Chapter 11
Since her divorce, Julie had moved out of the dump she had rented when she left Michael, and bought a one-bedroom condo on the third floor of a converted house off Prospect Street in Cambridge, where she could walk to her office near Harvard Square and do psychological counseling. I met her for dinner in a new place on Main Street called Cuchi Cuchi.
“How are the children?” I said when we were seated.
Julie shrugged.
“It doesn’t make me feel good to admit it,” she said. “But they seem better than they were when I lived there.”
“Isn’t that depressing,” I said.
“Yes. Except, well, I’m glad they’re doing better, whatever the reason.”
“Yes.”
The waitress brought us menus and took our drink orders.
“Are you still with that writer person?” Julie said.
“Melanie Joan Hall,” I said. “Yes.”
“Has there been any trouble?”
“Some,” I said and told her about our two encounters with John Melvin.
The waitress brought our drinks. A grapefruit gimlet for me. A blackberry cosmopolitan for Julie. We each took a sip.
“Wow,” Julie said. “Is that good or what?”
“Mine is delicious,” I said.
“Let me taste,” Julie said.
We exchanged sips.
“I think this will require more than one,” Julie said.
“Only a fool would deny it,” I said. “Have you ever heard of a psychiatrist named John Melvin?”
“Melanie Joan Hall’s husband?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a psychiatrist?”
“Yes.”
Julie always dramatized everything. She now made a considerable show of running through her memory banks looking for John Melvin. She wasn’t being dishonest. Julie was just demonstrative. Finally she shook her head.
“Is he in practice locally?” she said.
“Chestnut Hill, I believe.”
“And he does psychotherapy?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Julie said. “I can’t say I know him. That doesn’t mean much. There are many fine therapists I don’t know.”
“I thought you were the nexus of mental health in the Northeast,” I said.
“I’m an M.S.W.,” Julie said. “Psychiatrists don’t mingle with me.”
“Well, they should,” I said.
Cuchi Cuchi served a number of small plates, tapas-style. I had an order of skewered shrimp to start with. Julie had a salad of Boston lettuce. She looked good. She’d lost weight since her divorce. She wore her dark hair longer, and had changed her makeup.
“Where would be a good place to look for information?”
“Do you know if he does psychoanalysis?”
“I don’t.”
“Well, if he does, you might try BPSI.”
“Bipsi?” I said.
“Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute,” Julie said. “They’re in Boston. And there’s the Mass Psychiatric Society, which is, I think, in Waltham.”
“How about the Board of Registration?” I said.
“Sure,” Julie said. “West Street. And Mass Mental Health on Staniford Street.”
“Okay, enough business,” I said. “How’s your sex life?”
“I’ll tell you, if you’ll tell me,” Julie said.
“Nothing to tell,” I said.
“Oh,” Julie said. “You too.”
I shrugged.
“The nice ones are gay,” Julie said. “The straight ones are married… or jerks.”
“How’s Michael?” I said.
“Happily remarried.”
“Well,” I said. “That kind of brings closure, doesn’t it?”
“Kind of,” Julie said.
“Have you met her?”
“No.”
“What do the kids have to say about her?”
“They seem to like her.”
“Oh my,” I said.
“Well, it’s in their best interests to like her,” Julie said.
“I know, but it denies you the secret guilty pleasure you could feel if they hated her.”
“Yes,” Julie said. “It certainly does.”
We ordered two more drinks.
“She’s a stockbroker,” Julie said.
I nodded. My shrimp was a little hard to get off the skewer. I debated eating it like a chicken leg.
“Michael knew her from work,” Julie said.
I decided to cut a bite off of the skewer in a civilized fashion.
“They were dating a month after I left him,” Julie said.
I gave up on the knife and fork and picked up my shrimp skewer and took a bite. Excellent.
“Makes me wonder how well they knew each other while we were still married.”
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“It makes you think, though.”
“You ever see Robert anymore?” I said.
Julie looked at me for a moment. “You’re reminding me that I was fooling around for some time before I left Michael,” Julie said.
I shrugged.
“Okay,” Julie said. “I’m reminded.”
“Do you see Robert?” I said.
“No.”
Julie finished her salad and most of her second drink.
“Have you seen Richie lately?” Julie said.
“I saw him last night,” I said.
“How’s that going?”
“He has a girlfriend,” I said.
“Sort of like that cop Brian Whatsis that you went out with for a while.”
“Brian Kelly,” I said.
“Do you see him anymore?”
“No.”
We sat and looked at each other and after a moment we both began to laugh.
“Well,” Julie said. “Let’s just keep on dancing.”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said.
Chapter 12
I sat and talked to a tall lean woman with iron gray hair that looked as if it would rattle when she combed it. According to the name plate on her desk, her name was Elsa Earhardt, M.D., and she was an Executive Director.
“Dr. Melvin is a member of our organization,” she said. “I can give you his phone number and address.”
“Can you tell me anything about him?” I said.
“I don’t know him personally,” she said.
