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  I stood when she came in. The bartender waved at her, and two waiters came to say hello as she came toward my table. She put out her hand. I shook it, one of the waiters held her chair, and she sat. She ordered a lemon-drop martini and smiled at me.

  “You’re drinking beer?”

  “I am,” I said.

  “I get so full if I drink enough beer to get tipsy,” she said. The smile continued. “A martini does the job on much less volume.”

  “I’m hoping not to get tipsy,” I said.

  “What fun is that?” she said.

  Gary Eisenhower must have been delighted when he met her. She did everything but hand out business cards to let you know that she fooled around.

  “Tell me about Gary,” I said.

  “I thought we already did that, in Shaw’s office,” she said.

  Her lemon-drop martini arrived. She sampled it with pleasure.

  “Smoothes out a day,” she said.

  I drank a little beer.

  “I was hoping just sort of informally for some reminiscences,” I said. “You know, how did you meet? Where did you go? What did you do?”

  “What did we do?”

  “Other than that,” I said.

  “You got something against ‘that’?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “You can tell me about ‘that,’ too, if you like.”

  She smiled at me.

  “Maybe I will,” she said.

  I waited.

  “Actually,” she said, and took in some more of her lemon drop, “I met him here.”

  She glanced around the room, looking for a waiter, spotted one, and nodded. He smiled and went to the bar.

  “I come here quite often,” she said.

  “I suspected as much,” I said.

  “Often I go to my gym, in the late afternoon, and afterward I shower and change and meet my girlfriends for a cocktail.”

  “Replenish those electrolytes,” I said.

  “What?” she said.

  I shook my head and smiled.

  “Just musing out loud,” I said.

  “Anyway,” she said. “I’d see him at the bar sometimes, and after two or three times, he’d smile and nod as I came in, and I’d do the same. One day I came in alone and sat at a table, and he was at the bar. I smiled at him and nodded, and he picked up his drink and walked over and asked if he could join me. . . . God, he was handsome.”

  She drank some more of her lemon drop. She took small, ladylike swallows. She didn’t guzzle, but she was persistent.

  “And he was very charming,” I said.

  “And sexy and fun,” she said. “And we both had a couple of cocktails, and talked, and one thing led to another . . .”

  “And,” I said, “I’ll bet he had a room in the hotel.”

  She looked at me for a moment as if I’d just performed necromancy.

  “Yes,” she said, “he did. And . . .” She shrugged.

  “What’s a girl to do,” I said.

  She nodded slowly, looking at the depleted surface of her lemon drop.

  “I know now he was using me,” she said. “But God, he was good.”

  She stopped staring into the martini and finished it.

  “What gym do you go to?” I said.

  “Pinnacle Fitness,” she said.

  “The big flossy thing on Tremont?” I said.

  “You know it?” she said.

  “I was there once with a client,” I said.

  Another lemon-drop martini arrived.

  “Do you work out?”

  “Some,” I said.

  “You look very fit,” she said.

  “You, too,” I said.

  Mistake.

  She smiled again and her face flushed slightly.

  “You should see me with my clothes off,” she said.

  “Probably should,” I said.

  She smiled again and her face flushed a little more.

  “Do you have a room upstairs?” she said.

  “Sadly, no,” I said.

  “I could probably get us one,” she said.

  “It’s a kind offer,” I said. “But no, thank you.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “But?”

  “But I’m in love with Susan Silverman, and we’ve agreed on monogamy.”

  “My goodness,” Abigail said.

  “I know,” I said. “Makes me kind of boring, but there it is.”

  “What a waste,” she said.

  “Everyone says that.”

  I drank another swallow of beer.

  “When did the money stuff come up?” I said.

  “Not right away. He paid for everything the first time we were together, here. I don’t think he took any money from me for, oh, I’d say at least a year, year and a half. Then he said there was some waterfront property in Chatham, which was way underpriced, and he knew he could buy it, we could go there and spend time, and later when the market rose, he’d sell it for a nice profit.”

  “But all his money was tied up, and he didn’t want to cash in a CD because of the penalties,” I said. “So maybe you could lend him the down payment and you’d get it back with interest when the house was sold.”

  “That’s almost exactly right,” she said. “How did you know?”

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” I said. “You ever see the house?”

  “Yes, we spent several weekends there.”

  “And your husband?”

  “He thought I was with my girlfriends,” Abigail said. “You know. He used to call it a sisterhood retreat.”

  “Your husband doesn’t know,” I said.

  “God, no, that’s the big reason we hired you.”

  “No suspicions? Then or now?”

  “None. He’s very busy and very important. Tell you the truth,” she said, “I don’t think it occurs to him that it could happen.”

  “You are intimate?”

  “Sure. John’s not in the very best shape, and he gets tired at night, and, you know, he’s sixty-eight.”

