Everything fitted very snugly, and one got a sense of Latex stretched, of pressures tightly contained. Her bright blond hair was artfully tousled over her forehead and doubtless sprayed in place. She embraced one of the men, a short, fat guy with a long crew cut and a guardsman mustache, holding her head back so’s not to mess her hair and turning away as he tried to kiss her so’s not to mess the makeup.
“Vaughn, you gorgeous hunk,” she cried, “if your wife weren’t such a good friend of mine—”
Two more couples arrived, and she turned toward them, leaving Vaughn with his mouth half-open. The wives, one tall and handsome with early gray salting her black hair, the other small, blond, and pretty, stopped to talk with Marge Bartlett; the husbands headed directly for the buffet spread in the dining room. I watched them go. One was middle height and muscular with rounded shoulders and the kind of rolling walk associated normally with sailors and gorillas. His buddy was shorter and wider with the body of a Turkish wrestler and the haircut of a monk.
“Beer,” I said to Susan. “And I’ll bet they never leave the buffet.”
“The taller one’s the hockey coach at the high school,” she said.
“How about the other guy?”
“I don’t know him; maybe he’s a violinist.”
“Yeah,” I said, “or an elephant tamer.”
Marge Bartlett moved into the living room, where the noise and smoke were already thickening. I said to Susan, “Come on. Whither she goest you and I goest as well. Or at least I do.”
“Whither thou goest …” she said.
“How about whither I liest?” I said.
“I’m going to get us a drink. You want one?”
“Beer,” I said. “I’m sorry it’s self-service, but I’m working.”
“I know.”
She left me and returned shortly with a can of beer and a scotch on the rocks. She gave me the beer. Marge Bartlett had settled herself carefully on one arm of the living room sofa, not far from where Earl Maguire had gotten his neck broken. She was talking with three businessy-looking guys and inhaling her wine-dark scotch and water.
“What happened here today?” Susan Silverman asked. We stood in the archway that separated the living room from the front hall, and she rested one hand lightly on my upper arm. I restrained the urge to flex it.
“Somebody hit a lawyer named Earl Maguire on the side of the head so hard it broke his neck and he died. Or that’s probably what happened. I found him here dead with his neck broken and a large bruise on the side of his face.”
“Do you have any idea who?”
“Nope, nor why. There had been a threatening phone call directed at Mrs. Bartlett which seemed as bizarre and disjointed as everything else going on here. That’s why I’m doing my centurion routine.”
“And she’s going on with the party just like this?” Susan shook her head. “I don’t know if that’s courage or obsession or madness.”
“I don’t either,” I said, “but courage doesn’t seem the most likely choice.”
A middle-sized handsome man stopped in front of us. “A real blast, huh?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “Fake ones are better than none, though.”
“You bet your ass,” he said. He slurred the s’s, and I realized he was drunk already. “Marge and Rog really know how to throw a blast. What you do?”
“I’m a grape stomper at a winery. I stopped by here to get my feet bleached.”
Susan Silverman giggled at my elbow. I said, “It’s an old George Gobel line.” The handsome man said, “I’m into confidence training myself. If you believe in your product, then, by God, you can sell it, ya know? And the greatest product ya got to sell is yourself. Right?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m for sale.”
“Oh, yeah. Look, you wouldn’t believe the change a confidence seminar can make in your whole approach to living. I mean, it’s like getting psyched up for a football game, ya know? I’m going all over the state having these confidence seminars, and the results are fantastic, fan-tastic.”
“How about not giving one right now though; my ears are beginning to smart.”
“You got some terrific sense of humor. What did you say your name was?”
“Spenser.”
“Well, Spence, you got some terrific sense of humor. I like that. This the little woman?”
Susan Silverman looked as if she were carsick.
He went on, “I was into losing, ya know? And so I took this confidence seminar and they showed me how I wasn’t using all my potential and now I’m part of the team and running the seminars myself. What’d you say you did?”