Her tone was perfectly neutral and a little bit soothing. Her dress was neat and blue. She wore no jewelry. There were degrees in several branches of learning from several universities, none of which I could actually read from where I was sitting.
“Have there been any incidents in his professional life that you could tell me about?”
“I know of none.”
“Would you, had there been some?”
“Probably not. We are not a monitoring organization, and if I had learned of anything, ah, incidental, it would very likely be inappropriate for me to discuss them with you.”
“Wow,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows. “Wow?”
“Yes,” I said. “You just foreclosed any avenue of discussion in one declarative sentence.”
She smiled in a friendly and approving way. “Surely not every avenue,” she said.
“If I had a complaint about him, where would I take it?”
“The Patient Complaints section of the Medicine Registration Board.”
“On West Street?”
“I believe so.”
“But you can give me his address,” I said.
“Certainly,” she said. “The receptionist can help you with that.”
“Thanks for everything,” I said.
“We are not a patient advocacy organization,” Dr. Earhardt said. “Our focus is on the physician.”
“Well,” I said. “Maybe you’d better focus more closely on Dr. Melvin.”
She nodded slightly and tipped her head toward me, inviting me to
speak more.
“He’s been obsessively stalking his ex-wife.”
“If that were so,” Dr. Earhardt said, “it would remain a question for Patient Complaints.”
I took one of my business cards out of my purse and handed it across the desk. She took it and looked at it as if it were interesting.
“Sonya Randall,” she said. “Investigations, Personal Security.”
“That’s me,” I said. “If something occurs to you, please don’t hesitate to call.”
She tucked my card carefully into the brown leather corner of her desk blotter.
“I certainly will keep you in mind, Sonya.”
I stood.
“Thanks, Elsa,” I said and opened her office door and went out.
Chapter 13
I took Melanie Joan to an early-evening book signing at the vast Barnes & Noble bookstore in Burlington. It was a scene I’d already gotten used to. A table with books stacked up, and an easel with Melanie Joan’s picture on a poster. A line of people, most of whom had one of Melanie Joan’s books, a couple of store employees lingering near the table to supervise. As we went in I could see Melanie Joan begin to turn into Melanie Joan. She seemed to straighten a little. Her eyes brightened. Without changing expression she seemed more ready to smile. Her step was quicker. I could almost hear theme music begin.
The event coordinator was a young black woman in high-waisted gray pants. Melanie Joan introduced me as her escort. The event coordinator smiled once and ignored me thereafter. Would Melanie Joan like to freshen up? Did Melanie Joan need anything? Water? Coffee? Soft drink? Would she take questions? Did she prefer the microphone fixed on the lectern, or hand-held? Did she have a preference in pens? Felt-tip? Ballpoint? Would she personalize? Would she sign paperbacks? What page did she like to sign on? Melanie Joan knew the answers to all those questions, and threw in two small jokes. I had heard the same two small jokes in Cleveland and Cincinnati and Louisville and Dayton, but each time Melanie Joan said them, they seemed as fresh as if they’d never been said before.
There was a definite murmur in the line when Melanie Joan walked past it to the desk. Several people applauded. Melanie Joan smiled at them brightly. She was wearing black boots with high thick heels, a short gray skirt with a tiny black pattern, and a tight-fitting black top under a silvery leather jacket. She looked like ten million dollars, which, after all, she was.
The bookstore helpers looked at me as if I were going to help with the signing, but I moved away and stood against a shelf of nonfiction titles behind Melanie Joan and a little to the left.
“I’ll need an opener,” Melanie Joan said to one of the helpers. Then she smiled at the first person in line and put out her hand for a book and said, “Let us begin.”
We were on the second floor away from the escalators in a space that had probably been cleared for the event. I looked along the line of fans. John Melvin wasn’t among them. I looked past the line at the people who were lingering near the elevator, or walking purposefully toward another section of the bookstore where they could get a book on Tuscan cooking, or personal fitness, or how to reenergize their relationships.
John Melvin was there, leaning his hips against the escalator barrier, his arms folded across his chest. Tonight he was wearing pressed jeans and a black leather jacket with the collar turned up. The collar of his black polo shirt was turned up too, inside the jacket collar. He wore black moccasin-style loafers, and no socks. I looked at Melanie Joan. She gave no sign that she’d seen him.
I had my gun on my belt tonight under my light fall raincoat. It was more a wardrobe decision than a security one. If it didn’t ruin my outfit I carried the gun on my belt. If it did, I carried it in my purse. I was conscious of the pleasant weight of the weapon as I walked toward Melvin.
He was looking at Melanie Joan. I could see the hint of bandages on his wrists below the cuff of his jacket. He paid no attention to me. I leaned my hips against the escalator wall beside him and folded my arms like his and said, “How ya doing?”
He turned his head slowly toward me and looked at me with his eyes out of focus and dreamy.
“Excuse me?” he said.
“How ya doing,” I said again.
His eyes focused. “Oh,” he said. “The faceless bureaucrat. Hello.”
“How’s the wrists?” I said.
He smiled bravely. “Nothing, really. Just superficial.”
“Good to know,” I said. “How did it happen?”
