The music faded. There was a station break. A signature. Five minutes of the latest news from the wire room of WLEX.
She said, “Tildy was afraid we’d say the wrong thing, or do something to give Mr. Lanerd away. So I took her to my uncle’s until we found out how the wind was blowing.”
It checked with Auguste, with the producer. But not with Dow Lanerd’s waiting in 21MM with his automatic ready for business. Why was that?
“Oh, we’d all been under such a strain, expecting that cochon Gowriss to sneak in and murder us both in our beds. We pulled the bureau up against the bedroom door every time we snatched a ten-minute nap. Mr. Lanerd was as scared of Gowriss as we were. He thought, several times, he’d been followed by a man in a taxi—” she paused to listen.
The zombi voice from the console said:
“... after a hair-raising chase for seven miles through crowded traffic on the Boston Post Road at speeds in excess of eighty miles an hour, Connecticut State Police tonight shot it out with Albert Gowriss, notorious criminal. Gowriss and a woman companion were critically wounded by gunfire and subsequent smashup...”
“One thing about you, Miss Narian. There are fewer and fewer people who can contradict your story.”
Chapter thirty-two:
Amnesia?
In the Plaza Royale, we’ve one old girl who’s been living in a tower suite for nine years. She hasn’t been out of the hotel more’n a dozen times annually. Says she considers our metropolitan palacio the positive peak of luxury living. Point is, she can afford to live anywhere she wants to — and the place she left to come to New York was Fayette County, Kentucky! Man!