Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn (Spenser, #44)(33)

Her bruised tomatoes, although impressive, looked like I felt. She took a bite of the salad as I worked on the hamburger. Alden & Harlow chefs were artists. I tried to make it last. Susan laughed at me, reached over, and wiped some high-end ketchup off my chin.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll let you kidnap me. But only for nostalgia’s sake.”

“I heard they turned our bedroom into a shrine,” I said. “Holy men come there to pray. It promises to grant amazing prowess.”

“It’s where you—”

“Opened the heavens?”

“We’d already done that many times,” Susan said. “It’s where we forged our bond. In a very real sense, where we made a lifetime commitment to each other.”

“With only one brief and yet unimportant interruption.”

“You call that time unimportant?” she said.

“No,” I said. “But the other people involved were.”

“We never discuss that time.”

I looked up from my drink. “Would it be helpful?”

“Nope.”

I offered my Sam Adams across the table. Susan lifted her wine and we touched glasses with a sharp clink.

“To the future?” she said.

“‘Art is long,’” I said. “‘And Time is fleeting.’”





28


Rob Featherstone had lived in a blue cottage, like they built for GIs after the war, a few blocks from the water in Quincy. The next morning, I stepped over several flower arrangements set on the steps and mashed the buzzer. Within a minute or two, a woman opened the door. She was in her mid-sixties, with a long, drawn face and sagging shoulders. She wore narrow glasses and a Sox hoodie over a gray shirt.

I told her I’d worked with her Rob. A solid half-lie.

She nodded, reached into the hoodie, and grabbed a tissue. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and said she was Mrs. Featherstone.

“I’m very sorry to hear about Rob.”

She nodded and wandered back in the little house. I opened the storm door and followed. A handful of people sat in the living room with more talking back in the kitchen. Mrs. Featherstone walked back from the kitchen and nodded to a small dining room. The table was finely polished. The seats had been covered in protective plastic. On the walls hung prints of old locomotives and coal burners. Several model train engines sat side by side on the table with a track encircling the table.

“You a Spark?”

“I’m a private investigator. Rob was helping me with an arson case.”

“Christ Almighty,” she said. “I knew they were going to kill him.”

“Who?”

“The damned arsonists,” she said, wiping her nose again. Her nose was very red and her eyes completely glazed over. “Don’t you know about all these crazy fires?”

“And who are they?”

She shook her head. “Hell if I know,” she said. “But Rob did. He was sure of it. Just sure of it.”

“Besides you, who would he confide in?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Jerry Ramaglia? He’s here. Other Sparks. Rob saw them more than he saw me. When he wasn’t at work, he lived at that firehouse museum.”

“You think he meant someone who was a Spark?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t tell me nothing. We’d been together for forty years. But the last thirty hadn’t been so easy. We stayed together for the kids, and then the kids leave and we stay together ’cause it’s easy. Even if Rob wasn’t an easy man to be around. Chasing fires and playing with his model trains.”

“But he told you that he knew who set all these fires.”

“Yes.”

“And what else?”

“That he was going to do something about it.”

“And you didn’t ask him what he meant?”

“To be honest, I thought it was just talk,” she said. “Rob always had some kind of conspiracy theory working. I just said, ‘Good luck with that, dear,’ and turned the newspaper while eating toast. But they killed him. Didn’t they?”

“Someone did.”

“Couldn’t’ve been anything else,” she said. “Rob was an electrician. He fixed and wired shit. He did good work. Never pissed anyone off. Wasn’t into getting drunk or drugs or crap like that. He loved being a Spark. It was his life.”

She blew her nose long and hard. There was an odd burst of laughter from the kitchen. A man walked into the dining room and asked if we would like some coffee. We both shook our heads and the man disappeared.

“God,” she said. “Someone killed him. He finally did it.”

“Did what?”

“Something really important.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I’m sad for him. ’Cause he’s dead. But he finally did something big for Boston Fire. He would have loved that.”

“And if he did have some big information, might he have shared it with Jerry?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Better ask Jerry.”

I nodded. “Did Rob keep a journal or have a personal computer?”