“Hill. Laurel Hill.”
“―Miss Laurel Hill, but when I receive strange young things au naturel in Hollywood I like to be sure no confederate with a camera and an offer to do business is skulking behind my drapes. Why do you think you have to see me?”
“Because the police are dummies.”
“Ah, the police. They won’t listen to you?”
“They listen, all right. But then they laugh. I don’t think there’s anything funny in a dead dog, do you?”
“In a what?”
“A dead dog.”
Ellery sighed, rolling the frosty glass along his brow. “Your pooch was poisoned, of course?”
“Guess again,” said the set-faced intruder. “He wasn’t my pooch, and I don’t know what caused his death. What’s more, dog-lover though I am, I don’t care a curse... They said it was somebody’s idea of a rib, and I know they’re talking through their big feet. I don’t know what it meant, but it was no rib.”
Ellery had set the glass down. She stared back. Finally he shook his head, smiling. “The tactics are primitive, Laurel. E for Effort. But no dice.”