfect. Her makeup was flawless. She wore a Polo warm-up suit, in which, I suspected, no one had ever warmed up in the history of fashion.
“You may as well know, up front, Miss Randall,” she said, “that our attorneys are preparing legal action against you for the return of our daughter. You stand an excellent chance of being charged with kidnapping.”
“I’m all atremble,” I said.
I took the embarrassing picture of Betty Patton from my purse and leaned over and placed it on the writing desk face up. She looked at it. And looked quickly away. Her face colored slowly until it was a full blush. Good. She was human. After a moment, she turned the picture over very slowly and placed it facedown on the desk. The snow fell straight down some more outside the glass walls. The heat continued to rise gently from the stone floor. Betty Patton stared at the blank white back of the photograph. She looked out the window. She looked past me at the door I’d come in. She looked back down at the facedown picture.
“Many people allow themselves to be photographed naked,” she said.
I didn’t say anything.
“Admittedly this is perhaps a bit beyond simple nakedness,” Betty said.
I waited.
“I have needs,” she said. “Sometimes I can’t help myself.”
I nodded.
“If you knew what being married to him was like,” she said.
“You’re not married to the man in the picture,” I said.
“Of course not. I was referring to Brock.”
I knew that, but I didn’t comment.
“The man in the picture is a plumber,” I said, “named Kevin Humphries. He did some work for you once. He’s dead.”
She continued to stare down at the back of the photograph. Then she looked up and her gaze was pretty steady.
“What do you want?” she said.
“This picture is just a sample. There are more.”
She nodded.
“Tell me about him,” I said.
“The plumber?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know,” I said.
“And you think you can threaten me with the pictures?”
“Yes.”
“He came a year or so ago to put in a bathroom in my part of the house, off my bedroom.”
“You and your husband had separate bedrooms.”
“Yes. It had nothing to do with intimacy, it’s just a matter of each of us needing more privacy.”
“Sure,” I said. “You were intimate.”
“Of course, if it’s any of your business.”
“Someday I’ll figure out what my business is,” I said. “How did he get from plumber to lover?”’
“Lover,” Betty Patton said. “How quaint.”
“It seemed so much more ladylike than ‘fucker,’” I said.
“But the latter is far more accurate,” Betty Patton said, and smiled.
At least the corners of her lips moved up. I think she intended it to be a smile. It was awful.
“He was a big, strong man, attractive in a sweaty, capable way, and I could tell he was interested.”
I nodded again.
“I . . . as I said, I have needs.”
“And the pictures?”
“I gave them to him. I wanted him to remember what we’d had.”
/> “Did it occur to you that it might give him some leverage on you?” I said.
“I thought we mattered too much to each other. When it became apparent that we could no longer be together, I wanted him to have something that spoke to him of our intimacy.”
“What made you break up?”
Betty Patton looked at me as if I were far too stupid to get in out of the rain.
“I am a married woman, if you hadn’t noticed,” she said.
“Did Kevin attempt to use these pictures?” I said.
“No, certainly not.”
“Did you know he was dead?” I said.
“No, of course not, how would I? I told you we agreed to be apart.”
“You didn’t seem to have much reaction when I told you he was dead.”
“I know, I . . . I should. We were very close for a while. But you had just thrust that picture at me. . . . How did he die?”
“Someone shot him in the back of his head while he was sitting in his car outside a restaurant on Route 9.”
“My God.”
“Would you have any thoughts on that?” I said.
“How awful.”
“Any others?”
“No. You think I . . . because of the pictures?”
“You said he didn’t use the pictures.”
“He didn’t. I didn’t mean that. I just meant you might be suspicious.”
I nodded. We were quiet. The snow was still steady, melting as it touched the warm glass walls, turning into glistening rivulets that distorted the gray light.
“There’s a thing that’s been bothering me,” I said.
She waited.
“Many of these pictures feature you and Kevin together.”
She nodded.
“This one is not your standard Polaroid nudie,” I said. “Intimate close-ups, longer full shots, interesting perspectives.”
She nodded again. There was a deep numbness about her, as if she were slipping further and further below the surface.
“Who took them?” I said.
She stared at me as if she didn’t understand the question. I waited. She took in some air and let it out, several times. She opened her mouth and closed it and opened it again.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Mrs. Patton. You’re in a pretty sizable mess,” I said. “The only way we are going to get you out of it is if you will talk to me. Who took the pictures?”
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