“Joe might have,” she said persuasively. “God only knows what he’d want to do it for, why he’d want to get rid of the kind of meal ticket she was going to be. But you couldn’t always guess what he was getting at. He pulled plenty of dumb ones. He was too slick without being smart. If he was going to kill her, though, that would be about the way he’d go about it.”
“Were he and Babe friendly?”
“No.”
“Did he go to Babe’s much?”
“Not at all that I know about. He was too leery of Babe to take a chance on being caught there. That’s why I moved upstairs, so Sue could come over to our place to see him.”
“Then how could Joe have hidden the flypaper he poisoned her with in her apartment?”
“Flypaper!” Her bewilderment seemed honest enough.
“Show it to her,” I told O’Gar.
He got a sheet from the desk and held it close to the girl’s face.
She stared at it for a moment and then jumped up and grabbed my arm with both hands.
“I didn’t know what it was,” she said excitedly. “Joe had some a couple of months ago. He was looking at it when I came in. I asked him what it was for, and he smiled that wisenheimer smile of his and said, ‘You make angels out of it,’ and wrapped it up again and put it in his pocket. I didn’t pay much attention to him: he was always fooling with some kind of tricks that were supposed to make him wealthy, but never did.”