Small Vices

"Lila," I said. "Time to pay me back for letting you leer at me through the office door."

"You see me leering," Lila said, "you'll know it."

"My phone is going to ring in a minute. You pick it up and say `Internal Revenue Service,' with those great overtones you got. They'll ask for Mr. Anathema and you say `one moment please' and hit the hold button. If they say something else, like `refund department' or whatever, just say `one moment please' and hit the hold button."

Lila looked another wistful moment at the cover of Cosmo and said, "Anathema? What kind of name is that?"

"Greek," I said.

Lila shrugged and said, "Sure."

She folded up the magazine and followed me over to my office. I hung up the phone and we waited.

"Ain't it illegal to impersonate the IRS?" Lila said.

"I believe so," I said.

The phone rang and Lila picked it up, said her piece, and pushed the hold button.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome," Lila said. "You owe me lunch."

"Yes, I do," I said, and pushed the hold button. "Anathema."

"Mr. Anathema, Catherine Grant at Pemberton College. Glenda Baker lives in Andover at The Trevanion Condominiums."

"Is there a street address?"

"No sir, that's the only address we have. She has a married name now as well, Glenda Baker McMartin."

"Thank you," I said and hung up.

Spenser one, Pemberton zero.

Chapter 13

THE MERRIMACK RIVER comes down through New Hampshire by way of Concord and Manchester and Nashua. It enters Massachusetts a little north of Lowell and weaves toward the coast through Lowell and Lawrence and Haverhill. Up until the Second World War, the textile industry was strung out along that stretch of river, the mills powered by it, the inexpensive, often female, labor force making up most of the populace in the region. It was an affluent region, and here and there, near the mill cities, residential towns like Andover sprang up to service the executives. Then after the war the labor force organized, their cost went up, the textile mills moved south where the labor was still cheap, and the big mill cities like Lawrence and Lowell were left impoverished, awaiting urban renewal, and the executive bedroom towns turned their lonely eyes toward Boston. Andover was a little different. It had at one time its own textile mill, and the Shawsheen Village area of the town had been built largely by the mill. Its executives were encouraged to live there and walk to work; no garages were built. The mill's corporate offices were across the street from the manufacturing facility. Unlike most of the Merrimack valley, Andover remained upscale after the mill closed. The Academy was there. The mill manufacturing facility was taken over by an electronics firm, the McMartin Corporation; and the corporate offices went through several incarnations before being rehabbed into an upscale condominium complex called very grandly, I thought, The Trevanion. Hunt and Glenda Baker McMartin lived at The Trevanion.

It took about forty-five minutes to drive up to Andover in the late afternoon, with the rain spitting against my windshield and the wipers on slow sporadic. The foliage along Route 93 had peaked and was faded mostly yellow against the early November drab. I found a parking lot in back of The Trevanion and put my car in a slot that said Guest.

Glenda and Hunt were what every couple would want to be. He was tall and athletic looking with thick dark hair expensively cut. He was dressed in the J. Crew version of after-work leisure, and sported what used to be thought of as a healthy tan. She looked like him except she was shorter and her hair was auburn. She too had an even tan, which didn't look precancerous, and had the advantage of reminding me that they could probably afford to go to the Caribbean. Or a ta

"Hello," I said. "I'm Spenser. I called earlier."

"Yes, please, do come in," Glenda said.

She looked about twenty-two and acted as if she were a bit older than I. Neither of them looked as if they'd ever had a childhood. Probably they had been too busy being rich. The condo was money. The ceilings were twenty feet high, the bedroom was a loft. There was a kitchenette with a black-and-white tile dining counter, and a ruby-colored stove and refrigerator. The windows reached the full height of the ceiling. A brightly colored Tiffany-type lamp hung on a long brass chain over a thick glass-topped dining room table. There was an antique chaise covered with leather, and a refinished carriage seat, and a carefully assembled stereo system that would play Procol Harum in every nuance. Everything about them and the place spoke of money. Including the way they talked. Both of them had the sort of tight-jawed WASP drawl that only elocution lessons, or several generations of money and private education, can sometimes instill. My sense was that they hadn't taken elocution lessons.

"A drink?" Hunt said. "Coffee?"

"Beer is nice," I said.

"I have Sam Adams," he said. "White Buffalo, Red Hook Ale, Saranac Black and Tan."

"White Buffalo would be fine," I said, as if it made a difference.

We sat in the small room dominated by the television set. Probably only used it to watch Masterpiece Theater. Hunt poured my beer into a fine tall pilsner glass being careful to get an inch of head on it. Glenda had a glass of white wine, and sat on the couch with her feet tucked under her. Hunt held a short thick glass of single malt scotch on the rocks, and rattled the ice cubes a little as he sat on the edge of the couch leaning forward a little with his forearms resting on his thighs. I sat on a Moroccan leather hassock across from them and slurped a little beer through the foamy head, and wiped my upper lip with my thumb and forefinger and smiled.

"You related to the McMartin Corporation?" I said.

"My great-grandfather founded the company," Hunt said.

"Nice to have job security," I said.

"Yes."

"Tell me about Melissa Henderson's abduction," I said.

Glenda looked at Hunt. Hunt was being calm, a take-charge guy, full of confidence and poise, or as full of those things as a twenty-five-year-old kid is likely to be.

"Frankly, sir, we're a little tired of telling people about that. It was unpleasant to see, and it is unpleasant to talk about."

"I'm sure Melissa would agree," I said. "But I need to hear about it again."

"You work for Cone, Oakes?" Hunt said.

"Yes."

"And you or they or both seem to think that the murderer was wrongly convicted?"

"They would like to be assured that he wasn't," I said.

"He wasn't," Hunt said.

I looked at his wife.

"You as sure as your husband?" I said.

"Oh," Glenda said, "yes."

She had on an expensive, oversized waffle weave cobalt sweat shirt over silvery tights. Her twenty-two-year-old body seemed restless under the clothing, as if her natural state was naked, and clothes were a grudging accommodation to propriety.

"What did you see?" I said.

Glenda smiled and sipped some wine and looked at her husband.

"Glenda and I were walking back from a movie," he said.

"Actually I was hoping to hear from your wife," I said.

"I'll do the talking," Hunt said firmly. "We both saw the same thing. We were coming back from a movie, walking maybe twenty-five yards behind Melissa along Main Street near the campus front entrance. And a ear came along the street, driving slowly, and pulled in beside her and a black guy jumped out and dragged her in and sped away."