Walking Shadow by Robert B. Parker Read Free Book Online Page A

like."
    She relaxed. We were back in the realm of the physical. This was her turf.
    "You must be very strong," she said.
    "But pure," I said.
    "And kind-hearted."
    "Perhaps you will show me sometime, when we are not in so public a place."
    "I could meet you at the gym," I said.
    She frowned. Maybe I wasn't as funny as I thought I was. Or maybe she didn't have much sense of humor. Probably a Chinese thing. I ate some dim sum. She drank some tea. The dim sum wasn't very good. But there was plenty of it.
    "Do you work out?" she said.
    "Sure," I said.
    "I do too. Do you have a trainer?"
    "No, I muddle through on my own."
    "I have two," she said.
    "My CV specialist, and Ronny, my strength and conditioning coach."
    "CV?"
    "Cardiovascular," she said.
    "I train with them every day."
    "Well, it seems to be working," I said.
    "Yes. You should see my body," she said.
    "Yes, I should."
    She laughed. It wasn't an embarrassed laugh. But it was an uneasy one, as if she feared her own sexuality and where it might lead her. She stood. For lunch she had consumed two cups of green tea. I stood.
    "I have to go to my body-sculpting class," she said.
    "Sometime you must show me that pushup."
    "One arm," I said.
    "Ask Ronny if he can do that."
    She laughed. I gave her my card.
    "You think of anything useful, call me," I said.
    "Perhaps I will," she said.
    The waiter appeared with her coat and held it while she put it on.
    "Lunch is taken care of," she said.
    She turned and walked to the door. The waiter followed her, and when she got to the door, he opened it, and popped her umbrella open and held it over her head until she took the handle from him and walked out. I'm not sure she ever saw the waiter.

CHAPTER 12
    It was a bright day in Concord. The sky above the old house was the kind of bright blue that you see in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings. The sun was strong and pleasant and the foliage was turning color.
    The grounds around the house seemed to have been landscaped by Tarzan of the apes. Bushes, vines, saplings, weeds, decorative plantings run amok, all looped and sagged around the house, clustered in front of it, clung to it, and concealed far too much of it.
    "This is ugly," Susan said. She had on jeans, and sneakers, and a lavender tee shirt with the sleeves cut off. Sweat had darkened the tee shirt. Sweat ran down her face under the long billed Postrio baseball cap. A sheen of sweat defined the small, hard muscles in her forearms.
    "They'd never recognize you at Bergdorf s," I said.
    She paid no attention, focusing as she always did on the question before her. She was wearing tan leather work gloves and carrying an axe.
    "We need a chain saw," Susan said.
    "Jesus," I said.
    "You don't think I can handle a chain saw?"
    "They're sort of dangerous," I said.
    "If I weren't totally fearless, I'd be a little afraid of chain saws."
    "Well, it would speed things up," she said.
    "What's the hurry? We have the rest of our life to do this."
    "You know perfectly well that I am always in a hurry."
    "Almost always," I said.
    "Except then."
    Pearl came galloping up the slope from the stream, and jumped up with both feet on Susan's chest. Susan leaned forward so that Pearl could lap her face, which Pearl did vigorously. Susan squinched and endured the lapping until Pearl spotted a squirrel and dropped down and stalked it.
    "God, wasn't that awful," Susan said.
    "You might tell her not to do that," I said.
    "She likes to do that," Susan said.
    The squirrel zipped up a tree, and when it was safely out of reach, Pearl dashed at it and jumped up with her forepaws against the tree gazing after it.
    "You think she'd actually eat the squirrel?" Susan said.
    "She eats everything else she finds," I said.
    Susan took a big swing with her axe at the base of a tree-sized shrub. What she lacked in technique, she made up in vigor, and I decided not to mention that she swung like a girl. I went back inside and worked on demolishing the back stairs with a three