“Once more,” I insisted. “Can you drive a car?”
“No.”
“Can you, Tina?”
“No!”
“Okay.” I turned to Wolfe. “The caller at the barber shop this morning was a precinct dick named Wallen. Fickler took him to Tina’s booth, and he questioned Tina first. Then the others had sessions with him in the booth, in this order: Philip, Carl, Jimmie, Tom, Ed, and Janet. You may not know that the manicure booths are around behind the long partition. After Janet came out there was a period of ten or fifteen minutes when Wallen was in the booth alone. Then Fickler went to see, and what he saw was Wallen’s body with scissors buried in his back. Someone had stabbed him to death. Since Carl and Tina had lammed—”
Tina’s cry was more of a gasp, a last gasp, an awful sound. With one leap she was out of her chair and at Carl, grasping him and begging wildly, “Carl, no! No, no! Oh, Carl—”
“Make her stop,” Wolfe snapped.
I had to try, because Wolfe would rather be in a room with a hungry tiger than with a woman out of hand. I went and got a grip on her shoulder but released it at sight of the expression on Carl’s face as he pushed to his feet against her pressure. It looked as if he could and would handle it. He did. He straightened her up, standing against her, his face nearly touching hers, and told her, “No! Do you understand? No!”
He eased her back to her chair and down onto it, and turned to me. “That man was killed there in Tina’s booth?”
“Yes.”