  “So your intimacy is not as frequent as it might be,” I said.

  “Or as long-lasting, or as . . . ah, enthusiastic.”

  “So Gary Eisenhower was an appealing alternative.”

  “Very,” she said. “I think I would have let him get away with the money.”

  “The ride was worth the money,” I said.

  “Yes. But the blackmail. I can’t live that way, none of us can. My husband can’t know.”

  “You have a picture of Gary?” I said.

  “No, I threw them out as soon as I found out what he was,” she said.

  “Too bad.”

  “I didn’t want my husband finding them, either.”

  “You love your husband?”

  “Love?” She shrugged. “I care about him, certainly. Why do you ask?”

  “Just a curious guy,” I said.

  Chapter 5

  IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER NINE in the morning on an overcast day with some thin fog in the air. I was drinking coffee and reading “Arlo & Janis” when Nancy Sinclair came carefully into my office, as if she was entering the confessional.

  “Mr. Spenser?” she said. “I’m Nancy Sinclair, from the other day at Elizabeth Shaw’s office?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  As far as I could recall, she had not spoken when we had our meeting. She looked like a dressed-up cheerleader: a plaid skirt and a white shirt, dark stockings and boots. She was small. Her hair was short and thick. Her jewelry was gold and simple, and so was her wedding band. Her eyes were blue and very big, and she seemed to have a look of permanent surprise, as if the world amazed her. She sat opposite me, in front of the desk, with her knees together and her hands folded in her lap. She didn’t say anything.

  “How ’bout them Sox?” I said.

  She smiled brightly.

  After a while I said, “How you doing?”

  “Fine.”

  “Is th
ere something you’d like to discuss?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Is it about Gary Eisenhower?” I said.

  She nodded again. I waited. She smiled at me hopefully. I nodded helpfully.

  “I love my husband,” she said.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “He loves me,” she said.

  “Also nice,” I said.

  “We love each other,” she said.

  “Good combo,” I said.

  “I don’t . . .”

  She seemed to be thinking of how to say whatever it was she wanted to say.

  “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea,” she said.

  “I’d be thrilled with any idea,” I said.

  She smiled brightly again. It was what she did when she didn’t understand something. I was already pretty sure that understanding stuff wasn’t a big part of her skill set.

  “I did have an affair with Gary Eisenhower,” she said. “I don’t deny it. But it was not because Jim and I don’t love each other.”

  “What was it because?” I said.

  She blushed slowly but pervasively. It was kind of interesting watching the blush spread slowly over her face and down her neck, and onto the small expanse of chest that her white shirt collar exposed. She looked as if she might be blushing to her ankles.

  “I’m oversexed,” she said.

  “Doesn’t make you a bad person,” I said.

  “It does,” she said. “I keep promising myself it will never happen again. But it does. I can’t seem to stop myself.”

  “So Gary Eisenhower isn’t the first,” I said.

  “God, no,” she said. “I once had sex with a man who came to plow the driveway. I’m . . . This is so embarrassing. . . . I’m insatiable.”

  “And your husband’s not enough,” I said.

  “We have a good sex life. I’m just . . . I’ve fought it since junior high school. I am some sort of nymphomaniac.”

  I nodded.

  “I think ‘nymphomania’ is sort of an unfashionable term these days,” I said.

  “Whatever,” she said, her face still bright red under her makeup. “I’m addicted to sex. It is a shameful thing, and it has made my life very difficult.”

  “Ever talk to anyone about it?” I said.

  “I talked once with the minister at our church, before I got married.”

  “And?”

  “We prayed together,” she said.

  “At least he didn’t ask you out,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  I shook my head.

  “My mouth sometimes operates independent of my brain,” I said.

  She smiled brightly.

  “For a little while after we prayed together, it seemed almost as if it had worked. . . .”

  “But?” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “It didn’t,” she said.

  Her blush had faded. She seemed now to be having an easy conversation with a casual acquaintance about a perfectly pleasant subject. No wonder the praying had worked for a while.

  “But what I need you to understand,” she said, “is that I love my husband. And he loves me. To find out about me would just kill him.”

  “I’ll try to prevent that,” I said.

  “Have you made any progress?” she said.

  “Not much. Do you ever work out at Pinnacle Fitness?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes,” she said. “I have a membership. Why do you ask?”

  “Just looking for a pattern,” I said.

  “Do you have a picture of him?” she said.

  “No.”

  “I do,” she said.

  “May I see it?” I said.

  “I took it when he was asleep,” she said, “with the camera in my telephone.”

  “He doesn’t know?” I said.

  “No.”

  She took an envelope from her purse.

  “It’s a bit salacious,” she said.

  “Me, too,” I said, and put my hand out.

