We got out an assortment: salami, half a Georgia ham, pâté, cheese, cucumber rings, Italian bread, and milk. She volunteered to slice some ham, and was very nifty at it. Now that she had broken my sleep I saw no reason to let her monopolize things, so I joined in. I took the stool and let her have the chair. I had happened to notice before that she had good teeth, and now I also noticed that they knew how to deal with bread and meat. She chewed as if she meant it, but with no offense.
We made conversation. “When I heard my name and opened my eyes and saw you,” I told her, “I supposed it was one of two things. Either you had been drawn to my room as a moth to a candle, or you wanted to tell me something. When you said you were hungry it was a comedown. However—” I waved a hand, and on the way back it snared a slice of salami.
“I don’t think there’s much moth in me,” she said. “And you’re not so hot as a candle, with your hair like that and in those wrinkled pajamas. But I do want to tell you something. The hunger was just an opening.”
“My pajamas always get wrinkled by the middle of the week no matter how careful I am. What’s on your mind?”
She finished with a bite of cheese. Then she drank some milk. Then she arranged for her eyes to meet mine.
“We’re more apt to do some good if you’ll tell me something. What makes you think Pompa didn’t kill Floyd Whitten?”
That got me wide awake and I hastily shifted things around inside my head. Up to then the emphasis had been on this interesting, informal, early-morning, intimate association with a really pretty specimen, but she had made it quite different. Having never seen H. R. Landy, I didn’t know how much she looked like her father, but her manner and tone as she asked that question, and the look in her fine young eyes, had sure come straight from the man who had built up a ten-million-dollar business.
I grinned at her. “That’s a swell way to repay me for getting up to feed you. If we have any evidence it’s Mr. Wolfe’s, not mine, so ask him. If we haven’t any you wouldn’t be interested.”
“I might be. Try me.”
“I wouldn’t dream of boring you. More milk?”