Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

39

Tamara Elkin tried pouring Jesse another drink, but he waved her off. She decided she’d had enough as well and put the bottle back in the kitchen. When she came back into Jesse’s living room, she plopped herself down in his recliner across from the sofa on which Jesse had kicked up his feet. Neither of them spoke and neither seemed the least bit uncomfortable. Then she became aware of Jesse staring at her hair.

“Many men have tried to figure out the enigma that is my hair, Jesse Stone,” she said, a laugh in her voice. “And many have failed.”

“Any live to tell the tale?”

“The lucky ones.”

He shook his head at her, smiled. But she noticed something off in his smile.

She asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Jesse, we’ve been friends for, what, two days? And no offense, but you’re not as inscrutable as you’d like to believe you are. So let’s hear it.” She crooked one of her long, tapered fingers at him and wiggled it. “Something’s bothering you. Besides, isn’t sharing part of the whole friendship thing?”

“The panties,” he said.

“I don’t know about you. You’re sending me mixed messages there, Chief. I thought discussing my underwear was off-limits if we were going to be pals.”

“Not yours. Maxie Connolly’s.”

She laughed that deep laugh of hers. “You, sir, are a unique individual. Given my chosen career, you can imagine I’ve had some strange discussions in my time, but discussing a dead woman’s missing panties is a first.”

He smiled, but again it was a troubled smile. “It’s more than her panties,” he said. “Her handbag and cell phone are missing, too.”

“I can’t help you there, but like I said on the phone, some gals do go commando-style. And from what the buzz is around about her, it seems to me the late Maxie Connolly might have been a prime candidate for AARP Commando of the Year Award.”

“If all that was missing was her panties, it wouldn’t bother me as much. I saw surveillance video of her leaving her hotel room with her bag and she went straight from the hotel to the Bluffs.”

Tamara asked, “How did she get there?”

“Cab.”

“Well, Sherlock, you might want to have a talk with the cabdriver.”

“Did that.”

“And?”

“And I think I better go have another talk with him,” Jesse said. “And you, Doc, I think it’s time for you to get going.”

“You sure?”

“Positive. We can’t do friendly sleepovers every night.”

“Tempted?”

He said, “I didn’t think there was any question of that.”

Tamara stood. “Just checking. You know, I won’t hold it against you if you give in to it on occasion.”

“But I will.”

She wagged a finger at him. “Oh, you’re one of those.”

“One of those what?” Jesse asked.

“Moralist.”

He tilted his head. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“What would you say?”

“That I can usually sense right from wrong.”

“I don’t know, Jesse. I look at the world and the bodies that come into my morgue and I wonder if I know what’s right anymore.”

“Let’s say I know what’s wrong. Easier to know what’s wrong.”

“You’re an interesting man, Jesse Stone, but you’re out of place here.”

“In Paradise?”

“Yes, but that’s not what I mean, exactly,” she said. “I mean you were born in the wrong century. You should have been sheriff in a small frontier town.”

He didn’t say anything to that because he’d had that same thought a thousand times himself. It was one of the reasons he loved Westerns so much. As a kid, he often pictured himself as the sheriff in High Noon or as Wild Bill Hickok cleaning up Dodge City. When he thought about it seriously, Jesse realized that right and wrong probably weren’t any less complicated back then, but it was easier to pretend they were.

When Tamara had gone, Jesse sat in front of the TV and clicked through the channels, looking for a Western.