“I said I was a grape crusher at a winery, but I was only kidding.”
“Yeah, I got that. What’s your real job? I mean, maybe I could help you or your people, ya know? Maybe you could use a little confidence.”
Susan Silverman said, “Do you have a program for overconfidence?”
He frowned. “No. But you know, there might be a market there. You got a pretty good head for business for a lady. By God, I never thought of that.” He moved off.
Marge Bartlett said something to one of the businessy types and stood up. He gave her a slap on the rear end, and all three men on the couch laughed. Marge Bartlett moved away and headed for the kitchen. I moved along after her. Susan said, “I’ll be along. I think I’ll sample the buffet before those two guys finish it.”
As I passed the dining room, I noticed the coach and his buddy still at the buffet. A colony of beer cans had sprung up on the highboy beside them. In the kitchen Roger Bartlett was mixing drinks at the counter from half-gallons of booze. A plastic trash can was filled with chopped ice and beer cans, and a whole ham garnished with fruit was being readied for the buffet table. I wondered if the two gourmets in the corner had already polished off the first one. It would be fun to join them and comment on the broads and make wisecracks about the other guests and eat and drink till it became self-destructive and have your wife drive home. That would be more fun than finding a guy with his neck snapped, or going one-on-one with a weight lifter. Or following Marge Bartlett around all evening. I looked around for Mr. Confidence. I needed a booster shot.
Bartlett poured a glass near full of sctoch, added an ice cube and a teardrop’s worth of water, and gave it to his wife. She took a big drink and said, “Whoooo, that’s strong. You want me to get drunk so you can take advantage of me.”
“Dear, by the time I get to the bedroom tonight, you’ll be snoring like a hog.”
“Roger!” she said and turned away. She saw me standing in the doorway and came over.
“My God, Spenser, you’re a big handsome brute,” she said and leaned against me with her right arm around me.
I said, “You’re really into words, aren’t you?”
“He’s my bodyguard,” Marge Bartlett said to a woman with bags under her eyes and a pouty mouth. “Don’t you think I ought to keep my body very close to him so he can guard it?” She made snuggling motions at me. Pressed against me, she felt tightly cased and ready to burst, like a knockwurst.
The woman with the baggy eyes said, “Someone should guard your body, sweetie, that’s for sure.”
I said, “You’re leaning on my gun arm.”
She put her mouth up close to my ear and said, “I could lean on something else, if you were nice.”
“It wouldn’t carry the weight,” I said.
“You’re awful,” she said and stepped away from me.
I said, “All us big handsome brutes are like that.”
Baggy-eyes snickered, and Marge Bartlett spotted Mr. Confidence across the kitchen and went after him.
“Are you really a bodyguard?” Baggy-eyes said.
“Yep.”
“Do you have a gun?”
“No,” I said. “I have this mysterious power I acquired in the Orient to cloud men’s minds so they cannot see me.”
Susan appeared with an asso
rted platter from the buffet table and offered me some. “I have two forks,” she said. Baggy-eyes moved off. Marge Bartlett and Mr. Confidence were in close proximity across the kitchen. I wondered if she had called him a big handsome brute.
“Having a nice time?” Susan asked.
“It’s better than getting bitten by a great white shark,” I said.
“Oh, it’s not that bad. In fact, you kind of like it. I’ve been watching you. You look at everything; you listen to everybody. I bet you know what everyone in the kitchen is talking about and what they look like. They fascinate you.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m into people.”
“Oh, you’re such a big tough guy, and you think you’re funny, but I’ll bet if that fool with the confidence courses got in trouble, you’d get him out of it.”
“A catcher in the rye,” I said.
“You’re being smart, I know, but that’s right. That’s exactly what you are. You are exactly that sentimental.”
The wall phone in the kitchen rang. A thin woman said, “Oh, Christ, that’s my kid, I’ll bet anything.” And a tall white-haired man with a red face and a green polka-dot bow tie answered. “Duffy’s Tavern, Archie the manager speaking.” He listened and then he said, “Anybody here named Spenser?” The thin woman said, “Whew.” I took the phone and said hello.
