The Jesse Stone Novels 6-9

by Robert B. Parker

  “So their mother probably wanted them to look alike,” Jesse said.

  “I guess.”

  “Know the parents?”

  “Not really. Old man was a contractor. He’s dead now. They got a lot of money. Big house on the water. Big into church stuff. Probably guilt.”

  “About what?” Jesse said.

  “Old man was always kind of a sleaze. Never got convicted. But a lotta talk about not meeting the specs for his construction deals. Lotta talk about sweetheart deals with the state. Stuff like that. Lotta people say he fooled around.”

  “How’d he die?” Jesse said.

  “Heart attack,” Mayo said. “On a business trip to Cleveland. I think he was in the saddle at the time.”

  “How about the mother?” Jesse said.

  “Mother’s still around.”

  “Can you take us over there?” Jesse said.

  “Sure,” Mayo said.

  28

  MRS. BANGSTON WAS a brusque woman, not tall but erect. Her hair was iron-gray. She had pince-nez glasses, and she reminded Jesse of his elementary-school principal. They sat in the living room of her big glass-fronted modern home looking out over Hempstead Bay. It seemed totally out of keeping with the white-clapboard/weathered-shingle look of the town. It was out of keeping with the furnishings as well, which were overstuffed Victorian everywhere that Jesse could see. It was as if her husband had built the outside and she had furnished the inside without regard to each other.

  “I did not know that Roberta’s husband had died,” she said. “I am sorry to hear it, and sorrier still that he was murdered.”

  “No one told you?” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  “Perhaps they wanted to spare you,” Jesse said.

  “My girls call every Christmas and Easter,” Mrs. Bangston said. “I get flowers every Mother’s Day. I forward their mail.”

  “After all these years?” Jesse said.

  “Yes, they still get mail here.”

  “Do you see much of them?” Jesse said.

  “Not very much,” she said. “They are dutiful, but nothing more.”

  “Do you know their husbands?”

  “I have never met either,” Mrs. Bangston said.

  “Not even at the weddings?” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  There were some rosary beads on the coffee table in front of where she sat. She looked at them.

  “You weren’t at the weddings?” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  “Either wedding,” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  “Were you invited?” Jesse said.

  “Yes.”

  “But?”

  “I did not approve of the men they were marrying,” Mrs. Bangston said.

  “What did you disapprove of?” Jesse said.

  “They were both criminals,” Mrs. Bangston said.

  “How did you know that?” Jesse said.

  “My husband told me.”

  “He knew these men?”

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Bangston said. “My husband knew a great many people. Business was his sphere; mine was home and family.”

  “Your husband did business with the men your daughters married?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know how they met their husbands?”

  “I do not,” she said.

  She leaned forward and picked up her rosary beads from the coffee table and held them in her left hand.

  “They had the finest religious education we could give them. Holy Spirit High School. Paulus College. They made their First Communion side by side in identical white dresses. They were confirmed together . . . and they married criminals.”

  “The Church is important to you,” Jesse said.

  Jesse had no idea where he was going. But he wanted to keep her talking.

  “It has been the center of my life,” she said. “My late husband and I attended Mass every Sunday. Since he has gone, I attend every morning. It is my consolation.”

  “The girls are the most identical twins I’ve ever seen,” Jesse said.

  “Yes. Even I cannot always distinguish them.”

  “They dress alike,” Jesse said. “They do their hair alike. Makeup, manner, everything.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you encourage them in that?” Jesse said.

  “Of course; had God not wanted them to remain identical, he would not have created them identical.”

  “Did your husband feel that way, too?” Jesse said.

  She smiled and looked past Jesse out the wide front window at the whitecaps in the bay.

  “My husband used to say he was luckier than other fathers. He had the same daughter twice.”

  The room was quiet. Mayo was sitting a little behind Jesse with his arms folded. Suit sat beside Jesse with his hands folded in his lap.

  “You got any questions, Suit?” Jesse said.

  Suit looked startled. Jesse waited.

  “Were your daughters good girls?” he said finally.

  “They were angels when they were small. As adults they have disappointed me,” Mrs. Bangston said.

  “Anything besides marrying men you disapproved of?” Suit said.

  “No,” Mrs. Bangston said.

  Suit looked at Jesse.

  “Anything at all,” Jesse said, “that you can think of that might aid us in our investigation?”

  “No.”

  The room was silent. Mrs. Bangston continued to look past them at the ocean. It was as if she’d left them. The beads moved in her left hand, and Jesse realized she was praying. He stood.

  “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Bangston,” he said.

  She nodded slightly and continued to move the beads slowly with her left hand.

  “We’ll find our way out,” Jesse said.

  Again, a slight nod.

  The three cops left.

  29

  THE BANG BANG TWINS ,” Suit said, as they drove back up Route 3 toward Boston.

  “Yep.”

  “Wish we’d had them when I was in high school,” Suit said.

  “Luck of the draw,” Jesse said.

  “You said those sisters were so nice,” Suit said.

  “I did,” Jesse said.

  “And you didn’t know the half of it,” Suit said.

  Jesse nodded.

  “I think we need to find out if they are still the Bang Bang Twins.”

