Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Seven

A couple hours later I was with Spike at what I insisted on calling the new and improved Spike’s, his increasingly trendy place on Marshall Street.

“Would you call the Union Oyster House new and improved if it had been stolen by a skeevy hedge-fund asshat and then fire-bombed after that for good measure?” he asked.

“Would that the Union Oyster House never has to find out,” I said.

“Let’s not drink to that,” Spike said.

We both had Virgin Marys in front of us. Spike’s had been opened for about an hour. The lunch crowd was as loud and brisk as ever. The truth was that business at Spike’s was better than ever, having survived the hedge-fund guy, some even worse Russians, and the fire-bombing that had ensued.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” I said. “But I’ve got a situation and could use your help.”

“You got it, girlfriend,” he said.

“You didn’t ask what the situation was.”

“Don’t have to,” Spike said. “Don’t care.”

He had buzzed his hair again, shaved his beard, gained back the weight he’d lost when he thought Spike’s had closed forever. He had just returned from Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires with his current boyfriend, the host of Boston’s hottest morning TV show. I’d told him he was positively glowing. He told me to shut it, and just think of him as the new and improved Spike.

I filled him in now on what was happening with Melanie Joan, and the threatening email, and book, and knife. I had already dropped the book and knife with Lee Farrell at police headquarters. The red stuff was paint, which Lee said was Sherwin-Williams Rosedust, he was almost positive.

“How can you know that?” I said on the phone.

“I’m gay,” he said.

“Forgot,” I said.

“Ha!” he said.

Before I had driven over to Schroeder Plaza to see Lee, I had spoken with the ex-cop whom The Newbury had hired before their grand reopening to run security. Jerry Flint was his name.

“Our man Flint,” I’d said.

“Gee,” he’d said. “I never heard that one before.”

Flint told me that I was wasting my time; he already knew that there had been a ten-minute period, one that began with the time Melanie Joan said she’d left the suite, when their entire video system had gone down before rebooting.

Spike leaned forward, after carefully moving our glasses to the side.

“May I ask what may sound like a cynical question?” he said.

“It would be so unlike you.”

“Might Melanie Joan, a noted drama queen, be doing this to generate attention for herself?” he said. “And buzz for her new series in the process?”

“The thought has occurred,” I said.

“How can it not, for fuck’s sake?” he said.

He ate some of his celery stalk. Then an olive. Even without vodka, his Marys were fully loaded, and came in hot.

“But I honestly don’t think so,” I said. “She’s always going to be like one of her own unreliable narrators. But she’s made no attempt to hide how truly geeked she is by all of this, especially after finding what she found when she got back to the room.”

“It really is like she’s become like a character in one of her books,” Spike said.

“Or the person coming after her is,” I said. “Playing the part of the villain.”

“So what’s the favor?” Spike said. “Even though it’s silly for us to even use a term like that. I just look at it as me continuing to pay off a debt to you I will be paying off for the rest of my fabulous life.”

He gayed up the way he said “fabulous,” stretching the word halfway across the front room.

“Now you shut it,” I said. “After all the times you helped me, or saved my ass, we’re even. And will be even from now until the end of time.”

“Still waiting to hear what it is you want me to do.”

“I’d like you to keep an eye on her for a few days,” I said. “As big an ask as that is.”

“Not when I’m going this good.”

“Only during the day,” I said.

“Done,” he said. “But who watches her at night?”

“I’d normally think she’s safe once she calls it a night at the hotel,” I said. “But the best thing would be for her to move in with me, which means moving back into her own house for the rest of her stay in Boston.”

“And how long is that?”

“Couple weeks, tops,” I said.

“You’re willing to do that?”

“She’s been awfully generous to Rosie and me,” I said. “I feel as if I’d be paying off my debt to her.”

“Not like she doesn’t already owe you.”

“What can I say,” I said. “I’m a giver.”

“Richie doesn’t think so.”

“It’s amazing to me how, in the course of my day, and even with people I love, Richie finds his way into the conversation,” I said to Spike.

“Gee,” he said. “Why do you think?”

“Do you know something I don’t?”

“Often,” Spike said.

“Back to Melanie Joan,” I said. “We good?”

He ate my last olive.

“As we like to sing at Fenway,” he said, “so good, so good, so good. I’ve missed sleuthing with my friend Sunny.”

I told him that when he put it that way, I was practically doing him the favor.

He asked me what my next stop was.

“Prison,” I said.

“It was inevitable,” Spike said.