Small Vices Part 8

"What did you say your name was?"

"Anathema," I said. "Pervis Anathema, refund enactment agent."

"May I call you back, Mr. Anathema."

"Certainly. If the line's busy, please keep trying. I have calls stacked up."

Then I broke the connection, left the phone off the hook, and walked across the hall to the interior designer showroom across from my office. The receptionist was twenty years old and going to modeling school nights. When I interrupted her, she was studying the cover of Cosmopolitan. Her blond hair stood straight up, with a small maroon highlight streak. She wore white makeup with black lipstick and black nail polish. She was dressed for success in a plaid s.h.i.+rt over a scoop-necked black leotard top, and an ankle-length black dress with peac.o.c.ks on it. Peeking out from under the skirt were shoes that looked sort of like black combat boots except for the high heels. When I was in Korea I'd had zippers put in on the sides because it was so tiresome to lace them all. I couldn't tell if Lila had gone that route.

"Lila," I said. "Time to pay me back for letting you leer at me through the office door."

"You see me leering," Lila said, "you'll know it."

"My phone is going to ring in a minute. You pick it up and say 'Internal Revenue Service,' with those great overtones you got. They'll ask for Mr. Anathema and you say 'one moment please' and hit the hold b.u.t.ton. If they say something else, like 'refund department' or whatever, just say 'one moment please' and hit the hold b.u.t.ton."

Lila looked another wistful moment at the cover of Cosmo and said, "Anathema? What kind of name is that?"

"Greek," I said.

Lila shrugged and said, "Sure."

She folded up the magazine and followed me over to my office. I hung up the phone and we waited.

"Ain't it illegal to impersonate the IRS?" Lila said.

"I believe so," I said.

The phone rang and Lila picked it up, said her piece, and pushed the hold b.u.t.ton.

"Thank you," I said.

"You're welcome," Lila said. "You owe me lunch."

"Yes, I do," I said, and pushed the hold b.u.t.ton. "Anathema."

"Mr. Anathema, Catherine Grant at Pemberton College. Glenda Baker lives in Andover at The Trevanion Condominiums."

"Is there a street address?"

"No sir, that's the only address we have. She has a married name now as well, Glenda Baker McMartin."

"Thank you," I said and hung up.

Spenser one, Pemberton zero.

Chapter 13.

THE MERRIMACK RIVER comes down through New Hamps.h.i.+re by way of Concord and Manchester and Nashua. It enters Ma.s.sachusetts a little north of Lowell and weaves toward the coast through Lowell and Lawrence and Haverhill. Up until the Second World War, the textile industry was strung out along that stretch of river, the mills powered by it, the inexpensive, often female, labor force making up most of the populace in the region. It was an affluent region, and here and there, near the mill cities, residential towns like Andover sprang up to service the executives. Then after the war the labor force organized, their cost went up, the textile mills moved south where the labor was still cheap, and the big mill cities like Lawrence and Lowell were left impoverished, awaiting urban renewal, and the executive bedroom towns turned their lonely eyes toward Boston. Andover was a little different. It had at one time its own textile mill, and the Shawsheen Village area of the town had been built largely by the mill. Its executives were encouraged to live there and walk to work; no garages were built. The mill's corporate offices were across the street from the manufacturing facility. Unlike most of the Merrimack valley, Andover remained upscale after the mill closed. The Academy was there. The mill manufacturing facility was taken over by an electronics firm, the McMartin Corporation; and the corporate offices went through several incarnations before being rehabbed into an upscale condominium complex called very grandly, I thought, The Trevanion. Hunt and Glenda Baker McMartin lived at The Trevanion.

It took about forty-five minutes to drive up to Andover in the late afternoon, with the rain spitting against my winds.h.i.+eld and the wipers on slow sporadic. The foliage along Route 93 had peaked and was faded mostly yellow against the early November drab. I found a parking lot in back of The Trevanion and put my car in a slot that said Guest.

Glenda and Hunt were what every couple would want to be. He was tall and athletic looking with thick dark hair expensively cut. He was dressed in the J. Crew version of after-work leisure, and sported what used to be thought of as a healthy tan. She looked like him except she was shorter and her hair was auburn. She too had an even tan, which didn't look precancerous, and had the advantage of reminding me that they could probably afford to go to the Caribbean. Or a tanning salon. She too was in freshly ironed active wear. They both looked like they belonged to a health club.

"h.e.l.lo," I said. "I'm Spenser. I called earlier."

"Yes, please, do come in," Glenda said.

She looked about twenty-two and acted as if she were a bit older than I. Neither of them looked as if they'd ever had a childhood. Probably they had been too busy being rich. The condo was money. The ceilings were twenty feet high, the bedroom was a loft. There was a kitchenette with a black-and-white tile dining counter, and a ruby-colored stove and refrigerator. The windows reached the full height of the ceiling. A brightly colored Tiffany-type lamp hung on a long bra.s.s chain over a thick gla.s.s-topped dining room table. There was an antique chaise covered with leather, and a refinished carriage seat, and a carefully a.s.sembled stereo system that would play Procol Harum in every nuance. Everything about them and the place spoke of money. Including the way they talked. Both of them had the sort of tight-jawed WASP drawl that only elocution lessons, or several generations of money and private education, can sometimes instill. My sense was that they hadn't taken elocution lessons.

