'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.
'Honest to God?' she said.
I nodded.
'You got a gun?'
I nodded.
'I don't believe you.'
I opened my coat a little so she could see.
'Jesus;' she said, 'you don't have to flash me.'
Her tequila sunrise had disappeared again. I bought her another one.
'Is it like on TV?' Sandy said.
'Exactly,' I said. 'A lot of times I send my stunt double on the hard stuff.'
'You working on a case or you got a thing for college girls?'
'Both,' I said. Sandy laughed.
'Well, I'm one,' she said.
'A case, or a college girl?' I said.
'Both,' she said and laughed.
It was a full-out laugh, but no one except Sandy and I could hear it, because the room was full of people talking and laughing at peak capacity. Sandy was wearing jeans and a white tee-shirt under a gray blazer. She had strong breasts, and she brushed them against me as we talked. I didn't want to make too much of that. The place was so crowded it might have been inadvertent. Either way there was nothing wrong with it.
'Did you know Melissa Henderson?' I said.
'Girl that got killed? That the case you're working on?'
'Yes.'
Sandy stared at me for a minute.
'I thought that was all over. They got some black guy for it.'
'I'm sort of tying up the loose ends,' I said. 'Make sure it was really him.'
'I didn't know her well,' Sandy said. 'But, you know, I saw her around.'
