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probably enough, Mr. Spenser,” Maitland said.
    “It’s not enough,” I said. “But it’s all I can stand.”
    I stood. Maitland still sat half on the desk, looking bemused and neutral. Lillian Temple sat straight in her swivel chair, both feet flat together on the floor, her hands folded in her lap, looking implacable. I got to my feet.
    “I’m sorry I can’t help you more,” she said. “But I do not take my responsibilities lightly.”
    “You don’t take anything lightly,” I said.
    As I walked past the African-American Center on my way to the parking lot, I thought that while I had been fiercely bullshitted in the English department, no one had tried to kick my head off. Which was progress.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Burton Roth lived in an eight-room white colonial house with green shutters on a cul-de-sac off Commonwealth Avenue in Newton. I went to see him in the late afternoon on a Thursday when he said he’d be home from work a little early. We sat in front of a small clean fireplace in a small den off his small dining room and talked about his former wife.
    “She always had that flair,” he said. “It made her seem maybe more special than she really was.”
    “You miss her?” I said.
    “Yes. I do. But not as much as I first did. And of course I’m really angry with her.”
    “Because she left.”
    “Because she took up with another man, and left me for him, and for crissake she wasn’t even smart enough to find a good one.”
    “What would have constituted a good one?”
    “One that loved her back. The minute she was free of me he dumped her.”
    “You’d have felt better about things if she’d married him?”
    “And been happy? Yes. This way she wasted our marriage, for nothing, if you see what I mean.”
    “I do,” I said.
    He was a well-set-up man, middle sized with sandy hair and square hands that looked as if he might have worked for a living. On the mantel over the fireplace was a picture of a young girl. It had the strong coloration of one of those annual school pictures that kids take, but the frame was expensive.
    “Your daughter?” I said.
    “Yes. Jennifer. She’s eleven.”
    “How’s she handling all this,” I said.
    “She doesn’t understand, but she’s got a good temperament. She sees her mother usually every week. Divorce is hardly a stigma in her circles, half her friends have divorced parents.”
    “She’s all right?”
    “Yes,” Roth said, “I think so.”
    “Where is she now?” I said.
    “She has soccer practice until six,” Roth said. “I have to pick her up then.”
    “You dating anyone?” I said.
    “I don’t mean to be discourteous, but you said you were investigating something about my ex-wife and a stalker.”
    “Stalking is usually about control or revenge or both. I’m trying to get a sense of whether you are controlling or vengeful.”
    “My God, you think I might be stalking her?”
    “It’s a place to start,” I said.
    Roth was quiet for a time. Then he nodded.
    “Yes, of course, who would be the logical suspect?” he said.
    “Did you say you were dating?”
    “I’m seeing someone,” Roth said. “She’s fun. We sleep together. I doubt that we’ll walk into the sunset.”
    “Do you think your ex-wife would invent a stalker?”
    “Well,” he said, “she’s pretty crazy these days. So much so that I’m careful about letting Jennifer spend time there. KC and I had a pretty good fight about it, and I can’t simply keep her away from her mother. But I always stay home when she’s there so she can call me if she needs to.”
    “So you think she might?” I said.
    “No, I don’t really. I think she might go out with her boyfriend, now former boyfriend, and leave Jennifer alone. Or I think she might bring her with her when she and the boyfriend went someplace that was inappropriate for an eleven-year-old girl. She might be crazy that way, sort of like in junior high school where there was a girl who was boy crazy. But for all