"He isn't usually that way?"
"It's Stella's death, I guess." She opened one of the steel fire doors.
"He's always that way, though, when he's been out the night before."
I flashed a look at Kennedy. Could Werner have been at Tarrytown?
In the long hallway of dressing rooms Marilyn stopped, grasping the knob of her door. "It'll only take me—" she began.
Then her face went white as the concrete of the floor, and that was immaculate. An expression which might have been fear, or horror, or hate—or all three, spread over her features, transforming her.
Following the direction of her stare, I saw Shirley down the hall, just as he stopped at his own door. He caught her glance suddenly, and his own face went red. I thought that his hands trembled.
Marilyn wheeled about, lips pressed tightly together. Throwing open the door, she dashed into her room, slamming it with a bang which echoed and re-echoed up and down the little hall. She had forgotten our presence altogether.
XIV
ANOTHER CLUE
Kennedy looked at me quizzically. "I guess we'd better not wait for
Miss Loring to initiate us to McCann's," he remarked.