“No.”
His eyes bored steadily into mine. “All right,” he said, “if you want it straight from the shoulder. Carlotta — Mrs. Ashbury — needs only to breathe a whisper of what she knows to the police, and Alta would be put into Jed Ringold’s room last night at the time of the murder.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Well,” Carter amended hastily, “just before the time of the murder— Did it ever occur to you that the woman who went up to see Ringold answers Alta’s description, that it wouldn’t take a hell of a lot of detective work to establish the fact that Alta’s car was in a parking station within a couple of blocks of the hotel, and that a witness could be called who would testify that he’d seen Alta hurrying toward the parking lot from the direction of the hotel at just about the time the murder was committed?”
“What,” I asked, “do you want me to do?”
He said, “The next time Alta starts talking about her stepmother you might casually explain to her that Mrs, Ashbury has it in her power to put Alta in a hell of a spot, that she isn’t doing it because Carlotta is a square shooter and loyal to the man she’s married.”
I said, “You seem to take it for granted that Alta’s going to discuss her stepmother with me.”
“I do,” he said, and turned on his heel and started for the door.
“Just a minute,” I said. “If Alta left the hotel before the murder was committed, it doesn’t seem to me she has much to worry about.”
He paused with his hand on the knob of the door. “She was seen on the street,” he said, “just after the murder was committed.”