“Mr. Spenser? This is Mary Riordan at the State Police. Lieutenant Healy asked me to call you and tell you that Earl Maguire died of a broken neck apparently the result of being struck on the side of the face with a solid blunt object.”
“Son of a gun,” I said. “Thank you.”
She hung up. Susan looked at me and raised her eyebrows.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just a confirmation on the cause of death. I asked Healy to let me know, and he did. I didn’t think he would.”
“Who’s Healy?” she asked.
“State cop.”
I looked across the kitchen and was suddenly aware that I didn’t know where Marge Bartlett was. “Where’d Marge Bartlett go?” I said to Susan.
“I don’t know. Just a minute ago she was over there talking to a fat guy with a mustache.”
I walked through the kitchen to the dining room. And on into the living room. No sign. I felt the first small tug of anxiety in my stomach. Atta boy, lose your goddamned assignment in her own house. On either side of the fireplace in the living room were French doors, thinly curtained. One was slightly ajar, and I walked toward it. Outside I heard someone say in a half scream, “Don’t, don’t.” The little tug in my solar plexus darted up to my throat, and I jumped through the door. I was on a screened porch that ran the whole side of the house. In the dim light I could see a man and a woman struggling. The man had his back to me, but I could see the woman’s face across his shoulder, white in the dimness. It was Marge Bartlett. She wrenched away from him as I came onto the porch. I took one step with my left foot, planted it, turned sideways, and drove my right foot into the small of the man’s back. He said, “Ungh,” and went headfirst through the screen and into a mass of forsythia. I went after him. Marge Bartlett was screaming. The man was sluggishly trying to get out of the forsythia. I got his right arm bent up behind him and my left hand clamped under his chin and dragged him back on the porch.
He was protesting, but not coherently. The porch light snapped on. People were crowding out on the porch. The guy I had hold of was Vaughn, the fat man with the crew cut and the big mustache who had been one of the first to arrive.
“Goddamned tease,” he was yelling now. “She got me out here; I didn’t do anything. Goddamned stinking tease. Get you hot and then scream when you touch her. Bastard. Bitch.” There were scratches on his face where he went through the screen. There was lipstick on his face too. I looked at Marge Bartlett; her lipstick was smudged. The deep V-neck of her blouse was torn, and some of a black longline bra showed.
“Let him go, Spenser. Are you crazy? We were just talking. For God’s sake, haven’t you ever been to a party? We were just talking, and I guess he got the wrong idea. You know how men are.” Dimly visible through her makeup her face seemed to be red. “They always get the wrong idea. I was just surprised. I could have handled this. Look at my screen. Look …” I let the man go.
“Goddamned liar. You got me out here and started playing goddamned kissy-face with me and rubbing your boobs up against me and when I get serious you start screaming and yelling and your goddamned gorilla comes charging out and hits me from behind.”
“Gorilla?” I said.
Susan Silverman had come up beside me. “Goddamned gorilla,” she said.
16
It was two thirty-five in the morning. The noise was dense and tangible in the living room. Marge Bartlett had changed from a lavender to a yellow top, and the lavender trimmings she still wore glared more brusquely than ever. Vaughn, his back sore but unbroken, had collected his very silent and thin-mouthed wife and departed. The stereo was playing, and Billie Holiday’s remarkable voice cut through the coarse air. “… Papa may have, but God bless the child that’s got his own …” I edged a little closer so I could listen.
Two women, one red-haired, one brunette, both wearing pants suits a little tighter than they should be, were talking between me and the speakers.
“Do you think she’ll pass out?”
“Why should this party be different?”
“She’s got to be drunk out of her mind to be wearing that top with those earrings. She’d never do that sober. One thing you can always say for Margie, her taste in clothes is terrific.”
“It’s a little wild for her age.”
