Rough Weather

by Robert B. Parker

  “But it wasn’t,” I said.

  “No,” Ms. Baxter said. “She tried to kill herself.”

  “Do you know why?” I said.

  “I do not. Her mother came out to get her and brought her home, despite, I’m told, Dr. Weiss’s objections. She never returned to school. Perhaps if you talked with Dr. Weiss.”

  “School doctor?” I said.

  “No. Pediatrician. The school doctor, Dr. Feldman, never treated her, really. Just had her admitted to the hospital and arranged for Dr. Weiss to see her.”

  “Is he here in town?” I said.

  “He is.”

  Ms. Baxter took a small piece of lavender-colored notepaper and wrote an address and handed me the paper.

  “I’ll be happy to call him for you,” she said, “if you wish.”

  “Might be helpful,” I said.

  She nodded and stood, and went to her office door.

  “Doris,” she said to a secretary, “get Dr. Weiss for me, please.”

  Then she came back to her desk.

  “After successfully covering up the attempted suicide,” I said, “why did you decide to tell me now.”

  “The poor girl,” Ms. Baxter said. “Now she’s been kidnapped, you are trying to find her. I had no right to withhold anything.”

  Her phone rang.

  “Yes,” she said, “thank you, Doris, put him on.”

  She spoke briefly on the phone to Dr. Weiss, made a note on her lavender notepaper.

  “Three o’clock this afternoon,” she said. “He will see you. Do you need directions to his office?”

  “How many streets in this town?” I said.

  “I believe five,” Ms. Baxter said.

  “I’ll find him,” I said. “I am, after all, a detective.”

  She smiled. I stood.

  “I pray that you’ll find her,” Ms. Baxter said, and rose to walk me out. “And I hope you won’t have to use your gat.”

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “Have you ever used it?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I have.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said.

  “Think how I feel,” I said.

  46

  Hawk pulled his Jag up in front of the big white house where Dr. Weiss did business.

  “You going to join me?” I said.

  Hawk shook his head. I nodded and got out of the car.

  “Y’all take yo’ time, Miss Daisy,” Hawk said. “I be waiting right here.”

  “Cute,” I said, and walked up the flagstone path to the side of the house, where a self-effacing little sign said Office.

  Weiss was a tall, thin guy with a gray crew cut and a jittery manner.

  “At the behest of Dr. Feldman,” Weiss said, “I spoke with Miss Van Meer several times during her stay in the hospital.”

  “What can you tell me?” I said.

  “Well, of course, this was some years ago.”

  “Five,” I said.

  Weiss nodded.

  “She denied attempting suicide,” he said. “Claimed it was an accidental overdose.”

  “You think?” I said.

  “She accidentally took twenty sleeping pills?” Weiss said.

  “Okay, so she tried to kill herself. Was she serious?”

  “I don’t know. She took all the pills she had,” Weiss said.

  “So maybe she was serious.”

  “Maybe,” Weiss said.

  “She was attempting to kill herself, or attempting to call attention to her circumstances,” I said. “Either way, something’s wrong.”

  “Yes,” Weiss said.

  “Do you know what?” I said.

  Weiss leaned back a little in his chair.

  “Shrinks hate questions like that,” he said.

  “Because?”

  “Because we frequently don’t know the answer,” he said. “And we don’t like not knowing.”

  “My sympathies,” I said. “Can you guess?”

  “We hate to guess, and in our practice we shouldn’t guess, we should allow the patient to reveal his truth.”

  “I’m trying to find her,” I said. “Maybe save her. I need any guesses you can give me.”

  “I know. I wish I could have worked with her, but her mother came and snatched her away as soon as she could leave the hospital.”

  “She needs work?” I said.

  “In my judgment, she is a very unstable young woman,” Weiss said.

  “Can you amplify that for me?” I said.

  “Do you know much about psychotherapy, Mr. Spenser?”

  “Not enough,” I said. “But I am the significant other of a shrink in Cambridge.”

  “Really. What is the shrink’s name?”

  “Nice,” I said. “You framed the question gender-neutral.”

  Weiss smiled.

  “We don’t like to guess,” he said.

  “Susan Silverman,” I said.

  “I know her,” Weiss said. “She’s beautiful.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And very smart,” Weiss said. “I’ve heard several of her papers.”

  “Yes.”

  Weiss seemed to lean back farther in his chair. I felt as if I had passed some sort of initiation.

  “I truly don’t know her issues,” Weiss said. “But I’ve been in this line of work for a number of years, and my guesses are at least informed by experience.”

  “Never a bad thing,” I said.

  “Experience can inform,” he said. “It can also distort.”

  “Sure,” I said. “But inexperience is rarely useful.”

  He nodded thoughtfully.

  “Well put,” he said.

  “Adelaide Van Meer?” I said.

  He nodded.

  “I believe she has been sexually molested,” Weiss said.

  “She say so?”

  “No.”

  “More than once?” I said.

  “Over a long period of time, I think.”

  “By whom?” I said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What I know about sexual abuse,” I said, “particularly if it’s extended, is that it’s probably someone close, a family member, a neighbor, someone like that.”