  “Want me to see what I can learn?” Suit said.

  “I do,” Jesse said. “You grew up in this town. They’ve lived here awhile. Maybe you know some of the same people.”

  “I don’t know any people like that,” Suit said.

  “Maybe Hasty Hathaway’s wife?” Jesse said.

  Suit’s face turned red.

  “Man, you don’t forget nothing,” he said.

  “Of course not,” Jesse said. “I’m the chief of police.”

  “Mother was kind of weird,” Suit said.

  “She’s religious,” Jesse said.

  “Like I said.”

  “It works for some people,” Jesse said.

  “Not for the Bang Bang Twins,” Suit said.

  “So young, so judgmental,” Jesse said.

  “What? You think what they do is okay?”

  Jesse shrugged.

  “You think Mrs. Bangston knows about the Bang Bang stuff?” Suit said.

  “Yes.”

  “Because she sort of clammed up when you asked her about why she was disappointed in them?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “See,” Suit said. “I notice stuff.”

  “You do,” Jesse said. “There’s a donut place at this next exit.”

  “You notice stuff, too,” Suit said, and turned into the exit.

  They sat in the car in the parking lot and had donuts and coffee.

  “All-American grub,” Suit said.

  “Highly nutritious,” Jesse said. “I wonder how the father knew Knocko a
nd Reggie were bad guys.”

  Suit swallowed some donut and drank coffee.

  “Maybe they done some business or something,” Suit said. “Mike says the old man was kind of shady.”

  “Be good to know,” Jesse said.

  “Why?”

  “Because we don’t know,” Jesse said.

  “That’s what you always say.”

  “Except when we do know,” Jesse said.

  “Except then,” Suit said. “Is any of this going to solve our two murders?”

  “Maybe,” Jesse said.

  “Or maybe not?”

  “Or maybe not,” Jesse said.

  “I guess we should look into that, too,” Suit said.

  “I’ll do that,” Jesse said. “You work on the Bang Bang Twins.”

  “So, why’d you drag me along all the way down to Hempstead?”

  “Training,” Jesse said.

  “So I could become a crack sleuth like you?”

  “Observe and learn,” Jesse said.

  “I do,” Suit said. “I’ve already picked up the vocabulary. Maybe. Might. Possibly. I don’t know.”

  “If Paradise ever gets a slot for detectives, you’ll be the first appointed,” Jesse said.

  Suit grinned.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  30

  THE MARKHAMS LIVED at the head of a circle off a street that ran from downtown Concord out toward Route 2. Sunny parked her car across the street from the circle and maybe fifty yards up the street. It was her second week. Her cell phone rang. It was Jesse.

  “Oh, good,” Sunny said. “I’m so bored I’m close to fainting.”

  “What are you doing?” Jesse said.

  “Sitting in my car doing surveillance on Mrs. Markham.”

  “Cheryl DeMarco’s mother?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can’t let it go, huh?” Jesse said.

  “Nope,” Sunny said. “I’m worried about the kid.”

  “Anything so far?”

  “Mrs. Markham takes yoga, and she shops for food,” Sunny said.

  “Of course, she may not know where her daughter is,” Jesse said.

  “Possible,” Sunny said.

  “Could Cheryl be in the house?” Jesse said.

  “I don’t think so,” Sunny said. “They’re the kind of people would send her somewhere.”

  “Who would they send her with?”

  “When they first hired me they asked if I knew someone who would kidnap her.”

  “So it is not beyond their thinking,” Jesse said.

  “No.”

  “Somebody had to encounter her,” Jesse said, “and persuade her to go with them to a place, and the place would need to persuade her to stay there.”

  “Yes,” Sunny said.

  “Who would that be?”

  “I don’t know,” Sunny said. “But maybe I can find out.”

  “You got a plan?”

  “Not everyone will coerce a young woman into a place she doesn’t want to go,” Sunny said. “Even at the behest of her parents.”

  “True,” Jesse said.

  “And,” Sunny said, “they don’t seem like people who’d know someone who would.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “Unless it was a lawyer,” Sunny said.

  “The right kind of lawyer,” Jesse said.

  “Their lawyer might know the right kind of lawyer.”

  “Or they might just have a friend who’s a lawyer,” Jesse said.

  “If he went to an Ivy League law school,” Sunny said.

  “You might try checking that out,” Jesse said.

  “It’s all hypothesis and supposition and guessing,” Sunny said.

  “That’s called detection,” Jesse said.

  “But will it be as much fun as sitting in my car in Concord,” Sunny said, “watching people dressed funny ride their bicycles?”

  “Hard to imagine that it could be more fun than that,” Jesse said.

  “But it seems worth a try,” Sunny said. “Did you call just to talk about me and my case?”

  “Actually, I called to talk about me and my case,” Jesse said. “But I got sidetracked.”

  “By me and my case,” Sunny said.

  “Exactly.”

  “So, how are you,” Sunny said. “How’s your case.”

  “The time I told you about, when I went on a bender and Molly and Suit covered for me.”

  “Yes,” Sunny said.

