“Didn’t you look inside your pocketbook before you started downtown?” she asked.
Edina crimsoned.
“No,” she admitted. “I was so sure the money was there I—I—didn’t bother to look.”
“A fine treasurer!” came shrilly from the fringe of the crowd.
“I should ’a’ looked,” confessed Edina miserably. “I’ll never forgive myself for—for not lookin’.”
Billie’s grip tightened reassuringly upon her fingers.
“Hold fast,” she whispered.
“Let’s get this straight,” said Ray Carew. “Your story is that you took your purse from your locked trunk about two o’clock this afternoon. You don’t know that the money was there then, because you didn’t bother to look,” there was the faintest sarcasm in Ray’s drawling tones.
“I’m sure the money was there then,” Edina persisted doggedly. “Nobody could get into my trunk without breaking the lock—and the lock wasn’t broken.”
“Well, let’s say that the money was in your purse when you took it from the trunk,” Ray conceded. “You took the purse in your hand then. Was there anyone in the room with you?”