“No,” I said, leading her back toward the stalls. “Business this time. Where’s Ed?”
“Up north. His wife kicked off and he’s gone to collect the remains.”
“That makes you sorry?”
She showed her big white teeth in a boy’s smile of pure happiness.
“You bet! It’s tough on me that papa has come into a lot of sugar.”
I looked at her out of the corner of my eyes—a glance that was supposed to be wise.
“And you think Ed’s going to bring the jack back to you?”
Her eyes snapped darkly at me.
“What’s eating you?” she demanded.
I smiled knowingly.
“One of two things is going to happen,” I predicted. “Ed’s going to ditch you—he was figuring on that, anyway—or he’s going to need every brownie he can scrape up to keep his neck from being—”
“You damned liar!”
Her right shoulder was to me, touching my left. Her left hand flashed down under her short skirt. I pushed her shoulder forward, twisting her body sharply away from me. The knife her left hand had whipped up from her leg jabbed deep into the underside of the table. A thick-bladed knife, I noticed, balanced for accurate throwing.