Page 62 of A Talent for Murder

We found a twenty-four-hour diner and got ourselves big breakfasts, then Henry left me there alone, and I found a newspaper on the diner counter, bringing it back to my booth to read. He was gone for a little over an hour, and when he came back he told me that he’d seen Rebecca, Ethan’s wife, leave the brownstone, and that he’d used one of his picks to unlock the low-entry door that had been built into the side of the steps just below street level.

“Do you think you tripped an alarm?”

“I waited twenty minutes and no police arrived, so no. But when you go in there I wouldn’t linger.”

I got a to-go bag of sandwiches from the diner, figuring it couldn’t hurt to look like a food delivery person, and went straight to Saltz’s house and through the door that had probably, once upon a time, been a servants’ entrance. I emerged into a kitchen with a stone floor and a butcher-block table and shouted hello into the house just to make sure I was the only one there. No one shouted back.

Moving quickly, I went up three sets of stairs and found Ethan’s study, happy that it wasn’t locked. One entire wall was a built-in bookshelf and I began to scan the spines, then realized that the books were strictly alphabetized by author. I found the Cheever book, recognizable by its red spine, and opened it up, finding the small cutout where Saltz had made a hiding space. Inside was a sheet of paper, folded up, and what looked like an old metal toy soldier. I left the soldier and took the list.

Henry drove me back to Shepaug. Along the way we stopped at a shopping complex that had a Marshalls, where I bought underwear, a pair of jeans, and a cotton sweater. We threw Saltz’s clothes in another dumpster.

Back in the car, maybe knowing that we were only two towns away from my parents’ house, Henry didn’t immediately start the engine. He turned and said, “What are you going to tell your parents?”

“I haven’t exactly figured it out yet, but I think the easiest thing to tell them is that I ran off to meet someone, that it was a mistake, and that you came and rescued me. If I make it about a romance, somehow, they’ll ask fewer questions.”

“They’ve involved the police.”

“I know. We’ll just tell them it was all a big mistake. It’ll be a mess, but it will pass.”

“And what are you going to do with the list? Are you going to burn it?”

“I won’t burn it, no, but I’ll make sure no one else ever sees it.”

“Wouldn’t it be better if it did end up with the police? It could help close the files on some cases, and maybe it would console some grieving families.”

“I’ve thought of that,” I said, “but I don’t want Ethan Saltz to win. He was truly evil, just a mistake of nature, I think. The people who got killed by him might as well have been struck by lightning. Does that make sense?”

“I guess so.”

“And it’s not my job to do the police’s work for them.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Right now I’m just glad you managed to kill him before he killed you.”

“I keep thinking that, too, but if I’m honest, I was ready to die. It would have been worth it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I said, he was evil. If I’d died trying to stop him, then it still would have been the right thing to do.”

“You think so?” Henry said.

“I do.”

Before pulling out of the shopping complex, Henry asked to look at the list. I’d already read through it myself and handed it over.

“He numbered it,” he said.

“Yes, he did.”

He was quiet for a moment while he read, then gave it back, saying, “I think someone’s missing.”

“Josie Nixon’s name, the woman who died in Shepaug.”

“Right. Maybe she was actually a suicide.”

“Maybe,” I said.

Alan

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