Mr. Donald Willsson’s demise.”
The young woman got up, kicked a couple of newspapers out of her way, and came to me with one hand out.
She was an inch or two taller than I, which made her about five feet eight. She had a broad-shouldered, full-breasted, round-hipped body and big muscular legs. The hand she gave me was soft, warm, strong. Her face was the face of a girl of twenty-five already showing signs of wear. Little lines crossed the corners of her big ripe mouth. Fainter lines were beginning to make nets around her thick-lashed eyes. They were large eyes, blue and a bit bloodshot.
Her coarse hair—brown—needed trimming and was parted crookedly. One side of her upper lip had been rouged higher than the other. Her dress was of a particularly unbecoming wine color, and it gaped here and there down one side, where she had neglected to snap the fasteners or they had popped open. There was a run down the front of her left stocking.
This was the Dinah Brand who took her pick of Poisonville’s men, according to what I had been told.
“His father sent for you, of course,” she said while she moved a pair of lizard-skin slippers and a cup and saucer off a chair to make room for me.
Her voice was soft, lazy.
I told her the truth:
“Donald Willsson sent for me. I was waiting to see him while he was being killed.”
“Don’t go away, Dan,” she called to Rolff.