Across the room Susan was talking with a tall, thin dark-faced man with flaring nostrils that gave him the look of an Arabian horse. It was Dr. Croft. His hair was short and slicked straight back. His sideburns, thin and barbered, came to his jawline. He patted her hip. I squeezed past the fashion commentary and came up beside Susan and put my hand on her shoulder.
“Oh, Spenser,” she said, “I’d like you to meet Doctor Croft.”
I said, “We met briefly. How are you, Doctor Croft?”
He smiled and put out his hand. “Ray,” he said. “Good to see you again.”
We shook hands. His fingers were very long and showed the marks of a manicurist. They thickened at the ends.
“What’s your specialty?” I asked.
“General practice.” Again the big brilliant smile. When he smiled, the lines around his mouth became very pronounced. “I’m a specialist in general practice. It’s what medicine is about, I believe. People to people. Is Mrs. Silverman here with you?”
“Yes.” I phrased a remark about hip touchers but thought it would be immature to make it. So I didn’t.
“I understand you’re a detective.”
“Yes.”
“I understand you kicked Vaughn Meadows through a screen a little while ago.” His wide mouth was almost lipless, and when he smiled he looked less like an Arabian horse and more like a shark.
“Mistaken identity,” I said.
“That’s okay,” he said. “Vaughn Meadows would be a far better person if someone would give him a kick in the ass about weekly.” His smile shut off, and a serious frown replaced it. “It’s a terrible sequence of things that has befallen this family.”
I nodded. Susan said, “Isn’t it? The Bartletts seem so resilient, though. They keep bearing up.”
“How about the boy?” Croft asked. “Is there any trace of him?”
I shook my head. “Haven’t been able to look for him lately. I’ve had to stick around his mom.”
Croft rattled the ice cubes in his glass. “Looks like I’m empty,” he said. “Excuse me while I fix myself a new one. Getting through one of these parties sober is more than I could do.” He bared his brilliant shark smile again and then closed it off like a trap shutting and went to the kitchen.
“He appeared to be patting you on the hip,” I said.
“That’s why you came over.�
� Susan smiled and shook her head. “Were you prepared to defend my virtue?”
“I’m in pursuit of it myself, and I don’t like poachers.”
“He’s a very big man in this town,” Susan said. “Board of Selectmen, Conservation Commission, adviser to the Board of Health, used to be Planning Board chairman. All the best people have him when they’re sick.”
“He’s a hip patter,” I said.
“Very wealthy,” she said. “Very big house.”
“Pushy bastard,” I said.
“I wonder what it is in women,” she said. “Whenever they find a big strong guy with a wide adolescent streak running through him, they get a powerful urge to hold his head in their laps.”
“Right here?” I said.
“About now I think we could probably marry and raise a family here without anyone noticing.”
She was right. It looked like a Busby Berkeley production of Dante’s Inferno. To my left in the dining room the food was scattered on the table and floor. The platters were nearly empty, and the tablecloth was stained and littered with potato salad, cole slaw, miniature meatballs, tomato sauce, mustard, ham scraps, ring tabs, ashes, and things unrecognizable. The detritus of jollity.
The hockey coach had departed, but his buddy remained, red-eyed and nearly motionless, in his oversized right hand a can of beer, and a platoon, perhaps a company, of its dead companions in silent formation on the highboy beside him. His wife was speaking sharply to him with no effect.
Marge Bartlett was back on the couch between two of the business types in the razor-styled haircuts and the double knit suits. She was talking thickly, her mouth loose and wet, an iceless drink in her right hand, her left rubbing the thigh of one of the men. As she talked, the two men exchanged grins behind her head, and one of them rolled his eyes upward and stuck his tongue out of the left corner of his mouth.
“I’m a very nice person,” she was saying. It came out “nishe pershon.”
“Hey Marge,” one of the business types said, “you know the definition of a nice girl?”
Five Classic Spenser Mysteries Page 50