The address was a green shingled ranch near the college. A narrow concrete walk led up to the house. The lawn was neat, and a big hydrangea with blue flowers bloomed beside the front door. I parked out front. The black Explorer drove on past, with Curly in the passenger seat, carefully looking the other way.

I went up the concrete walk and stood on the low concrete front step and rang the doorbell. A burly woman with gray hair opened the door. She was wearing a flowered dress that reached her ankles.

“Hi,” I said brightly, “I’m looking for Roy Levesque.”

She had a pale indoor face and thick black eyebrows that almost met over the bridge of her broad nose.

“Why?”

“I’d like to talk with him about Mary Toricelli.”

The woman looked like she had smelled a bad thing. Maybe it was Mary. Maybe she always looked that way.

“What about her?”

“Is Roy home?”

She thought about that for a moment.

“He’s eatin‘ his breakfast,” she said. “He works nights.”

“Maybe I could join him for coffee,” I said.

That seemed too hard a thing for her to think about. She tried for a while and gave up and yelled into the house. “Roy. Some guy here wants to see you.”

Roy appeared in an undershirt and baggy jeans with no belt. His long hair was clubbed back in a ponytail. He was barefoot and needed a shave. On his upper arm was a tattoo of a cowboy riding a bucking horse. The cowboy was holding the reins with one hand and waving his hat with the other. Below the horse, a banner read “Born to Raise Hell.”

“Whaddya need?” Roy said.

“I need to talk about Mary Toricelli.”

He looked at me for a moment without speaking. You could tell he thought he was scary. Then he spoke to the woman.

“Ma,” he said. “Whyn’t you go clean up the breakfast dishes.”

She shuffled off in her blue rubber flip-flops. Roy stepped out onto the front stoop and closed the door behind him.

“Go ahead,” Roy said. “Talk.”

“I understand you are a friend of Mary’s.”

“Who tole you that?”

“She did,” I lied.

“And who the fuck are you,” Roy said.

“My name is Spenser,” I said. “I’m trying to clear her of a murder charge.”

“Yeah, I heard about her husband. What are you coming to me for?”

“I understand you used to go out with her.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you still friends?”

“I seen her once, couple years ago, at a high school reunion,” Roy said.

He was dark-haired and taller than I was, with dark eyes that looked tired, and a little pouchy. I thought he looked like a boozer. Some women might think he looked soulful.

“Seen her since?” I said.

“None of your fucking business,” Roy said.

“Clever answer,” I said. “You go to high school together?”

“Yeah. Graduated Franklin High in ‘eighty-nine,” Levesque said. “You a fucking cop, man?”

“Private,” I said.

“Private? A fucking gumshoe? For crissake I’m trying to eat my breakfast.”

“The reunion the last time you saw her?”

“I don’t know. I seen her when I seen her.”

“You anything more than friends?”

“What’s that mean?”

“You intimate?”

“You mean did I fuck her?”

“Yes.”

“What if I did?”

“More power to you,” I said.

“I didn’t say I fucked her. I just said what if I did?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I don’t want to get mixed up in some freaking murder case, you know?”

“I know,” I said. “She date anyone else besides you?”

“No… I don’t know… I never said I dated her.”

“But you did.”

“I don’t have to talk with you, pal.”

“Of course you don’t,” I said. “You know anybody she might have been dating?”

“I got nothing else to say.”

“What a shame,” I said.

“So just shove fucking off, pal.”

“You bet,” I said. “How’d you feel about her marrying Nathan Smith?”

He tapped me on the chest with a long forefinger. “I told you once to take a walk. I’m not telling you again.”

“Actually you told me to ”shove fucking off.“ You didn’t say anything about taking a walk.”

Roy looked a little confused. But he was a tough guy, wasn’t he? He changed the jabbing finger into a flat hand on my chest and shoved. I didn’t move. There was no point to this. He wasn’t going to talk to me anymore. I was just being stubborn.

Roy said, “You don’t want to fuck with me, pal.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re real close to a lot of trouble.”

“You?” I said.

“Yeah. Me.”

“Roy, you couldn’t cause me trouble if you had a bulldozer.”

Roy was maybe an inch taller than I was, but ten pounds lighter. He thought about it. But he didn’t do it. Instead he said, “Ahh,” and dismissed me with a hand gesture and turned back toward the house.

“We’ll talk again,” I said.

He kept going.

As I went back to my car I saw the nose of the Explorer around the corner on a side street. I thought about going over and grabbing one of the shadows. But that was just irritation. It wouldn’t produce anything good.

Nothing else had.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Susan had decided we should ride bikes. So we rented a couple, to see how we liked it, and set out.

“We’ll just ride along the river a little ways,” Susan had said. “And then we can sit and have our little lunch, and then ride back. It’ll be fun.”

“Did you know that bike riding is a threat to male fertility?” I said.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“How about a threat to potency?”

“That would matter,” Susan said.

We rode past the Harvard Business School on the Boston side of the river, heading into town. The balance was still a little shaky, but I knew it would come. There wasn’t room on the trail to ride beside each other. Bikes coming in the other direction couldn’t get by. So I trailed along behind her, admiring her butt in its spandex tights. It was not fun. I hadn’t ridden a bicycle since I was a kid in Wyoming, and after five minutes on this one I was glad I hadn’t. We went over the Weeks footbridge to the Cambridge side again, and stopped and sat on benches near the Harvard women’s boathouse. Susan took a brown paper bag out of her backpack and began to set out finger sandwiches.

“There,” Susan said. “Was that fun?”

“What would be fun about it?” I said. “We’re not even together while we’re riding.”

“You’re just afraid you’ll fall off and embarrass yourself.”

“I thought you thought I was fearless,” I said.

“About stuff that matters,” she said. “But when it doesn’t matter, you hate doing things at which you’re not accomplished.”

“Shall I lean back, Doc, and recall my childhood?”

Susan took a small bite of her egg salad sandwich. “I have all the information about you I require,” she said. “Tell me about the Nathan Smith business you’re working on.”

“There’s a lot wrong with the Nathan Smith business,” I said. “First of all, there’s someone following me.”

“Dangerous?”

“No,” I said. “It’s a what’s-he-up-to tail, rather than a try-to-kill-him tail.”

“Oh good,” Susan said. “Do they know you’ve spotted them?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “They’re still being covert. If they knew I’d made them they wouldn’t bother.”

“And you think it relates to the Nathan Smith murder?”

“Started shortly after I took the case,” I said.

“Do you know who they are?”

“They’re connected to a company called Soldiers Field Development Limited, the CEO of which is on Mary Smith’s invitation list.”

I took a second finger sandwich from the bag.

“What’s here besides bread and ham?” I said.

“Butter.”

“Butter?”

“Well, not exactly butter. I sprayed it with one of those no-calorie butter-flavored sprays. Same thing.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Is it possible that it’s a coincidence, the surveillance and stuff? Or maybe connected to another case you were involved in? A loose end somewhere?”