Small Vices

"Where'd he speed away to?"

"Into the campus."

"Just where I'd go," I said. "If I were kidnapping a coed."

"I started toward her to see if I could help, but I was too late and I didn't know. I thought it might have been a lover's quarrel, you know. Lot of the girls dated black guys, and it would look like because he was black…"

"Sure," I said. "What kind of car?"

"Big car, pink. Maybe an old Cadillac."

"Just the thing for sneaking around Pemberton," I said. "How'd he grab her?"

"Excuse me'?"

"He grabbed her and dragged her into the car. What part of her did he grab?"

"I, it was dark, you know, I think he had her by the hair."

"That how you remember it, Mrs. McMartin?"

"Yes," she said.

There was a faintly dreamy quality about her, as if she were always a little disengaged, thinking of her body.

"She scream?"

"Yes."

"What'd she scream?"

"She just screamed, you know, eeek. A scream."

I nodded.

"You knew Melissa well?" I said.

"Oh, certainly," Hunt said. "She and Glenda were very close friends."

"She was my sorority daughter," Glenda said. "She was like a younger sister."

Hunt looked slightly a

"When Glenda and I began dating," he said, "I got to know her well, too."

"So you saw a black man in an old pink car pull up, grab a female friend of yours by the hair and drag her screaming into his car and speed away."

"Yes."

"And you didn't call the cops."

"I didn't want to be one of those country-club liberals who thinks all blacks are hoodlums. I guess I made a mistake."

"I guess," I said. "Where'd you grow up?"

"Here, in Andover."

"Go to the Academy?"

"Yes, and on to Williams, and then graduate work at M.I.T."

"How about you, Mrs. McMartin?"

"Same," she said. "Hunt was three years ahead of me at Phillips."

"Did the kidnapper ever get out of the car?" I said.

Again Hunt answered.

"Yes, he had to to catch her and when he did the streetlight was right above him and I saw him clear."

"And when Melissa turned up dead you went to the cops."

"Yes."

"And they put you in front of a lineup, and you picked out Ellis Alves."

"We both knew him right away."

"That's really good," I said. "Eyewitnesses are often confused."

Hunt smiled contentedly. Glenda gazed past me into space.

"She have a boyfriend?" I said.

"A boyfriend?"

"Yeah. You were close with Melissa, you double-date at all?"

"Yeah, once in a while. Why are you asking?"

"Got nothing else to ask about," I said. "And I'm supposed to be asking something."

"Well; it's a damn waste of time," Hunt said. "The jasper did it, and he's where he ought to be."

"She date a guy from Taft? Te

"I don't know where he was from or what he played. We only doubled with them a few times. I don't know how serious they were."

"You like him, Mrs. McMartin?"

It took her a minute to come back to us.

"Sure," she said. "He was a cute guy."

"Either of you remember his name?"

Neither of them did.

"I'm afraid this is all the time we can give you, sir," Hunt said. "We haven't had di

"Hard day at the plant?" I said.

"I have some early meetings."

"How about you, Mrs. McMartin. What do you do?"

"I'm training," she said, "at Healthfleet Fitness Center.

"She's learning the business," Hunt said. "We'd like to open a chain of health clubs ourselves one of these days."

"Great idea," I said. "They're starting to catch on."

"The trick is to position yourself to capture a market segment that's underserved."

"That's sort of my secret," I said. "And then you say bye-bye to the family business?"

"No, I wouldn't leave my job. The company's been in our family for four generations. I'd consult, of course, especially during start-up. But Glenda would run the health clubs."

My own sense was that Glenda enjoyed being a member of the leisure class and the thought of her ru

He said, "We really do need to get to our di

I didn't like their story. It seemed glib to me, and I found both of them in their smooth, upper-class propriety entirely unbelievable. I smiled graciously, however, and shook hands with them and departed. Spenser the civilized gumshoe.

Chapter 14

THE PEMBERTON INN fronts on Pemberton Green, a block from the Pemberton College Campus. The bar was small with a working fireplace, and the walls done in old barn boards. They served draft beer in small glasses. The whole place made me feel like singing boola boola when I went in. It was crowded in the late afternoon with young women from the college looking to meet men, and young men from greater Boston looking to meet women. I edged in at the left hand corner of the bar and ordered a beer. A row of college girls to my right checked me out. One of them had thick red hair that fell past her shoulders. I smiled at her.

"Come here often?" I said.

"Oh, brother!" she said.

"What's your sign?" I said.

She looked around.

"Is there a hidden camera or something?"

"Gee," I said, "I was sure that would work."

"Get a grip," she said.

"Wait a minute," I said. "I've got one more, always works… can I buy you a drink?"

She pointed a finger at me and smiled.

"You're right," she said. "That's the one. Sure, you can buy me a drink."

I gestured to the bartender and she brought a fresh tequila sunrise to the redhead.

"My name's Sandy," she said. "What's yours?"

"Spenser," I said. "With an S, like the English poet."

"Which English poet?"

"Edmund Spenser," I said. "You know, The Shepheardes Calender, The Faerie Queen?"

"Oh, yeah. Spenser your first name or your last."

"Last."

"What's your first name?"

I told her.

"I don't figure you for a sophomore at Babson," Sandy said.

"Grad student?"

She looked at me.

"Okay," I said. "I'm not in school, but I have a friend who has a Ph.D. from Harvard."

Sandy smiled.

"Close enough," she said and drank some tequila sunrise. "What do you do for a living, Spenser-like-the-poet?"

I took a card from my shirt pocket and put it on the bar in front of her. She studied it for a moment and then looked at me carefully.