Robert Parker - Rough Weather

“Damned if I know,” Susan said.

Thanksgiving at Spenser’s: Hawk and Susan sipping champagne, Pearl asleep in front of the fire, the rich scent of the roasting bird filling the room, the dining room table set and beautified by Susan, Hawk’s shotgun leaning on the corner of my bookcase.

When I got the food to the table my duties were over. Hawk carved surgically. Susan served meticulously. I ate. Pearl watched each mouthful closely. Susan had ruled that it was absolutely forbidden to feed her from the table. All three of us ignored the rule.

“Wonder what Rugar doing for Thanksgiving,” Hawk said.

“And Adelaide,” I said.

“No,” Susan said. “Not on Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving we worry about whether we’ll be hungry enough before bedtime to have a turkey-and-stuffing sandwich with cranberry sauce and mayo.”

“No business?” I said.

“None,” Susan said.

“No concern for the less fortunate?” I said.

“Fuck ’em,” Susan said.

“That be my other Thanksgivings,” Hawk said.

“Works for me,” I said. “Pleasant and not fattening.”

“I was using a metaphor,” Susan said.

“Fact it probably burn calories,” Hawk said.

“Today is a day to enjoy the fact that we love each other,” Susan said. “That’s enough.”

“All three of us?” Hawk said.

“And Pearl,” Susan said.

“’Scuse me,” Hawk said. “All four of us?”

“You know we love you, Hawk,” Susan said. “ Pearl included. And you damned well know that in your own singular way, you love us.”

Hawk grinned widely.

“Singular,” I said.

“Sho ’nuff, Missy,” Hawk said to Susan.

He bent over and gave Pearl a bite of turkey. He watched her chew it, still bending over, and when she was finished she looked up at him hopefully.

“Sho ’nuff,” he said to her.

I went to see Van Meer. We sat in the same room we’d sat in last time. He offered me a drink. I declined. He made one for himself. It appeared that he’d started early today. He was already a little glassy-eyed at two in the afternoon.

I couldn’t think of a way to ease in, so I just went.

“You in financial difficulty?” I said.

“No,” he said, “not at all.”

“The bank’s foreclosing on this place,” I said.

“Oh, the banks are always doing something,” he said. “I don’t pay any attention.”

“You’ve cashed out your life insurance,” I said.

Van Meer smiled happily.

“Had better things to do with it,” he said.

“What about your daughter? She was the beneficiary.”

“She was marrying into one of the richest families in the country,” he said. “She didn’t need it.”

I nodded. I wondered if he remembered that his daughter was missing.

“So the reports of your financial vulnerability are greatly exaggerated.”

Van Meer nodded several times.

“You bet,” he said. “I’m rich.”

“In the early 1980s,” I said, “while she was married to you, Heidi was in Bucharest, Romania, with Harden Bradshaw.”

“I know,” Van Meer said.

“Talk about that,” I said.

“We had a big fight,” he said. “She went to Bucharest. When she came back, we made up. In fact, that’s when Adelaide was conceived.”

He sipped his drink. He was sedate. No guzzling.

“What was the fight about?”

“Oh, God,” he said. “I don’t know. We had fights all the time.”

“You know she was cheating on you?”

“Yes.”

“With Bradshaw?”

“Yes.”

“Might it have been a fight about that?” I said.

“Coulda been,” Van Meer said.

“How’d you feel about that?” I said.

Van Meer shrugged.

“Hell, she cheated on me all the time, with anybody available,” he said, and sipped again.

“How’d you feel about that?” I said.

He laughed.

“You sound like all of my many shrinks,” he said. “Why do you want to know all this?”

“If I knew ahead of time what was important to know and what was not…” I said.

He nodded.

“Yeah,” he said. “I can see that.”

He had another swallow. Like a lot of experienced boozers, he could go a long time before he began to slur his words. He held his glass up a little and looked at his drink.

“Not too long after we got married, we had some wiring done at our new house,” he said. “She fucked the electrician.”

I nodded.

“She needed sex, and she needed variety,” Van Meer said. “She was fucking me while she was married to that art professor. She was fucking Bradshaw when she was married to me.”

“Busy,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Looking for Mr. Right?” I said.

“Mr. Feels Good,” Van Meer said. “As far as I could tell, she fucked plumbers and limo drivers and delivery men, and for all I know doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs.”

“One man would never be enough,” I said.

“That is correct.”

“And you could live with that?” I said.

“Better than I could live without her,” Van Meer said.

“And now you have to do both,” I said.

Van Meer nodded and took another sip.

“Yup,” he said.

It was the Thursday after Thanksgiving, the last day of November, with a gentle but persistent rain falling all along the south coast. In Padanarum, Hawk waited in the car for me while I went up on the porch and rang the bell for Harden Bradshaw. I could hear the surf from the waterfront side of the house. I could smell wood smoke, and when Bradshaw opened the door, I could look past him and see the fire burning on the big hearth in his living room.

“You again,” he said.

“Glad to see you, too,” I said. “May I come in?”

“What do you want?”

“Several things,” I said. “Like where your stepdaughter attended college.”

“She went to Penn for two years before she dropped out,” Bradshaw said. “Before that she went to Miss McGowan’s School in Ashfield, western Mass,” he said.

“Prep school?”

Bradshaw nodded.

“For young ladies,” he said.

He sounded a little scornful.

“Why’d she drop out of college?” I said.

“You’ll have to ask her mother,” Bradshaw said. “Is that all?”

“Can we discuss you and Heidi in Bucharest in 1984,” I said.

“I have nothing further to say to you,” Bradshaw said, still blocking the doorway. He had on a plaid flannel shirt today, and wide-wale corduroy pants.

“I wonder if she might have met a man named Rugar while she was there.”

“I don’t know,” Bradshaw said. “I had nothing to do with the events at Tashtego. I have no idea where my stepdaughter is. I don’t know anything about this Rugar fellow, and I am quite frankly tired of you.”

“Then you’ll be tired of dreaming,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Allusion to a song,” I said. “I could sing it all for you.”

“I do not find you amusing,” Bradshaw said.

“What a shame,” I said. “So you probably don’t want me to sing, either.”

“I believe we’re through here,” Bradshaw said.

“Before you go,” I said, “lemme tell you what I think. You and Rugar were working out of the American embassy in Bucharest. I think you knew Rugar from there. I think maybe Heidi met him there as well.”

“The American embassy in Bucharest is not a ma-and-pa store,” Bradshaw said. “Many people worked there. I didn’t know most of them.”

“And yet nearly twenty-five years later, Rugar shows up at your wife’s home and kidnaps your stepdaughter,” I said. “Is it really that small a world?”