Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Twelve

I’d gotten up, walked past her and out of the room, on my way to walking right out of the house. It was still hers, of course. The house. But Rosie and I had been there a long time. And Melanie Joan wasn’t the only one who could act like a drama queen.

“Where are you going?” she called after me.

“Walking to work,” I said. “Just no longer working for you.”

I don’t know how she managed to get into her sneakers as fast as she did, but she caught up to me when I was about to cross Beacon and head into the park. She was out of breath.

“You can’t quit,” she said.

“Watch me,” I said. “Rosie and I can be packed up and out by tomorrow.”

“Why are you acting this way?”

Now she sounded like a petulant child, which, in so many ways, she was.

“I’m not acting any way,” I said. “Well, maybe a little anxious. I get that way sometimes when I’m between clients.”

“But I’m your client,” she said.

“Were,” I said. “You’re the writer, Melanie Joan. Keep your tenses straight.”

I was walking briskly as we passed the duckling statues in the Public Garden, just a few yards from Beacon. She was keeping up with me. Maybe this would be her morning walk today. We angled to the left then, toward Charles, where we had to wait for the light to cross. This wasn’t the most direct route to my office, but I liked walking past the playground set in the far corner of the Boston Common where my father used to take me when I was little.

“How can I make things right between us?” Melanie Joan said now. “I can’t lose you.”

“You can start by telling me where you were last night,” I said. “And who you were with.”

She huffed. “Well, if you must know, I was with a man,” she said.

“What man?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Humor me.”

“I can’t tell you,” she said.

“And why is that?”

“Because he’s married!”

The force of the way she said it almost made me laugh.

“I don’t care!” I said.

We stopped briefly at the playground. It was early, but there were a lot of parents and children here already, on one of those Boston mornings that made the rest of the world feel like out of town. I watched a dad help his daughter across the monkey bars.

“Is there a reason why we’re standing here?” she said.

“Because I like it here,” I said.

“Oh,” she said.

“Back to your mystery man,” I said as we headed for Boylston.

“I promised him I wouldn’t tell,” Melanie Joan said.

“I can keep a secret,” I said. “You can look it up, it’s right there in the code of conduct for private detectives.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s one of the things that keeps me young,” I said, adding, “though not everyone seems to think so these days.”

We were passing the little store in Park Plaza that actually still had a keno sign in the window, and then The Trolley Shop. There was no one around us, but Melanie Joan lowered her voice.

“It’s my manager,” she said.

“Oh, ho,” I said. I turned my head and grinned at her. “Richard Gross, you dog, you.”

“Very funny,” she said.

“Not so much.”

She said, “Richard took the early flight from Los Angeles yesterday.”

“And you didn’t think you could trust Spike or me to know you’d gone off for a night of carnal passion at your cutie’s hotel?” I said.

If she appreciated me trying to sound like one of her novels, she hid it well. But then irony had never been one of Melanie Joan Hall’s strong suits, for as long as I had known her.

“Richard is here because he wants to take charge of my current situation,” she said. “I stuck up for you and told him you were in charge. And now this is the thanks I get.”

“How can I be such an ungrateful bitch?” I said. “Whatever gets into me?”

She solemnly shook her head in agreement. That was it for irony this morning. Maybe the whole rest of the week.

“Where is Spike?” she said.

“I told him he could take the day off.”

“But who’s going to watch me when you’re not around?”

“I’m sure Richard Gross will think of something,” I said. “It sounds like he knows everything.”

“But I want you and Spike,” she said.

“Then you need to act like it,” I said. “It’s rather difficult for Spike and me to protect you if we don’t know where you are.”

We had walked up the stairs and were in my office. I sat down behind my desk and called Spike and told him our wayward girl had come home. Melanie Joan made a face. I called Samantha Heller after I hung up with Spike. She asked if I needed anything. I told her she could email me Melanie Joan’s schedule for the day, which she did.

Spike was with us in the office a half-hour later, telling Melanie Joan he would drive her back to River Street Place. She had decided to do a book signing while she was in Boston. She said it was for fun. I knew it was for an ego stroke. She was due at the Barnes & Noble at the Prudential Center at eleven. It gave her plenty of time for the essentials. Hair, makeup, wardrobe.

I asked Spike if he would walk Rosie while Melanie Joan was getting ready.

“I’m starting to feel like your concierge,” he said.

“I’m a big tipper,” I said.

“Since when?” Spike said.

Once they were gone I was happily alone behind the rustic wood desk that I loved, enjoying some Melanie Joan−free time, amazed at how quickly time away from her had become this meaningful. But reminding myself once more how much Rosie and I owed her. And as crazy as it was, and as crazy as I knew she was, I did like her.

I was checking emails, finding even that task enjoyable today, when my father called.

“Busy?” he said.

“Never too busy for my pops,” I said.

“I have a problem I need to discuss with you,” he said.

“What kind?”

“A Joe Doyle problem,” he said.

The most powerful lawyer in Boston, as bad as the bad guys he so often defended. And one with whom my father had history, none good.

“The one and only,” I said.

“Himself,” Phil Randall said.

“Can you briefly describe the problem?” I said.

“I think he might want to kill me,” my father said.