  “One of the things that set me off was I met these women married to a couple of mobsters, who seemed perfect wives,” Jesse said.

  “And you went into a tailspin,” Sunny said. “Why them and not me?”

  “Yes,” Jesse said. “You know about that kind of tailspin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Present company excluded,” Jesse said, “these are two of the most compelling women I ever met. They’re identical twins. In high school they were known as the Bang Bang Twins.”

  “They were promiscuous,” Sunny said.

  “They used to switch off on the same guy, see if he could tell which was which.”

  “Wow,” Sunny said. “They ever have sex in the dressing room of an upscale boutique in Beverly Hills?”

  “Maybe at the same time,” Jesse said.

  “Tell me more,” Sunny said.

  Jesse did. When he finished, Sunny was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Doesn’t mean they haven’t matured into lovely women.”

  “Unless they’re still doing the Bang Bang thing.”

  “Whatever else it is,” Sunny said, “it would provide several swell motives for murder.”

  “It would.”

  “And they each live with a husband, side by side,” Sunny said.

  “True.”

  “Does what you learned about them make you uncomfortable with your appraisal of women.”

  “And wives,” Jesse said.

  “Even worse,” Sunny said.

  “Much,” Jesse said.

  “Dix have any insights?” Sunny said.

  “Haven’t seen him yet,” Jesse said. “First I need to know what the Bang Bang Twins are like these days.”

  “But you’ve talked about your first reaction to them,” Sunny said.

  “Yes.”

  “He say anything interesting?”

  “No, but he looked interested,” Jesse said.

  “It’s a start,” Sunny said.

  Again, they were quiet on their respective cell phones.

  “You want to have dinner?” Jesse said.

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll come there,” Sunny said.

  “Really?” Jesse said. “Long drive home at night.”

  “Maybe I’ll bring a little suitcase,” Sunny said.

  “What a very good idea,” Jesse said.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” Sunny said.

  “My hopes are always up,” Jesse said.

  “Good to know,” Sunny said.

  “Either way,” Jesse said, “it’ll be nice to see you.”

  “Either way?”

  “Either way.”

  Again, they were quiet.

  Then Sunny said, “Gray Gull?”

  “Seven o’clock,” Jesse said.

  31

  FRESHLY SHOWERED and sitting alone in Jesse’s living room, wearing one of Jesse’s shirts for a bathrobe, Sunny called Pace Advertising and asked for John Markham.

  “Mr. Markham is in Chicago this week. May I transfer you to his voice mail?”

  “No,” Sunny said. “Do you have an attorney on staff?”

  “That would be Mr. Cahill. May I connect you?”

  “Yes,” Sunny said. “Thank you.”

  The line went silent, then a phone picked up and a male voice said, “Don Cahill.”

  “Hi, Mr. Cahill,” Sunny said. “This is Sonya Stone in John Markham’s office. He’s out of town, and I need a little favor.”

  �
�Whaddya need, Sonya?”

  “Mr. Markham asked me to call that lawyer you sent him to, and I’ve lost his name and number.”

  “John won’t like that,” Cahill said.

  “I know,” Sunny said. “Can you save me?”

  Cahill laughed.

  “Cahill to the rescue,” he said. “Wait a second.”

  Sunny waited. Cahill came back.

  “Harry Lyle,” he said, and recited the phone number.

  “Thank you,” Sunny said. “You’re an angel.”

  “You better believe it, Sonya,” Cahill said. “You can stop by anytime to thank me.”

  “I will,” Sunny said, and hung up.

  She looked at Ozzie Smith’s picture on the wall behind the bar.

  “Sometimes, Ozzie,” she said out loud, “I dazzle myself.” She went into the bedroom and dressed and made the bed. The picture of Jenn that used to be on the bedside table was gone. Sunny smiled to herself as she packed her small suitcase.

  Sonya Stone?

  She cleaned up the breakfast dishes. It was kind of fun being housewifely. When she was through she went back in the living room and got out a copy of the Boston phone book and looked up Harry Lyle. He was listed as a criminal lawyer. She phoned and made an appointment, calling herself Rose Painter. Then she went into the kitchen where Jesse kept a notepad, and sat at the kitchen table and wrote him a note and left it on the bed pillow.

  I’m glad I brought my little suitcase. XXOO

  S

  As she drove back toward Boston, she thought about Jesse. She liked having sex with him. What was not to like . . . as a sex partner. As a life partner? There was the drinking problem and the ex-wife. Sunny wasn’t sure that he had actually rid himself of Jenn and the way he felt about Jenn.

  She gave a small humorless laugh.

  Like I’m rid of Richie. What kind of prospect am I for Jesse? I don’t have a drinking problem, but I very well may be more addicted to my ex than he has been to his. Are we both settling for second best? Dr. Silverman had said once that she was using other men as an anodyne. Were she and Jesse doing that, killing their pain with each other? . . . Worse ways, I suppose.

  32

  CHARLIE TRAXAL,” Rita Fiore said, “Jesse Stone.”

  Jesse shook hands with Traxal.

  “Charlie’s the chief investigator for the Norfolk County DA,” Rita said. “Jesse’s the chief of police in Paradise.”