Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me

32

“Does all that make sense to you?” Grace said.

“My girlfriend is the shrink,” I said. “But I understand a little bit about sociopaths and manipulations. Especially when the victims are teenagers.”

“I wasn’t a teenager when I went to work for Peter,” Grace said. “I had an art degree from BU and had been working on my own for almost a year. Peter and Poppy came to one of my shows in Cambridge and bought one of my paintings. When I heard who they were, I was impressed, flattered, and grateful. Can you believe it? It was a large piece no one expected to sell, and they took it home that night. A week later, Poppy called me to have a drink and help her hang it. Have you seen their home?”

“Yep,” I said. “Big enough to dry-dock the Queen Mary.”

Grace finished cleaning her hands with mineral spirits and clapped her hands for her cat. The cat sprung from my lap and into hers. I’d never had a cat but appreciated their athleticism.

“When did you start working for Steiner?” I said.

“Almost immediately after my show,” Grace said. Her arms were long and muscular, paint splatters on her biceps. Her eyes seemed even a deeper shade of green in the sunlight. “Although I could never grasp what I was supposed to do. Basically, I just ran errands. I picked up dry cleaning. Ran to the package store. Answered the phone. I didn’t ask a lot of questions. I got paid good money, Mr. Spenser. And God knows I needed the money.”

“Was there anything unusual about the arrangement?”

“Nothing,” she said. “The only thing odd was that I couldn’t really tell what the hell Peter and Poppy did. Peter always talking about his big mysterious clients. Poppy was always on the phone, interviewing new models, trips to New York. I went to Paris with them twice. But if you’re asking if I sensed anything odd, no. I thought they were just typical rich white folks in the Back Bay.”

“No shortage of those types.”

“I grew up down in the ’Bury.” Grace said. “Both my parents came from Jamaica. My mom taught art at Roxbury Prep. My dad drove a truck. That kind of thing. I never thought I’d be living in a world like what Peter and Poppy showed me. A private jet to Paris? I mean, come on. I thought that shit was only in the movies.”

“Did Poppy ever ask you to model?”

“Once,” Grace said. “I told her I was flattered but too old. She seemed to be always working with the teenagers for shoots. Besides, I’m a painter. An artist. I didn’t have any interest. Would you like any coffee?”

“If I have any more coffee, I’ll blast off for the moon.”

Grace shifted in her chair and caused the cat to jump to the floor. The cat offered a judgmental look as it licked a paw.

“Do you mind talking about the incident?” I said.

“Whew,” she said, biting her lip in thought. “Yeah. I guess that’s why you’re here. Right? You really think you can do something about those people? I had to shut it out of my mind. I had to move on. Saw a shrink for years. Still seeing one. It’s not a part of my mind I care to open back up.”

“Steiner had never made advances?”

“Nope,” she said. “Honestly, I didn’t see him that much. I had my own little office at their place on Comm Ave. I took phone messages for him. He was charming and sort of funny. A real flirt. But nothing out of the ordinary. He never said anything sexual or offensive. In fact, I never thought he thought of me one way or another until they set up that residency for me.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Should’ve known. Three months at a cute little brownstone in the South End. All to myself where they said I could open my mind and create. Only they didn’t say they’d require me to party with them and join in their fun and games.”

“Fun for them but awkward for you.”

“Awkward was the best of it,” she said. She pursed her mouth and closed her eyes. “I had been there nearly a week when they showed up late one night. Unexpected, of course — I was already in pajamas. Poppy had brought a case of wine and kept refilling my glass. I must’ve had two gallons of rosé.”

“God help you.”

“Not a fan of rosé?”

“Between rosé and nothing, I’ll take nothing.”

“She may have added something into it,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t remember much of it. I was very sick and confused.”

It was very quiet in the large space. The sunlight cast gridlike patterns on the old floors, worn and scraped from years of abuse. The cat found the sun and stretched itself to maximum length.

“What I do remember is Poppy taking me back to my bedroom and undressing me,” she said. “I told her I was going to throw up, and she laid me on the bed. I blacked out for a while. I don’t know for how long. I don’t know what she did or what happened. When I came to, Peter was there, sitting on the edge of the bed rubbing my thigh. I was naked.”

“Was he dressed?”

“He had his shirt off,” she said. “That’s all I know. I screamed and forced them out of my room. I locked the door and placed a big chair in front of it. I tried to stay up, but I finally fell asleep. When I woke up later that night, the house was quiet. And when I got up the courage to walk downstairs, I found they were gone.”

“When did you go to the police?”

Her eyes were very wet as she inhaled a long breath and stared down at the cat. She smiled for a moment, watching it in the sun, and then looked back to me. “Not until I found out what they’d done to my sister.”

“This was after?”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t know what they did to Bri until I told her what had happened to me. She was ashamed and embarrassed. She blamed herself. She still blames herself even though I was the one who caused everything. I was too damn ambitious and stupid to look after my own sister.”

“Captain Glass said she was fourteen?”

“Fourteen when she first met them,” Grace said. “Fifteen when she was raped. I didn’t know how long Poppy had been grooming her. She promised Bri and my mother that Peter Steiner wanted to look out for her education. They said that Peter was a big-time donor at Harvard and could assure that she got in. Do you know what something like that would mean to our family? My mother had to put herself through a community college. Harvard?”

“Will Bri speak to me?”

“No.”

“The more victims we can find, the stronger the case.”

Grace shook her head, stood, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “My family has been through all this before,” she said. “We were promised we would get some kind of justice. Both of us had to sit in offices for hours and hours remembering every sick detail of what those people did. Or tried to do. I knew something was wrong. Bri would come to see me, and Poppy would take her out shopping to Newbury Street or Copley Place. They’d come in with bags and bags from Neiman Marcus, Chanel, and Gucci. We laughed about it. It seemed like it was absolutely nothing to Poppy. She said she and Peter didn’t have their own kids and she loved to lavish their friends. Lavish. She used that word a lot.”

“Do you want to tell me what they did to Bri?”

I was still seated. Grace stood over me, the cat twisting and turning back through her legs.

“Not really,” she said. “Poppy was there for it. She’s the one who wanted Bri to feel comfortable with her body. That everything they did was normal and natural.”

“Was this at Steiner’s house?”

“Yes,” she said. “Several of his houses. And with his friends.”

I tasted metal at the back of my throat. I felt I’d been holding my breath and let out a long, steady exhale. I told her I was very sorry. I wish I’d said more, but that was all I had at the moment.

“Captain Glass said you were harassed.”

She nodded and told me about two men visiting after she filed charges. They knew where her parents worked and threatened to have both of them fired.

“I’d like you both to meet a lawyer friend of mine,” I said. “She’s putting together a class-action suit. Perhaps some federal charges to follow.”

“I don’t know you,” she said. “And I don’t know this lawyer. Is he even any good?”

“She,” I said. “Her name is Rita. In a courtroom, she’s as relentless as a nuclear winter.”

The calico cat wandered back between us and rubbed its flank against Grace’s leg. She reached down and stroked its back and tail. The cat purring in the sunlight.

“How many girls are there?” she said.

“Two,” I said. “You and your sister would make four.”

“Let me talk to Bri,” she said. “I sure would love to see these creeps exposed.”