“He was a real estate person,” Susan said.
She put a leaf of Bibb lettuce on each of the five egg-covered bread slices.
“Yeah. And Amy Peters was in banking, and Brink Tyler was a financial advisor, and Nathan Smith was a banker. And he was on the board of Soldiers Field Development, and they’ve disappeared, and he brought Marvin Conroy into the bank, and Marvin Conroy was Ann Kiley’s boyfriend, and he’s disappeared, and Ann Kiley represented Jack DeRosa, who lied that Mary Smith hired him to kill her husband, and who hired Chuckie Scanlan to beat up Thomas Bisbee and probably to kill me, and Ann represented him, too, and Conroy was investigating Nathan Smith’s sexuality, and Larson Graff was a friend of Nathan’s, and a boyhood friend of Mary’s and Roy Levesque, and Mary says she met Nathan through Graff, and Graff says he met Nathan because of Mary, and…”
“Jesus Christ,” Susan said. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“Lot of that going around,” I said.
Susan completed her five sandwiches with five more slices of white bread, then she cut them into cute quarters and put them on a small platter. Beside the sandwiches, artfully, she put a few cherry tomatoes and some cornichons.
“There’s a bottle of Riesling in the refrigerator,” Susan said. “If you’ll bring it out onto the back porch we’ll have lunch.”
I put the wine in an ice bucket, got two glasses and a corkscrew, and followed Susan. Pearl dragged off the couch and limped after us to the porch. It was a lovely August day. We sat at Susan’s little filigreed glass-topped table. Pearl sat beside Susan. Susan gave her a quarter of a sandwich.
“How,” Susan said, “on earth are you going to unravel all of that?”
I uncorked the bottle.
“Same way you do therapy,” I said.
“Which is?”
“Find a thread, follow it where it leads, and keep on doing it.”
“Sometimes it leads to another thread.”
“Often,” I said.
“And then you follow that thread.”
“Yep.”
I ate a bite of my sandwich. Miracle Whip maybe was good in an egg salad sandwich. Susan nibbled on a cornichon. I sipped some Riesling. I liked Riesling.
“Like a game,” Susan said.
“For both of us,” I said.
Susan nodded. “Yes,” she said, “the tracking down of a person or an idea or an evasion.”
“Or fixing something that’s broken,” I said. “Like home repair.”
“Or both,” Susan said. “Except sometimes it’s awfully hard.”
“Part of its charm,” I said.
“I know. I know. Can’t win if there’s no chance of losing. It’s true,” Susan said. “But not consoling in the moment.”
“No,” I said. “Not in the moment.”
Susan gave Pearl another quarter of the extra sandwich she’d made. Pearl chomped it briskly and wagged her tail.
“Speaking of consolation in the moment,” I said.
“She’s easily consoled,” Susan said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The seven of us met in a conference room down the hall from Quirk’s office. Rita was there, and me, Belson and Quirk, a guy named Russo from Owen Brooks’s office, and Mary Smith and Larson Graff. We were seated in gray metal chairs around a gray metal table. Larson sat on one side of Mary, and Rita was on the other. Rita had a yellow notepad in front of her. Russo had one in front of him. It was how they knew they were lawyers. There was a tape recorder on the table. Quirk turned it on and explained the date and the people in attendance.
“Spenser is here as Ms. Fiore’s investigator,” Quirk said to Mary Smith. “He has no police status.”
“I think he used to be a policeman,” Mary said.
Quirk ignored her. “Mr. Graff here also has no status in this proceeding.”
“I don’t see why…” Mary Smith began.
Rita put a hand on her arm and shook her head. Mary stopped talking.
“We have the weapon that killed your husband,” Quirk said. “A forty-caliber Smith and Wesson semiautomatic pistol.”
Mary smiled at him.
“Ohmigod,” she said. “I don’t know anything about guns.”
