Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Twenty-Seven

When I arrived at the house Samantha informed me that Melanie Joan was well sedated and back to sleep at last.

“I gave her the pill I like to think of as the big boy,” Samantha said.

“She must have really liked that guy,” I said.

Samantha shrugged. “She likes them all,” she said. “All the way back to when she married one of her former professors.”

I thanked her for coming and told her she needed to go get some sleep, because she had a long day ahead of her. She smiled and said we all did. I had only just met her. But I liked her. And told her that now.

“Don’t sound so surprised about liking me,” she said. “Agents are people, too.”

“It should be a T-shirt,” I said. “Now, go get some sleep.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” she said.

I fixed cups of coffee for both of us. I knew I wasn’t going to sleep, either. We sat in the kitchen.

“You didn’t have much use for Richard Gross,” I said.

“And as I know you could see, the feeling was almost breathtakingly mutual,” she said. “But this? His throat cut? My God.”

She ran a hand through her hair. She still looked way better than she should have in the middle of the night.

“What in the world was Richard doing there?” she said.

“Whatever it was,” I said, “he thought it was important enough for him to spend another night in Boston.”

“Maybe it was ego,” she said. “Maybe he wanted to show he could crack the case before you did.”

I grinned at her. “As if such a thing were even remotely possible in a civilized society.”

I sipped some coffee. Delicious. Dunkin’. I’d been raised to believe that there really was no substitute.

“When Gross was here,” I said, “he said something about possibly having a lead on the email.”

“I heard the same thing,” Samantha said.

“Did you follow up?” I said.

Now she grinned. “We didn’t have that kind of relationship,” she said, “when we had any kind of relationship at all.”

“If he had found out anything,” I said, “you’d think he would’ve mentioned it to Melanie Joan.”

“Unless he thought he was about to find out something tonight,” Samantha said, “and never got the chance.”

We sat in silence. There was blessedly no sound from upstairs.

“May I ask you a question?” she said.

“Make it a softball.”

“How can you take something like what just happened in stride?” she said.

“Do I sound callous?” I said.

“No,” Samantha said, “I wasn’t suggesting that. But I’m just barely holding it together and I didn’t even like the guy.”

“It’s all a bluff,” I said. “I got rocked tonight the way we all did. I saw the blood. But I don’t have the luxury of going to pieces.”

“I get it.”

“By the way?” I said. “How are you going to work this when you have to get to work?”

“By making sure that no one could ever possibly think that Melanie Joan’s relationship with the noted power broker Richard Gross was anything more than professional,” she said. “And that his death was a random, tragic event that has shocked her the way it’s shocked us all.”

“Take the personal out of play.”

“Way, way out,” she said. “And then Melanie Joan goes back to work when the series actually begins principal photography. You know that in addition to everything else she’s executive producer, right?”

“I thought that was a name-only thing for the credits,” I said.

“Not to her,” Samantha said. “She’s already letting the line producer and the director know who the boss lady is. Or bossiest lady. This is the one about how if you’re not the lead dog, the view is always the same.”

“Or lead bitch,” I said.

She grinned. “A lot of that helpless-little-girl act is just that,” Samantha said. “An act. She told me one time that most people think it’s derogatory when they get called a bitch. But she said she thinks of it as a badge of honor.”

Samantha Heller sighed. “And as callous as this sounds,” she said, “this is going to make her even more famous than she was already. Once word gets out about Richard, there’s going to be a huge spike in her sales on Amazon, wait and see.”

“Good times,” I said.

“Just sayin’,” she said.

“Now we just have to make sure that we keep her safe,” I said.

“You think she’s in even more danger now?”

“Put it this way,” I said. “She’s not in any less.”