by Mike Lupica
The Spenser Novels
Robert B. Parker’s Angel Eyes
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Old Black Magic
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Little White Lies
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Kickback
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot
(by Ace Atkins)
Silent Night
(with Helen Brann)
Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland
(by Ace Atkins)
Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby
(by Ace Atkins)
Sixkill
Painted Ladies
The Professional
Rough Weather
Now & Then
Hundred-Dollar Baby
School Days
Cold Service
Bad Business
Back Story
Widow’s Walk
Potshot
Hugger Mugger
Hush Money
Sudden Mischief
Small Vices
Chance
Thin Air
Walking Shadow
Paper Doll
Double Deuce
Pastime
Stardust
Playmates
Crimson Joy
Pale Kings and Princes
Taming a Sea-Horse
A Catskill Eagle
Valediction
The Widening Gyre
Ceremony
A Savage Place
Early Autumn
Looking for Rachel Wallace
The Judas Goat
Promised Land
Mortal Stakes
God Save the Child
The Godwulf Manuscript
The Jesse Stone Novels
Robert B. Parker’s Fool’s Paradise
(by Mike Lupica)
Robert B. Parker’s The Bitterest Pill
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s The Hangman’s Sonnet
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Debt to Pay
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot
(by Reed Farrel Coleman)
Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice
(by Michael Brandman)
Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues
(by Michael Brandman)
Split Image
Night and Day
Stranger in Paradise
High Profile
Sea Change
Stone Cold
Death in Paradise
Trouble in Paradise
Night Passage
The Sunny Randall Novels
Robert B. Parker’s Grudge Match
(by Mike Lupica)
Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud
(by Mike Lupica)
Spare Change
Blue Screen
Melancholy Baby
Shrink Rap
Perish Twice
Family Honor
The Cole/Hitch Westerns
Robert B. Parker’s Buckskin
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Revelation
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s The Bridge
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Bull River
(by Robert Knott)
Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse
(by Robert Knott)
Blue-Eyed Devil
Brimstone
Resolution
Appaloosa
Also by Robert B. Parker
Double Play
Gunman’s Rhapsody
All Our Yesterdays
A Year at the Races
(with Joan H. Parker)
Perchance to Dream
Poodle Springs
(with Raymond Chandler)
Love and Glory
Wilderness
Three Weeks in Spring
(with Joan H. Parker)
Training with Weights
(with John R. Marsh)
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2020 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lupica, Mike, author. | Parker, Robert B., 1932–2010, creator.
Title: Fool’s paradise / Mike Lupica.
Other titles: At head of title: Robert B. Parker’s
Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2020. | Series: A Jesse Stone novel
Identifiers: LCCN 2020018116 (print) | LCCN 2020018117 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525542087 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525542094 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Stone, Jesse (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Police chiefs—Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction
Classification: LCC PS3562.U59 F66 2020 (print) | LCC PS3562.U59 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018116
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018117
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0
For John Fisher, Chief of Police, Carlisle, Mass.
Contents
Cover
Also by Robert B. Parker
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Tw
enty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Chapter Fifty-Three
Chapter Fifty-Four
Chapter Fifty-Five
Chapter Fifty-Six
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-One
Chapter Sixty-Two
Chapter Sixty-Three
Chapter Sixty-Four
Chapter Sixty-Five
Chapter Sixty-Six
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy-One
Chapter Seventy-Two
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
One
Jesse Stone opened his eyes even before the alarm on his phone started to chirp, 5:58 a.m. Sunday, Fourth of July weekend, cold sober. Stone cold. Private joke. His drinking never was. Jesse had never been a happy drunk, or a funny one. Just a drunk.
Once he would still have been drunk at this time of the morning, trying to decide whether he was waking up or coming to, and likely scared shitless about what he might have done the night before.
Good times.
Now he set the alarm for six, seven days a week.
Last night had been another early one for him, after the relighting of the marquee above the entrance to the Paradise Cinema. The theater had burned to the ground the year before. But somehow that day the volunteers from the Paradise Fire Department had managed to save the marquee. In the immediate aftermath of the fire, a not-for-profit committee had been formed by Lily Cain, part of the town’s royal and ruling class. It was called Friends of Paradise. No better friend than Lily, who, being Lily, had quickly raised enough money to invade New Hampshire. The Paradise Cinema had been rebuilt in less than a year and had officially reopened last night.
Jesse had looked around the crowd during the ceremony and seen all these happy faces lining Main Street. So many more faces of color than there had been in Paradise when he’d first arrived here. The town wasn’t just more diverse than it had been twenty years ago. He knew it was better because of the diversity, livelier and more welcoming. Even though he knew people of color still scared the money in town, and there was still a boatload of that.
But for this one night, they all stood shoulder to shoulder on Main Street, cheering the reopening of a theater that always looked to Jesse as if it had been a fixture in Paradise almost as long as the ocean. It always amazed Jesse how little it took to make other people happy.
Molly Crane, his deputy and friend, had seen him staring into the crowd before Lily Cain threw the switch to light the marquee.
“Looking for potential perps?” she said.
