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Chapter 1

If you leaned way back in the chair and cranked your neck hard over, you could see the sky from my office window, delft-blue and cloudless and so bright it looked solid. It was September after Labor Day, and somewhere the corn was probably as high as an elephant’s eye, the kind of weather when a wino could sleep warm in a doorway.

“Mr. Spenser; are you listening to us?”

I straightened my head up and looked back at Roger and Margery Bartlett.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “You were just saying about how you never dealt with a private detective before, but this was an extreme case and there seemed no other avenue.

Everybody who comes in here tends to say about that same thing to me. ”

“Well it’s true. ” She was probably older than she looked and not as heavy. Her legs were very slim, the kind women admire and men don’t. They made her plumpish upper body look heavier Her face had a bland, spoiled, pretty look, carefully made up with eye shadow and pancake makeup and false eyelashes. She looked as though if she cried she’d erode. Her hair, freshly blond, was cut close around her face. Gaminelike, I bet her hairdresser said. Mia Farrow, I bet he said. She was wearing a paisley caftan slit up the side and black, ankle-strapped platform shoes with three-inch soles and heels. Sitting opposite me, she had crossed her legs carefully so that the caftan fell away above the knee. I wanted to say, don’t, your legs are too thin. But I knew she wouldn’t believe me. She thought they were wonderful.

Just below her rib cage I could see the little bulge where her girdle stopped and the compressed flesh spilled over the top. She was wearing huge lavender sunglasses and lavender-dyed wooden beads on a leather thong.

“We want you to find our son,” she said.

“Okay. ”

“He’s been gone a week. He ran away. ”

“Do you know where he might have run?” I asked.

“No,” her husband answered. “I looked everywhere I could think of—friends, relatives, places he might hang out. I’ve asked everyone I know that knows him. He’s gone. ”

“Have you notified the police?”

They both nodded. Mr. Bartlett said, “I talked to the chief myself. He says they’ll do what they can, but of course it’s a small force and there isn’t much…”

He let his voice trail off and sat still and uncomfortable looking at me. He looked ill at ease in a shirt and tie. He was dressed in what must have been his wife’s idea of the contemporary look. You can usually tell when a guy’s wife buys his clothes. He had on baggy white cuffed flares, a solid scarlet shirt with long collar points, a wide pink tie, and a red-and-white-plaid seersucker jacket with wide lapels and the waist nipped. A prefolded handkerchief in his breast pocket matched the tie. He had on black and white saddle shoes and looked as happy as a hound in a doggie sweater. He should have been wearing coveralls and steel-toed work shoes. His hands looked strong and caloused, the nails were broken, and there was grime imbedded that the shower wouldn’t touch.