Everything fitted very snugly, and one got a sense of Latex stretched, of pressures tightly contained. Her bright blond hair was artfully tousled over her forehead and doubtless sprayed in place. She embraced one of the men, a short, fat guy with a long crew cut and a guardsman mustache, holding her head back so’s not to mess her hair and turning away as he tried to kiss her so’s not to mess the makeup.
“Vaughn, you gorgeous hunk,” she cried, “if your wife weren’t such a good friend of mine—”
Two more couples arrived, and she turned toward them, leaving Vaughn with his mouth half-open. The wives, one tall and handsome with early gray salting her black hair, the other small, blond, and pretty, stopped to talk with Marge Bartlett; the husbands headed directly for the buffet spread in the dining room. I watched them go. One was middle height and muscular with rounded shoulders and the kind of rolling walk associated normally with sailors and gorillas.
His buddy was shorter and wider with the body of a Turkish wrestler and the haircut of a monk.
“Beer,” I said to Susan, “And I’ll bet they never leave the buffet.”
“The taller one’s the hockey coach at the high school,” she said.
“How about the other guy?”
“I don’t know him; maybe he’s a violinist.”
“Yeah,” I said, “or an elephant tamer” Marge Bartlett moved into the living room, where the noise and smoke were already thickening. I said to Susan, “Come on. Whither she goest you and I goest as well. Or at least I do.”
“Whither thou goest…” she said.
“How about whither I liest?” I said.
“I’m going to get us a drink. You want one?”
“Beer,” I said. “I’m sorry it’s self-service, but I’m working.”
“I know.”
She left me and returned shortly with a can of beer and a scotch on the rocks. She gave me the beer. Marge Bartlett had settled herself carefully on one arm of the living room sofa, not far from where Earl Maguire had gotten his neck broken. She was talking with three businessy-looking guys and inhaling her wine-dark scotch and water.
“What happened here today?” Susan Silverman asked.
We stood in the archway that separated the living room from the front hall, and she rested one hand lightly on my upper arm. I restrained the urge to flex it.
“Somebody hit a lawyer named Earl Maguire on the side of the head so hard it broke his neck and he died. Or that’s probably what happened. I found him here dead with his neck broken and a large bruise on the side of his face.”
“Do you have any idea who?”
“Nope, nor why. There had been a threatening phone call directed at Mrs. Bartlett which seemed as bizarre and disjointed as everything else going on here. That’s why I’m doing my centurion routine.”
“And she’s going on with the party just like this?” Susan shook her head. “I don’t know if that’s courage or obsession or madness.”
“I don’t either,” I said, “but courage doesn’t seem the most likely choice.”
A middle-sized handsome man stopped in front of us. “A real blast, huh?” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, “Fake ones are better than none, though.”
“You bet your ass,” he said. He slurred the’s’s, and I realized he was drunk already. “Marge and Rog really know how to throw a blast. What you do?”
“I’m a grape stomper at a winery. I stopped by here to get my feet bleached.”
Susan Silverman giggled at my elbow. I said, “It’s an old George Gobel line.” The handsome man said, “I’m into confidence training myself. If you believe in your product, then, by God, you can sell it, ya know? And the greatest product ya got to sell is yourself. Right?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m for sale.”
“Oh, yeah. Look, you wouldn’t believe the change a confidence seminar can make in your whole approach to living. I mean, it’s like getting psyched up for a football game, ya know? I’m going all over the state having these confidence seminars, and the results are fantastic, fan-tas-tic.”
“How about not giving one right now though; my ears are beginning to smart.”
“You got some terrific sense of humor. What did you say your name was?”
“Spenser”
“Well, Spence, you got some terrific sense of humor. I like that. This the little woman?”
Susan Silverman looked as if she were carsick.
He went on, “I was into losing, ya know‘?. And so I took this confidence seminar and they showed me how I wasn’t using all my potential and now I’m part of the team and running the seminars myself. What’d you say you did?”
“I said I was a grape crusher at a winery, but I was only kidding.”
“Yeah, I got that. What’s your real job? I mean, maybe I could help you or your people, ya know? Maybe you could use a little confidence.”
