"Matthew, my boy," D"Amata said, smiling. "Don"t tell me you did this."
"I came in to get a dozen eggs."
"You see what happened?"
"No. But I know who owns this car, the one he ran into."
"Oh?"
"She"s a librarian at U of P. Nice lady. She saw the body and she"s nearly hysterical."
"I would be too," D"Amata said. "Do you think she saw anything? "
"She saw what I saw, zilch. We were in the back of the store."
"We"ll need your statements," D"Amata said. "But I don"t see why you couldn"t take her to the Roundhouse before the mob gets there. I"ll let them know you"re coming."
"I owe you one, Joe."
"Yeah. Don"t forget."
Matt went back to his Bug and got behind the wheel and turned to Mrs. Glover.
"What happens now?" she asked.
"I know one of the Homicide detectives. He"s fixed it so that we can go to the Roundhouse now, before the crowd gets there, and make our statements."
"But I didn"t see anything."
"That"s your statement. And they"ll want to know about your car."
"What am I going to do about my car?"
"They"ll want to take pictures of it. Maybe, if we"re lucky, we can get them to turn it loose when they"re finished. We can ask."
"What would have happened if you weren"t here?"
"They"d have taken you, when they got around to it, to the Roundhouse in a car."
"What"s this "Roundhouse" you keep talking about?"
"The Police Administration Building. At 8th and Race. That"s where Homicide is." He paused. "You all right, Mrs. Glover?"
"I"ll be all right," she said.
He started the Bug and drove downtown to the Roundhouse.
It was quarter to twelve when they left. Captain Quaire, the commanding officer of Homicide, had come in, and he authorized the release of Mrs. Glover"s car to her when the Mobile Crime Lab was through with it.
When they got back to the Acme parking lot, they were told that it would be at least an hour before the car could be released.
"I"m sorry," Matt told Mrs. Glover. "But that"s the way it is. I"ll take you home and then bring you back in an hour."
"You"re sweet, Matt. I appreciate all this," Mrs. Glover said, and touched his arm.
He started the car and asked her where she lived. She gave him an address in Upper Darby Township.
"It"s not far," Mrs. Glover said. "But I appreciate the offer to take me back there."
"I"ll take your husband back," Matt said. "What you should do is make yourself a stiff drink, and then go to bed, and forget this whole thing."
He saw they had crossed into Upper Darby Township. "You"re going to have to start giving me directions."
It was a fairly nice ranch house in a subdivision, the sort of house he would have expected people like the Glovers to have. He remembered hearing that Mr. Glover, probably Doctor Doctor Glover, was some sort of professor. There was a light on in the carport, and there were lights in the living room, behind the curtain that covered the picture window. Glover, was some sort of professor. There was a light on in the carport, and there were lights in the living room, behind the curtain that covered the picture window.
"I don"t see a car," Matt said. "It looks like Dr. Glover"s not home."
"Not here, he"s not," Mrs. Glover said, more than a little bitterly.
Oh!
"Could you use one of those stiff drinks you recommended for me?" Mrs. Glover asked. "Or are you on duty?"
"Yes, ma"am."
"Well, you"re going to have to watch while I have one, I"m afraid. I"m shaking like a leaf."
"I meant that "no drinking on duty" business is only in the movies, or on TV cop shows. And anyway I"m not. On duty, I mean."
She got out of the car and went to the door that opened off the carport into the kitchen. He followed her inside. She snapped on fluorescent lights and pulled open a cabinet over the sink.
"I"m not much of a drinker," she said, taking out four bottles. "But this is an occasion, isn"t it?" She turned to him. "What do you recommend?"
There was a bottle of gin, a bottle of blended whiskey, a bottle of Southern Comfort, and, surprisingly, an unopened bottle of Martel cognac.
"The cognac, if that would be all right," Matt said.
"I"ve even got the gla.s.ses for it," she said. "They"re probably a little dusty."
She went farther into the house and returned with two snifters that were, in fact, dusty. She wiped them with a paper towel and set them on the kitchen counter.
"Do you need a corkscrew?"
