The Jesse Stone Novels 6-9

by Robert B. Parker

  “Or people are being more careful,” Jesse said.

  “Pretty much everybody in town knows there’s a peeper on the loose,” Maguire said. “Everybody’s looking out their window.”

  “And reporting anybody they see,” Jesse said.

  “So some of these may not really be the peeper,” Maguire said.

  Jesse shrugged.

  “Could even be a copycat,” he said.

  “Or several,” Jesse said.

  “Hell, we’ve practically got the cuffs on him,” Maguire said.

  “Stay with it, Johnny,” Jesse said. “I got nobody to help you.”

  “It’ll be luck,” Maguire said. “We’ll spot him by accident someplace. Or he’ll look in the wrong house and somebody’s husband will make a, ah, citizen’s arrest.”

  “Be nice,” Jesse said.

  “Anyway,” Maguire said. “All the women got to do is pull their shades.”

  “So far,” Jesse said.

  “I been reading up a little,” Maguire said. “Peepers don’t normally take it further.”

  “Not usually,” Jesse said.

  “On the Internet it says ‘rarely.’ ”

  “Sure,” Jesse said.

  “You’re saying ‘rarely’ doesn’t mean ‘never’?”

  “I got a twelve-man force here, and I’ve got you on this full-time,” Jesse said.

  “Because it’s possible,” Maguire said.

  “Otherwise, he’s just a nuisance.”

  “Yeah,” Maguire said. “I’ll keep on it.”

  “You’ve interviewed all the victims,” Jesse said.

  “Sure,” Maguire said, “and wrote it up.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Interview them again,” he said.

  “They’ll say the same thing,” Maguire said.

  “Usually people don’t,” Jesse said. “Maybe there’s something they left out, forgot, dismissed as irrelevant. Their stories are all we’ve got, Johnny. You may as well keep working them.”

  “Okay, Jesse.”

  “And be polite and friendly,” Jesse said. “We don’t want them to wish they’d never reported it.”

  “I am always polite and friendly,” Maguire said.

  “I know that,” Jesse said. “Course, there was that guy fell down the stairs while in your custody.”

  “Accidents happen,” Maguire said. “Besides, he was beating on his wife and kids.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “And you would never throw somebody down a flight of stairs,” Jesse said.

  “Absolutely not, Chief.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “That’s what I told the selectmen,” he said.

  “Protect and serve,” Maguire said.

  “Absolutely,” Jesse said. “I wonder if there are any people who’ve been peeped at and haven’t reported it.”

  “Probably,” Maguire said. “There usually are, I guess.”

  “See if you can find any,” Jesse said.

  “I’m on it,” Maguire said.

  “And if you find any,” Jesse said, “try not to throw them down the stairs.”

  “God, Jesse,” Maguire said. “You spoil everything.”

  Jesse grinned.

  “It’s how I got to be chief,” he said.

  18

  JESSE MET Rita Fiore after work at the bar in the Langham Hotel in Post Office Square. She was wearing a green-and-blue dress with a skirt that ended well above the knees. Her thick, red hair was down to her shoulders. She had on slingback stiletto heels. Jesse stood when she came to the bar.

  “Still got the wheels,” he said.

  “Thanks for noticing,” Rita said.

  She slid onto a bar stool next to him.

  “There a dress code at Cone, Oakes?” Jesse said.

  “Yes,” Rita said. “Otherwise, I’d dress sort of flamboyantly.”

  “If you were more flamboyant,” Jesse said, “you’d get arrested.”

  “By you?”

  “I’m out of my jurisdiction,” Jesse said.

  “Damn,” Rita said.

  She ordered a mojito.

  “How’s Jenn?” Rita said.

  “Gone to New York,” Jesse said.

  “Alone?”

  “No.”

  Rita sipped her mojito, looking at Jesse over the rim of the glass.

  “So is that why we’re having a drink?” Rita said.

  “You mean, am I looking for backup?” Jesse said.

  “Something like that.”

