Hugger Mugger by Robert B. Parker

killed . . .”
    â€œIt has their attention,” I said. “I can stick around pro bono for a while.”
    â€œI couldn’t ask you to do that.”
    â€œIt’s not just for you,” I said. “I don’t like having a client shot out from under me.”
    â€œI know, but no. I thank you for what you’ve done, and for being so decent a man. But I’d prefer that you left this to the police.”
    â€œOkay,” I said.
    â€œPlease send me your final bill,” she said.
    â€œAgainst the private eye rules,” I said. “Your client gets shot, you don’t bill his estate.”
    â€œIt’s not your fault,” she said. “I want a final bill.”
    â€œSure,” I said.
    â€œYou’re not going to send one, are you.”
    â€œNo.”
    I stood. She stood.
    â€œYou’re a lovely man,” she said. “Would you like to say goodbye to Hugger?”
    I had no feelings one way or another about Hugger, but horse people are like that and she’d just called me a lovely man.
    â€œSure,” I said.
    â€œGive him a carrot,” she said, and handed me one.
    We walked in the now more insistent rain along the stable row until we came to Hugger’s stall. He looked out, keeping his head stall side of the drip line, his big dark eyes looking, I suspected, far more profound thanhe was. I handed him a carrot on my open palm, and he lipped it in. I patted his nose and turned and Penny stood on her tiptoes and put her arms around my neck and gave me a kiss on the lips.
    â€œTake care of yourself,” she said.
    â€œYou too,” I said.
    The kiss was sisterly, with no heat in it, but she stayed leaning against me, with her arms still around my neck, and her head thrown back so she could look up at me.
    â€œI’m sorry things didn’t work out,” she said.
    â€œMe too,” I said.
    We stayed that way for a minute. Then she let go of me and stepped back and looked at me for another moment and turned and walked back to the stable office. I watched her go, and then turned the collar of my jacket up to keep the rain off my neck and headed for my car.

TWENTY-ONE

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    I ARRIVED BACK in Boston around three-thirty. By quarter to five I was in Susan’s living room, showered and shaved and aromatic with aftershave, waiting for her when she got through work. I was sitting on the couch with Pearl, having a drink, when Susan came upstairs from her last patient.
    She saw me, and smiled, and said hello, and patted Pearl and gave her a kiss, and walked past us into her bedroom. I could hear the shower, and in about fifteen minutes, Susan reappeared wearing a bath towel. She flipped the towel open and shut, like a flasher.
    â€œY’all want to get on in heah, Georgia boy?”
    â€œThat’s the worst southern accent I’ve ever heard,” I said.
    â€œI know,” she said, “but everything else will be pretty good.”
    â€œHow could you be so sure I’d be responsive?” I said. “Maybe I’m tired from the long drive.”
    â€œI’m a psychotherapist,” Susan said. “I know these things.”
    â€œAmazing.”
    When we made love, Susan liked to do the same things every time, which was less boring than it sounds, because it included about everything either of us knew how to do. She was also quite intense about it. Sometimes she was so fully in the moment that she seemed to have gone to a place I’d never been. Sometimes it took her several minutes, when we were through, to resurface.
    As usual, when she had come back sufficiently, she got up and opened the bedroom door. Pearl came in and jumped on the bed and snuffled around, as if she suspected what might have happened here, and disapproved.
    There was the usual jockeying for position before we finally got Pearl out from between us. She settled, as she always did, with a noise that suggested resignation, near