“Yeah. I want to ask you a few questions.”
“Shoot.”
“Well — for instance. When did you last see Ann Amory?”
“Aw, hell,” I said regretfully. “You would do that. Ask me the one question I’m not answering tonight. This is my night for not answering any questions whatever about anybody named Ann.”
“Nuts,” he growled, his bass growl that I had been hearing off and on for ten years. “And I don’t mean peanuts. Is it news to you that she’s dead? Murdered?”
“Nothing doing, Purley.”
“There’s got to be something doing. She’s been murdered. You know damn well you’ve got to talk.”
I grinned at him. “What kind of got?”
“Well, to start with, material witness. You talk, or I take you down, and maybe I do anyway.”
“You mean arrest me as a material witness?”