Melancholy Baby Read online

  THE SPENSER NOVELS

  Bad Business

  Back Story

  Widow’s Walk

  Potshot

  Hugger Mugger

  Hush Money

  Sudden Mischief

  Small Vices

  Chance

  Thin Air

  Walking Shadow

  Paper Doll

  Double Deuce

  Pastime

  Stardust

  Playmates

  Crimson Joy

  Pale Kings and Princes

  Taming a Sea-Horse

  A Catskill Eagle

  Valediction

  The Widening Gyre

  Ceremony

  A Savage Place

  Early Autumn

  Looking for Rachel Wallace

  The Judas Goat

  Promised Land

  Mortal Stakes

  God Save the Child

  The Godwulf Manuscript

  THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

  Stone Cold

  Death in Paradise

  Trouble in Paradise

  Night Passage

  THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

  Shrink Rap

  Perish Twice

  Family Honor

  ALSO BY BOBERT B. PARKER

  Double Play

  Gunman’s Rhapsody

  All Our Yesterdays

  A Year at the Races

  (with Joan Parker)

  Perchance to Dream

  Poodle Springs

  (with Raymond Chandler)

  Love and Glory

  Wilderness

  Three Weeks in Spring

  (with Joan Parker)

  Training with Weights

  (with John R. Marsh)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Melancholy Baby

  A Putnam Book / published by arrangement with the author

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2004 by Robert B. Parker

  Excerpt from Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud copyright © 2018 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  penguin.com

  ISBN: 978-1-1012-0502-0

  A PUTNAM BOOK®

  Putnam Books first published by The Putnam Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  PUTNAM and the “P” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Version_3

  FOR JOAN:

  Like the kicker in a julep for two

  Contents

  Also by Robert B. Parker

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Excerpt from Robert B. Parker’s Blood Feud

  1

  My ex-husband was getting married to a woman I wanted to kill. I didn’t actually know her, and killing her would only make matters worse. But I got as much pleasure out of the idea as I could before I had to let go of it.

  He didn’t take the coward’s way out and simply send me an invitation. He came to see me.

  “She better be nice to Rosie,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t let anyone not be nice to Rosie,” Richie said. “Do you think I love Rosie less than you do?”

  I didn’t say anything for a bit, then, finally, I said, “No.”

  “Thank you,” Richie said.

  “And, obviously, stupid question, you love this woman.”

  “Yes,” Richie said.

  It got out before I could shut it off.

  “More than you love me?” I said.

  He didn’t say anything for a bit, then, finally, he said, “No.”

  “This raises a question,” I said.

  “It is, I’ve found, possible to love more than one person,” Richie said. “I love you, and I love her. She’s willing to marry me.”

  “And you want to be married,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And I don’t.”

  “I know.”

  “It has nothing to do with not loving you,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “I just can’t be married, Richie.”

  “I know.”

  I had been looking at Richie for so long. He got a dark shadow on his face if he didn’t shave every day. He had the strongest-looking hands I’d ever seen. He had thick black hair and wore it short. He seemed never to need a haircut. I knew what he looked like naked. I knew what he looked like asleep. I knew what he smelled like and sounded like and felt like. I knew how he thought and what he thought.

  Richie stood.

  “I wish there was something else to say, Sunny.”

  I stood, too. He opened his arms. We hugged each other. It was eviscerating. Richie stepped away; neither of us spoke. He bent over and picked up Rosie and kissed her on the nose. And hugged her. Then he put her back down and turned and left.

  I sat on my bed for a time. My eyes filled but I didn’t cry. Rosie jumped up beside me and lay down and wagged her tail.


  “Don’t you ever, ever love her,” I said to Rosie.

  Rosie looked at me as only bull terriers can look. She offered no objection. I wiped my eyes and walked down the length of my loft to the kitchen and got a bottle of Irish whiskey and poured some in a highball glass. I took it with me to the kitchen table and sat in my chair and looked out the window. Rosie came and got up in her chair and looked hopeful. I took a cracker out of the canister on the table and gave it to her. My sister, Elizabeth, would love this. My father would ask if there was anything he could do to help. My mother would assume it was my fault.