  She smiled brightly again and handed me the envelope. I opened it. In the envelope was a computer printout of a digital photograph of a naked man lying on his back on a bed in what was probably a motel room. It was not my kind of salacious. And even if it had been, Nancy had edited out the groin area with a Magic Marker.

  Decorum.

  Chapter 6

  ALL OF MY CLIENTS were members of Pinnacle Fitness. Which was a pattern. Which gave me something to do. Of course they might also have gone to the same gynecologist, or belonged to the same square-dance club. But a pattern was a pattern. And it was better than having nothing to do. So I walked over to Tremont Street and took a look.

  The club was on the top of a newish building across Tremont Street from the Common. Until I was a grown man, I had never even been in any place as glossy as Pinnacle Fitness. It was a monument to the fitness illusion that somehow working out was fun and glamorous. I thought about the gyms where I’d trained as a kid, when I was a fighter. I had started in Boston at Henry Cimoli’s decrepit dump on the waterfront, when the waterfront was decrepit. Henry used to say the location was perfect for screening out the frauds, because only a legitimate tough guy would dare to go down there. Then the waterfront yuppified and so did Henry, and when I went there now I felt sort of misanthropic for not wearing spandex. But there are things that can’t be compromised. I refused to dress up to work out.

  The lobby of Pinnacle Fitness had sofas and coffee tables and a snack bar where you could get juices and smoothies and tofu sandwiches on seven-grain bread. It was probably not a good place to get a linguica sandwich. I went to the front desk.

  “Gary Eisenhower here?” I said.

  The young woman at the front desk had a blond ponytail and very white teeth. She was wearing a white polo shirt with the club logo on it and black satin workout pants.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “Gary Eisenhower,” I said. “Is he here?”

  “Does he work here?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She frowned cutely.

  “I don’t believe we have anyone by that name working here,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Good. So he’s a member, then?”

  “I, ah, I don’t recognize the name,” she said.

  “Could you look him up for me?” I said.

  “I . . . I’m sure the client-services manager can help you,” the young woman said. “That’s her office right there.”

  The client-services manager had an open-door policy. I knocked on the open door and she turned in her swivel chair and smiled at me radiantly and stood. She, too, had a blond ponytail and very white teeth. But she was wearing a white top and a black skirt. The skirt was short, and there was a lot of in-shape leg showing between the hem and the top of her black boots.

  “Hi, I’m Margi,” she said. “How can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Gary Eisenhower,” I said.

  “Is he a member here?” Margi said.

  “That’s what I was going to ask you,” I said.

  “Why do you wish to know?” Margi said.

  “I’d like to get in touch with him,” I said.

  “It is club policy, sir, not to give out member information.”

  “Something illicit going on here?” I said.

  “Of course not,” Margi said. “It is simply that we respect our members’ privacy.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “So he is a member?”

  Margi was getting brisker by the minute; no wonder she made client-services manager.

  “I didn’t say that, sir.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “But if he’s not a member, then there’s no privacy issue, is there.”

  “Of course not,” Margi said. “May I ask why you are interested?”

  “So what you can do is check your membership records, and if he is not a member, you can tell me.”

  She frowned. The reasoning had becom
e too convoluted for her. I thought her frown was even perkier than the one I’d seen at the front desk. But I feared that she would never advance beyond client services.

  “Are you some kind of policeman or something?” she said.

  “I am,” I said.

  I used to be a policeman, and “or something” covers a lot.

  “I don’t mean to give you grief, Margi. Just check. If he’s not a member, tell me and I’ll move on,” I said.

  I was interested as well as to what she’d do if he was a member.

  She looked at me, still frowning, giving it as much thought as she was able. Then she heaved a big sigh and turned to her computer.

  “Eisenhower,” she said. “Does that start with an I?”

  “E,” I said, and spelled it for her.

  She clicked at her computer for a little while, and then I could see her face relax.

  “We have no one by that name as a member,” she said.

  She could have been lying to get rid of me. But I didn’t think she was smart enough to fake the look of relief when she didn’t find him. I thanked her.

  “Could I buy you a linguica sandwich?” I said.

  She looked horrified.

  “On Portuguese sweet bread?” I said.

  “No,” she said, and smiled at me brightly. “But thanks for asking.”

  Chapter 7

  IT WAS NEARLY NOVEMBER. Baseball season was over. And the wind off the Charles River was beginning to have an edge. I was at my desk, with my feet up, thinking about pattern, when two men came in without knocking and closed the door behind them. I opened the right-hand drawer on my desk. The bigger of the two was bald, with biceps that strained against the sleeves of a shiny leather jacket. The other guy was slim and dark, with deep-set eyes and graceful hands.

  “Lemme guess,” I said. “You’re George, and you’re Lenny.”

  The muscular guy looked at the slim guy.

  “He’s being a wiseass,” the dark, slim guy said.

  “Maybe he should stop,” the muscle guy said.