Free Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker

watch. It was one of those that you press a button and the time is given as a digital readout.
    ”Well, time for the Old Buckaroo to get on up to the booth.
    Nice talking to you, Spenser.“
    He waddled off, his feet splayed, the toes pointing out at forty-five-degree angles. Lester unhinged and slouched after him, eyes alert under the hatbrim for lurking rustlers.
    There never was a man like Shane. Tomorrow he’d probably be D’Artagnan.
    There’d been some fencing going on there, more than there should have been. It was nearly one. I went down into the locker room and used the phone on Farrell’s desk to call Brenda Loring at work.
    ”I have for you, my dear, a proposition,“ I said.
    ”I know,“ she said. ”You make it every time I see you.“
    ”Not that proposition,“ I said. ”I have an additional one, though that previously referred to above should not be considered thereby inoperative.“
    ”I beg your pardon?“
    ”I didn’t understand that either,“ I said. ”Look, here’s my plan. If you can get the afternoon off, I will escort you to the baseball game, buy you some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, and you won’t care if you ever come back.“
    ”Do I get dinner afterwards?“
    ”Certainly and afterwards we can go to an all-night movie and neck. What do you say?“
    ”Oh, be still my heart,“ she said. ”Shall I meet you at the park?“
    ”Yeah, Jersey Street entrance. You’ll recognize me at once by the cluster of teenyboppers trying to get me to autograph their bras.“
    ”I’ll hurry,“ she said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    MIDTOWN EAST SIDE in Manhattan is the New York they show in the movies. Elegant, charming, clean, ”I bought you violets for your furs.“ Patricia Utley occupied a four-story town house on East Thirty-seventh, west of Lexington. The building was stone, painted a Colonial gray with a wrought-iron filigree on the glass door and the windows faced in white. Two small dormers protruded from the slate mansard roof, and a tiny terrace to the right of the front door bloomed with flowers against the green of several miniature trees. Red geraniums and white patient Lucys in black iron pots lined the three granite steps that led up to the front door.
    A well-built man with gray hair and a white mess jacket answered my ring. I gave him my card. ”For Patricia Utley,“ I said.
    ”Come in, please,“ he said and stepped aside. I entered a center hall with a polished flagstone floor and a mahogany staircase with white risers opposite the door. The black man opened a door on the right-hand wall, and I went into a small sitting room that looked out over Thirty-seventh Street and the miniature garden. The walls were white-paneled, and there was a Tiffany lamp in green, red, and gold hanging in the center of the room. The rugs were Oriental, and the furniture was Edwardian.
    The butler said, ”Wait here, please,“ and left. He closed the door behind him.
    There was a mahogany highboy on the wall opposite the windows with four cut-glass decanters and a collection of small crystal glasses. I took the stoppers out of the decanters and sniffed. Sherry, cognac, port, Calvados. I poured myself a glass of the Calvados. On the wall opposite the door was a black marble fireplace, and on either side floor-to-ceiling bookcases. I looked at the titles: The Complete Works of Charles Dickens, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill, Longfellow: Complete Poetical and Prose Works, H. G. Wells’s The Outline of History, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, with illustrations by Rockwell Kent.
    The door opened behind me, and a woman entered. The butler closed it softly behind her.
    ”Mr. Spenser,“ she said, ”I’m Patricia Utley,“ and put out her hand. I shook it. She looked as if she might have read all the books and understood them. She was fortyish, small and blond with good bones and big black-rimmed round glasses. Her hair was pulled back tight against her head with a bun in