Free Paper Doll by Robert B. Parker Page A

ground.
    “Do you know Olivia Nelson?”
    “Used to.”
    “Could you tell me about her?”
    “No.”
    “Where is your daughter now?” I said.
    She shook her head doggedly, staring down.
    “Got to work. Can’t stand here talking the damned day away,” she said.
    She turned and lumbered back into the kitchen and began to break eggs into a bowl. The black woman looked at her and then glared at me. I thought about it and decided that she was reluctant to discuss it further, that her associate thought I was worse than roach turd, and that if they came at me together, I might get badly trampled.
    I went back to my table and ate my grits and toast and finished my coffee and looked at the picture of Cheryl Anne Rankin, who looked just like Olivia Nelson.
    I was confused.

chapter nineteen
    JUMPER JACK NELSON’S house was beyond the training track, on a hill with a lawn that rolled down maybe half a mile to the roadway. The drive was crushed oyster shells, and it curved in a white arc slowly up through the putting green lawn to a porte cochere, supported on gleaming white pillars. The house too was white and looked as if it had been built before the Civil War and kept up. It was three stories, vaguely like a European country house, buoyed by foundation plantings of shrubs and flowers I didn’t recognize, so that, stark white, it seemed to float atop its hill on a wave of color. The house was silent. The windows were blank, the mid-morning sun reflecting off them without meaning. At the edges of the property, on either side, tall southern pines stood, their branchless trunks like palisades containing the estate. In their branches birds fluttered. I could hear them singing. As I got closer to the house, I could see the bees hovering over the foundation plantings, moving from flower to flower. My feet seemed intrusive as I crunched up the oyster shell drive.
    When I rang the bell, it chimed deep inside the house. A number of dogs barked at the sound, though not as if they meant much. I waited. The dogs continued to bark without enthusiasm, as if they were merely doing their job, and didn’t really care if the doorbell rang.
    A small breeze moved across the tops of the taller flowers along the front of the house and made them sway gently. The bees swayed with them, unconcerned with the breeze, focused on the nectar.
    I didn’t hear footsteps. The door simply opened. Slowly. A huge hallway beyond the door was dark. A slow old Southern male black voice said slowly, “Yessir.”
    “My name is Spenser,” I said and handed a card into the darkness. “I’m here to see Mr. Nelson.”
    I smiled into the dark hallway. Friendly as a guy selling sewing machines. A black hand, nearly invisible in the dark hallway, took my card.
    “Step in,” the old voice said.
    Inside the hallway, my eyes began to adjust. There was an odd fresh smell in the house. It was a smell I knew, but I couldn’t place it. I felt something brush against my leg and looked down at an old hunting dog that was leaning against my knee. It was too dark to see him clearly, but the way he held his head, and the way his back swayed, was enough to know he was old. I reached down and let him smell the back of my hand. As my pupils continued to dilate I could see that there were three or four other dogs standing around, none of them hostile. They were all hunting dogs.
    The black man said, “You wait here, sir. I’ll see Mr. Nelson, can he see you.”
    His voice was soft, and he was very old. As tall as I was, but narrow; and stooped as if he were embarrassed to be tall and wanted to conceal it. He had on a worn black suit of some kind and a white shirt with one collar point bent upward, and a narrow ratty black bow tie, like a movie gambler, tied with the ends hanging long. The hand that held my card was surprisingly thick, with strong fingers. His hands were graceful, like he might play the harp, or deal cards.
    “Sure,” I said.
    “Don’t pay the dogs no