Small vices by Robert B. Parker

Author:Robert B. Parker [Parker, Robert B.]
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery fiction, Suspense, Fiction, Political, Detective, Mystery, Private investigators, Mystery & Detective, Fiction - Mystery, Hard-Boiled, Boston (Mass.), Mystery & Detective - Hard-Boiled, Spenser (Fictitious character), Private investigators - Massachusetts - Boston, Police Procedural, Mystery & Detective - Police Procedural, Women college students - Crimes against
ISBN: 9780425162484
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 1998-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 29

IT WAS TIME to talk with the eyewitnesses again. Glenda seemed a better bet than Hunt, so I went up to Andover in the middle of a cold, sunny afternoon and parked on Main Street out front of the Healthfleet Fitness Center. I was wearing a Navy surplus peacoat and a black Chicago White Sox baseball cap, and when I snuck a peek at myself in a store window I thought I looked both dashing and ominous. Up and down Main Street, Andover, there was no sign of the Gray Man, which didn't, of course, mean that he wasn't there. Healthfleet was up a flight of stairs above a coffee shop and a medical supply store. Inside the entrance was the usual desk manned by the usual upbeat teenybopper in designer sweats and a ponytail who urged everybody as they checked in to have a great workout. I'd never figured out why cheerfulness and exercise were so tightly linked in everybody's marketing system, but it was the official attitude in all health clubs. Made me think fondly of the old boxing gyms that I had trained in where people came to work hard, and concentrated on it.

On the wall by the desk was some sort of motivational gimmick with credit given for hours on the treadmill, and a bar graph showing people's various progress. The main workout space was banked with windows over the street and mirrors around the other walls. It was a bright room with some shiny weight-training machinery lined up in front of the windows and an exercise floor behind it. I could see Glenda at that end of the room wearing painfully tight black shorts and a bright green halter top. She was leading a class of women who stepped on and off of a plastic step to the throb of rock music while Glenda yelled, "Aaand over, aaaand back, aaand nine, eight, seven… aaand take it on down." The Gray Man was nowhere in the room.

I told the kid at the desk that I was here to see Glenda Baker, and I'd wait until she was through. There was a small waiting area in front of the desk, a low sofa, and a bentwood coffee table. And a long coat rack, mostly filled, on the wall by the door. I took off my coat and hung it on the rack and sat on the sofa with my feet on the coffee table and my hat on. The teenybopper eyed my gun covertly. She'd probably have told me to have a great shoot if she'd seen it when I came in.

When Glenda's class ended she started across the room toward the waiting area carrying a big bottle of Evian water and taking healthful sips from it as she walked. She went straight to the coat rack without paying any attention to me.

I said, "Hello, Glenda."

She stopped and smiled and said "Hello" vaguely.

"Spenser," I said. "The sleuth."

"Oh, hello."

"May I buy you a cup of coffee?" I said.

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