  I drank a little more whiskey. I could feel a real cry beginning to form in my throat. I tried to swallow it. But then I was taking little short breaths, and making little short sounds, and it was too late. I gave up and let it come. Rosie looked at me uncertainly. She wasn’t used to this. I cried hard for a while, leaning my forehead against my left hand. With my right I tried to comfort Rosie, who was nervous.

  We’d been divorced for five years. What the hell did I expect? It wasn’t like he’d been celibate all that time, or I had. It wasn’t just the finality of my former husband remarrying. It wasn’t even that I loved him still, though I did. It was the unyielding reality that, as far as I could tell, I couldn’t marry anybody, live with anybody, share my life fully with anybody.

  I drank some more whiskey.

  I listened to the paroxysmal quality of my own crying.

  I bent over and picked up Rosie and held her in my lap.

  “Only you,” I said to her. “You’re the only one I can live with.”

  I rocked back and forth in my chair with her for a time.

  “Only you.” I gasped. “Only you. Only you.”

  Why can’t I live with anyone but a dog?

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  2

  In the morning I was still red-eyed, even after I showered and put on makeup. By muscle memory, I fed Rosie and took her out. When I came in with her, I wasn’t hungry. I drank some orange juice and made some coffee. The phone rang. When I answered it, my voice sounded thick.

  “Sunny?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Barbara Stein. Do you have a cold?”

  I said, “Yes.” It seemed more dignified than “No, I’ve been crying a lot.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you well enough to do a little detective work?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re still in the detective business?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, good. I have a young woman who came into my office late yesterday. I’d done legal work for her family from time to time. You know, closings, wills, that kind of thing. She wants to find her biological parents.”

  “Can’t you help her with that?”

  “We’re a small firm,” Barbara said. “Just me and Jake and a paralegal . . . and this is going to be a little tricky, I think. The parents claim she’s theirs, that she’s not adopted.”

  “DNA?”

  “The parents won’t submit. Say it’s an insulting invasion of their privacy.”

  “Oh, my,” I said. “Birth records?”

  “So far,” Barbara said, “we can’t locate any.”

  “What makes her think she is adopted?”

  “She won’t say. Can you meet with her?”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “Can you come to my office?”

  “You still in Andover?” I said.

  She was. We made a date and I hung up. What I didn’t feel like doing was working. But maybe, in the long run, it was better for me than sitting by the window, drinking Irish whiskey. Rosie went to the coat rack by the door and stared at her leash. I didn’t feel like walking her, either. Actually, I didn’t feel like doing anything. Maybe talking to someone. Usually when I felt this bad, and I had never felt this bad since Richie and I divorced, I talked to Richie. My mother and my sister were out. My best friend, Julie, would genuinely care, but she would have a little inside, unspoken thrill of satisfaction that my love life was fucked up, too. And I would sense it, and it would make me mad. My father would hug me. But what could he say.

  “We’re awful goddamned alone,” I said to Rosie.

  She continued to gaze at her leash.

  “Except for Spike,” I said.

  Rosie’s gaze toward the leash wavered for a moment when she heard Spike’s name. She loved Spike almost as much as she loved me . . . and Richie. And she always had fun with him. I tried to smile at her.

  “Okay,” I said.

  My voice still sounded hoarse to me, and thick with sadness.

  “We will kill two birds. You’ll get your walk, and Spike will make me feel better. Maybe.”

  3

  Rosie had on her black-and-white leash, which matched her black-and-white collar, which matched her coloration. She pranced, and I walked along Atlantic Avenue through the maelstrom of Big Dig construction to Spike’s Place on Marshall Street, near Quincy Market. Spike used to manage it when it was a casual restaurant during the day, and perform in it when it was a comedy club at night. Now he owned it. The first thing he had done was change the name to Spike’s Place. The second thing he’d done was to retire from show business. He canceled the comedy club and upgraded the dinner menu.