  “I asked you to meet me because I like you, and I like to see you, and I need some information from you.”

  “In that order?” Rita said.

  Jesse smiled and drank a little of the beer he was nursing.

  “No particular order,” he said.

  Rita nodded.

  “I don’t mind being backup,” she said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “We’ll return to that in a little while,” he said. “First, I need to ask you about your managing partner.”

  “Jay?” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why do you want to ask me . . . oh! . . . his wife and the panty inspection.”

  “Yep.”

  “It happened in Paradise,” Rita said.

  “Yep.”

  “It’s been very embarrassing for Jay.”

  “I’ll bet it has,” Jesse said.

  “Are you still pursuing that?” Rita said.

  “Sort of,” Jesse said. “Nobody much wants me to.”

  “I’ll bet that bothers you a lot.”

  Jesse shrugged.

  “She violated those kids’ civil rights,” he said.

  “I’m not sure that’s a legally sustainable argument,” Rita said.

  “But she did.”

  Rita smiled.

  “And you want her to suffer some consequence,” she said.

  “I do.”

  “That would be you,” Rita said. “If it’s any consolation, Betsy Ingersoll is probably pretty embarrassed and wishes it hadn’t happened.”

  “You know her?”

  “Not really,” Rita said. “She attends a few of the hideous social events the firm occasionally runs, to prove how warm and fuzzy we are. She doesn’t get to say much.”

  “Because Jay does most of the talking?”

  “Nearly all,” Rita said.

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “So tell me about her husband.”

  “He was a hell of a lawyer,” Rita said.

  “Was?”

  “He probably still is,” Rita said. “But he doesn’t do much law anymore. Now he mostly manages the firm.”

  “And the firm does well,” Jesse said.

  “Very,” Rita said.

  “He love his wife?” Jesse said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Say he does,” Jesse said. “What else does he care about?”

  “The firm.”

  “Anything else? Kids?”

  “No kids,” Rita said.

  Rita finished her mojito. The bartender stepped promptly over.

  “Another one, Ms. Fiore?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You, sir?” the bartender said. “Another beer?”

  Jesse hesitated.

  “Drink scotch, Jesse,” Rita said. “You look miserable.”

  “Dewar’s and soda,” Jesse said to the bartender.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rita said, “Have you met Jay?”

  “He came by and leaned on me a little bit,” Jesse said.

  “There are a lot of successful men like him,” Rita said. “After a while he starts to think that he can do whatever he decides to do and who’s to say nay.”

  “You like him?” Jesse said.

  “I admire him,” Rita said.

  “Would you want to be married to him?” Jesse said.

  “Oh, God, no,” Rita said.

  “Because?”

  “He’s totally self-absorbed, li
ke so many of them.”

  “He appears to be protecting his wife,” Jesse said.

  “He’s protecting his reputation,” Rita said. “He doesn’t want to be seen as the husband of a dope.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Why are you so interested?” Rita said. “You going to take him on?”

  “Just gathering information,” Jesse said. “It’s always better to know stuff.”

  “Well, he’s got a lot of chits that he can call in,” Rita said.

  “I figured,” Jesse said.

  “And he’ll call them if he needs to,” Rita said. “Don’t think he’s just another empty suit.”

  “I won’t,” Jesse said.

  “On the other hand,” Rita said, “neither are you.”

