“Don’t give me that. You said it was because you were a coward. That wasn’t cowardly, identifying Gowriss.”
“Oh — by being a coward—” she was flustered, “I only meant I’d been afraid somebody’d be killed trying to protect me; if I’d just run away from the hotel before — and let Gowriss or his gang shoot me — the others would have lived.”
It was thin as wet tissue, but I couldn’t bully her around to get the truth out of her. If Lanerd’s death wouldn’t make her talk, I didn’t know what would.
“What about that ‘had to do it’ business MacGregory mentioned?”
She’d had time to think up an answer. “I meant that if eloping with him was the only way for me to be with Dow, I had to do it; I couldn’t give him up.”
It clicked into place all right, but I couldn’t tell when to believe her any more. “You know Edie Eberlein?”
“I used to. Years ago. On the Coast.” She didn’t ask why I wanted to know.
“Seen her lately? Give her the key to your Plaza Royale suite?”
“No — to both.”
Right then Fran knocked; I let her in.