They were drinking iced tea and eating sandwiches. Sunny had a BLT. Jesse had a lobster club.
“We got an agenda on this visit?” Jesse said.
“You mean why did I come up here and have lunch with you?”
“Yes.”
“How about because you’re a white-hot stud, and I’ve missed you,” Sunny said.
“Nice answer,” Jesse said.
“It’s true. I do miss you,” Sunny said.
“Yes,” Jesse said. “I miss you, too.”
“And,” Sunny said, “I want a favor.”
Jesse nodded.
“Don’t they always,” Jesse said.
“Ohmigod, the weltschmerz,” Sunny said.
“I’m trying it out,” Jesse said. “How’s it play?”
“Sucks,” Sunny said. “Here’s what I need.”
Jesse smiled and nodded.
“You remember my friend Spike,” she said.
“Sure, big guy, beard, looks sort of like a bear.”
“That would be Spike,” Sunny said.
She opened her sandwich and picked up a slice of bacon and took a small bite off the end of it. Sunny always looked as if she’d recently stepped from the shower, combed her hair, ap-plied her makeup carefully, and dressed. There was a freshness about her that made her seem always nearly brand-new.
“He owns a restaurant in Boston,” Sunny said. “Spike’s. Near Quincy Market.”
“Clever name,” Jesse said.
“He wants to expand,” Sunny said. “And he’s looking to get a place up here.”
“Spike’s North?” Jesse said.
“Yes,” Sunny said, “in fact. How’d you know?”
“You got something really clever,” Jesse said. “You probably like to work with it.”
Sunny took a red lettuce leaf from her deconstructed sandwich and nibbled on it.
“I thought being down with the chief of police might be useful to him,” she said.
“How useful has it been for you?” Jesse said.
“More than maybe you know,” Sunny said.
They were quiet for a moment, waiting for the conversation to go to another place.
“I could put him in touch with my friend Marcy Campbell. She’s a real estate broker.”
“Good friend?” Sunny said.
“Yes.”
“With privileges?” Sunny said.
“Why do you ask?” Jesse said.
Sunny nibbled on a tomato slice. Then she put it down and patted her mouth with her napkin.
“How’s Jenn,” she said.
“Gone to New York,” Jesse said.
“To work?”
“Yes.”
“She go by herself?”
“No.”
“Man?” Sunny said.
Jesse leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling, as if he were stretching his neck.
After a time he said, “Of course.”
Sunny nodded. She sipped some iced tea. Jesse sat forward and smiled at her.
“How’s Richie?” Jesse said.
“I don’t exactly know,” Sunny said. “We decided to try a sabbatical from one another. I mean, you know, for God’s sake, his current wife is having a baby soon.”
Jesse nodded.
“And Rosie?”
Sunny shook her head.
“I had to put her down,” she said. “This spring.”
“Oh, God,” Jesse said. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” Sunny said. “I’ll get past it.”
“Hard,” Jesse said.
“Very.”
He put his hand on hers on the tabletop. They sat quietly. The waitress came and asked if they were interested in dessert. They said no. She brought them the check. Jesse paid it and added a tip.
“Let’s get out of here,” Jesse said.
“And go where?” Sunny said.
“We can start with a walk on the beach,” Jesse said.
“That feels right,” Sunny said.
“It does,” Jesse said.
And they left the restaurant.
22
EDDIE COX called in.
“Jesse,” he said. “I got a home invasion. I think you need to come down here, now, and bring Molly.”
“Where,” Jesse said.
Cox gave him the address on Beach Street.
“Here I come,” Jesse said.
“Can we do the siren?” Molly said as they drove to Beach Street.
“No need,” Jesse said.
“Damn,” Molly said, and settled back in the passenger seat with her arms folded. “What are we going to?”
“Home invasion,” Jesse said. “Must be a woman involved. Cox requested you.”
“Maybe he just wanted my superior investigative skills,” Molly said.
“Maybe,” Jesse said.
Cox’s patrol car was parked on the street in front of an ordinary-looking smallish white colonial-style house on a street of smallish colonials in the south part of town, near the commuter railroad station. There was a pear tree in the front yard.
When Jesse rang the bell, Cox opened the front door and gestured them to the living room, which ran the length of the house from back to front. A woman sat on the couch, wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. She was crying.
“Kids?” Jesse said.
Molly walked over and sat down on the couch beside the woman.
“In school,” Cox said. “Husband works in Boston. He’s on his way.”
“Name?” Jesse said.
Cox glanced at his notebook.
“Dorothy Browne,” he said.
Jesse nodded and walked to the couch.
“I’m Jesse Stone, Mrs. Browne. Are you okay?”
She nodded.
“Can you tell me what happened?” Jesse said.
She nodded again. Molly sat quietly beside her. Jesse waited. Mrs. Browne gathered herself.
“What if the kids had been here,” she said.
“It’s good that they weren’t,” Jesse said.
Mrs. Browne took a couple of breaths.
“Michael went to work like always, the seven-forty train from Preston Station. I got the kids onto the school bus at eight.” She smiled very faintly. “That’s always a struggle. I cleaned up breakfast dishes, made the beds, took a shower, and dressed for the day.”
Across the room from where she sat on the couch was a small, clean fireplace, and above it a large oil painting of surf breaking over the kind of rock outcroppings that lined the coast north of Boston. She stared at it blankly as she talked. Her voice was under tight control, almost monotone.
“I came downstairs all neat and clean,” she said, “with my makeup on, and he was in my living room with a ski mask on . . . I was going to have coffee and read the paper.”
Eddie Cox stood near the front door, looking uneasy. Molly sat close to Mrs. Browne on the couch. Jesse waited.
“He had a gun,” she said. “He said he wouldn’t hurt me if I did what he said. I said, I think, something like ‘What do you want?’ He said for me to take off all my clothes.”
Jesse nodded.
“So I said something really stupid like ‘Why?’ And he said, and I remember him saying it just like this, ‘Because if you don’t I will hurt you, but if you do, I won’t.’ ”
She paused and hugged herself as if she were cold. Molly patted her arm gently.
“I couldn’t seem to get started for a minute. I just stood there and he made a little gesture with the gun, and he said, ‘You want me here when the kids come home from school?’ ”
Her eyes filled as if she was going to cry. But she didn’t. She got under control again.
“So I undressed.” She looked down at her lap and shivered. “He stood there and watched me take my clothes off. In my living room, at, like, ten o’clock in the morning.”
Cox turned and looked out through the narrow glass sidelights flanking the front door.
Molly continued to pat Mrs. Browne’s arm.
“And when I got entirely naked, he just stood there looking at me. I think I said something like ‘Please don’t rape me.’ And he nodded and took out one of those little digital cameras and took pictures of me.”
“Oh, God,” Molly said.
“I didn’t know what to do. I just had to stand there. Then he told me to lie facedown on the couch and close my eyes and count to one hundred without looking up. . . . In some ways that was the worst; I didn’t know what he would do. So I counted, and when I got through counting I sort of peeked and he was gone. And I sat up and he was still gone. So I put on my clothes and called you.”