Spenser - 02 - God Save the Child by Robert B. Parker

Author:Robert B. Parker
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780786203888
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Published: 1995-12-15T07:45:57+00:00

Chapter 14

The north shore shopping center was on high ground north off Route 128 in Peabody. Red brick, symmetrical evergreens, and parking for eight thousand cars. I discovered that Marge Bartlett was a member of the shopping center the way some people belong to a country clubb. Between ten fifteen and one twenty she charged $375 worth of clothes. I spent that time watching her, nodding approval when she asked my opinion, keeping a weather eye out for assailants, and trying not to look like a pervert as I stood around outside a series of ladies’ dressing rooms. I was glad I hadn’t worn my white raincoat. There were a lot of very well-shaped suburban ladies shopping in the same stores.

Suburban ladies tended to wear their clothes quite snug, I noticed. I was alert for concealed weapons.

We got back to Smithfield at about a quarter of two. The house was still. Roger Bartlett worked Saturdays, and Dolly was going to spend the night with Aunt Betty. Punkin lay placidly in a hollow under some bushes to the right of the back door Marge Bartlett held the door for me as I carried in the shopping bags. The dog came in behind us.

”Put them on the couch in the living room,“ she said. ”I want to call the caterer.“

There was a corpse in the living room. On the floor, face down, with its head at a funny angle. I dropped the shopping bags and went back to the kitchen with my gun out.

Marge Bartlett was still on the phone with her back to me. No one was in sight. The back door was closed. The dog had settled under the kitchen table. I turned back to the living room and stood in the center, beside the corpse, and held my breath and listened. Except for Marge Bartlett talking with animation about a jellied salad, there was no sound.

I put the gun back in the hip holster and squatted down beside the corpse and looked at its face. It had been Earl Maguire. That’s it for the law practice, Earl. I picked up one hand and bent the forefinger back and forth. He was cold and getting stiff. I put the hand down. All the college and all the law school and all the cramming for the bar, and someone snaps your neck for you when you’re not much more than thirty. I looked around the room. A glass-topped rug was bunched toward Maguire’s body. A fireplace poker lay maybe two feet beyond Maguire’s outflung hand. An abstract oil painting was on the floor beneath a picture hook on the wall as if it had fallen.

I duck-walked over to the poker and looked at it without touching it. There was no sign of blood on it. I stood up and went to the front door The lock button in the middle of the knob was in. The door was locked. I’d seen Marge Bartlett unlock the back door. I opened the front door No sign of it being jimmied.

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