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"I know"

"We wanted to co, that was just actors standing on the stage and reading lines froh ould have come if Paula had wanted it But she didn't even want us to coood play and her part was small anyway She said we should wait until she was in so decent"

They had last heard fro about possibly getting out of the city for the suone into detail When a couple of weeks passed without word fro machine

"She was hardly ever ho, so she didn't spend much time in it When I saw it the other day I could understand why I didn't actually see her roo and the front hall, but I could understand People pay high prices in New York to live in places that anywhere else would be torn down"

Because she was rarely in, they did not ordinarily call her Instead, they had a syste a person-to-person call for herself They would tell the operator that Paula Hoeldtke was not at home, and then they would call her back station-to-station

"It wasn't really cheating them," he said, "because it cost the same as if she called us station-to-station, but this way it was on our phone bill instead of hers And as a result she wasn't in a hurry to get off the phone, so actually the telephone company came out ahead, too"

But she didn't call, nor did she respond to the es on her machine Toward the end of July, Hoeldtke and his wife and the youngest daughter gassed up one of the Subarus and took a trip, driving up into the Dakotas to spend a week riding horses at a ranch and seeing the Badlands and Mount Rushot back, and when they tried Paula they didn't get herthem that her phone had been temporarily disconnected

"If she went away for the suht have had the phone turned off to saveanybody know? It wasn't like her She et in touch with you and let you know about it She was responsible"

But not too responsible You couldn't set your watch by her Soraduated froone more than two or three weeks between phone calls So it was possible she'd gone soet in touch It was possible she'd tried to call while her parents weretrails in Wind Cave National Park

"Ten days ago was her mother's birthday," Warren Hoeldtke said "And she didn't call"

"And that was so she wouldn't have otten and she wouldn't haveAnd if she did miss she would have called the next day"

He hadn't knohat to do He called the police in New York and got nowhere, predictably enough He went to the Muncie office of a national detective agency An investigator from their New York office visited her last known residence and established that she was no longer living there If he cared to give thelad to pursue the ht, what did they do for my money? Go to the place where she lived and find out she wasn't there? I could do that one to the roo house where Paula had lived She hadaddress The telephone co beyond what he already knew, that the telephone in question had been disconnected He'd gone to the restaurant where she'd worked and found out that she'd left that job back in April

"She may even had told us that," he said "She ot to New York, and I don't know if she ed jobs She would leave because the tips weren't good, or she didn't get along with somebody, or because they wouldn't let her take off when she had an audition So she could have left the last job and gone to work so us, or she could have told us and it didn't register"

He couldn't think what else to do on his own, so he'd gone to the police There he was told that in the first place it wasn't really a policeher parents and that, as an adult, she had every legal right to do so They told hi, that she had disappeared alo and whatever trail she'd left was a cold one by now

If he wanted to pursue the matter further, the police officer told hiator Depart a particular investigator However, the officer said, it was probably all right for him to say what he himself would do if he happened to find himself in Mr Hoeldtke's circumstances There was a fellow named Scudder, an ex-cop as a matter of fact, and one who happened to reside in the very neighborhood where Mr Hoeldtke's daughter had been living, and-

"Who was the cop?"

"His name's Durkin"

"Joe Durkin," I said "That was very decent of hiht," I said We were in a coffee shop on Fifty-seventh, a few doors down froot there, so they were letting us sit over coffee I'd had a refill Hoeldtke still had his first cup in front of him

"Mr Hoeldtke," I said, "I'm not sure I'm the man you want"

"Durkin said-"

"I knohat he said The thing is, you can probably get better coverage from the people you used earlier, the ones with the Muncie office They can put several operatives on the case and they can canvass a good dealthey can do a better job?"

I thought about it "No," I said, "but they , they'll furnish you with detailed reports telling you exactly what they did and who they talked to and what they found out They'll itemize their expenses and bill you very precisely for the hours they spend on the case" I took a sip of coffee, set the cup down in its saucer I leaned forward and said, "Mr Hoeldtke, I'm a pretty decent detective, but I'm completely unofficial You need a license to operate as a private investigator in this state and I don't have one I've never felt like going through the hassle of applying for one I don't itemize expenses or keep track of my hours, and I don't provide detailed reports I don't have an office, either, which is e're ot is whatever instincts and abilities I've developed over the years, and I'm not sure that's what you want to employ"

"Durkin didn't tell me you were unlicensed"

"Well, he could have It's not a secret"

"Why do you suppose he reco an attack of scruples Or maybe I didn't ive him a referral fee," I said