Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Six

She was waiting for us when we got out of the elevator at the penthouse level, twitchy as a hummingbird, dressed in workout clothes I knew weren’t cheap, just because nothing Melanie Joan Hall owned ever was.

The baseball cap she was wearing had ardor written on the front.

“It took the two of you long enough!” she snapped.

“Melanie Joan,” Samantha said, her voice calm. “We were at Sunny’s office. It’s on the other side of the park. We felt it was quicker to walk. Or run, to be more precise.”

“We’re here now,” I said.

“Well,” Melanie Joan said, “hooray for both of you.”

We walked down to her suite, at the end of a long hallway. She used her key card to let us all in. I knew it was challenging in the world of key cards to break into a hotel room. But my friend Ghost Garrity, who had elevated breaking and entering into an art form, had explained to me one time that if you could get your hands on a used card to start the process, it wasn’t as difficult as you might think.

“Look!” Melanie Joan said, pointing dramatically at the coffee table where her bottle of Emperador, specially ordered for her by The Newbury, had rested the night before.

In the middle of the table was a copy of Burning Excess, her latest book, red paint that was apparently supposed to look like blood splashed across the cover, a sharp-point paring knife driven into the book.

Samantha Heller started to reach down and I told her not to touch anything, just in case prints had been left, though I doubted that they had.

Melanie Joan told us that she’d just come back from her morning walk when she found the book and the knife.

“It wasn’t there before you left?” I said.

“Of course it wasn’t!”

“Have you called hotel security?” I said to Melanie Joan.

“I called you!” she said. “Do you think I want to read about this on Page Six?”

We were in Boston and Page Six was the gossip section of the New York Post. But we both knew what she was saying.

“We should get them up here,” I said.

“Absolutely not!” she said. “Once something like this gets out, people will immediately want to know why someone would do something as hideous as this.”

I knew that I would have to talk to the hotel, and sooner rather than later, because they’d want to look at footage from the video cameras I knew had to be situated in the hall. But I also knew that if you were tech-savvy enough to manufacture a key card at a high-end hotel, then you could get yourself a jammer for the cameras. I’d seen it done before, and not just at places like The Newbury.

For now, I was making the assumption that if somebody had risked making a delivery like this, that person was no amateur. Or, in the words of my sainted father, had brass ones.

“We may need bodyguards for the rest of your stay in Boston,” Samantha Heller said.

“Sunny has guarded me before,” Melanie Joan said. “She can do it again.”

No no no, I thought.

Fuck no.

But then Samantha Heller, bless her heart, threw me a life preserver.

“We’re going to be fighting a two-front battle here, Melanie Joan,” she said to her client. “I’m not sure Sunny can handle this all herself.”

I wondered if Melanie Joan even heard the tone Samantha was using, someone so much younger than she was speaking to her the way she would a child.

“Job one is keeping you safe,” Samantha continued. “Then Sunny has to find out who is behind this nastiness. And as formidable a presence as I can already see that Sunny is, she really can’t do both.”

In that moment, she sounded like my agent.

“Sunny did both before,” Melanie Joan said.

“Back then,” I said, “we both knew who was after you. We didn’t need to establish a list of suspects. We had our guy from the start.”

Dr. John Melvin. Psychiatrist. Ex-husband. Stalker and kink. Recently turned down yet again, as emphatically as ever, by the state’s parole board. It had become a very nice habit with them.

“Have you heard from your ex lately?” I said.

“No,” Melanie Joan said. “And may my ex never be an ex-con.”

“Have you?”

“Have I what?” she said, perhaps already moving on to her next thought.

“Heard from John Melvin.”

“I hadn’t heard from him in years,” she said. “He used to write me when he first got to prison. But out of the blue, a couple months ago, a mean letter arrived at my home in L.A.”

“What did it say?”

“That one day we would meet again, in one way or another.”

“That was it?”

“Oh,” she said, waving her hand, “there was some silliness at the end about me continuing to enjoy my success while I still could.”

Samantha Heller said, “You never mentioned that to me.”

“I didn’t think it was worth mentioning, with him locked away,” Melanie Joan said.

Samantha Heller looked at me and did a quick, subtle eye roll.

“And now I want that book out of this room this instant!” Melanie Joan said, staring at it the way she would a cockroach.

“For now, it’s evidence,” I said. “I’ll bag it before I leave and get it to a friend of mine with the cops.”

We walked into the next room, a small dining area, and sat at the table. I had Melanie Joan take me through her morning. She said she had taken her morning walk down Newbury to Mass Ave. and then back up Boylston. Then again. Proudly pointing out that she made sure to walk at least three miles a day whenever possible.

“I don’t keep the weight off by wishing it away,” she said.

“Few can,” I said.

She gave me a look that would have been far more withering if she weren’t once again asking me to save her from the bad guys.

“Snarky as ever,” she said.

“Chronically,” I said. “Happily. Proudly.”

She kept going, saying she’d finally stopped to pick up a latte at the Starbucks on the corner of Boylston and Berkeley. She said it was the morning and the sidewalks were already crowded with people going to work, and she saw no reason to be afraid, not knowing that she would become terrified as soon as she was back in the suite and saw the book. Had called me immediately, the stakes having been raised, and exponentially, in that moment.

“Maybe it is John,” Melanie Joan said. “Maybe this is some kind of act of vengeance from prison. He knows that every time he has applied for parole, I have written a letter reminding the board of what he did to me. And tried to do to Sunny.”

“I could make a call to the prison,” I said. “All prison calls are recorded.”

“But wouldn’t he have been the one who waited an awfully long time to get even?” Samantha said. “Like the author of the email to our author?”

“Revenge is a powerful, and sustainable, emotion,” I said. “And motivator.”

“He hates us both,” Melanie Joan said. “And Richie, too.”

I said, “I’m going to have to start somewhere. Might as well start there. He could easily have hired someone to send that email. Perhaps he has even figured out a way to send them himself on Guerilla Mail, and hired someone to leave the book here.”

I walked out of the dining area and into Melanie Joan’s bedroom, went into her closet, and came out with one of the plastic dry-cleaning bags. Went back and picked up my non-Prada leather bag where I’d left it in the living room and pulled out my nitrile crime scene gloves. Then I carefully placed the book and the knife inside the dry-cleaning bag.

I knew I would call Lee Farrell at Homicide when I got back to my office and ask for another favor involving a case that had anything to do with him, or with Homicide. I planned to do all that when, despite Melanie Joan’s objections, I had gotten in touch with whomever was in charge of security at The Newbury and explained what had happened, and asked to see the video footage from her floor, beginning from when she’d gone out for her walk.

I had forgotten to take off the gloves when I came back to the dining room table.

“You carry those gloves around with you?” Samantha Heller said.

“Doesn’t everybody?” I said.

“Listen,” she said, “before you leave, maybe you could point me in the direction of the best private security firm in Boston.”

I told her I had a better idea.