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belongings and your pet just to make you feel bad .
    â€œDo you have any idea who it might be?” I asked Jake.
    â€œI was hoping you could help me there. You know these people, I don’t.” Jake ran an investment counseling firm; he’d probably never set foot backstage in his life before he met Sylvia. “Somebody that sick can’t keep it hidden all the time. There have to be signs, times when he gives himself away. Can you think of anybody like that? Anybody behaving strangely?”
    â€œJust normal backstage bitching, Jake. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
    â€œBut now that you know …”
    But now that I knew, I’d be looking at everyone through different eyes. “You want me to watch for giveaway signs.”
    â€œWould you, Abby? The police can’t do anything. And there’s no reason to assume this nut is finished with his sadistic tricks.”
    â€œI’d be glad to, Jake, but I’m going to Pittsburgh next week. Have you told anyone else?”
    â€œNo. The only one of them I know well is John Reddick, and he’d blab it all over town.”
    â€œLook, when I get back maybe I can—God, I don’t know how to … investigate !”
    Jake smiled for the first time. “I’m not asking you to play detective.”
    â€œThe hell you aren’t. Jake, have you thought about that? Hiring a private detective, I mean.”
    He hesitated. “Yes. Syl doesn’t want to. You know how she is—she doesn’t like the idea of, well, of looking like a victim. And that’s how it would seem, if a detective suddenly started asking questions. But I’m going to hire one anyway if something else happens.”
    â€œDo you think it will?”
    â€œI don’t know. All I know is, I’d like to wring that bastard’s neck! Who the hell does he think he is—invading our lives like that?” His eyes were glassy and a vein throbbed in his neck. “It’s just that I feel so goddamned helpless! How can you fight an enemy you can’t even identify?”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œIt’s sick—the whole thing’s sick.” The anger suddenly seemed to drain out of him. “I wish I knew what to do.”
    â€œEat your lox,” I said.

4
    The Three Rivers Playhouse in Pittsburgh was within walking distance of the point where the Allegheny joined the Monongahela to form the Ohio River. I was too late for the Three Rivers Arts Festival and too early for the Three Rivers Piano Competition, but right across the Allegheny sat Three Rivers Stadium, not far from Three Rivers State Park. My hotel was rather unimaginatively called the Hilton.
    I was sitting in the Playhouse lobby waiting for Claudia Knight, who was directing a program of two long one-acts I had written about a hundred years ago under the joint title of Double Play . No one was much interested in one-acts at the moment, so I was both pleased and surprised when the Playhouse decided to produce them. The plays were of the sort that are called experimental for lack of a more definitive term; and when I read them over for the first time in years, I winced. Had I ever really been that young? I’d done some hasty rewriting and promised to return to Pittsburgh for the final rehearsals.
    Claudia Knight had turned out to be the driving force behind the revival, if so elegant a term can be applied to plays that had received only amateur productions in the past. Claudia was a tall, copper-haired, big-eyed young woman who dressed like a fashion model and was careful never to say the wrong thing. She made a point of knowing everybody and remaining on good terms with everyone she knew. Definitely a woman on the rise, she didn’t exactly curry favor but she was clearly making as many contacts as she could from her Pittsburgh base. I wondered how many playwrights she’d invited to the Three Rivers Playhouse before she found one that took