The Edge of Doom by Amanda Cross Page A

liked learning how one put up buildings, or how to renovate them; it was work I could almost always get. In good times, workers with experience were needed; in bad times, workers who came cheap were desired. That was how it went, during most of the between periods.”
    Reed could think of nothing else to ask. In fact, he could think of much else to ask, but this hardly seemed the time or place for such questions; some of them could never be asked. As to the résumé, he needed to study it more closely, and perhaps make a few inquiries.
    “You’ve been most agreeable about all this,” he said to Jay. “You might well have told me to stuff it.”
    “I’m glad you wanted to know more about me. I’m glad Kate’s married to someone who cared to find out more about her father.”
    “I wouldn’t have even met with you unless Kate agreed,” Reed said.
    “I took that for granted.”
    Reed smiled, and reached for his wallet.
    “Do let me pay,” Jay said. “I’ve been the cause of all this inquiry.”
    “Another time,” Reed said.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    Do you not know I am a woman?

When I think I must speak.
    Reed handed Jay’s résumé to Kate.
    “He gave it to you?” she asked, glancing at it. “It’s all typed up. You mean he brought it to you unasked?”
    “All of those,” Reed said. “He’s no fool; he guessed why I wanted to see him. This was to show me how he’d spent his life and that he was as open as anyone could be.”
    “A busy life,” Kate said, reading the résumé. “He worked as an architect or builder most of the time; just as he told us. Is his architecture firm still in existence?”
    “Oh, yes. See, he gives the address, the phone numbers, the name of his partner who now runs it. All clean and above board.”
    “Why do I catch a note of skepticism? I take it the lunch did nothing to assuage your doubts about him.”
    “Look at that résumé more carefully.”
    Kate studied it in detail, pausing over each entry. “There are lacunae, of course. And whatever it was he was doing seems a little vague after he went west, but is that so unexpected? And doesn’t everyone have gaps unless they’re trying to be appointed as a judge or attorney general?”
    “He explained the gaps to some extent. In between jobs in restoration he worked temporarily as a subcontractor, a carpenter, a bricklayer possibly. That’s not what’s troubling me. Look at the years between 1970 and 1975.”
    “I see,” Kate said. “Nothing much there. Perhaps we are to assume that it was temporary jobs again.”
    “Why not say so?”
    Kate smiled. “I don’t remember you being this serious before, this doubtful. Is there something about Jay that’s getting to you? Aside from the fact that he’s my father.”
    “That’s rather a bigger aside than usual. Perhaps I’m jealous of this new man in your life; perhaps I’m just naturally a mean, suspicious person. I can’t really tell you why, but I sense something not quite right. It need not be something to his discredit; it may merely be something he’d rather not disclose. If you don’t want me to snoop, just say so.”
    “Of course you must snoop as you choose, provided you keep me informed of all you uncover.” Kate grinned at him. “But as you keep telling me, whatever he had to offer me in the way of a paternal inheritance he’s already done. Nothing we can find out will change that.”
    “Kate,” Reed said, answering the undertone rather than her words. “If you have the slightest hesitation about my looking further into the life of Jay Ebenezer Smith, just say so. As you so wisely point out, there’s nothing to be learned that could affect you in any way.”
    “Do you think the name is made up too? It does sound a bit unlikely.”
    “Only because Smith is so common a name that, if we suspect someone of dishonesty who says his name is Smith, we tend to assume he’s lying.”
    “That is not a logical sentence,” Kate said.
    “No, but it’s