Blood Relatives by Ed McBain

wanted to bring his cousin and his sister, so what could I tell him? Could I say no? So I said okay, and then what happens is that he can’t make the damn party, so the two girls come alone. I didn’t mind Muriel, but you know, lots of the guys were kidding me about Patricia, about having jailbait here.”
    “Muriel was only seventeen,” Carella said.
    “I didn’t realize that. She looked older. For that matter, Patricia looks older too. But she’s kind of immature, if you know what I mean. After all, fifteen is fifteen, no matter how you slice it. The party was big enough to absorb them both, though, so what the hell. I’m only sorry Andy didn’t get to come. I’m sure if he’d been here, the whole thing wouldn’t have happened later.”
    “What time did he get here?”
    “Just after the girls left.”
    “And he left immediately, huh? To go look for them?”
    “Yeah. But then he came back again because it was raining so hard, you see, he figured they might have changed their minds and run back here. But they hadn’t. So he left again.”
    “About these other people you mentioned—”
    “Right,” Gaddis said. “We can eliminate my father, right? Because he never left the apartment all night long.” Gaddis smiled suddenly and infectiously. “Besides, he’s a very nonviolent type, believe me.”
    “Okay, let’s eliminate your father,” Carella said, and returned the smile.
    “And I think we can eliminate Sally Hoyt’s boyfriend, because first of all, she didn’t let him out of her sight all night long, and secondly, by the time she got through with him the poor bastard was probably too weak to walk.”
    “Okay.”
    “So that leaves…Listen, is anybody hungry? I’m starved. Would anybody like a sandwich?”
    “No, thank you,” Carella said.
    “You mind if I make myself one?”
    “Not at all.”
    “Come on in the kitchen,” Gaddis said, and rose, and continued talking as they started out of the room. “That would leaveJackie Hogan, who got here about fifteen minutes before the girls left, and who I’m sure didn’t get to meet them. And it would also leave this English instructor Charlie Cavalca brought with him. Trouble is, Jackie didn’t leave the party till way past midnight, so that lets him out, am I right?”
    “That’s right.”
    They were in the kitchen now. Gaddis opened the refrigerator, took out a slab of butter, a loaf of unsliced rye bread, and some ham wrapped in waxed paper. “So that leaves only the English instructor,” he said, and turned toward the detectives and smiled again, and said, “Personally, I wouldn’t put anything past English instructors, but this guy seemed very straight, and besides, he was with a gorgeous blonde he’d have to have been out of his mind to leave.” Gaddis walked to the cutting board and reached for one of the knives on the rack above it.
    Both Kling and Carella saw the knives on the rack at the same moment. There was a bread knife with a nine-inch-long blade, which Paul pulled down from the rack now. There was also a carving knife with a ten-inch-long blade, and a chef’s knife with a six-inch-long blade. But their attention was caught by the paring knives which hung in a row on the rack. There were three of them. They all had wooden handles with stainless-steel rivets in them. They all had blades that appeared to be about four inches long.
    “Those knives,” Carella said.
    Paul Gaddis looked up from where he was slicing the rye bread.
    “On the rack there,” Carella said. “The paring knives.”
    “Yeah,” Gaddis said, and nodded.
    “Were they here on the night of the party?”
    “Oh yeah, been here forever, those knives.”
    “Are any of them missing?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Should there be four paring knives instead of three?”
    “Well, there are four,” Gaddis said, and looked at the rack.
    “No, there are only three up there,” Carella said.
    “There’re supposed to be four,” Gaddis said.
    “Would