The Professional - By Robert B. Parker Page 0,43

said. “She is now worth eighty million, seven hundred, and twenty-three bucks.”

“More or less,” I said.

“That’s the number they gave me,” Belson said. “I assume it’s rounded to the nearest dollar.”

“Might explain why Estelle and Gary have welcomed her into their home,” I said.

“But why does she want to go?” Belson said.

“Why do most people do anything?” I said.

“Love or money, or variations on either,” Belson said.

“She don’t seem to need money,” I said.

“So we’re back to love,” Belson said.

“But you don’t like it,” I said.

“I don’t see that broad doing anything for love,” Belson said.

“You don’t like Beth?” I said.

“I think she killed her husband,” Belson said.

“Not herself,” I said.

“No, but there’s people who’ll do anything you need if you have money.”

“She didn’t have it until her husband died,” I said.

“So maybe she got a trusting hit guy,” Belson said.

“Like who?” I said.

Belson shrugged.

“Don’t know any trusting hit guys,” he said.

We were quiet. Belson ate the last strawberry-frosted.

“Love and money,” he said.

“Or sex and money,” I said.

“Same thing,” Belson said.

“You think they took it out in trade?” I said.

“It’s what she’s got,” Belson said.

“And it’s gotten her this far,” I said.

“So it’s a theory,” Belson said.

He found a chocolate-cream donut under a cinnamon one, and took it out from under and dusted off the accidental cinnamon and took a careful bite. The donut had a squishy filling, and Belson was very neat.

“She know anybody would kill somebody?” Belson said.

“Her husband did,” I said. “She probably met some. She knew Boo and Zel.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Belson said.

“Doesn’t explain why she’s living with Gary and Estelle,” I said.

“Nope,” Belson said.

I located the cinnamon donut that Belson had put aside in favor of chocolate cream. We ate silently for a moment.

“We don’t have any idea what we’re doing,” I said.

“No,” Belson said. “We don’t seem to.”

Chapter52

I OPENED THE BPD FOLDER on Beth. She had been born Elizabeth Boudreau in a shabby little town on the Merrimack River, east of Proctor. She was thirty-six. In the month she graduated from Tarbridge High School, she married a guy name Boley LaBonte, and divorced him a year later.

Nobody was paying me to do anything. On the other hand, no one was paying me to do nothing, either. Business was slow. I was nosy. And I had kind of a bad feeling about this long-running mess I’d wandered into and hadn’t done a hell of a lot to improve. So I got my car from the alley where I had a deal with the meter maids, and headed north from Boston on a very nice February day with the temperature above freezing and stuff melting gently.

You enter Tarbridge on a two-lane highway from the south. The town is basically three unpainted cinder-block buildings and a red light. A few clapboard houses, some with paint, dwindle away from the cinder block. Up a hill past the red light, maybe a half-mile away, stood a regal-looking redbrick high school. The fact that Tarbridge had a municipal identity was stretching it a bit. That it had a high school was jaw-dropping. It had to be a regional school. But why they had located a regional high school in Tarbridge could only have to do with available land, or, of course, graft.

The town clerk was a fat woman with a red face and a tight perm. She had her offices in a trailer attached to one of the cinder-block buildings. The plastic nameplate on her desk said she was Mrs. Estevia Root.

I handed her my card, and she studied it through some pink-rimmed glasses with rhinestones on them, which hung around her neck on what appeared to be a cut-down shoelace.

“What do ya wanna see Mrs. Boudreau for?” the clerk said.

“I’m investigating a case,” I said. “In Boston.”

“Boston?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What the hell are you doing up here?”

“Just background stuff,” I said. “Where would I find Mrs. Boudreau.”

“Probably in her kitchen, where she usually is.”

“And where is the kitchen located?”

“Back of the house,” Estevia said.

I nodded happily.

“And the house?” I said.

“Passed it on the way in, if you come from Boston,” Estevia said. “’Bout a hundred yards back, be on your right heading out. Kinda run-down, looks empty, but she’ll be in there.”

I felt a chill. If Estevia thought it looked run-down . . .

“Did you happen to know her daughter?” I said. “Beth?”

“She run off long time ago, and no loss,” Estevia said.

“No loss?”

“Best she was gone, ’fore she dragged half the kids in town down with her.”

“Bad girl?” I