"Ms. Bradshaw has told you she don't wish to speak of it," he said. "You'll have to leave."

I had a brief internal struggle, which I lost. I was too frustrated.

"What's option B?" I said.

"I remove you," Clark said.

"I'll take that one," I said.

"What?"

"I'll take option B," I said. "Remove me."

Clark looked at Heidi. Heidi had an odd look on her face.

"Remove Mr. Spenser, Clark."

He was so spectacularly big and muscular that it probably didn't occur to him that he couldn't. Most times he probably just frightened people into submission. He put his left hand flat against my chest and pushed.

"Okay," he said. "Move it."

I brought both hands up and knocked his hand away, which left both my hands up, and in convenient position for step two. Clark initiated step two by throwing a big roundhouse right hand at me. I deflected it with my left and stepped back.

"Clark," I said. "That's not the way."

He lunged at me and I put a stiff jab on his nose.

"Get your feet under you," I said. "Left one forward."

I gave him another jab and ducked under his left and moved to my right.

"See, if you don't have your legs under you, you don't turn well. Which lets me get around you and bang up your body."

I hooked him left, then right, to the ribs. I heard him gasp. He wouldn't last long, even if I didn't hit him. There's shape, and there's fighting shape. Clark was maybe in posing shape. He was already starting to suck air. He was slower throwing the big right again. I brushed it away with my left.

"And don't loop your punches," I said. "Lead with your hip. Keep your elbows in. Guy your size, you should be working in close anyway, use your muscle."

I doubled up on a jab to the nose and then stepped in and hit him a big right-hand uppercut, and Clark fell over.

"See how I started my hip first?" I said. "And let the punch follow it?"

Clark wasn't out. But he was through. He sat on the floor. I knew his head was swimming. He was breathing as hard as he could.

"The companions you hire," I said to Heidi, "don't seem to be working out."

Her face was a little flushed. Her eyes were shiny. She ran the tip of her tongue along her lower lip. I turned and walked out of the atrium. Behind me the harpist was still playing. As I walked down the hall toward the front door, two security guards came in, walking fast.

"What happened," one of them said to me.

"Clark just got knocked on his a.s.s," I said.

"Good," he said, and kept on past me into the atrium.

20.

"Well," Susan said. "That worked out swell." Susan said. "That worked out swell."

It was Sunday morning. We were in her kitchen. She was sipping her coffee, watching me make clam hash for breakfast.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," I said.

"And what was gained from this venture?" she said.

"The considerable satisfaction of giving Clark a big smack," I said.

"That's why your right hand seems swollen."

"I deserve it," I said. "The uppercut was showing off. Another minute or so and he'd have run out of oxygen."

"It didn't seem to bother you earlier this morning," Susan said. "Does it hurt?"

"Only if I punch somebody."

"Which you do much less of these days," Susan said.

"I'm maturing," I said.

"But not aging," Susan said.

I smiled at her.

"You're thinking about earlier this morning, aren't you."

"Hard not to," Susan said.

I was chopping onions.

"Is there a pun in there?"

"Not unless you are a lecherous pig," Susan said.

"Oink," I said.

"And bless you for it," Susan said. "You might have learned some things. You said Heidi Bradshaw acted strangely."

"The fight excited her," I said.

"Fights can be exciting?"

"There was something wrong with her excitement," I said. "Her eyes. There was something going on in her eyes."

"Like what?" Susan said.

I mixed the chopped onions with the clams.

"Like I was peeking in a window and seeing something terrible," I said.

"I guess you had to be there," Susan said.

I nodded. I cubed some boiled red potatoes, skins and all, and stirred them in with the chopped clams and onions.

"There's something else, now that I'm thinking about it," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I think there is."

"You know what it is?" I said.

"Yes," Susan said. "If you're reporting accurately."

"I always report accurately," I said.

She nodded.

"I know," she said. "Heidi's behavior is inconsistent with all the things that have happened."

"Wow," I said.

Susan smiled.

"Harvard," she said, "Ph.D."

"Yet still s.e.xually active," I said.

"You should know," Susan said.

"I should," I said. "Right after the kidnapping you remarked that her reactions seemed odd, but we both know that shock can cause all sorts of behavior."

"Yes," Susan said. "But the shock should have worn off by now. Her current behavior should be far more genuine."

"c.o.c.ktails in the atrium," I said. "A new companion."

"Or bodyguard," Susan said. "However ineffective."

"I wasn't too effective, either," I said.

"Hard to decide that," Susan said, "without knowing exactly what you were supposed to effect."

I nodded.

"And it seemed like an inside job," I said.

"You've always wanted to say that, haven't you?"

"Detectives are supposed to say stuff like that," I said. "And it had to be inside. Rugar wouldn't have taken a job without knowing the layout. Who was where. What the security was. What time things were happening."

"You think Heidi was involved in kidnapping her own daughter?"

"If that's what it was," I said.

"What it was?"

"I'm just noodling," I said. "But what if the kidnapping was a head fake. What if the real business was something else?"

"What?"

"The murder of the clergyman . . . or the son-in-law . . . or a scheme to extract ransom from somebody, like Adelaide's father."

"And you think Heidi could be involved?"

"I don't know," I said. "That's why I'm noodling. It doesn't have to be Heidi. It could be anybody who knew what was going on. Maggie Lane, the famous conductor . . . Adelaide."

"Wow, you are noodling," Susan said.

"Better a theory," I said, "than nothing."

"Theory is no subst.i.tute for information," Susan said.

"They certainly didn't teach you that at Harvard," I said.

Susan smiled.

"No," she said. "Some things I know, I learned from you."

21.

Lydia Hall College was north of New York City, near Greenwich, Connecticut. About a three-hour drive from Boston, unless you stopped at Rein's Deli for a tongue sandwich on light rye. So it was almost four hours after I left home that I was in the alumni office talking to a very presentable woman named Ms. Gold. was north of New York City, near Greenwich, Connecticut. About a three-hour drive from Boston, unless you stopped at Rein's Deli for a tongue sandwich on light rye. So it was almost four hours after I left home that I was in the alumni office talking to a very presentable woman named Ms. Gold.