Free Stardust by Robert B. Parker Page A

the white saucer and handed the coffee to me. Outside, the bright pasture sloped away to the riverbank in the midday sunlight, while the water ran across the glass roof of the atrium in thick rivulets and dripped rhythmically down the sides. Somewhere in the house there was a wood fire burning. I could smell it. After he gave me the coffee, Randall stood back against the archway that led to the atrium and waited with his arms folded. He was wearing a white warm-up suit with a cobalt stripe down the arm and leg seams, and some sort of off-white canvas slippers. The zipper on the warm-up suit was down about halfway, and he appeared to be wearing a lisle tank top underneath. Without uncrossing his arms he inspected the nails on his right hand.
    â€œWhat questions do you have for me, Mr. Spenser?”
    â€œFirst let me tell you my situation,” I said. I drank a little coffee. It was good. What’s a little rapid heartbeat now and then.
    â€œI have been employed to do a couple of things for Jill Joyce, the television star with whom you were trying to speak this morning.”
    Rojack nodded. Randall admired his nails. I sipped a bit more coffee.
    â€œOne,” I said, “I’m supposed to protect her from harassment, hence my unkindness to old Randall here.”
    Rojack nodded again. Randall examined the nails on his left hand.
    â€œSecond,” I said, “I’m supposed to find out who’s harassing her.”
    We all paused.
    â€œHence, as it were, my visit here.”
    â€œYou think I am harassing Jill Joyce?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “I don’t know what you are doing with Jill Joyce. But I need to know, in order to do what I was hired to do. So I thought I’d come out and ask.”
    â€œEven though you had reason to assume that Randall would be, ah, angry with you?”
    â€œI can live with Randall’s anger,” I said.
    Rojack smiled without any humor. “Perhaps,” he said.
    We all thought about that for a moment.
    â€œWhat has Jill told you about our relationship?” Rojack said.
    â€œShe says she doesn’t know you.”
    Rojack was too carefully practiced in his every mannerism to show surprise. But he was expressionless for a moment and I guessed that maybe my answer had affected him.
    â€œShe is a liar,” Rojack said, finally.
    â€œShe certainly is,” I said.
    â€œWhat do you wish to know?”
    â€œAnything,” I said. “I can’t get her to tell me her birthday. I don’t even know enough to ask an intelligent question. Tell me anything about her, and it will be progress.”
    â€œShe is a drunk,” Rojack said.
    â€œThat I know.”
    â€œAnd, I don’t know if the term is used anymore, a nymphomaniac.”
    â€œI don’t think it is, but I know that too.”
    â€œShe uses drugs.”
    â€œYeah.”
    Rojack shrugged. “So what else is there to know?”
    â€œHow do you know her?” I said.
    â€œAt a cocktail party,” Rojack said. “The governor had a party in the State House rotunda for the stars and top executives of Fifty Minutes, when it first came to town to shoot the pilot. Three years ago. I went—I am a substantial contributor to the governor’s campaigns—and I met her there. I gave her a card. A couple of days later she called and said that she was alone in town, living in a hotel, and wanted someone to take her out and help her not be lonely.”
    Far down in the pasture, at the edge of the stream, one of the horses put his head down and drank. He was a red roan horse, and he made an ornamental contrast to the white pasture and the black trees, blacker than usual with the snow melt glistening on their sides.
    â€œI was pleased—most men would be. I took her to dinner at L’Espalier. We had wine. We went to the Plaza Bar. We came home here . . .” Rojack made a shrugging hand-spread gesture; among us men of