  19

  EVERYONE IN town seemed to be interested in, or amused by, or frightened about, the Peeping Tom at large. They knew about him. They didn’t know his name. But they knew what he did. The Night Hawk was scared . . . and titillated. He didn’t make his usual rounds this Wednesday night. Instead, in civilian dress, he strolled around Paradise, getting a look at the way things were. Shades were down all over town. It made him smile and stirred some sense of power in him. There seemed to be no unusual police activity. No stakeouts, no prowl cars driving slowly through the neighborhoods. The Night Hawk felt faintly disappointed that there was no more police activity. Wasn’t much of a police department, anyway. And it was encouraging that maybe he could still make his rounds. But not the same way. No one would be careless about their shades anymore . . . unless he found an exhibitionist. Wouldn’t that be a chuckle, he thought, for a voyeur and an exhibitionist to find each other. That was pretty unlikely, he knew. And he also knew without quite saying it that it wouldn’t work anyway. He didn’t want to keep seeing them. He just wanted to discover their secret and move on, and discover someone else’s. Maybe he should work another town for a while. Until things relaxed . . . No. He didn’t want things to relax, and he preferred to discover his secrets in this town. Where he lived. Where he knew most of the people. He stopped at the main-land end of the causeway to Paradise Neck, and leaned his forearms on the top of the wall, and looked at the ocean. It would be awfully frustrating, night after Wednesday night, to be unsuccessful. He hadn’t even seen a bedroom in the last two weeks. Everywhere the shades were drawn. . . . There was no wind. The stars were high. The black ocean quietly murmured against the causeway. . . . He stared out to sea. . . . Okay, he thought. A new venue. More risk, yes. But the rewards were greater. He smiled to himself in the darkness. Like the stock market, he thought. Bigger the risk, bigger the reward.

  20

  SUIT CAME into Jesse’s office carrying a bag of doughnuts.

  “Sex in Paradise,” he said. “The saga continues.”

  He put the doughnuts down on the edge of Jesse’s desk. Jesse took one out of the bag and had a bite.

  “I got an expense account to submit,” Suit said.

  “For what?”

  “I bought a few beers for Vinnie Basco,” Suit said. “And I took Debbie Basco and Kim Clark for lunch.”

  “Give it to Molly,” Jesse said.

  Suit nodded and drank some coffee.

  “You learn anything?” Jesse said.

  “I bought Vinnie a few beers at the Gray Gull. I told him I was curious about the Paradise Free Swingers. You know, not as a police officer, just as a guy used to play ball with him.”

  “He buy that?” Jesse said.

  “I don’t think so. But his real problem was that he was embarrassed about it. Said it was kind of creepy.”

  “Then why does he do it?” Jesse said.

  “My question exactly. And my answer to myself was”―Suit grinned―“the little woman.”

  Jesse nodded and fished another doughnut out of the paper bag.

  “So I say to Vinnie,” Suit went on, “ ‘Your wife likes it?’ And he says, ‘Yeah, it turns her on.’ And that’s about all I got out of that. Rest of the time we talked about how if I coulda held my block longer he’d have had more time to run the deep patterns. And I say to him if he were faster I wouldn’ta had to hold my blocks so long. And like that. I always thought Vinnie was an okay guy.”

  “You talk with Chase,” Jesse said.

  “Chase Clark? Naw, he’s an asshole. Always was. I couldn’t stand him, and he couldn’t stand me.”

  “Hard to believe,” Jesse said.

  “How I know he’s an asshole,” Suit said.

  “So you went for the wives,” Jesse said.

  “I did. Kim Clark was ahead of me in high school. I guess I had kind of a crush on her.”

  “She show early promise?” Jesse said.

  “As a future swinger?” Suit said. “No. But she did get knocked up. It’s why she’s got a thirteen-year-old daughter, and she’s only a few years older than me.”

  “So maybe she did,” Jesse said. “How about Debbie?”

  Suit grinned.

  “She showed a lot of promise,” he said. “With about everybody.”

  “You had lunch with them together?”

  “Yeah,” Suit said. “They was always buddies, even when Kimmy was into being Catholic.”

  “And Debbie wasn’t,” Jesse said.

  “Not so it showed. I told them I was investigating another case that had nothing to do with them, but that I needed to learn as much as I could about the swinging lifestyle.”

  “And they told you,” Jesse said.

  “Maybe more than I wanted to know,” Suit said.

  “Cocktails with lunch?” Jesse said.

  “Line of duty,” Suit said. “And a couple bottles of wine.”

  “Candy is dandy,” Jesse said, “but liquor is quicker.”

