I stood up.
“Well, I think your new digs are fabulous.”
“Yeah, me too,” Belson said.
“But it’s a long way from Berkeley Street. What are you going to do when you need help?”
“You’re as close as my nearest phone,” Belson said.
“Well, that must be consoling to you,” I said.
“Consoling,” Belson said.
CHAPTER FIVE
At two in the afternoon the temperature was in the eighties, the sun was bright, and there was only a very soft breeze. A perfect midsummer day except that it was March 29. I was reading the paper with my feet up and the window open.
Susan came into my office wearing white shorts and a dark blue sleeveless top. She had Pearl on a leash.
“It’s summer,” she said. “I want us to go outside and play.”
“Don’t you have patients?” I said.
“Not this afternoon. It’s the afternoon I teach my seminar.”
“And?”
“And I canceled my seminar because of the weather.”
“I might have clients,” I said.
Susan glanced around my office.
“Un huh.”
“And I might be studying evidence,” I said.
She came around the desk and looked over my shoulder.
“Tank McNamara,” she said.
“There could be a clue there,” I said. “You don’t know.”
Susan gave me a look that, had it not been diluted by affection, would have been withering. I folded the paper carefully and put it down on my desk.
“So,” I said, “what would you like to do?”
“You don’t know where there’s a field of daffodils in bloom, do you?”
“Susan,” I said, “it’s March 29.”
“Okay, then let’s walk along the river.”
“Flexible,” I said.
“You bet.”
“I like flexible,” I said.
“I know.”
We were crossing the footbridge near the Shell when Susan said to me, “Do you have time between the Robinson Nevins case and Tank McNamara to do a little something for a friend of miner
I said I did.
“KC Roth,” Susan said. “Actually that’s a nickname. Short for Katherine Carole. She is recently divorced, and being stalked.”
“Ex-husband?” I said.
“That’s what she thinks, but she’s not actually seen him.”
“So how does she know she’s being stalked?” I said.
We were down on the Esplanade, and Pearl was leading out up the river.
“Phone calls, she answers, silence at the other end,” Susan said. “A flat tire, there’s a nail in it; eerie music on her answering machine; a guy she dated got a threatening letter.”
“Anonymously,” I said. “Of course.
“He keep it?”
“I don’t know. She said she hasn’t seen him since.”
“Course of true love,” I said, “never did run smooth.”
Pearl saw a cocker spaniel coming along the Esplanade from the other direction. She growled. The hair on her back rose.
“Not a friendly dog,” I said to Susan.
“Friendly to you and me,” Susan said.