  The décor was still the bare-beams and weathered-brick look it always had been. But the food was greatly improved. The service was good. The help dressed better. And Spike, now with a financial stake in things, had attempted an attitude upgrade, which, given his temperament, was not entirely successful.

  Inside the front door of Spike’s Place was the hostess stand, and on the table was a small sign that read No dogs allowed, except seeing-eye. The hostess, a pretty young woman in a yellow linen dress knew me, knew Rosie, and made no comment as she led us to a banquette for two along the wall at a right angle to the bar. Rosie hopped up beside me on the banquette.

  “You want to see Spike?” the hostess said.

  “Please,” I said.

  “I’ll tell him you’re here,” the hostess said. “You want anything?”

  “Just some coffee,” I said.

  “I’ll send some over,” the hostess said.

  She spoke to a waitress as she walked toward the back of the room. The four women at the next table were having an early lunch and discussing a recent production at the American Repertory Theatre. They seemed enthusiastic. The waitress brought me coffee and a roll.

  “Roll’s for Rosie,” the waitress said.

  “Thank you.”

  I stirred some milk and Splenda into my coffee. Rosie fixed a beady, laser-like stare on the roll. I broke off a small piece and put it on the table in front of her, and she ate it.

  A mature woman with harlequin eyeglasses gazed at us in horror.

  “That’s offensive,” she said.

  I leaned my head back against the banquette and closed my eyes and took in some air, and said nothing. When I opened my eyes, Spike was standing in front of my table. He was a very big bear of a man, in all senses. His hair was short and his shirt was crisp white and his tan slacks had a sharp crease. He wore mahogany loafers with no socks. The loafers had a high shine. He was looking at me hard. Then he pulled a chair away from another table and sat down across from me.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  The mature woman gestured to the hostess, who walked over.

  “I’d like to speak with the manager, please,” she said.

  The hostess was charmed.

  “That would be me,” she said. “I’m Miranda.”

  “Well, are you going to do anything about this dog?”

  “Well, Rosie is sort of a regular patron,” Miranda said.

  “Which I gather means you do not plan to intervene?”

  “Perhaps a happy
compromise,” Miranda said, “would be to offer you a different table.”

  “I prefer to sit where I am,” the lady said. “And I wish to speak with your superior.”

  “You certainly may,” Miranda said. “The owner is sitting right next to you. Spike himself.”

  The mature woman and her three mature companions all spoke as if they had taken elocution lessons at Radcliffe. And they looked as if they shopped at an Ellen Tracy discount store.

  “How do you do,” the mature woman said.

  “How do you do?” Spike said.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I saw your sign when I came in. It says No dogs allowed, except seeing-eye.”

  Spike looked at Rosie, and then at Miranda, then back at the woman.

  “Oh, of course, ma’am. I see your point completely.”

  He stood up.

  “I’ll take care of it right away.”

  Spike walked to the hostess stand and reached behind it and opened the drawer. All of his movements were as graceful and precise as if he weighed half of what he weighed. He took a black felt-tipped Magic Marker from the drawer, bent over, and carefully, after the part that said except seeing-eye, wrote in a neat hand: and Rosie Randall. Then he put the Magic Marker back in the drawer, stepped back, and looked at the sign. Nodded with satisfaction, and returned to his chair.

  “Thanks for caring,” he said to the lady in the harlequin glasses.

  “But you . . . you . . . you can’t just change the sign and allow dogs to eat off the table in a restaurant.”

  Spike looked at them, puzzled for a moment. I knew he was struggling with his attitude adjustment.

  “Perhaps if Miranda got you a better table,” Spike said.

  “It’s not a question of a better table,” the mature woman said. “It’s a question, if I may say so, of hygiene.”

  The adjustment was sliding.

  “Rosie’s had all her shots,” Spike said. “I don’t think you’ll infect her.”

  Miranda had been hovering near, knowing how tenuous Spike’s hold on civility was.

  “Ladies, if you’ll come with me,” Miranda said. “There’s a lovely table by the window. I’ll have your server move everything . . . and lunch will be on me.”