“And you didn’t mind?”
“You’ve got this all wrong,” she said. “Of course I didn’t mind. I was being cut in on it. You know her father had the bees. That’s what Joe was after. She didn’t mean anything to him but an in to the old man’s pockets. And I was to get my dib. And you needn’t think I was crazy enough about Joe or anybody else to step off in the air for them. Babe got next and fixed the pair of them. That’s a cinch.”
“Yeah? How do you figure Babe would kill her?”
“That guy? You don’t think he’d—”
“I mean, how would he go about killing her?”
“Oh!” She shrugged. “With his hands, likely as not.”
“Once he’d made up his mind to do it, he’d do it quick and violent?” I suggested.
“That would be Babe,” she agreed.
“But you can’t see him slow-poisoning her—spreading it out over a month?”
Worry came into the girl’s blue eyes. She put her lower lip between her teeth, then said slowly:
“No, I can’t see him doing it that way. Not Babe.”
“Who can you see doing it that way?”
She opened her eyes wide, asking:
“You mean Joe?”
I didn’t say anything.