“Frankly I’d prefer not to discuss it,” he said gently.
“Sure,” I said. “What is your interest here tonight?”
“Same as everyone else’s, I guess.”
“Entirely the same?” I said.
“Well.” He smiled. “I have done more with Melanie Joan than read her books.”
“For example?” I said.
“I used to fuck her,” Melvin said.
“Isn’t that lovely for you,” I said.
“She found it lovely for her,” he said.
“But no more,” I said.
Melvin looked at me carefully, appraising me, the way people did with horses. “Maybe you will find it lovely.”
“Oh, you sweet-talking devil,” I said.
He didn’t enjoy being kidded.
“Perhaps we’ll find out someday,” he said.
“Perhaps pigs will fly,” I said. “And whistle while they do so.”
Something, I don’t know quite what, call it a shadow, passed behind his eyes for a moment. It was like seeing the quick slide of a snake in a dark corner. Almost without volition I made sure my coat was open.
“And perhaps you will be less frivolous someday,” he said.
I was afraid my voice would be hoarse when I spoke. But it wasn’t.
“In the meantime,” I said, “you need to understand that Melanie Joan Hall is no longer your wife, and no longer wishes to see you.”
“She will see me,” he said.
“You know you are pathological,” I said.
“Such judgments are mine to make,” he said. “Not yours.”
“You know it,” I said. “And I know it, too.”
“It is not a subject for debate,” he said. “I will see her when I choose to.”
“And you’ll see me.”
He laughed. There was no humor in the laugh, nor pleasure, nor, for that matter, anything much in the way of humanity. He straightened from his leaning position and stood half a foot taller than I was.
“And what will you do?” he said.
“I might shoot you,” I said.
He stared at me. “My God,” he said. “You aren’t just a tour escort, are you? You’re a bodyguard.”
“I am,” I said.
I opened my coat a little and let him see the gun. He stared at it without an affect. Then he laughed the empty laugh again.
“That makes it more exciting,” he said, and smiled the empty smile at me and turned and walked away.
Chapter 14
Having gotten not much from Elsa Earhardt, M.D., I thought I might try out a little more routine detecting to see if I was still any good at it. I put Rosie in the car with me and drove over to Chestnut Hill and parked outside the big Victorian house where John Melvin, M.D., had his home and office. It was a lovely big house with white siding and green shutters, and lilac bushes in the front. A brick pathway curved around the side of the house. A small neat sign with a discreet arrow told me that the path led to the office.
I got out two of the tools of my business, a notebook and a ballpoint pen.
“Let the adventure begin,” I said to Rosie.
She stared out her side of the car, alert for covert squirrel activity. A silver gray Infiniti sedan parked in front of the house and a well-dressed woman got out and walked up the brick path. I wrote down the license plate number. A couple of sparrows foraged on Melvin’s small green patch of front lawn. A squirrel hustled past the car with an acorn in its mouth and scooted up a t
ree. Rosie spotted it and hurled herself around the car gargling and snarling until it was high up in the tree and out of sight.
Everything else that happened was less interesting. Forty-five minutes after the Infiniti had arrived, a beige Mercedes sedan pulled up and parked behind the Infiniti, and another well-dressed woman got out and walked up the brick path. Five minutes after that the first well-dressed woman walked down the path and got into her Infiniti and drove off. In fifty minutes the woman with the Mercedes came out and drove away, and in about another minute a red Subaru wagon pulled in and another woman got out and walked up the path. I now had three license-plate numbers in my notebook.
“A pattern is beginning to develop here,” I said to Rosie.
Exhausted by the excitement of the previous two hours, Rosie had curled up on the front seat with one paw up over her nose and gone to sleep. While she slept, the pattern held: Once an hour a woman in an expensive car wearing good clothes came for therapy. All of them were attractive. All of them, by my estimate, were somewhere between thirty and fifty. It was hard to tell for sure from where I was across the street, but all of them seemed to have dressed and made up carefully. I was pretty sure you could do therapy in sweats if you needed to, but maybe Melvin had his own rules. Dress for success.
By one o’clock I needed a ladies’ room and a sandwich, in that order, and I suspected the same was true for Rosie. So I drove back to Fresh Pond Circle and went into Bread and Circus. I used their ladies’ room, spruced up my face and hair, and bought a Mediterranean sandwich and a quart bottle of water. I took Rosie for a walk around the parking lot, gave her some water, and shared my sandwich with her. Then we went back and looked at John Melvin’s brick walk some more. By the end of the day I had eight license-plate numbers, including one of a chauffeured limousine whose driver waited in the car while the lady went in for therapy. Rosie had been even more productive, sighting not only three squirrels but two golden retrievers and a Norwich terrier, all of whom she threatened vociferously from the safety of our car. The owner of one of the goldens had given me a control-your-goddamned-dog glare, which I recognized immediately, having received it before. Up yours, I glared.
When it became apparent that no one else was going to show up at Dr. Melvin’s office, I stowed my notebook and drove through rush-hour traffic back to South Boston in the lowering evening.
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