“Why not?”
She pushed away her plate, accepted one of my cigarettes, and leaned forward for a light. She reached up with her hands and held my hand and the match m both of hers. Her hands were soft and warm, the skin smooth. “Paul and I went out to dinner. He was going to kill you,” she said.
“He got drunk and crazy jealous again. He began asking me a lot of questions about you. He wouldn’t believe you were a detective. Finally I got sore, and told him that he hadn’t changed a bit m the last two years, that I’d tried to let him down easy once by simply moving out, but this time I was giving it to him the hard way; that I didn’t want to see him again ever and I didn’t want to have anything to do with him; that it he ever tried to force himself on me, I’d call the officers.”
“What did he do then?”
“He did something that frightened me, and at the same time it made me laugh.”
“What?”
“He grabbed my purse.”
“Why? So you wouldn’t have any money?”
“That’s what I thought at the time, but I realized later what it was.”
“You mean he wanted your key?”