"No, I don"t think so," he said, and twisted the metal foil off the neck. The bottle was closed with a cork, but the kind that can be pulled loose.
He poured cognac in both gla.s.ses, and handed her one.
"You don"t mix it with anything?"
"My father says it"s a sin to do that," Matt said. "But my mother drinks hers with soda water."
"I"ve got ginger ale. Would that be all right?"
"That would be a sin," he said.
"I think I"ll be a sinner," she said, and went into the refrigerator and took out a bottle of ginger ale, and poured some into her gla.s.s. Then she held the gla.s.s out to touch his.
"I"m glad you were there, Matt," she said. "This whole experience has been horrible. I would have hated to have had to go through it alone."
He smiled and took a sip from his gla.s.s. She took a tentative sip of hers. She smiled. "That"s not so bad."
He took another swallow and felt the warmth course through his body.
"Funny," Mrs. Glover said, "you don"t look like a detective."
"Probably because I"ve only been a detective a couple of weeks."
"Or a policeman," she said. "I thought you were one of those who was going in the Marines?"
He was surprised that she had paid enough attention to him to have known that.
"I flunked the physical," he said.
"Oh," she said. "And do you like being a policeman?"
"Most of the time," he said. "Not tonight."
She hugged herself, which caused the material of her blouse to draw taut over her bosom.
"That warms you, doesn"t it?" she said.
"Yes, it does."
"My husband"s father gave him that when he was promoted."
"Oh."
"I was tempted to throw it out when he left, but I decided that would be a waste, that sooner or later, I"d need it. For an occasion. I didn"t have something like this in mind."
"Well, it"s over," Matt said. "Put it out of your mind."
"I"m not letting you get on with whatever you were about to do when this happened."
"Don"t worry about it."
"Where do you live?"
"In Center City. I was driving past the Acme, saw the parking lot was pretty empty, and thought it would be a good time to get a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread."
"Me too," she said, and upended her brandy snifter and drained it. "I went there to get something for my supper. Have you eaten?"
He shook his head, no.
"The least I can do is feed you," she said. "There should be something in the freezer."
She found two Swanson Frozen Turkey Breast Dinners and put them in the oven.
"It"ll take thirty-five minutes," she said. "Is that going to make you terribly late where you were going?"
"I just won"t go," he said. "It wasn"t important."
She made herself another cognac and ginger ale and extended the bottle to him.
"Well, we"ll eat the leathery turkey, and then you can drive me back there."
"Fine."
"I"m now going to do something else I rarely do," Mrs. Glover said. "I"m going to smoke a cigarette."
"I"m sorry, I don"t have any."
"I"ve got some somewhere," she said, and went farther into the house again. She immediately returned. "I"m sorry. Why are we in the kitchen? Come on in the living room."
An hour later, they drove back to the Acme Supermarket. Her car was gone, and so had just about everybody else. There was a uniformed cop by the shattered plate-gla.s.s window.
Matt showed him his badge.
"Where"s the car, the victim"s car the doer ran into?"
The uniformed cop shrugged. "I guess they took it to an impound area. Maybe at the district."
Matt returned to the Bug and told Mrs. Glover that the authority they had to reclaim her car was useless. It was somewhat in limbo, and there was nothing that could be done until the morning.
"What do I do now?" Mrs. Glover asked. "Can you take me home again?"
"Of course."
She wanted an explanation of where in "limbo" her car actually was, so it seemed perfectly natural that he follow her into the house again and have another cognac.
"I was thinking," Mrs. Glover said an hour later, dipping her index finger into her cognac snifter to stir the ginger ale into the cognac, "I mean it"s just an idea. But if you stayed here, there"s a guest room, you could drive me down to the Roundhouse in the morning."
She is not making a pa.s.s at me. She is at least thirty years old, maybe thirty-five, and . . .
"And the truth of the matter seems to be that we"ve both had more of this cognac than is good for us," she added.
"Well, if it wouldn"t inconvenience you."
"Don"t be silly," she said. "I"ll just get sheets and make up the spare bed."