He nodded very slightly. He was very pale, and he kept himself rigid as if any movement would make him disintegrate.
“Feel free to explain to the cops why I punched you,” I said and turned and walked out of his office.
Betty had hung up the phone. When she saw me she pointed me out to a couple of vigorous-looking young guys who were probably good at squash.
“That’s him,” she said. “Don’t let him get away.”
I didn’t feel like instructing them in the difference between scuffling and squash, so I smiled at them courteously and opened my coat so they could see that I was wearing a gun.
“Let him get away,” I said.
Which they did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Pearl and Susan and I were sitting in Susan’s large black Explorer in the parking lot of the Dunkin‘ Donuts shop on Route 1 in Saugus, eating donuts. Actually Susan and Pearl were sharing a donut and I was eating several, with coffee.
“I got a call from KC Roth this morning,” Susan said.
She sprinkled a little Equal into her decaffeinated coffee and swirled it with the little red swizzle that came with the coffee.
“Swell,” I said.
I liked the donuts they sold with the little handle on them. When you had finished the donut you still could eat the little handle and have the illusion that you’d gotten extra.
“She says you’ve been hitting on her.”
I finished my donut and drank some coffee to help it down.
“And how did you respond?” I said.
“I said that it seemed very unlike you.”
“And she said?”
“That apparently I didn’t know you as well as I thought I did.”
“Well,” I said, “if I were going to hit on someone besides you, she’d be an early candidate.”
“Yes, she is undeniably stunning,” Susan said. “But I’m pretty sure that I do know you as well as I think I do.”
“Maybe better,” I said.
“So I don’t want you to deny it,” Susan said. “Because I don’t believe you did it. But I’d be curious as to why she is telling me you did.”
“She blandished me and I was unresponsive,” I said.
“Blandished?”
“Yes.”
“As in blandishments?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure that’s a word?”
“It is now,” I said.
“Tell me about her blandishments,” Susan said.
So I did, graphically.
“I don’t wish to hurt your feelings, but KC has always been something of a hot pants.”
“Damn,” I said, “I thought maybe you had told her what a Roscoe I was in bed.”
Susan shook her head and sipped some more decaf. “Your secret is safe with me,” she said.
From the backseat Pearl nudged at my elbow as I was about to bite into a new donut.
“Excuse me,” I said and broke off a piece and gave it to her.
“KC and I have been friends a long time,” Susan said. “I would have hoped for a little better behavior.”
“Maybe she’s different with men than she is with other women,” I said.
“I’d say that was a given,” Susan said.
“I don’t know why, and obviously I’m making some rather large intuitive leaps here, but she seems to be in bad need of male attention and she seems to need it from men she can be scornful of.”
“Including you?” Susan said.
“If I had, ah, come across,” I said. “Then she could have been scornful of me because I was unfaithful to you.”
