Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Sixty-Six

Hawk had passed on dinner at the house, saying he had plans with the redhead. I arranged to meet up with him tomorrow and pay him out of the big check Melanie Joan had presented to me before dinner, one that I planned to divide up equally among him and Spike and me.

“Well, thank you for your service, as people like to say,” I said to Hawk.

“What people?” he said.

There was a pause at his end and then he said, “You sure we done here, missy? You good with your pen pal?”

“You’re not?” I said.

“Not ready to put a bow on this even if you might be,” he said. “On account of I’s still reporting to a higher power.”

“God?” I said.

“Susan,” he said.

I laughed and asked him again if he was sure he didn’t want to have dinner with Melanie Joan and Samantha and Spike and me.

“Fuck no,” he said.

Spike cooked, lemon chicken and fingerling potatoes and broccolini. Now we were having coffee in the living room, still talking about John Melvin’s letter.

“I knew John hated me,” Melanie Joan said. “I just didn’t know how much he hated me.”

“So you do believe his deathbed confession?” I said.

I’d made a copy of it for her.

“It needed an editor,” Melanie Joan said. “But yes, I do.”

“He waited an awfully long time to get even,” I said.

“Sustained by hate,” Samantha said. “Or rage.”

“Or both,” I said.

“Revenge,” Spike said. “A dish served cold.” He grinned. “I just made that up, by the way.”

Melanie Joan laughed and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. She wanted the evening to be festive, a celebration of what she had decided was closure.

“Do you really no longer care who sent those pages?” I said to her. “It’s kind of where we all came in, Melanie Joan.”

“You want to know what I really think?” she said.

“Always,” I said.

“I think whoever did it just changed their mind when people around me started dying,” she said.

“Maybe it makes as much sense as anything else,” Samantha Heller said. “You’ve probably made enemies you didn’t even know were enemies, long before even I came along.”

“Fame is a cruel mistress,” Spike said. He grinned. “Just came up with that, too.”

“I’m begging you to stop,” I said.

He went into the kitchen then and came back with glasses and a bottle of Louis XIII cognac he’d brought from the restaurant, and poured for everybody.

“To Melanie Joan,” Spike said. “A survivor.”

We all drank to that.

“Tell the truth,” he said to Melanie Joan. “Are you going to miss me when you’re finally back in Tinseltown?”

She and Samantha had decided to skip publisher meetings in New York for now. They were flying back to Los Angeles from the private terminal at Hanscom Field tomorrow. Samantha said that even with John Melvin dead, they were hiring L.A. bodyguards for the immediate future to be on the safe side, and maybe even for Boston when the new series started shooting in a few months.

“I am going to miss you desperately,” Melanie Joan said to Spike. “And Hawk, too.”

She turned to me.

“Do you really think this is over?” she said, and sipped cognac.

“For you, perhaps,” I said. “I very much want it to be for you. But I still want to know what happened to Jennifer Price’s baby.”

“If you ever do find out,” Melanie Joan said, “let me know.”

“I thought you didn’t care about her,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t care about poor tragic Jennifer or her baby, as insensitive as that might sound,” she said. “But the more I think about that baby, the more I think it might be the start of a good novel.” She winked at me. “Or the end of one. After all, I need a good idea for my next book whenever Samantha and I do meet with publishers.”

She drank more cognac. She’d had plenty of wine at dinner and was starting to act more than somewhat lit. And as full of herself as ever.

“Maybe I should keep you on retainer to keep searching,” Melanie Joan said.

“You don’t have to,” I said. “If I want to find what happened to that child, I will, I promise you.”

It came out with more force than I intended. I saw Samantha Heller staring at me.

“You know something?” she said. “I believe you.”

She and Melanie Joan left late the next morning in Samantha’s rental car, Samantha saying that the nice thing about private terminals was how they magically made rental cars disappear. I made two trips out to the car with Melanie Joan’s bags. What we couldn’t fit in the trunk we put in the backseat.

Melanie Joan and I hugged it out at the front door, and she said that she could never properly thank me. I told her I still wasn’t quite sure what exactly I’d done for her.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” she said, and then kissed me on both cheeks.

I hugged Samantha Heller, too.

“I wish I could say this has been fun,” I said.

She laughed.

“I hear that, girl,” she said. “But if I ever get into trouble of my own...”

I finished the thought for her.

“Call Spike,” I said. “Or Hawk.”

I was upstairs painting that afternoon, on my way to pay Hawk, when Samantha called.

“You guys couldn’t even go a whole day without talking to me?” I said.

“It turns out we took a little side trip,” Samantha said. “But I’ll let the writer explain. She’s quite proud of herself.”

They were on speaker.

“I found Jennifer Price’s daughter,” Melanie Joan said now. “I’ll explain when you get here.”

“Wait,” I said. “Where are you guys?”

“Sheeps Heaven Mountain,” Melanie Joan said.