“About how I felt. I want to get out of that newspaper. I want to get out of Oakview. I knew that you were a detective—”
“How did you know?”
“I’m not blind,” she said. “You had to be a detective. You were working for someone. You were trying to get information, and you weren’t simply trying to look up a bad credit or collect a bill — not after twenty-one years.”
“All right, go ahead.”
“Well, I knew you were a detective, and I knew Mrs. Lintig was mixed up in something big. There’s been too much interest in her, and I figured you got that black eye because of trying to find out about her. So I figured if she was that important, it would be a good chance for me, being on the ground, to get in on the ground floor, use my acquaintanceship in Oakview to find out what it was everyone was after, and find out who you were working for, go to your boss with the information, and see if I couldn’t get a job.”
“What kind of a job?” I asked curiously.
“Being a detective. They have woman detectives, don’t they?”
I said, “You were going to ask Bertha Cool to give you a job as a detective?”
“Yes. Of course I didn’t know anything about Bertha Cool at the time. I didn’t know who your boss was. I thought probably it was one of the big agencies or something like that.”
“What do you know about being a detective?”