Hugger Mugger by Robert B. Parker Page A

continued to sit silently, looking at nothing.
    â€œAmong Delroy’s duties was keeping tabs on the girls,” I said.
    He was silent still, and then slowly his eyes refocused on me.
    â€œAnd dealing with the trouble they got into, and their husbands got into,” he said.
    â€œSuch as?”
    Clive shook his head. Outside, the birds had gone away and at the window there was only the flutter of thecurtains in the warm Georgia air. I put my empty coffee cup on the tray and stood up.
    â€œThanks for the coffee,” I said.
    â€œYou understand,” he said.
    â€œI do,” I said.

TWELVE

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    S INCE IT WAS evening, and I wasn’t being feted at the Clive estate, I had the chance to lie on the bed in my motel and talk on the phone with Susan Silverman, whom I missed.
    â€œSo far,” I said, “only one sister has made an active attempt to seduce me.”
    â€œHow disappointing,” Susan said. “Are there many sisters?”
    â€œThree.”
    â€œMaybe the other two are just waiting until they know you better.”
    â€œProbably,” I said.
    â€œI have never found seducing you to be much of a challenge,” Susan said.
    â€œI try not to be aloof,” I said.
    We were silent for a moment. The air-conditioning hummed in the dim room. Outside, in the dark night,thick with insects, the full weight of the Georgia summer sat heavily.
    â€œAre you making any progress professionally?” Susan said after a time.
    â€œI’m getting to know my employer and his family.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œAnd I may be in a Tennessee Williams play. . . . The old man seems sort of above the fray. He’s separated, got a girlfriend, looks better than George Hamilton, and appears to leave the day-to-day management of the business to his youngest daughter.”
    â€œWhat’s she like?”
    â€œI like her. She’s smart and centered. She finds me amusing.”
    â€œSo even if she weren’t smart and centered . . .” Susan said.
    â€œActually, that’s how I know she’s smart and centered,” I said.
    Susan’s laugh across the thousand miles was immediate and intimate and as much of home as I was ever likely to have. It made my throat hurt.
    â€œWhat about the other sisters?” Susan said.
    I told her what I knew.
    â€œYou have any comment on a woman married to a man who prefers little boys?” I said.
    â€œIt would probably be preferable if she were married to a man who preferred her.”
    â€œWow,” I said. “You shrinks know stuff.”
    â€œIn my practice, I know what my patients tell me. I know nothing about Stonie and whatsisname.”
    â€œCord.”
    â€œCord,” she said. “And there is no one-fits-all template for a woman married to a man who prefers boys—if what SueSue told you is true.”
    â€œSueSue says that Stonie is so sexually frustrated that she is a threat to every doorknob,” I said.
    â€œMaybe she is,” Susan said. “Or maybe that’s just SueSue’s projection of how she herself would be.”
    â€œAnd Cord? You figure he married her to get cover?” I said.
    â€œMaybe,” Susan said. “Or maybe he married her because he loves her.”
    â€œI could not love thee half so much, loved I not small boys more?”
    â€œSexuality is a little complicated.”
    â€œI’ve heard that,” I said. “What bothers me in all of this is that I’ve got a series of so-far inexplicable crimes, committed in the midst of this family full of, I don’t even know the right word for it—dippy?—people. I mean, there ought to be a connection but there isn’t, or at least I can’t find it.”
    â€œYou’ll find it if it’s there,” Susan said. “But most families are full of dippiness. Perhaps you don’t always find yourself so fully in the bosom of a client’s family,