Time to Murder and Create

The weather was good and the air pollution lighter than usual. You could actually see the sky. I headed back to the hotel, picking up a paper on the way. It was almost noon. I don't usually get that much sleep.

I would have to call them, Beverly Ethridge and Theodore Huysendahl. I had to let them know that they were off the hook, that in fact they'd never actually been on it in the first place. I wondered what their reactions would be. Probably a combination of relief and some indignation about having been gulled.

Well, that would be their problem. I had enough of my own.

I'd have to see them in person, obviously. I couldn't manage it over the phone. I didn't look forward to it, but did look forward to having it behind me. Two brief phone calls and two brief meetings and I would never have to see either of them again.

I stopped at the desk. There was no mail for me, but there was a phone message. Miss Stacy Prager had called. There was a number where I was to call her as soon as possible. It was the number I had dialed from the Lion's Head.

In my room I checked through the Times. Prager was on the obit page under a two-column headline.

Just his obituary, with the statement that he had died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. It was apparent, all right. I was not mentioned in the article. I'd thought that was how his daughter might have gotten my name. Then I looked at the message slip again. She had called around nine the night before, and the first edition of the Times wouldn't have hit the street before eleven or twelve.

So that meant she'd learned my name from the police. Or that she had heard it earlier, from her father.

I picked up the phone, then put it down again. I did not much want to talk to Stacy Prager. I couldn't imagine that there was anything I wanted to hear from her, and I knew there was nothing I wanted to say to her. The fact that her father was a murderer was not something she would learn from me, nor would anyone else.

Spinner Jablon had had the revenge he'd purchased from me. So far as the rest of the world was concerned, his case could remain in the Open file forever. The police didn't care who had killed him, and I didn't feel obliged to tell them.

I picked up the phone again and called Beverly Ethridge. The line was busy.

I broke the connection and tried Huysendahl's office. He was out to lunch. I waited a few minutes and tried the Ethridge number again, and it was still busy. I stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes, and the phone rang.

"Mr. Scudder? My name is Stacy Prager." A young and earnest voice. "I'm sorry I haven't been in. After I called last night I wound up taking the train so I could be with my mother."

"I just got your message a few minutes ago."

"I see. Well, would it be possible for me to talk with you? I'm at Grand Central, I could come to your hotel or meet you wherever you say."

"I'm not sure how I could help you."

There was a pause. Then she said, "Maybe you can't. I don't know. But you were the last person to see my father alive, and I—"

"I didn't even see him yesterday, Miss Prager. I was waiting to see him at the time it happened."

"Yes, that's right. But the thing is… listen, I'd really like to meet with you, if that's all right."

"If there's anything I could help you with over the telephone—"

"Couldn't I meet you?"

I asked her if she knew where my hotel was. She said she did, and that she could be there in ten or twenty minutes and she would phone me from the lobby. I hung up and wondered how she had known how to reach me. I'm not in the telephone book. And I wondered if she'd known about Spinner Jablon, and if she'd known about me. If the Marlboro man was her boyfriend, and if she'd been in on the planning…

If so, it was logical to believe that she'd hold me responsible for her father's death. I couldn't even argue the point—I felt responsible myself. But I couldn't really believe she'd have a cute little gun in her handbag. I'd ragged Heaney about watching television. I don't watch all that much television myself.

It took her fifteen minutes, during which time I tried Beverly Ethridge again and got another busy signal.

Then Stacy called from the lobby, and I went downstairs to meet her.

Long dark hair, straight, parted in the middle. A tall, slender girl with a long, narrow face and dark, bottomless eyes. She wore clean well-tailored blue jeans and a lime-green cardigan sweater over a simple white blouse. Her handbag had been made by cutting the legs off another pair of jeans. I decided it was highly unlikely there was a gun in it.

We confirmed that I was Matthew Scudder and she was Stacy Prager. I suggested coffee, and we went to the Red Flame and took a booth. After they gave us the coffee, I told her I was very sorry about her father but that I still couldn't imagine why she wanted to see me.

"I don't know why he killed himself," she said.

"Neither do I."