“Karen.” She turned on the bench toward me, tucked an imaginary strand of hair behind her ear.

“Karen. Why do you need a detective?”

A sad, crumpled smile bent her pursed lips and she looked down at her knees for a moment. “There’s a guy at the gym I go to?”

I nodded.

She swallowed. I guess she’d been hoping I’d figure it all out from that one sentence. I was certain she was about to tell me something unpleasant and even more certain that she had, at best, only a very passing acquaintance with things unpleasant.

“He’s been hitting on me, following me to the parking lot. At first it was just, you know, annoying?” She raised her head, searched my eyes for understanding. “Then it got uglier. He began calling me at home. I went out of my way to avoid him at the gym, but a couple of times I saw him parked out in front of the house. David finally got fed up and went to talk to him. He denied it all and then he threatened David.” She blinked, twisted the fingers of her left hand in the fist she’d made of her right. “David’s not physically…formidable? Is that the right word?”

I nodded.

“So, Cody-that’s his name, Cody Falk-he laughed at David and called me the same night.”

Cody. I hated him already on general principle.

“He called and told me how much he knew I wanted it, how I’d probably never had a good, a good-”

“Fuck,” Bubba said.

She jerked a little, glanced at him, and then quickly back to me. “Yeah. A good, well…in my life. And he knew I secretly wanted him to give me one. I left this note on his car. I know it was stupid, but I…well, I left it.”

She reached into her purse, extracted a wrinkled piece of purple notepaper. In perfect Palmer script, she’d written:

Mr. Falk,

Please leave me alone.

Karen Nichols

“The next time I went to the gym,” she said, “I came back to my car, and he’d put it back on my windshield in the same place I’d left it on his. If you turn it over, Mr. Kenzie, you’ll see what he wrote.” She pointed at the paper in my hand.

I turned it over. On the reverse side, Cody Falk had written a single word:

No.

I was really starting to dislike this prick.

“Then yesterday?” Her eyes filled and she swallowed several times and a thick tremor pulsed in the center of her soft, white throat.

I placed a hand on hers and she curled her fingers into it.

“What did he do?” I said.

She sucked a breath into her mouth and I heard it rattle wetly against the back of her throat. “He vandalized my car.”

Bubba and I both did a double take, looked out at the gleaming green VW Bug parked by the schoolyard gate. It looked as if it had just been driven off the lot, still probably had that new-car smell inside.

“That car?” I said.

“What?” She followed my gaze. “Oh, no, no. That’s David’s car.”

“A guy?” Bubba said. “A guy drives that car?”

I shook my head at him.

Bubba scowled, then looked down at his combat boots and pulled them up on his knees.

Karen shook her head as if to clear it. “I drive a Corolla. I wanted the Camry, but we couldn’t afford it. David’s starting a new business, we both have student loans we’re still paying off, so I got the Corolla. And now it’s ruined. He poured acid all over it. He punctured the radiator. The mechanic said he poured syrup into the engine.”

“Did you tell the police?”

She nodded, her small body trembling. “There’s no proof it was him. He told the police he was at a movie that night and people saw him going in and leaving. He…” Her face caved in on itself and reddened. “They can’t touch him, and the insurance company won’t cover the damages.”

Bubba raised his head, cocked it at me.

“Why not?” I said.

“Because they never got my last payment. And I…I sent it. I sent it out over three weeks ago. They said they sent a notice, but I never got it. And, and…” She lowered her head and tears fell to her knees.

She had a stuffed animal collection, I was pretty sure. Her totaled Corolla had either a smiley face or a Jesus fish affixed to the bumper. She read John Grisham novels, listened to soft rock, loved going to bridal showers, and had never seen a Spike Lee movie.

She had never expected anything like this to happen in her life.

“Karen,” I said softly, “what’s the name of your insurance company?”

She raised her head, wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “State Mutual.”

“And the post office branch you sent the check through?”

“Well, I live in Newton Upper Falls,” she said, “but I’m not sure. My boyfriend?” She looked down at her spotless white sneakers, as if abashed. “He lives in Back Bay and I’m over there a lot.”

She said it as if it were a sin, and I found myself wondering where they grew people like her, and if there was a seed, and how I could get my hands on it if I ever had a daughter.

“Have you ever been late on a payment before?”

She shook her head. “Never.”

“How long have you been insured there?”

“Since I graduated college. Seven years.”

“Where’s Cody Falk live?”

She patted her eyes with the heels of her hands to make sure the tears were dry. She wore no makeup, so nothing had run. She was as blandly beautiful as any woman in a Noxzema ad.

“I don’t know. But he’s at the gym every night at seven.”

“What gym?”

“The Mount Auburn Club in Watertown.” She bit down on her lower lip, then tried for that Ivory Snow smile of hers. “I feel so ridiculous.”

“Miss Nichols,” I said, “you’re not supposed to deal with people like Cody Falk. Do you understand that? No one is. He’s just a bad person and you didn’t do anything to cause this. He did.”

“Yeah?” She managed to get a full smile out, but fear and confusion still swam in her eyes.

“Yeah. He’s the bad guy. He likes making people afraid.”

“He does.” She nodded. “You see it in his eyes. The more uncomfortable he made me feel in the parking lot one night, the more he seemed to enjoy it.”

Bubba chuckled. “You wanna talk uncomfortable? Just wait till we visit Cody.”

Karen Nichols looked at Bubba and for just a moment she seemed to pity Cody Falk.

In my office, I placed a call to my attorney, Cheswick Hartman.

Karen Nichols had driven off in her boyfriend’s VW. I’d instructed her to drive straight to her insurance company and drop off a replacement check. When she said they wouldn’t honor the claim, I assured her they would by the time she got there. She wondered aloud if she could pay my fee and I told her if she could afford one day, she’d be fine, because that’s all this would take.

“One day?”

“One day,” I said.

“But what about Cody?”

“You’ll never hear from Cody again.” I closed her car door, and she drove off, giving me a little wave as she reached the first traffic light.

“Look up ‘cute’ in the dictionary,” I said to Bubba as we sat in my office. “See if Karen Nichols’s picture is beside the definition.”

Bubba looked at the small stack of books on my windowsill. “How do I tell which one’s the dictionary?”

Cheswick came on the line and I told him about Karen Nichols’s trouble with her insurance claim.

“No missed payments?”

“Never.”

“No problem. You said it’s a Corolla?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s that, a twenty-five-thousand-dollar car?”

“More like fourteen.”

Cheswick chuckled. “Cars really go that cheap?” Cheswick owned a Bentley, a Mercedes V10, and two Range Rovers that I knew of. When he wanted to be one with the common folk, he drove a Lexus.

“They’ll pay the claim,” he said.

“They said they wouldn’t,” I said, just to get a rise out of him.

“And go up against me? I hang up the phone without satisfaction, they’ll know they’re already fifty thousand in the hole. They’ll pay,” he repeated.