"No," responded the girl, her confidence in Uncle Bryant severely threatened, "there's no way to prove otherwise."
"I saved some chow fer yuh," Gimlet said in an incidental way, "if yuh want it. I reckon yore hungry."
Penelope shook her head. "I'm not hungry, Gimlet."
"I dunno what's goin' tuh happen," the old man said sadly. "I do know one thing though, an' that's jest this. Becky wasn't kilt by no accident, an' if Bryant says she was he's as big a damn liar as Mort."
Penny looked at Gimlet. She laid one hand on his skinny forearm below the rolled-back shirtsleeve. Softly she said, "Gimlet, have you any idea why Rebecca was shot?"
Gimlet dropped the gaze of his one eye to the floor and shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other.
"Tell me," said Penny. "I want to know."
Gimlet nodded slowly. "I know," he said. "That's what made me afeared fer you." He stopped there, and Penny said:
"Go on."
Gimlet drew a deep breath as if, in telling the girl what he knew, he were leaping into a bottomless pit filled with icy water.