Robert B. Parker's Little White Lies Read online

  THE SPENSER NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s Slow Burn

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Kickback

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Silent Night (with Helen Brann)

  Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby

  (by Ace Atkins)

  Sixkill

  Painted Ladies

  The Professional

  Rough Weather

  Now & Then

  Hundred-Dollar Baby

  School Days

  Cold Service

  Bad Business

  Back Story

  Widow’s Walk

  Potshot

  Hugger Mugger

  Hush Money

  Sudden Mischief

  Small Vices

  Chance

  Thin Air

  Walking Shadow

  Paper Doll

  Double Deuce

  Pastime

  Stardust

  Playmates

  Crimson Joy

  Pale Kings and Princes

  Taming a Sea-Horse

  A Catskill Eagle

  Valediction

  The Widening Gyre

  Ceremony

  A Savage Place

  Early Autumn

  Looking for Rachel Wallace

  The Judas Goat

  Promised Land

  Mortal Stakes

  God Save the Child

  The Godwulf Manuscript

  THE JESSE STONE NOVELS

  Robert B. Parker’s Debt to Pay

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Blind Spot

  (by Reed Farrel Coleman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Damned If You Do

  (by Michael Brandman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice

  (by Michael Brandman)

  Robert B. Parker’s Killing the Blues

  (by Michael Brandman)

  Split Image

  Night and Day

  Stranger in Paradise

  High Profile

  Sea Change

  Stone Cold

  Death in Paradise

  Trouble in Paradise

  Night Passage

  THE SUNNY RANDALL NOVELS

  Spare Change

  Blue Screen

  Melancholy Baby

  Shrink Rap

  Perish Twice

  Family Honor

  THE COLE/HITCH WESTERNS

  Robert B. Parker’s Revelation

  (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s Blackjack

  (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s The Bridge

  (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s Bull River

  (by Robert Knott)

  Robert B. Parker’s Ironhorse

  (by Robert Knott)

  Blue-Eyed Devil

  Brimstone

  Resolution

  Appaloosa

  ALSO BY ROBERT B. PARKER

  Double Play

  Gunman’s Rhapsody

  All Our Yesterdays

  A Year at the Races

  (with Joan H. Parker)

  Perchance to Dream

  Poodle Springs

  (with Raymond Chandler)

  Love and Glory

  Wilderness

  Three Weeks in Spring

  (with Joan H. Parker)

  Training with Weights

  (with John R. Marsh)

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by The Estate of Robert B. Parker

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Ebook ISBN 9780698413061

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  In memory of Ron Borne,

  True pal, lover of life, and dedicated Sox fan

  Que le vin de l’amitié ne jamais s’assèche

  Contents

  Also by Robert B. Parker

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  1

  Dr. Silverman thought you might help,” Connie Kelly said. “She said you’re the best at what you do.”

  “I do many things for Dr. Silverman,” I said. “Although my chosen profession is the least important of them.”

  “So I take it you’re more than friends?”

  I nodded, adding water to the new coffeemaker sitting atop my file cabinet. I’d recently upgraded from Mr. Coffee to one of those machines that used pre-measured plastic cups. I placed
my mug under the filter, clamped down the lid, and returned to my desk. Demonic hissing sounds echoed in my office. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

  “God,” Connie said. “I feel like the biggest idiot in Boston.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s quite an elite club,” I said. “The line stretches all the way from Mass Ave down to Mattapoissett.”

  “I thought I loved him.”

  “Did he say he loved you?”

  “Of course,” she said. “That’s how I found myself back in therapy. I haven’t been to see Dr. Silverman for years. I thought I was cured.”

  “Dr. Silverman might say therapy isn’t a cure,” I said. “It’s a process.”

  “She’s a very intelligent woman.”

  I gave Connie a big smile, letting her know I echoed the sentiment. When the hissing and spitting ceased, I retrieved the mug and a carton of milk, a few packs of sugar, and a clean spoon. I set them on the desk near her and returned to my seat.