“Nope,” he said. “Just trying to figure out why something like this could make this many people feel this good.”
“Maybe because these people don’t think feeling good is against the law in Paradise, Massachusetts,” she said.
“I’m the chief,” Jesse said. “I should know shit like that.”
“Not about being happy,” Molly said.
“I think of myself as a work in progress,” he said.
She’d sighed and said, “So much work.”
Fireworks had lit the sky as soon as the ceremony ended. Most of Paradise had gone out to party after that, in bars, all the way to the beach. Jesse had gone home to bed. Alone. But sober.
Sober, he knew, was why he was still the chief of police. Alone was because he’d arrived at the decision, at least for the time being, that he was about as good at romantic relationships as he had been with scotch.
Molly Crane had always said he was the alonest man she’d ever known.
His phone started chirping again. Incoming call this time.
The display said Suit.
“Got a body at the lake,” Suitcase Simpson said.
Jesse had made Suit a detective at the same time he’d officially made Molly his deputy, and had gotten both of them raises, despite the objections of the cheapskates on the Board of Selectmen. When Jesse had first met Luther Simpson, nicknamed Suitcase after an old-time ballplayer, he’d been a former high school football player, a local who’d just drifted into police work, after he’d taken the test, passed it. Molly had been working the desk and acting as a dispatcher. Now Suit had grown into being a terrific cop, even if Jesse still looked at him and saw the big, open-faced kid he’d met originally. Molly had grown into being a first-rate cop herself, in addition to being completely indispensable.
“Man or woman?”
Jesse sat up.
“Man.”
“How?” Jesse said.
“Looks like a bullet to the back of the head,” Suit said. “Or two. Lot of blood.”
“ID?”
“Not yet. But we just got here. I wanted to call you first thing.”
“You’re a detective,” Jesse said. “It means you’re authorized to start detecting without me.”
“Just going by the book,” Suit said. “Yours.”
“Floater?”
“No, praise Jesus and all of His apostles.”
Suit now knew more about floaters than he’d ever wanted to, things that Jesse had learned a long time ago in Los Angeles, about how bodies in the water first sank and then eventually came back to the surface as the air in them was replaced with gas that inflated them like toy dolls. The longer they had been in the water, especially seawater, the better the chance that fish and crabs and sea lice had been feeding on them, turning them into something you never forgot.
Suit told Jesse exactly where he was at the lake, a part of the closest thing Paradise had to a Central Park, close to town, full of wooded areas, but somehow feeling remote at the same time. It was on the west side of Paradise, next to the field where Jesse still played in the Paradise Men’s Softball League. What he called the Men of Summer. It’s where they’d once found a teenage girl named Elinor Bishop. Jesse had seen more than his share of floaters when he’d worked Robbery Homicide. Suit had never seen one before Elinor Bishop. He still said he’d rather be caught wearing women’s clothing than catch another floater.
He’d admitted later to Jesse that the first chance he got that night, and hoping that nobody else noticed, he went into the woods and nearly puked up a lung.
Jesse told Suit he was on his way, and ended the call. Then he was out of bed, having already decided not to shower, getting into the jeans he’d left hanging over the chair next to his bed, grateful there was no hangover for him to manage. Before the lighting of the marquee, he had been at an AA meeting in Marshport, the next town over from Paradise. At one point the speaker had said having a hangover was like having a second job.
; Jesse was still making it. Day at a goddamn time. Still on the job as chief. Maybe that was all the proof he needed that the Higher Power they talked about in AA really was looking out for him. Serving and protecting him.
Jesse felt a different kind of buzz now. One that had never had anything to do with booze. Just cop adrenaline and a dead body making him feel more alive than he had in a while.
He went into the kitchen, poured some coffee into a travel mug, mixed in cream and sugar, and headed out the door. Before he did, he stopped, having caught his reflection in the mirror in his living room.
Toasted himself with the mug as he did.
First of the day, Jesse Stone thought.
Two
Jesse drove his new black Ford Explorer through the empty streets of Paradise, the theater marquee looking like some kind of ghost light sitting on top of morning fog. Suit had told him it was time to upgrade, that this year’s Explorer got a better “pursuit rating” than Jesse’s model, that they had beefed-up suspensions and performed better, and that you could get them even more easily prewired than before for police radios and what Suit called “all the other fun cop shit.”
Jesse had told him to stop, he was sold, had gone to the Board, and had been issued the Explorer he was driving now. He got them to issue Suit one, too. Molly said she was sticking with her old Cherokee.
She’d just shook her head at the time and said, “Boys with their souped-up toys.”
As Jesse got to the lake he saw the flashing blue lights, like a different kind of light show now in the first hour after sunrise. He parked the car, got out, and ducked underneath the yellow crime tape, noticing Suit’s Explorer parked next to the medical examiner’s van and two other patrol cars. No onlookers here yet, no cell phone pictures being taken. Soon, though. Word would get out. It always did. In the old days, before the advent of digital portable radios, there had briefly been an app people in Paradise could download onto their phones that live-streamed the PPD’s police scanners. All in the name of transparency. Jesse had shut it down first chance he got.