  “Yes,” Weiss said.

  “Have any sense if it was more than one person?”

  “Probably one.”

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  Again, Weiss looked thoughtful.

  “About how many molested her? No.”

  “But that she was molested?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I cannot prove it. I cannot even demonstrate logically why I believe it. But yes, I am at some intuitive level sure.”

  I nodded.

  “I got no problem with intuitive,” I said. “Most of what I do is not the result of pure reason.”

  “That’s true of most people,” Weiss said. “Not all of them know it.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Anything else you can tell me about Adelaide?”

  “Not really. When her mother took her I urged that she see a competent therapist,” Weiss said. “I told her I could help with a referral, and in any case was always available to her new therapist or to Adelaide. Mrs. Bradshaw declined a referral.”

  “Ever hear from anyone?”

  “No.”

  “You think she got better?”

  “Not without a good deal of professional attention,” Weiss said.

  47

  When Hawk and I got to my office we found a man and a woman waiting in the corridor. I unlocked the door and we went in. Hawk went and sat on Pearl’s couch and put his feet on the coffee table. I went to my desk. The man and woman sat in front of my desk. I introduced myself.

  “We’re the Lessards,” the man said.

  They were both tall and athletic-looking. About fifty. Probably played a lot of tennis. Probably in a southern clime; they were both tanned. His hair was gray. Hers was blond and firmly in place.

  “It
was our son who was killed at Tashtego,” the woman said.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” I said.

  They nodded. They were both aware of Hawk behind them.

  “May we speak freely?” Mrs. Lessard said.

  “Absolutely. I share everything with my associate,” I said.

  They both turned to look at him. Hawk smiled reassuringly.

  “You were there,” Mr. Lessard said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have prevented it.”

  “We know,” Mrs. Lessard said. “The police have explained everything to us.”

  “It was the police who sent us to you,” Lessard said. “A Captain Healy, who is apparently in charge of the investigation.”

  “Nobody better,” I said.

  “He told us you’ve been investigating,” Mrs. Lessard said.

  “I’m trying to find Adelaide,” I said.

  “Yes. We gave Heidi some money to meet the ransom demands, but so far Adelaide is still missing.”

  “Heidi didn’t have the money?” I said.

  “She said it would take her too long to convert it to cash, and was afraid to wait,” Lessard said. “We gave her the money as an advance against Adelaide’s substantial inheritance from . . .” He stopped, and took in some air before he seemed able to say the name. “. . . Maurice.”

  “Where did they meet?” I said.

  “Maurice and Adelaide? They were friends in college.”

  “Which college?”

  “Penn,” Mr. Lessard said. “Maurice graduated two years ago. Adelaide was a freshman when my son was a junior. We hadn’t really known much about her until he announced they were getting married.”

  “How’d you feel about that?” I said.

  “We heard she came from a good family,” Lessard said.

  “We were thrilled,” Mrs. Lessard said. “Poor Maurice had very few girlfriends. We always feared he might be gay.”

  Feared.

  They were quiet then, very much with each other. Looking back in their memories at things they would never see again, feeling things they probably couldn’t express.

  “Will the ransom payment make a significant dent in the inheritance?” I said.

  “Oh, no,” Mr. Lessard said. “No, no. It is a substantial inheritance.”

  I nodded.

  “And what can I do for you?” I said.

  “We don’t know,” Mr. Lessard said. “Do you have any idea why this happened?”

  “It’s just so awful,” Mrs. Lessard said. “We can’t let go of it. We have to do something. We don’t even know what.”

  “Maybe if somehow we could help you catch him,” Lessard said.

  “We have scads of money,” Mrs. Lessard said. “We can pay you anything.”

  “No need,” I said. “This happened right under my nose and I didn’t prevent it. I have to even that up.”

  “Whether we pay you or not,” Lessard said.

  “Yes.”

  “You know who shot him.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I saw him do it. The police must have told you about Rugar.”

  “Yes. But there’s no sense to it,” Lessard said.

  “We have to make sense of it,” Mrs. Lessard said.

  “Do you have other children?” I said.

  “We have a daughter, in her second year at Princeton.”

  “Perhaps I should talk with her,” I said.

  48

  It was late afternoon and dark when Hawk and I finished running intervals at the Harvard track. We walked across the Anderson Bridge, waiting for our oxygen levels to renew themselves, and on up through Harvard Square and along Mass Ave to Linnaean Street. Susan was going to make dinner for us.

  “She actually gonna make it herself,” Hawk said, “or is she ordering it on the phone?”

  “Says she’s making it herself,” I said.

  “Ain’t that kind of dangerous?” Hawk said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Susan was still with her last patient when we went into her house and up the stairs to Susan’s apartment, where we had changed into our sweats earlier. Pearl was pleased to see us again, and ran around the apartment with a squeaky toy in her mouth, which made her sound like the Road Runner. Beep, beep.

  “She do that every time she see you?” Hawk said.

  “When you get out of the shower,” I said, “she’ll do it again.”

