her big brown eyes; but none actually came. The eyes stayed dull and empty.
“You mean you’re arresting me?”
“Not exactly. But if you stick to your story about being home in bed at 3:00 last Tuesday morning I can promise you you will be arrested. If I were you I’d think up another story while we’re riding down to the Hall of Justice.”
She left the doorway slowly and came back into the room, as far as a chair that stood between us, put her hands on its back, and leaned over it to look at me. For perhaps a minute neither of us spoke—just stood there staring at each other, while I tried to keep my face as expressionless as hers.
“Do you really think,” she asked at last, “that I wasn’t here when Bernie was killed?”
“I’m a busy man, Miss Kenbrook.” I put all the certainty I could fake into my voice. “If you want to stick to your funny story, it’s all right with me. But please don’t expect me to stand here and argue about it. Get your hat and cloak.”
She shrugged, and came around the chair on which she had been leaning.
“I suppose you do know something,” she said, sitting down. “Well, it’s tough on Stan, but women and children first.”
My ears twitched at the name Stan , but I didn’t interrupt her.
“I was in the Coffee Cup until one o’clock,” she was saying, her voice still flat and emotionless. “And I did come home afterward. I’d been drinking vino all evening, and it always makes me blue. So after I came home I got to worrying over things. Since Bernie and I split finances haven’t been so