“Perhaps you and I could get our heads together.”
The girl put breakfast on the table. Lowry started eating.
“You watch him,” Babe said indignantly to Lowry. “He’s smooth. You start making any kind of a deal with him and I walk out of your life so fast you just hear me whiz as I go through the door.”
“What’s the deal?” Lowry asked me.
I said, “There’s eighty thousand dollars’ insurance at stake. The insurance company would like to refund one year’s premium and be in the clear. It would hate like hell to be stuck for eighty thousand bucks.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Lowry interjected, shovelling ham into his mouth.
I said, “I’m going to stick them. I was working on that angle of the case. I went to see the girl, but she was dressing. She told me to wait in the other room while she got some clothes on. Someone followed me. I think it was you.”
“Not him,” the girl declared. “You can’t pull that stuff on us. I was with him every minute of the time from the time you stole our car. We had to flag a passing motorist, get some petrol for your car, drive it into town, and park it and then take a taxi out here.”
I said, “Somebody else knew about that address.”
“What address?”