  “Nothing wrong with enthusiasm,” Hawk said, and went in to take a shower.

  While he showered, I fed Pearl, and when Hawk was finished and dressed, I went in and did the same thing. When I came out, Pearl ran around with her squeaky toy. Beep, beep.

  “You right,” Hawk said. “She done that with me, too.”

  Then, glowing with health, both of us breathing normally again, clean, sober, and looking good, we had a drink.

  “Table been set already,” Hawk said.

  “She probably did it last night,” I said.

  “Plan ahead,” Hawk said.

  “Looks nice,” I said. “Tablecloth, crystal, flowers in the middle. Linen napkins.”

  “I eat dinner at your house,” Hawk said, “we stand at the counter and eat pizza from the box.”

  “I’m an informal guy,” I said.

  “She doing this ’cause I’m here?” Hawk said.

  “Whenever we eat together,” I said, “just she and I, she does this.”

  “She like to do things right,” Hawk said.

  “Yes.”

  “Me, too,” Hawk said.

  “Different things,” I said.

  “True,” Hawk said, “but you gonna do it some way, might as well be right.”

  Susan came in through the front door. Pearl dashed around. Beep, beep. Susan kissed her, and Hawk, and me.

  “I don’t mind you kissing the dog before me,” I said. “But Hawk?”

  “He was closer,” Susan said.

  “And better,” Hawk said.

  “Want a drink?” I said.

  “Will you make me a martini while I change?”

  “Up with lots of olives,” I said.

  “Two minutes,” she said, and went into the bedroom.

  I got up and mixed the martini in the shaker and put the olives in her glass. I didn’t add ice to the shaker.

  “She like it warm?” Hawk said.

  “No, but I don’t want the ice to melt and ruin the martini.”

  “She say two minutes.”

  “She thinks it will be two minutes. When she comes out, she’ll think it was two minutes.”

  “But it won’t be,” Hawk said.

  “Be about twenty,” I said.

  In fact, it was twenty-five. When she emerged from the bedroom in jeans and a sleeveless top, I put ice in the shaker and finished the martini.

  Susan took her drink to the couch and sat down beside Pearl and tucked her legs up under her. In the sleeveless top, her arms showed muscle definition.

  “Met a guy in western Mass,” I said, “named Weiss. Says you’re very beautiful.”

  “Weiss,” she said. “Is he a therapist?”

  “Yeah, in Ashfield.”

  “Springfield, really,” Susan said. “I remember him. He lives in Ashfield and sees patients in his home a couple of days a week.”

  “So you know him.”

  “I’ve met him. I never knew he thought I was beautiful,” she said.

  “He competent?”

  “Who cares?” Susan said. “He thinks I’m beautiful.”

  “He tells me that Adelaide Van Meer was probably molested sexually as a child.”

  “Does she say so?”

  “No,” I said. “But she tried to commit suicide, and when he talked with her in the hospital he formed an intuitive opinion.”

  Susan nodded. Pearl shifted so that her head hung off the couch and her feet stuck up in the air resting against the back of the couch. Susan rubbed Pearl’s stomach.

  “I don’t know hi
m well,” Susan said. “Met him at a couple of conferences. I have no reason to question his competence.”

  “What do you think about intuitive opinions,” I said.

  “Probably what you do,” Susan said. “I prefer tangible support, but sometimes if it is unavailable, intuition may have to do.”

  “And intuition ain’t licking it off a stone,” Hawk said. “It what you know. What you’ve seen and heard and smelled. People you’ve known who are like this person.”

  Susan smiled.

  “Experience,” Susan said.

  “The very word,” Hawk said.

  “He thinks it’s someone close to the family,” I said.

  “It usually is,” Susan said.

  “Talk to me about symptoms,” I said.

  “Of childhood sexual abuse?” Susan said. “Low self-esteem, dependency, promiscuity, and at the same time trouble with intimacy, a kind of frantic aimlessness, fear of the unknown. Some or any of these, or none, or other symptoms, depending on the person.”

  “Do people get over it?”

  “You mean without help?” Susan said.

  “Yeah.”

  “If they do,” Susan said, “we never see them and thus don’t know. I would guess that it would be unusual.”

  “Her mother came and took her home as soon as she could leave the hospital. Weiss recommended therapy,” I said. “Any way to know if she’s seen a shrink around here?”

  “Other than asking her, or her mother,” Susan said, “none that I can think of.”

  “Family doctor, maybe,” I said.

  “If the shrink went to her,” Hawk said, “be a security log on him.”

  I stared at him for a moment.

  “The Tashtego patrol,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Security log,” I said. “And all this time I thought you were just another ugly face.”

  Hawk ignored me.

  “What’s for supper,” he said to Susan.

  “We begin with a wedge of iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing. Then a recipe I saw in the Times. Noodles with ground lamb, pistachio nuts, oregano, and a béchamel sauce.”

  Hawk said, “Wow!”

  “It will be delicious,” Susan said.

  “You think?” Hawk said.

  “I will stake my reputation on it,” Susan said.