Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Two

Before we left the bar I tried to correct the record with my father about what had actually transpired when I had first been hired by Melanie Joan Hall.

She was being stalked by an especially creepy ex-husband with even creepier sexual tastes. But Richie and I had teamed up to finally take him down, and an equally dangerous friend along with him, when they tried to drug and assault me, not knowing I had shown up having taken an antidote.

“Good times,” Phil Randall said drily.

But Melanie Joan had shown her undying gratitude to Rosie the dog and me by allowing us to rent her four-story town house on River Street Place, where, legend had it, ship sails had been woven in the long-ago. Melanie Joan had once again fallen in love at that particular moment in her life and had gone Hollywood, something that seemed as inevitable to me as the phases of the moon. She wanted me to live in the town house rent-free. I told her I couldn’t do that. She finally established a ridiculously low figure as an alternative and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Saying no to Melanie Joan, queen of the bodice-ripping romance novels and founder of what called itself, without the slightest hint of irony, the Ardor Channel, was like trying to stop the rain.

So she had gone off years ago to, in her words, put even more tinsel in Tinseltown, and Rosie and I had lived at the foot of Beacon Hill ever since.

“Tell me she doesn’t want her house back,” my father said, “even though your mother has kept your room as you left it.”

“Just neater, I’m guessing.”

“There’s that.”

“You’re too old to move back home,” he said.

“And, in your view, not getting any younger.”

He waved for the check. I told him this one was on me. While we waited I explained to him that the Ardor Channel, the mention of which always made him giggle, was about to start shooting a new series based on Melanie Joan’s most recent book, the first one set in the modern world, one chronicling the adventures of the great-granddaughter of her signature character, Cassandra Demeter, the spunky and extremely frisky girl from the wrong side of the tracks in Boston who had made it into the thick of Brahmin society at the turn of the century. With and without her clothes on.

“Your mother loves those books,” my father said. “God save us and protect us.”

“Melanie Joan is actually staying here at the hotel,” I said. “I’m meeting her for dinner at Davio’s.”

“You two walking over together?”

“What, and spoil her entrance?”

“She should have joined us for a drink,” he said.

“Would have cut into essential prep time for hair and makeup and wardrobe,” I said.

“Why does she need you this time?”

“Says she has a problem only I can help her with.”

“Hopefully not one that puts you in harm’s way.”

I sighed. “I can take care of myself.”

“If I had a nickel,” Phil Randall said.

When I’d signed the check, I saw him once again staring over at the entrance to The Street Bar again.

“You okay?”

“Never better,” he said.

He had parked in a lot at Exeter and Newbury, saying the walk would do him good, he could get some air and walk off the vodka before he got into the car. I told him I was going to take a stroll through the Public Garden before making my way back to Davio’s.

I kissed him on the cheek when we were outside and standing in front of the new entrance to the hotel.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” I said.

“I just told you I was,” he said. “And you know I never lie to my baby girl.”

While I waited for the light to change on Arlington, I turned around, already smiling, expecting to see my father’s jaunty walk as he made his way down my favorite walking street in the whole city.

But he was already gone.

Wherever he was going, it wasn’t to his car.

And as for him never lying to his baby girl, it would turn out that there was a first time for everything.