Read Online Slightly Abridged by Ellen Pall - Free Book Online Page A

have no idea. I had to go out myself.”
    â€œYesterday?”
    â€œWell, magazines have to get published on time whether the weather is good or not,” Suzy pointed out. “An editor at Menu suddenly decided to kill a piece on polenta. They called me up around three, desperate for artwork on silverware. I took Ada up to Dennis’s, saw her go into the building, took a bus down Broadway, and spent from four-something till almost eight drawing forks in the art editor’s office.”
    Juliet resisted the temptation to inquire into the nature of the fork article in Menu, an upscale book for New York foodies, and focused instead on the matter at hand.
    â€œSo the last time you saw her—?”
    â€œWas just before three-thirty.”
    â€œAnd when you got home, you couldn’t tell if she had come in and gone out again?”
    â€œNo. She has her own keys, of course, and she always wears
that same bear coat, seal, whatever it is, so—I really didn’t think about it. Wait a minute.”
    Juliet heard Suzy walking, heard the old-fashioned click of her aged refrigerator door. A moment later, “No, I bet she never came in,” she reported. “I left her some homemade soup for dinner, and she never touched it at all. Although, of course, she could have decided to eat out.”
    â€œAt her own expense?”
    â€œYeah, maybe not,” Suzy agreed. “Well, whatever, by the time I got home myself, I realized that wherever she was, she’d have a hard time returning. It took me an age to get up Sixth Avenue. The buses were barely running. Anyway, I had no way to find her, so I just figured eventually she’d turn up. And then I got totally distracted. The phone rang, and it was Parker—”
    â€œParker, huh?”
    Parker Scutt was an artist who created detailed suburban dollhouses in which small waxen figures did strange and scary things to each other. Suzy had met him several months before. They had been seeing each other once a week or so.
    â€œYeah. He said he had his snowshoes on, and he wanted to come by and visit me. So he did.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œWe went for a walk in the park, which was pretty gorgeous, and then we went back to my place and then—he stayed over.”
    â€œSuzy, you slept with Parker Scutt?” Juliet yelped. Parker Scutt was married, although he claimed to be separated.
    â€œDon’t yell at me! It was fabulous, and he swears he’s not living with Diana anymore—”
    â€œThen why doesn’t he ever let you come to his place?”
    â€œJuliet, the point is, I was in bed with him; I didn’t come out of the room till I woke up this morning; and when I finally did, Parker was gone and Mrs. Caffrey still hadn’t come home. I mean, I didn’t realize that first thing. When we got in from the park and I
didn’t see her coat anywhere, I guessed she was still out. This morning—well, she’d left her room door shut; and when I saw it that way, I figured she’d finally worn herself out and was sleeping. It wasn’t until five minutes ago that I thought to look in the closet. Her coat’s not there. So then I opened her door, of course, and Juliet, she never came in. Her bed is untouched.”
    â€œYou don’t think she could have come home, slept, got up, made the bed, and gone out again this morning?”
    There was a momentary pause. Then, “It’s pretty clear you never had Ada Caffrey for a houseguest,” Suzy said. “I’m worried about her, of course, but what a pig. Believe me, if she’d been here, I’d know it.” There was a pause. “You don’t think she could really have gotten lucky at the slam?”
    Juliet thought of the youthful faces of the other poets at the Ashtray slam, of the embarrassment of the usher Ada had hit on at Phantom. Who could she have expected to flirt with at the slam? She hadn’t even talked