"I'm saying… yes, that's what I'm saying."

"If he weren't married to Diane, if he asked you out, you wouldn't jump at the chance?"

I gave that more thought than it deserved.

"I don't think so."

"You're impervious?"

"It's not that. It's that I don't trust men who don't have to work for what they get."

Tolliver stopped, and turned me to him with a hand on my arm. "That's ridiculous," he said. "You mean a man should have to work for the love of a woman?"

"Maybe," I said. "Maybe I'm saying that Joel has probably come to accept this automatic king position as the norm, as his due. Without working for it."

"You don't think he's a virtuous man?"

"I think he is. I don't think he's a crook, or a secret addict, or a cheater."

"So, your sole objection is that he doesn't have to work for love?"

"I'm saying, there's something wrong about getting so much invested in you without setting out to earn it."

Tolliver shrugged. "I'm still not sure I understand," he said.

I couldn't explain it any better. I'm not real good at explaining things, especially emotional things. But I knew what I meant. And I didn't entirely trust Joel Morgenstern.

eleven

WHEN we got back to the hotel, Rick Goldman was waiting for us, sitting in the same chair in the lobby he'd used before.

"I should've figured he'd show up, considering the scene last night," I told Tolliver. "I wonder if he's told the cops yet."

I introduced Rick to Tolliver as politely as if Rick had come to ask us to tea. But there was a muscle jumping in the private detective's jaw, and his whole body was tense.

"Can we have this talk somewhere a little more private?" he growled at me.

Tolliver said, "That would be best, I think. Come with us."

The ride up in the elevator was silent and ominous.

The maids had been in, and the room looked clean and welcoming, I was glad to see. There's something kind of seedy in having guests in your hotel room when the evidence of your stay is strewn all around you in disorderly heaps; room service cart, crumpled newspapers, discarded books, a shoe here and there. I'd been enjoying having a sitting room at this hotel, though I never forgot I was paying for it through the nose.

"You didn't have to kill Nunley," Rick Goldman said. "I know he was an obnoxious drunk, but he didn't hurt you." He switched his level gaze to Tolliver. "Or were you so angry he manhandled your sister that you tracked him down after I left?"

"I might just as well suspect you," I retorted, not a little pissed off. "You're the one laid hands on him. You can leave right now if you're going to sit there and accuse us of stuff without having the slightest bit of evidence that we ever saw the man again."