Bertha Cool started to drum with her thick, jeweled fingers on the top of the desk. “What a mess,” she said.
“You cooked it,” I told her.
“I’m sorry, Donald.”
“I thought you would be.”
“Listen, couldn’t you take over and—”
“Nothing doing,” I said. “If you hadn’t known anything about it, I could have gone ahead and done what I thought was necessary. I could have acted dumb and if anyone had — questioned me, they could never have proved anything except that I was dumb. Now, it’s different. You know. What you know might get found out.”
“You could trust me, lover,” she said.
“I could, but I don’t.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”