  “Man,” Suit said. “I never drink in the middle of the day. I barely sipped a little wine, and I had to go home and take a nap.”

  “Being a lush is heavy work,” Jesse said. “What’d they tell you.”

  “Well, for openers,” Suit said, “they talked about it like it was some kind of high-minded philosophy of life. The swinging lifestyle.”

  “Liberated,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah, ‘free of prudish’ . . . what did she say? ‘Free of prudish limitations.’ That’s what Debbie told me,” Suit said.

  “Only a repressed pervert would disapprove,” Jesse said.

  “Debbie says that studies show that swingers have happier relationships and more stable marriages.”

  “Because they are open and loving, and there’s no surreptitious nookie going on,” Jesse said.

  “Wow,” Suit said. “Surreptitious nookie.”

  “I amaze myself, sometimes,” Jesse said. “How’s it work?”

  “The swingers club?”

  “Yep.”

  “Couples only,” Suit said. “No single guys.”

  “Leaves us out,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah,” Suit said. “Don’t seem fair, does it?”

  “How about single women?” Jesse said.

  “No rules that I know of about that,” Suit said.

  “Sexist bastards,” Jesse said. “So do they meet regularly?”

  “They meet once a month at a club member’s home,” Suit said. “And they also have, you know, parties and cookouts and picnics, stuff like that.”

  “And this is all about partners having sex with other people’s partners,” Jesse said.

  “I guess,” Suit said. “I know that sometimes one partner watches while the other partner does it.”

  “I wonder how they decide,” Jesse said.

  “Who’s gonna do what with who?” Suit said. “Yeah, I wondered about that.”

  “But you didn’t ask,” Jesse said.

  “I was getting embarrassed,” Suit said.

  “Cops don’t get embarrassed,” Jesse said.

  “Never?” Suit said.

  Jesse grinned at him.

  “Hardly ever,” he said. “Debbie seems to have done most of the talking.
What did Kim have to say?”

  “Not much. She was kind of agreeing with Debbie, but I don’t know. She didn’t seem to have much to say about it.”

  “She’s the one we should talk with,” Jesse said.

  “Because she didn’t say much?”

  “Be good to know why she didn’t,” Jesse said

  21

  JESSE SAT at a table in Daisy’s Restaurant and looked at Sunny Randall sitting across from him wearing tight jeans and a white tank top.

  “Hard to carry a concealed weapon in that outfit,” Jesse said.

  “This outfit is not about concealing,” Sunny said. “Gun’s in my purse.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “The outfit is doing its job,” Jesse said.

  “Of not concealing?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was hoping you’d notice,” she said.

  They were drinking iced tea and eating sandwiches. Sunny had a BLT. Jesse had a lobster club.

  “We got an agenda on this visit?” Jesse said.

  “You mean why did I come up here and have lunch with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How about because you’re a white-hot stud, and I’ve missed you,” Sunny said.

  “Nice answer,” Jesse said.

  “It’s true. I do miss you,” Sunny said.

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “I miss you, too.”

  “And,” Sunny said, “I want a favor.”

  Jesse nodded.

  “Don’t they always,” Jesse said.

  “Ohmigod, the weltschmerz,” Sunny said.

  “I’m trying it out,” Jesse said. “How’s it play?”

  “Sucks,” Sunny said. “Here’s what I need.”

  Jesse smiled and nodded.

  “You remember my friend Spike,” she said.

  “Sure, big guy, beard, looks sort of like a bear.”

  “That would be Spike,” Sunny said.

  She opened her sandwich and picked up a slice of bacon and took a small bite off the end of it. Sunny always looked as if she’d recently stepped from the shower, combed her hair, applied her makeup carefully, and dressed. There was a freshness about her that made her seem always nearly brand-new.

  “He owns a restaurant in Boston,” Sunny said. “Spike’s. Near Quincy Market.”

  “Clever name,” Jesse said.

  “He wants to expand,” Sunny said. “And he’s looking to get a place up here.”

  “Spike’s North?” Jesse said.