“Doesn’t make sense,” Bauer announced finally.
“What doesn’t?”
“Look here.” He held the gloves out for Conway’s inspection. “They’ve both been darned a couple times. There’s a rip in this one, and the ends of the fingers are worn through two places in this one and one in that. They’re no good.”
The sergeant’s observation was shockingly true. Conway remembered Helen’s attitude when she had bought the gloves: she had gotten a sadistic satisfaction in letting him think she was spending their money on a whim; she would have enjoyed it less had he known that she needed the gloves. And he hadn’t noticed their condition; neither then, nor in the hurried moment when he had changed his plan and taken them from the drawer. Again his mind raced to discover what it might mean.
“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” he said.
“It doesn’t make sense, that’s all. Why would a woman make you go all the way back to that theatre to get a glove that was all worn out anyway?”
“You know how women are, Sergeant. There’s nothing that annoys them more than losing one glove.” Whatever the sergeant’s theories, he would have to admit the truth of that.
“Yeah,” Bauer conceded, “sometimes women are tough for even me to figure out. I mean, because their minds don’t always work the way a sensible person would expect them to.”
You’ve got something there, Conway thought.
“Let’s see if we can find that address book,” the detective said. He pocketed both the gloves and led the way from the room.