“About a private matter.”
As she continued to stand blocking the doorway, Mason added significantly, “Something which I think you’d prefer to discuss where the neighbors couldn’t hear.”
She glanced at the doors opening on the porch. “Come in,” she said.
Drake closed the door behind them. Marcia Whittaker silently led the way up the stairs.
The living-room had shades but no drapes. New rugs were on the hardwood floors. The furniture seemed stiff and unreal as though it had not as yet become accustomed to its new surroundings and settled down to homey comfort.
“Sit down,” she invited tonelessly.
Mason studied her face, the yellow hair with a darker fringe at the roots, her hard, blue eyes containing a hint of fear, her skin seeming smooth enough when her face was in repose but showing hard little lines which sprang into existence between her nose and the corners of her mouth as she placed a cigarette in her lips, adeptly scratched a match along the sole of one of her Chinese shoes, and said, “All right, let’s have it.”
Mason said, “It’s about that check you cashed.”
“My God,” she said, “can’t anyone cash a check without being hounded to death? You’d think I was the only person in the city who ever had a check to cash. I was a fool for giving my address. I found out afterwards I didn’t have to.”
“What was the consideration for that check?”