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outstretched hand. My eyes followed her out of the place but she purposely avoided glancing my way.
    “Well,” Quinn said, “good to see you again. Can I help you?”
    I was still puzzled by Mrs. Baine’s strange appearance, but I tried not to show it. Obviously Quinn wasn’t planning to discuss her visit with me. “Simon Ark asked me to talk with you,” I said. “He has a lead on the Clark killing.”
    “Ark? The man who was with you yesterday?”
    “That’s right. He said to tell you the killer will be at the funeral tomorrow morning. You should be there with some men.”
    Quinn made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. “Is your friend Ark going to unmask the killer at the funeral—pull him like a rabbit out of the hat? Maybe get the corpse to stand up and point an accusing finger like in Poe?”
    “I don’t know. I’ve seen Simon do stranger things.”
    “I’ll be there, don’t worry.”
    I started to turn away and then paused. “Say, didn’t you tell us you’d never met Cathy Clark?”
    Quinn’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”
    “I just heard from somebody that you knew her.”
    I’d tried to make my tone casual, but he wasn’t having any. I was like a fisherman who finally gets a bite and finds it’s a whale. “Who?” he rasped, seeming to tower over me as he spoke. “Who told you that?”
    “A kid named Zenny.”
    He nodded. “Cathy’s friend. You know him?”
    “We’ve met.”
    “He’s a nut. Be in trouble someday. Know why they call him Zenny?” I shook my head. “He’s trying to be one of those beat characters like you have in New York. You know—Kerouac and all that. He reads books about Zen Buddhism and stuff, so his gang started calling him Zenny. He liked it and it stuck.”
    “He said you rescued Cathy from them one night. Took her home or something.”
    He shrugged. “Maybe I did. I usually try to get a girl out of their clutches, unless she’s asking for it. Cathy Clark might have been one of them.”
    It was hard to decide whether or not he was telling the truth. Certainly he was an honest, educated man—and probably a good cop as well. I was inclined to take his word for it. “Then you’ll be there tomorrow—at the funeral?”
    “I’ll be there.”
    With that he turned back toward his office and I left him, heading for the street. My mind was still on the conversation with Quinn when I saw Mrs. Foster Baine waiting for me outside. It startled me so that I couldn’t be certain she was really after me until she spoke, calling me by name.
    “Could I talk to you?” she asked.
    “Any time. This is a surprise, after last night.”
    “I’m sorry about last night. I can explain it.”
    She was edging me toward a cream-colored convertible I’d noticed on my way in. It was parked in a striped No Parking zone not twenty feet from Police Headquarters, but I suppose that didn’t bother people like Mrs. Foster Baine. “Your car?”
    She nodded. “Want a ride?”
    “Where to?”
    “Just around. While we talk.”
    “What will your husband think?”
    “There comes a time when it just doesn’t matter much any more,” she answered, opening the car door for me.
    “And this is the time?”
    “Maybe. I thought about it all night, I couldn’t sleep.” She went down the main street, in a direction I didn’t know, driving with a skill that surprised me.
    “It’s been a good many years,” I said. “What have you been doing?”
    She twisted her lips into a sort of smiling sneer. “I got married.”
    “And pretty well, too—Baine Brass isn’t just the corner drugstore.”
    “She sighed a bit. “Ten years of it now. That’s a long time for anything. I’ll bet even Adam and Eve got tired after the first ten years. That’s probably why it was so easy for the serpent.”
    “I didn’t think anyone ever tired of money. Baine must be worth a cool hundred million, and it’s family owned—no stockholders to get in your hair.”
    The warm breeze caught at