“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Bauer said. “Mr. Conway told me you weren’t going to stay here.”
“I told Mr. Conway,” she said frigidly, “that I would leave as soon as I could find a suitable place to stay. I intended to start looking this afternoon, but he didn’t wake me, and I overslept.”
“There’s a motel not far from here,” the detective said. “I happened to pass it on my way over and noticed a ‘Vacancy’ sign. I can take you over there now, if you’re ready.”
“I shall look for an apartment tomorrow, but I will not stay in a ratty motel when there is a perfectly good room with a perfectly good bed upstairs.”
This was obviously too much for the sergeant’s tender sensibilities. “How can you sleep in the bed your own murdered sister slept in?”
“Half-sister. And if I were home in Topeka I’d be sleeping in the bed she slept in, because I still use the one we shared when we were kids. I don’t see any reason to be morbid about it.”
“And I don’t see how a girl who looks like you do can be so unconscious. Don’t you know it just ain’t right, your staying here in this house?”
“Where I come from,” she said, “when anyone’s in trouble, or there’s sickness or death in the family, their friends and relatives all pitch in and do what they can to help. Well, I haven’t noticed anyone else trying to help Arthur, and as long as he’s the only relative I’ve got, it seems to me I ought to try to do what I can.”
“But what will people say? How does it look to people?” The sergeant was growing exasperated. “I’ll tell you how it looks — it don’t look decent. Right?” He turned to Conway as he confirmed his own judgment. “Right.”
She looked him up and down coolly, impersonally, and it was a moment before she spoke. “Sergeant Bauer,” she said glacially, “I have looked after my reputation — and my virtue — without the help of the Los Angeles Police Department up to now, and I think I can continue to do so. Right now I’d be much happier without your advice, opinion, or company.”