"Maybe he knew," I said. "And he was telling you he knew by leaving you the family house and his half of the business, and he was telling you that he was still part of the Rutka family."

She jabbed out her Chesterfield in a filthy dish full of butts and gave me a look. "You must watch too much television, Donald, and you've gone a little soft in the head. The Rutka family hasn't been a family for a long, long time. I don't even know why John stayed on after Mom and Dad died. There was nothing for him in Handbag. He and I hardly even spoke to each other. I'd tell him changes I was making in the business, but he wasn't really interested. He just wanted his share of the profits. He never said boo to my kids and not much more to me. No, it wasn't family that kept John in Handbag. I don't know why he stayed. It's a total mystery to me."

She fired up another Chesterfield and saw me watching her take a deep drag. "I know," she said, "I know. Soon."

I drove over to the Rutka house and found Eddie Sandifer out back prying up charred boards from the back porch.

"I talked to the chief," he said. "I told him I thought John sent his files to Utica for safekeeping."

"Utica? I thought we decided on Rochester."

"I changed it to Utica because I don't really know anybody there and I don't think John did either."

"Did Bailey seem to buy it?"

"I doubt it. But what's he going to do, beat the truth out of me with a rubber hose? This is Handbag." He ripped up another floorboard and flung it onto the heap out in the yard.

"I hate to do this to a decent guy like Bub Bailey," I said. "But this is the way it has to be for now."

"Hey, I'm cool."

Given the company he'd kept for a decade, I supposed he was. "I think I may have found who one of the sets of initials in the payout ledger belongs to. Have you ever heard of a Nathan Zenck?"

"What's he? No."

"He's a hotel manager in Colonic"

"Never heard of him." He was ripping away at another board that kept splintering and leaving jagged shreds of itself behind.

"I met John's sister," I said. "She told me you'd been by the store."

Sandifer stood up now and wiped the sweat off his face with the side of his arm. He stood there looking as if he was about to speak but was afraid of whatever might come out.

I said, "Ann told me about the will."

Now his shoulders began to shake.

"She was surprised," I said. "And she said you were surprised too, and hurt."

Tears rolled down his face. "Why did John do that?"

I shrugged lamely. "You knew how strange he could be."

Sandifer said, "I don't need the money-it's not that. I can work. But I was like his family. I was more like his family than his real family was. He told me that once. It was hard for him, but he told me. So why did he stiff me?"

"You two hadn't been having any problems?"

"No, I don't think so. No, no, a long time ago. But lately-we loved each other and we thought we'd always be together. So why?

Why did he do it?"

I was as stumped as Sandifer, and mad at Rutka all over again. "Well, he left you some money, right?"

"Yes. Several thousand dollars. I'm grateful. I'll be able to use it. I'll have to find a place to live."

We looked at each other, but we'd both run out of words. Again I wanted Rutka to come back from the dead so that I could grab him and force him to answer a list of questions that kept getting longer and longer. end user

I spent three hours back at the house, poring over Rutka's files. I made notes, then compared them and rearranged them, and memorized the data as well as I could. When Timmy got home, I told him I'd have to postpone dinner again and would see him later at the hospital.

At six I drove out to Wolf Road in Colonic

"I'd like to speak to Mr. Parmalee, please. Could you tell me where his office is?"

The desk clerk at the Parmalee Plaza gave me a chilly once-over and said, "There isn't any Mr. Parmalee. This hotel is owned by the Zantek Corporation and they just call it the Parmalee Plaza."

"How come?"

"I really couldn't tell you that."

"In that case, I'll speak to Mr. Nathan Zenck. I understand he's the night manager."

"Is Mr. Zenck expecting you, sir?"

"No, but he shouldn't be surprised to see me show up."

"Your name, please?"

"Donald Strachey."

"And what is it that you would like to speak to Mr. Zenck about?"

"I'm trying to find out-and maybe he could help me-just who the hell is Parmalee?"

He glared, the telephone receiver he was clutching poised in midair. "I don't know whether I can bother Mr. Zenck with a question like that."

"All right, forget Parmalee. Tell Mr. Zenck I'm an associate of John Rutka and I've got some questions concerning John Rutka's death."

This loosened him up. He blinked several times. "Are you with the police?"

"Were any police officers associates of John Rutka?"

"What?"

"I said I was an associate of John Rutka, and you asked me if I was with the police. You were the one who made the connection.

How come?"

"No, I- That's not what I meant. I'll call Mr. Zenck." He picked up the receiver and dialed and waited. "Nathan, a Donald Strachey is here to talk to you about John Rutka, he says." He listened for a quarter of a minute, then hung up. "I'm sorry, but Mr.

Zenck doesn't know anyone by that name and he's in conference just now. He says perhaps you can write him a letter. Do you have our mailing address?"

I sighed. "Get him back on the line," I said, "and ask him how would he like it if I called up the Zantek Corporation and got Zantek himself on the line and told him that the night manager of his overpriced, overdecorated new hotel in Colonie, New York, out by the Albany airport, was a scumbag, greedy-ass Peeping Tom, and I had the financial records of a murdered man to prove it? Bother him in conference with that and see what happens."

He looked as if he might put in for an immediate transfer to some remote, undesirable dead end of an outpost such as, say, Albany, New York, except, ha ha, he was already there.

He dialed again.

"I think you'd better talk to Mr. Donald Strachey." He hung up. "Mr. Zenck will be right out."

"Thank you."

Like the desk clerk, Zenck was svelte and silky and meticulously mustachioed, and a little blurry, as if he'd been severely airbrushed. Twenty years earlier this effect could only be achieved on photographs but now it was being done on actual human beings, though I didn't know how.

"Mr. Strachey?"

"I am he."

"Nice to see you." He beamed. "Why don't we step into my office?"

"Let's step."

I followed him down the corridor and past an unmarked door, which he closed behind us. Zenck's spacious-enough digs included a desk with a marble top and a computer terminal off to one side, two leather couches, a small bar, and a couple of rust-colored rectangles in silver frames placed on the otherwise bare walls as if they were family portraits. Also among the furnishings was a series of small-screen video monitors mounted on racks next to Zenck's desk. One showed the spot at the front desk where I had recently been standing. Another showed a panning shot of the restaurant, which at six-fifteen was nearly filled. A third shot swept the hotel lobby and a fourth the murky bar.