  “I’ve worked a lot of unusual jobs,” I said. “But I have to admit, helping with relationships isn’t my specialty.”

  “I don’t want help,” Connie Kelly said. “I need to know who he really is.”

  “You mean deep down?”

  “I know he’s a phony, a liar, and a two-timing, backstabbing son of a bitch.”

  “Yikes.”

  She busily added sugar and milk to her coffee with shaking hands. Despite her mood, Connie Kelly was dressed in a white sleeveless silk top with a black pencil skirt adorned with chrysanthemums and a pair of black open-toe heels that highlighted her shapely calves. Her toes had been painted a festive red.

  “As true as that might be . . .” I said.

  “Wait,” she said. “There’s more.”

  Being a trained investigator and a master listener, I waited. Pleasant city sounds drifted up from Berkeley Street on a cool, almost fall-like breeze. I leaned back in my chair, resting my hands on my thighs, still dressed in a sweaty gray T-shirt and running shorts. I had intended to check my mail, not meet with a client. But she’d been there waiting before I opened the door.

  “He has two hundred and sixty thousand dollars of my money,” she said. “He swindled it from me and then disappeared.”

  I withheld from snapping my fingers and saying, “Now we’re talking.” Instead, I nodded with grave understanding. The promise of money made me quite attentive, especially after a slow summer and losing my apartment and all my worldly possessions in a recent fire.

  “I don’t even know if M. Brooks Welles is his real name.”

  “That name sounds familiar,” I said. “Should I know him?”

  “Are you a member of many social clubs?”

  “Does the corner barstool at the Tennessee Tavern count?”

  “Hardly,” she said. “When we were together, he seldom passed on a charity event or dinner invitation. Come to think of it, I never saw him pick up a check. People loved being around a guy who got his face on TV.”

  “Actor?”

  “Worse,” she said. “Pundit.”

  She ran down the names of several cable news channels where Welles had appeared as an expert. I inquired about his area of expertise.

  “He said he was in the CIA,” she said. “He spoke on terrorism, military affairs, politics. Mainly how we’d failed to keep our country safe. He was a very popular speaker after the marathon bombings. He said the current administration and their liberal policies had failed us.”

  “How, when, and under what pretense did Mr. Welles take your money?”

  Connie let out a long breath and reached for the coffee with both hands. She sipped and with great care returned the mug to the desk. “It’s so naked and awful,” she said. “It was two months ago. Real estate.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “A foolproof investment?”

  “Land up near Walden Pond,” she said. “He said he’d hunted there as a boy and the place had given him great solace.”

  “The only thing I knew people to hunt around Walden Pond were rats.”

  “I didn’t ask many questions,” Connie said, shaking her head, her eyes growing moist. “I didn’t ask him anything at all. I met very few of his friends and no family.”

  “Love is blind,” I said.

  I toasted her with my mug. She smiled for the first time since entering my office. “Bryn Mawr. English.”

  “You and Kate Hepburn.” I reached for a yellow legal pad and my pen. “What is it that you’d like me to do?”

  “I want you to run a background check on him.”

  I shrugged. “You could do that online. You don’t need me.”

  “And,” she said, “I want my goddamn money back and his ass hanging out to dry.”

  “Ah.”

  I wrote down a few notes, taking care with the details about his ass drying out. I put down the pen and drank some coffee. After running five miles, I was having fantasies about stopping off at Kane’s for a couple of old-fashioneds to replenish my carbs.

  “I’m four hundred dollars a day,” I said. “Plus expenses.”

  She didn’t flinch, and instead reached into her purse for a checkbook. The checks were sandwiched between handsome alligator covers. “I’d be glad to pay for a week in advance.”

  “I don’t know how long it will take,” I said. “And I can’t promise any legal action or justice. Although I do know a very competent and very mean redheaded attorney.”

  “I understand.”

  “Just the facts, ma’am.”

  “The Bard and Joe Friday?”

  “I am one literate son of a gun.”

