“And me, too,” Quinlan said and spooned some of the soup into his mouth. “Martha,” he said, “I’m not a rotter and I’d surely marry you. I’d do anything for you.”
“Go along, Mr. Quinlan.”
“A big man like you embarrassed, James Quinlan?” Thelma Nettro laughed. Sally was thankful she was wearing her teeth. “I think you’ve been around several blocks, boy. I bet I could take off my clothes and it wouldn’t faze you.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it, ma’am,” Quinlan said.
“I’ll bring in the chicken parmigiana,” Martha said. “With garlic toast,” she said over her shoulder.
“She keeps me alive,” Thelma said. “She should have been my daughter but wasn’t. It’s a pity. She’s a good girl.”
This was interesting, Quinlan thought, but not as interesting as the soup. They all gave single-minded concentration to the minestrone until Martha reappeared with a huge tray covered with dishes. The smells nearly put Quinlan under the table. He wondered how long he’d have a hard stomach if Martha cooked all his meals.
Thelma took a big bite of chicken parmigiana, chewed like it was her last bite on earth, sighed, then said, “Did I tell you that my husband, Bobby, invented a new, improved gyropilot and sold it to a huge conglomerate in San Diego? They were hot for it, it being the war and all. Yep, that’s what happened. I know it made airplanes fly even more evenly at the same height on a set course than before. With that money, Bobby and I moved here to The Cove. Our kids were grown and gone by then.” She shook her head, smiled, and said, “I’ll bet that body was a real mess when you found it.”
“Yes,” Sally managed to say, reeling just a bit. “The poor woman had been thrown over the cliff. Evidently she was caught in the tide.”
“So who is she?”
“No one knows yet,” Quinlan said. “Sheriff Mountebank will find out. Did you hear a woman screaming, Ms. Nettro?”
“You can call me Thelma, boy. My sweet Bobby died in the winter of 1956, just after Eisenhower was elected died—he called me Hell’s Bells, but he always smiled when he said it, so I didn’t ever get mad at him. A woman screaming? Not likely. I like my TV loud.”
“It was in the middle of the night,” Sally said. “You would have been in bed.”
“My hair curlers are so tight, I can’t hear a thing. Ask Martha. If she’s not trying to find herself a man, she’s lying in bed thinking about it. Maybe she heard something.”
“All right,” Quinlan said. He took a bite of garlic toast, shivered in ecstasy at the rich garlic and butter taste, and said, “The woman was screaming close by, perhaps just across the way from Amabel’s house. She was someone’s prisoner. Then that someone killed her. What do you think?”
Thelma chewed another bite of chicken, a string of mozzarella cheese hanging off her chin. “I think, boy, that you and Sally here should go driving some place and neck. I’ve never before seen a girl in such a twitter as poor Sally here. She’s a mess. Amabel won’t say anything except that you’ve had a rough time and you’re trying to get over a bad marriage. She said none of us were to say a word to anybody, that you needed peace and quiet. You don’t have to worry, Sally, no one from The Cove will call and tell on you.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Call me Thelma, Sally. Now, how much does either of you know about that big-time murdered lawyer back in Washington?”
James thought Sally would faint and fall into her chicken parmigiana. She looked whiter than death. He said easily, “No more than anybody else, I suspect. What do you know, Thelma?”
“Since I’m the only one with a real working TV, I know a world more than anybody else in this town. Did you know the missing daughter’s husband was on TV, pleading for her to come home? He said he was worried she wasn’t well and didn’t know what she was doing. He said she wasn’t responsible, that she was sick. He said he was real concerned about her, that he wanted her back so he could take care of her. Did you know that? Isn’t that something?”
She wouldn’t faint into the parmigiana now. Quinlan felt her turn into stone. “Where did you hear that, Thelma?” he asked mildly, even as he doubted he ever wanted another bite of chicken parmigiana in his life.
“It was on CNN. You can find out everything on CNN.”
“Do you remember anything else he said?”
“That was about it. He pleads real well. Looked very sincere. A handsome man, but there’s something too slick about him. From what I could tell he’s got a weak chin. What do you two think about that?”