"A drink?" Hunt said. "Coffee?"

"Beer is nice," I said.

"I have Sam Adams," he said. "White Buffalo, Red Hook Ale, Saranac Black and Tan."

"White Buffalo would be fine," I said, as if it made a difference.

We sat in the small room dominated by the television set. Probably only used it to watch Masterpiece Theater. Hunt poured my beer into a fine tall pilsner gla.s.s being careful to get an inch of head on it. Glenda had a gla.s.s of white wine, and sat on the couch with her feet tucked under her. Hunt held a short thick gla.s.s of single malt scotch on the rocks, and rattled the ice cubes a little as he sat on the edge of the couch leaning forward a little with his forearms resting on his thighs. I sat on a Moroccan leather ha.s.sock across from them and slurped a little beer through the foamy head, and wiped my upper lip with my thumb and forefinger and smiled.

"You related to the McMartin Corporation?" I said.

"My great-grandfather founded the company," Hunt said.

"Nice to have job security," I said.

"Yes."

"Tell me about Melissa Henderson's abduction," I said.

Glenda looked at Hunt. Hunt was being calm, a take-charge guy, full of confidence and poise, or as full of those things as a twenty-five-year-old kid is likely to be.

"Frankly, sir, we're a little tired of telling people about that. It was unpleasant to see, and it is unpleasant to talk about."

"I'm sure Melissa would agree," I said. "But I need to hear about it again."

"You work for Cone, Oakes?" Hunt said.

"Yes."

"And you or they or both seem to think that the murderer was wrongly convicted?"

"They would like to be a.s.sured that he wasn't," I said.

"He wasn't," Hunt said.

I looked at his wife.

"You as sure as your husband?" I said.

"Oh," Glenda said, "yes."

She had on an expensive, oversized waffle weave cobalt sweat s.h.i.+rt over silvery tights. Her twenty-two-year-old body seemed restless under the clothing, as if her natural state was naked, and clothes were a grudging accommodation to propriety.

"What did you see?" I said.

Glenda smiled and sipped some wine and looked at her husband.

"Glenda and I were walking back from a movie," he said.

"Actually I was hoping to hear from your wife," I said.

"I'll do the talking," Hunt said firmly. "We both saw the same thing. We were coming back from a movie, walking maybe twenty-five yards behind Melissa along Main Street near the campus front entrance. And a ear came along the street, driving slowly, and pulled in beside her and a black guy jumped out and dragged her in and sped away."

"Where'd he speed away to?"

"Into the campus."

"Just where I'd go," I said. "If I were kidnapping a coed."

"I started toward her to see if I could help, but I was too late and I didn't know. I thought it might have been a lover's quarrel, you know. Lot of the girls dated black guys, and it would look like because he was black..."

"Sure," I said. "What kind of car?"

"Big car, pink. Maybe an old Cadillac."

"Just the thing for sneaking around Pemberton," I said. "How'd he grab her?"

"Excuse me'?"

"He grabbed her and dragged her into the car. What part of her did he grab?"

"I, it was dark, you know, I think he had her by the hair."

"That how you remember it, Mrs. McMartin?"

"Yes," she said.

There was a faintly dreamy quality about her, as if she were always a little disengaged, thinking of her body.

"She scream?"

"Yes."

"What'd she scream?"

"She just screamed, you know, eeek. A scream."

I nodded.

"You knew Melissa well?" I said.

"Oh, certainly," Hunt said. "She and Glenda were very close friends."

"She was my sorority daughter," Glenda said. "She was like a younger sister."

Hunt looked slightly annoyed, as if he wasn't used to being interrupted.

"When Glenda and I began dating," he said, "I got to know her well, too."

"So you saw a black man in an old pink car pull up, grab a female friend of yours by the hair and drag her screaming into his car and speed away."

"Yes."

"And you didn't call the cops."

"I didn't want to be one of those country-club liberals who thinks all blacks are hoodlums. I guess I made a mistake."

"I guess," I said. "Where'd you grow up?"

"Here, in Andover."

"Go to the Academy?"

"Yes, and on to Williams, and then graduate work at M.I.T."

"How about you, Mrs. McMartin?"

"Same," she said. "Hunt was three years ahead of me at Phillips."

"Did the kidnapper ever get out of the car?" I said.

Again Hunt answered.

"Yes, he had to to catch her and when he did the streetlight was right above him and I saw him clear."

"And when Melissa turned up dead you went to the cops."

"Yes."

"And they put you in front of a lineup, and you picked out Ellis Alves."

"We both knew him right away."