“No.”
“Could you identify her?”
“I don’t think so. They just went by.”
“What time Tuesday afternoon?”
“Around half-past six, maybe a little later.”
I would take that, anyhow on consignment. Pete Drossos had said it was a quarter to seven when the woman in the car had told him to get a cop. I almost hated to ask the next question for fear of Egan disqualifying himself by answering it wrong.
“Who was driving, Birch?”
“No, the woman. That surprised me. Birch wasn’t a guy to have a woman driving him.”
I could have kissed the louse. He had made it twenty to one on Wolfe’s hit-or-miss assumption. I had a notion to get the photos of Jean Estey, Angela Wright, and Claire Horan from Fred’s envelope and ask Egan if the woman in the car had resembled one of them, but skipped it. He had said he couldn’t identify her, and he certainly wasn’t going to take on more load than he already had.
I asked him, “Who do you deliver the dough to?”