Painted Ladies

20

I took Winifred Minor to lunch at Grill 23, which was handily equidistant between her office and mine. We sat at the bar. It was kind of early in the day for the warming pleasures of alcohol, so I ordered iced tea. She ordered a glass of chardonnay. “So,” I said, and raised my glass of tea. “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

“You can’t toast wine with tea,” she said.

“You can’t?”

“No,” she said seriously. “It’s bad luck.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said. “Thank God you warned me in time.”

She smiled. But she didn’t pick up her glass until I put mine down. Then she raised hers for a sip.

“Missy Minor?” I said.

She finished her sip and put her glass carefully back down on the bar.

“What about Missy Minor?” she said.

“Your daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Attractive girl,” I said.

“You’ve spoken with her?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Winifred said.

“You know how this kind of thing works,” I said. “You got nothing, so you start snooping around, looking for a loose end to tug on.”

“And you decided my daughter was such?” Winifred said.

“I went over to Walford, where Prince taught, and talked with everyone I could find. Your daughter was one of them.”

“And you’ve singled her out?” Winifred said.

“Of course,” I said. “I find a woman in Prince’s class whose mother is handling the insurance claims on the crime in which Prince was killed?”

“There’s no connection,” Winifred said.

“I’m sure there isn’t,” I said. “But it’s too big a coincidence to let it slide.”

“Coincidences happen,” she said.

I had ordered a small shellfish sampler for lunch. She was having Caesar salad.

“They do,” I said.

I put some red sauce on a littleneck clam, and ate. She messed around with her fork in her salad bowl. But she didn’t put any food in her mouth.

“And I’d have been more willing to accept that,” I said, “if you had mentioned to me that there was a daughter.”

“I didn’t consider it germane,” Winifred said. “I was unaware that she knew Prince.”

“Was she an art major?”

“Yes.”

“At Walford?”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “You know that.”

“How long were you with the Bureau?” I said.

“Fifteen years.”

I ate a shrimp. She appeared to be counting the anchovies in her salad. The bar was partly full. Mostly people having lunch but a sprinkling of thank-God-it’s-noontime people. Men, mostly, who worked in the big insurance companies. No wonder they drank.

“And you didn’t think someone would discover this coincidence?”

“That’s all it is,” she said.

“I hate coincidences,” I said. “They don’t do anything for anybody, and they muddy up the water to beat hell.”

She studied her anchovies some more.

“Who’s her father?” I said.

Winifred shook her head silently.

“I’m almost sure there has to be one,” I said.

“He died,” Winifred said.

“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “Is it recent?”

“He died a long time ago.”

“What was his name?” I said.

She shook her head again.

“How come Missy won’t talk about him, either?”

Winifred took in a long, slow breath. It sounded a little shaky. Then she stood.

“Thanks for lunch,” she said, and left me alone with her anchovies.

Spenser, master inquisitor.