  “I heard you often amuse yourself.”

  “Can’t put anything by ol’ Doc Silverman.”

  “Shall I tell you everything I know about M. Brooks Welles?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know much, but I do think he might be dangerous,” she said. “Very dangerous. I think back on things he told me and they make me shudder. He confided in me that he’s killed many men.”

  I shrugged and thought about flexing my biceps or showing off the .357 Magnum I kept in my right-hand drawer. But doing so might seem gauche to a gal from Bryn Mawr, so I just listened.

  “I asked for it,” she said. “We met each other through an Internet dating site. He told me that after Vietnam, he joined the CIA and then went on to write books and produce movies. I saw him several times on television, so I trusted he was telling me the truth.”

  “Do you have a photo?”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of a man in his sixties with silvery hair and a saltwater tan, wearing expensive duds. Starched white shirt wide open at the throat, navy blazer with brass buttons. Connie Kelly was seated beside him at some waterfront restaurant. They were laughing and looked very happy. I didn’t wish to judge, but he looked a bit long in the tooth for her.

  “I wanted a tall, successful, and interesting man. Someone who liked to travel and took time to enjoy sunsets.”

  “Piña coladas and getting caught in the rain?”

  “I should have said honest but ran out of room on my profile,” she said. “I guess I left the door wide open for this kind of thing. My husband left me two years ago for a flight attendant from Dallas. I am not what you’d call a stunner, but Brooks made me feel very beautiful. I do know I’m smart and very good at what I do.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I work as an administrator for Jumpstart,” she said. “Are you familiar with the organization?”

  “Very,” I said. “They do great work. Do you have children?”

  She shook her head. She didn’t touch the coffee again. But she ripped out the check and dropped it on my desk.

  “Let me see what I c
an do.”

  She smiled again. “You’re different than Dr. Silverman described you.”

  “Bigger? More stunning?”

  “Quieter,” she said. “More self-contained.”

  “I tried to put that on the business cards,” I said. “But ran out of room.”

  2

  I drove home to my new digs in the Charlestown Navy Yard and made breakfast. As I ate two poached eggs with a side of locally cured bacon from the Public Market, I pulled up YouTube clips of M. Brooks Welles doing his thing. It was liberating doing my job in a terry-cloth robe while munching on bacon. I wondered why I didn’t begin every day like this. Skip the workouts, head right to the breakfast meats and sleuthing.

  Pearl sat by my side as I worked. Her yellow eyes were dutiful and glowing. She wanted either to show me her love or me to share. I pinched off a piece of bacon and tossed it to the floor. On my computer, Welles was introduced as a former Navy SEAL, Vietnam vet, and CIA operative. Special consul to foreign affairs committees. He was sleek and confident. He spoke in a gravelly, knowing voice filled with authority and wore an American flag pin on his lapel. I resisted the urge to salute my MacBook.

  He called the president at the time a clown and a fraud. He claimed he knew of dozens of Muslim paramilitary training camps within the United States. He said, based on his experience, that tougher immigration standards and screening processes needed to be put in place or we’d be visiting 9/11 all over again. He talked a lot about his time in the CIA, offering vague comments about his mission in South America making tough calls and doing the work in the shadows. Over the years, I had known men and women who’d done that kind of work. They seldom spoke of it. Even in vague terms.

  Welles relished in it. More talk about working with Air America, battling the Communist threat, and now looking at a battlefront at home. As the interview continued, Welles was intercut with images of the marathon bombing. I had enough and closed the screen.

  Pearl looked up at me. Ever vigilant, she knew I still had half a piece of bacon left. I tossed it to her and walked back to get dressed. Pearl trotted beside me, still not confident in the new place.

  The old shipping warehouse had been built not long after the Civil War and had a nice view of the yards and the U.S.S. Constitution, with tall ceilings and a big plate-glass window, exposed brick walls, and floors fashioned from the decks of old ships. Rustic. Susan found it amusing I resided so close to Old Ironsides.