“Why didn’t your parents hold the service at their own church?” he asked.
“Because our minister might have said nice things about Priss.”
“Wow.”
“Hey, she’s lucky they didn’t hire a funeral home.”
“All this punishment just for being an unmarried pregnant teenager?”
Sydney shot him a furious look, which he received as an equal match to his own fury at all of them.
“What about you?” he asked her very quietly.
“What about me?”
“Your father-”
“Shut up! If you say anything else, I’ll slap you, too.”
Sydney turned away so fast that her long hair swung across her shoulders.
Seeing hostile looks from people around him, Sam continued on to the elevator and took it down, descending in regal solitude because no one wanted to ride with him.
Out on the street, Sam checked his phone.
His receptionist had texted: Cop wants to talk to you. She had left no name but did give him a number, which he called immediately.
The man who answered said, “Dr. Waterhouse. Thanks for calling me back. I’d like to talk to you about the murder of Priscilla Windsor. Where are you right now, sir?”
“Just leaving the funeral reception at her parents’ place.”
“Well, that’s a lucky coincidence, because I’m waiting outside there. By any chance, are you tall and handsome, with ridiculously great silver hair, wearing a really nice gray suit?”
“I think you have me confused with Richard Gere. I’m medium height, mid-fifties, black suit, graying brown hair.”
“Oh, okay, I’ve got you now. I guess we can’t all be Richard Gere. But, really, you’re not so far from George Clooney.”
“Detective…”
“Paul Cantor. Turn left, look ten yards down for a short bald guy in a blue suit that he won’t let his wife throw out.”
They shook hands, crossed over to the Central Park side of the street, and found a bench, where they sat with their backs to the park and their faces toward traffic.
Without a word, the detective handed Sam a long thin piece of notepaper with Sam’s name and office information at the top. Under that were the words TELL THE TRUTH, and then a list with an asterisk in front of each entry.
* Dustin
All but the last entry had a single line drawn through it, as if each had been taken care of and then crossed off. Additional asterisks followed down the page, but nothing was listed beside them; she had either meant to add more or figured she already had plenty.
“Where’d you find this, Detective?”
“In her fanny pack. Do you have any idea what it is?”
“It’s a bucket list,” Sam informed him, and then he detailed the facts of the illness that had been set on killing Priscilla until someone took its chance away.
“Ah, some of this explains the funeral,” the detective said.
“I think so.”
“Hot-dog guy. That was amazing.”
“She was an amazing young woman.”
“Five thousand bucks. Makes me wish I’d had a chance to be rude to her, too.”
Sam laughed.
“You liked her?” the cop asked him.
“Oh, yes. She was a genuinely nice person.”
“Who might want to kill her?”
“What? It wasn’t a random guy?”
“We have a witness who saw somebody dressed like a runner near her building. Leaning against it, like he was waiting. Straightened up when she came out. Started walking, as if following her. Crossed a street when she did, turned the direction she did, and kept going after her. It didn’t look dangerous at the time, our witness says; it looked more casual. But that’s a hell of a casual coincidence-that he’d just happen to be hanging out near her building.”
“I don’t know what to say. Wow. That’s”-Sam stared at the traffic going by-“really awful. I can’t imagine who-”
The cop shrugged. “I’m thinking it wasn’t the hot-dog guy or that taxi driver.”
“Yeah.” Sam glanced at the detective. “I heard a story you didn’t hear. Remember the woman who got up to say something, but she never got a chance?”
“There were people popping up all over the place. I was at the back. I could see all of them. Which one was she?”
“Floral dress. Middle aged. Close to the front.”
“What was her story?”
“That she fired Priscilla the day she died.”
“She was going to tell that?”
“Well, no, she was going to say that all the little kids loved Priscilla.”
“Then why fire her?”
“For telling the truth.” Sam told the whole story, according to both women, as it had been told to him.
“So that would be ‘The Awful Parents,’ I guess. But who are ‘The Other Awful Parents’?”
“Her own, I think. Or vice versa.”
“So that could explain the incredibly impersonal service. I’ve never seen one like it. All those fancy people there to hear nothing about her, at least not until the mourner rebellion.”
“Mourner rebellion.” Sam nodded. “That’s what it was.”
“The mom and dad looked as if they’d wandered into a funeral for a stranger.”
“I just got slapped by one of them.”
The detective’s eyes widened. “What did you do, tell them you liked her?”
“I suggested to her mom that if she ever wants to know for sure whether her husband had molested their daughter, I still have some DNA that could prove it one way or the other.”
“Holy moly, Doc. Let’s walk while you tell me more.”
As they got up to enter the park, the detective pointed to the bucket list. “Who are Sydney and Allen, do you know?”
“Sydney is the sister who hated Priss for giving away three million dollars to charity, and I’m guessing that Allen is Priss’s boyfriend who cheated on her with her sister.”
“Man, oh, man,” the detective said. “Am I ever glad you gave her a piece of paper with your name on it.” He laughed a little. “What about this last name? Dustin.”
“Don’t know,” he said, lying.
As they parted, the detective said, “Don’t worry. We’ll catch her killer the easy way-with surveillance video.”
Sam’s heart picked up its pace.
He had worried about exactly that possibility.
He steadied his voice: “A camera in the park?”
“No, across the street from her building.”
For the first time that day, Sam felt beyond nervous, beyond anxious, and deep into frightened. When he shook hands in farewell, he hoped his palm wasn’t as sweaty as he feared it was.
At the last minute, he found the nerve to ask, “Have you looked at it yet?”
“The video?” The cop shook his head. “No, but I hear it’s good stuff. See ya, Doc. You gave me good stuff, too. Thanks.”
Sam got his breathing under control and then called home just to hear his wife’s voice. She was an architect, working from their house.
“How’s tricks?” she answered, their habitual query.
“Okay. How are you and Eric?”
They had a ten-year-old son, the light of both of their lives.
He would have been adopted if they’d gone through proper channels, if Sam hadn’t put the proper papers under his patient’s nose and whisked them away to be shredded after Priscilla signed them. No one was ever supposed to know her baby was a child of incest; Eric was only ever supposed to know that he had been loved by a young mom who couldn’t keep him. And when the time came for him to ask about her, she would have vanished into bureaucratic thin air. He would never know where she was, she would never know where he was, and everybody would be happier for it.