“What I don’t understand,” he said, “is what you think you got. You think she had a boyfriend and the boyfriend gave her the ring. Okay. You also figured she had a boyfriend and he gave her the fur jacket, and you traced that and it looks as though you were right, but the jacket won’t lead to the boyfriend because he kept his name out of it. If you can’t trace him with a jacket that we’ve got, how can you trace him with a ring that all we know about it is it’s missing? You see what I mean?”

“I see what you mean.”

“That Sherlock Holmes thing, the dog that didn’t bark, well what you got is a ring that isn’t there, and what does it prove?”

“It’s gone.”

“Right.”

“Where’d it go?”

“Same place a bathtub ring goes. Down the fucking drain. How do I know where it went?”

“It disappeared.”

“So? Either it walked away or someone took it.”

“Who?”

“How do I know who?”

“Let’s say she wore it to the hotel where she was killed.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Let’s just say so, all right?”

“Okay, run with it.”

“Who took it? Some cop yank it off her finger?”

“No,” he said. “Nobody’d do that. There’s people who’ll take cash if it’s loose, we both know that, but a ring off a murder victim’s finger?” He shook his head. “Besides, nobody was alone with her. It’s something nobody’d do with somebody else watching.”

“How about the maid? The one who discovered the body?”

“Jesus, no way. I questioned the poor woman. She took one look at the body and started screaming and she’d still be screaming now if she had the breath left. You couldn’ta got her close enough to Dakkinen to touch her with a mop handle.”

“Who took the ring?”

“Assuming she wore it there—”

“Right.”

“So the killer took it.”

“Why?”

“Maybe he’s queer for jewelry. Maybe green’s his favorite color.”

“Keep going.”

“Maybe it’s valuable. You got a guy who goes around killing people, his morals aren’t the best. He might not draw the line at stealing.”

“He left a few hundred dollars in her purse, Joe.”

“Maybe he didn’t have time to go through her bag.”

“He had time to take a shower, for Christ’s sake. He had time to go through her bag. In fact, we don’t know that he didn’t go through her bag. We just know he didn’t take the money.”

“So?”

“But he took the ring. He had time to take hold of her bloody hand and tug it off her finger.”

“Maybe it came off easy. Maybe it wasn’t a snug fit.”

“Why’d he take it?”

“He wanted it for his sister.”

“Got any better reasons?”