Free Rough Weather: A Spenser Novel by Robert B. Parker

said.
    “Fights can be exciting?”
    “There was something wrong with her excitement,” I said. “Her eyes. There was something going on in her eyes.”
    “Like what?” Susan said.
    I mixed the chopped onions with the clams.
    “Like I was peeking in a window and seeing something terrible,” I said.
    “I guess you had to be there,” Susan said.
    I nodded. I cubed some boiled red potatoes, skins and all, and stirred them in with the chopped clams and onions.
    “There’s something else, now that I’m thinking about it,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said. “I think there is.”
    “You know what it is?” I said.
    “Yes,” Susan said. “If you’re reporting accurately.”
    “I always report accurately,” I said.
    She nodded.
    “I know,” she said. “Heidi’s behavior is inconsistent with all the things that have happened.”
    “Wow,” I said.
    Susan smiled.
    “Harvard,” she said, “Ph.D.”
    “Yet still sexually active,” I said.
    “You should know,” Susan said.
    “I should,” I said. “Right after the kidnapping you remarked that her reactions seemed odd, but we both know that shock can cause all sorts of behavior.”
    “Yes,” Susan said. “But the shock should have worn off by now. Her current behavior should be far more genuine.”
    “Cocktails in the atrium,” I said. “A new companion.”
    “Or bodyguard,” Susan said. “However ineffective.”
    “I wasn’t too effective, either,” I said.
    “Hard to decide that,” Susan said, “without knowing exactly what you were supposed to effect.”
    I nodded.
    “And it seemed like an inside job,” I said.
    “You’ve always wanted to say that, haven’t you?”
    “Detectives are supposed to say stuff like that,” I said. “And it had to be inside. Rugar wouldn’t have taken a job without knowing the layout. Who was where. What the security was. What time things were happening.”
    “You think Heidi was involved in kidnapping her own daughter?”
    “If that’s what it was,” I said.
    “What it was?”
    “I’m just noodling,” I said. “But what if the kidnapping was a head fake. What if the real business was something else?”
    “What?”
    “The murder of the clergyman … or the son-in-law … or a scheme to extract ransom from somebody, like Adelaide’s father.”
    “And you think Heidi could be involved?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s why I’m noodling. It doesn’t have to be Heidi. It could be anybody who knew what was going on. Maggie Lane, the famous conductor … Adelaide.”
    “Wow, you are noodling,” Susan said.
    “Better a theory,” I said, “than nothing.”
    “Theory is no substitute for information,” Susan said.
    “They certainly didn’t teach you that at Harvard,” I said.
    Susan smiled.
    “No,” she said. “Some things I know, I learned from you.”

 
    Lydia Hall College
was north of New York City, near Greenwich, Connecticut. About a three-hour drive from Boston, unless you stopped at Rein’s Deli for a tongue sandwich on light rye. So it was almost four hours after I left home that I was in the alumni office talking to a very presentable woman named Ms. Gold.
    “At various times,” I said, “her name has been Heidi Wash-burn, Heidi Van Meer, and currently, Heidi Bradshaw.”
    “Marriages?” Ms Gold said.
    “Yes,” I said. “All to men of substance, I believe.”
    Ms. Gold smiled.
    “The best kind,” she said. “And what is your interest?”
    “You know who Heidi Bradshaw is?” I said.
    “I’ve heard of her,” Ms. Gold said.
    “Then you know of the recent kidnapping?”
    “Of her daughter,” Ms. Gold said. “Yes.”
    “I’m involved in that investigation,” I said.
    “Are you a police officer?” Ms. Gold said.
    “Private detective,” I said.
    “Do you have any identification?” Ms. Gold said.
    I showed her some. She looked at it and handed it back.
    “We do not normally give out information about our alumni,” she said.
    “I really