“How nice for Lisa,” I said.

Belson grinned.

“I don’t see anything soft in the case,” he said. “The kid was gay, apparently had a love affair with an older man that went sour, and he did the, ah, Brody.”

“You interview the older man?”

“Yep.”

“He admit the affair?”

“Nope. He is a faculty member at the university. I heard he was up for tenure.”

“So he’d have some reason to deny it.”

“I don’t know how they feel on the tenure committee about professors fucking students,” Belson said. “You?”

“I’m guessing it’s considered improper,” I said.

“Maybe,” Belson said.

“You ask?” I said.

Belson dropped his voice.

“The deliberations of the tenure committee are confidential,” he said.

“So they wouldn’t tell you if sex with a student counted for or against tenure?”

“Some of the people I talked to, sex with anything would count,” Belson said.

“But you got no information from the tenure folks.”

“No.”

“And if you yanked their ivy-covered tuchases down here for a talk?” I said.

“Tuchases?”

“You can always tell when a guy’s scoring a Jewess,” I said.

“I thought the plural was tuch-i,” Belson said.

“Shows you’re not scoring a Jewess,” I said. “You didn’t want to shake them up a little?”

“We had no reason to think that the case was anything but an open and shut suicide,” Belson said.

He smiled. “Quirk wanted to run them down here just because they annoyed him,” he said. “But they had the university legal counsel there, and like I say, we had no reason.”

“But it would have been kind of fun,” I said.

Belson smiled but he didn’t comment. Instead he said, “So what’s your interest. You think the suicide’s bogus?”

“Got no opinion,” I said. “I been hired to find out why Robinson Nevins didn’t get tenure.”

“Really?” Belson said.

“He says a malicious smear campaign prevented it, including the allegation that he was the faculty member for whom Lamont did the Brody.”

“See?” Belson said. “I knew you’d like that word. Does he admit it?”

“He denies it.”

Belson shrugged.

“Should be easy enough to prove he had a relationship,” Belson said.

“Harder to prove that he didn’t.”

“Yep.”

I stood up.

“Well, I think your new digs are fabulous.”

“Yeah, me too,” Belson said.

“But it’s a long way from Berkeley Street. What are you going to do when you need help?”

“You’re as close as my nearest phone,” Belson said.

“Well, that must be consoling to you,” I said.

“Consoling,” Belson said.

CHAPTER FIVE

At two in the afternoon the temperature was in the eighties, the sun was bright, and there was only a very soft breeze. A perfect midsummer day except that it was March 29. I was reading the paper with my feet up and the window open.

Susan came into my office wearing white shorts and a dark blue sleeveless top. She had Pearl on a leash.

“It’s summer,” she said. “I want us to go outside and play.”

“Don’t you have patients?” I said.

“Not this afternoon. It’s the afternoon I teach my seminar.”

“And?”

“And I canceled my seminar because of the weather.”

“I might have clients,” I said.

Susan glanced around my office.

“Un huh.”

“And I might be studying evidence,” I said.

She came around the desk and looked over my shoulder.

“Tank McNamara,” she said.

“There could be a clue there,” I said. “You don’t know.”

Susan gave me a look that, had it not been diluted by affection, would have been withering. I folded the paper carefully and put it down on my desk.

“So,” I said, “what would you like to do?”

“You don’t know where there’s a field of daffodils in bloom, do you?”

“Susan,” I said, “it’s March 29.”

“Okay, then let’s walk along the river.”

“Flexible,” I said.

“You bet.”

“I like flexible,” I said.

“I know.”

We were crossing the footbridge near the Shell when Susan said to me, “Do you have time between the Robinson Nevins case and Tank McNamara to do a little something for a friend of miner

I said I did.

“KC Roth,” Susan said. “Actually that’s a nickname. Short for Katherine Carole. She is recently divorced, and being stalked.”

“Ex-husband?” I said.

“That’s what she thinks, but she’s not actually seen him.”

“So how does she know she’s being stalked?” I said.

We were down on the Esplanade, and Pearl was leading out up the river.

“Phone calls, she answers, silence at the other end,” Susan said. “A flat tire, there’s a nail in it; eerie music on her answering machine; a guy she dated got a threatening letter.”

“Anonymously,” I said. “Of course.

“He keep it?”

“I don’t know. She said she hasn’t seen him since.”

“Course of true love,” I said, “never did run smooth.”

Pearl saw a cocker spaniel coming along the Esplanade from the other direction. She growled. The hair on her back rose.

“Not a friendly dog,” I said to Susan.

“Friendly to you and me,” Susan said.

“All you can ask,” I said. “What you’ve described may legally be stalking, but it falls more into the realm of dirty tricks.”

“I know.”

“Husband abuse her when he was with her?”

“I asked that,” Susan said. “She says he did not.”

“Why’d they divorce?”

“She left him for another man,” Susan said.

“And the other man?” I said.

“Didn’t work out.”

“How come she doesn’t think it’s the other man doing the stalking?”

“He dumped her,” Susan said.

“As soon as she became available?”

“Yes.”

“You know his name?”

“No. She won’t tell me, says he’s a married man.”

“Who was happy to sleep with her on the side and said ‘oh honey if only we were single’ and she believed him and got single.”

“I don’t know what happened,” Susan said, “but your scenario is not unheard of.”

The spaniel passed by and kept going with its owner. Pearl looked longingly after it and then stopped growling and let her hair back down and forged ahead again, keeping the leash taut.

“What’s her ex’s name?” I said.

“Burt – Burton. Burton Roth.”

“You know him?”

“He seemed a pleasant man.”

“Any kids?”

“One, she’s with her father.”

“Hmph,” I said.

“Hmph?”

“Hmph.”

“What’s hmph mean?”

“Means now I’ve got two cases and no fee,” I said.

“Well, in this case there might not exactly be no fee,” Susan said.

“I’ll get right on it,” I said.

CHAPTER SIX

Hawk and I sat on a bench by the swan boat lagoon in the Public Garden on the first good day of spring. The temperature was 77. The sun was out. And the swan boats were cranking. We were looking at the notes I made from Belson’s confidential files.

“So,” Hawk said when we were through. “Nobody actually claims to have seen Robinson and the Lamont kid together in any romantic fashion except these two professors.”

I looked at my photocopy of Belson’s report.

“Lillian Temple,” I said, “and Amir Abdullah.”

“Amir,” Hawk said.

He was looking at a squirrel who kept skittering closer to us, and rearing up and not getting anything to eat and looking as outraged as squirrels get to look.

“You know Amir?” I said.

“Yeah, I do,” Hawk said.

“Tell me about him,” I said. A man in an oversized double-breasted suit walked by eating peanuts from a bag.

“Gimme one of your peanuts, please,” Hawk said.

The man in the big suit looked flustered and said, “Sure,” and held the bag out to Hawk. Hawk took a peanut out and said, “Thank you.” Big Suit smiled uncomfortably and walked on. Hawk gave the peanut to the squirrel and then said again, “Amir.”