She was still lying on the floor.
"It's all right," he said, and reached down and helped her to her feet. "Did you see anything? Anything at all?"
She shook her head, no.
"I told them you're with me," he said.
There was confusion in her eyes.
"We can go. Otherwise, you'll be taken to the Roundhouse and be there for hours."
"Are you a policeman or something?" she asked incredulously.
"I'm a detective," he said. "You all right? Can you walk?"
"I'm all right," she said. "What do we do about the groceries?"
"Leave them," he said, and took Mrs. Glover's arm and led her out the front of the store.
"Oh, my God!" Mrs. Glover said. "That's my car!"
And then she was clinging to him, whimpering. She had looked at the ground beside her car, where the second robber Stakeout had taken down was on his back in the middle of a spreading pool of blood. He had taken a load, Matt decided, maybe two loads, of double aught buckshot.
Well, that blows any chance we had to get away from here. Shit!
SIX
"My car's over there," Matt said, and started to lead Mrs. Glover toward it.
Mrs. Glover seemed to want the reassurance of his arm around her, and stayed close to him. He was very much aware of her body against his.
He put her in the car.
"Listen," he said. "We can't leave now. Let me go talk to the lieutenant, and I'll come back."
The lieutenant told him there was nothing he could do now but wait for Homicide and the brass to show up.
That means instead of Mother's western omelet, I will have to find sustenance in a cup of coffee in a paper cup, and if I'm lucky, a stale doughnut.
The first Homicide detective to arrive at the crime scene was Detective Joe D'Amata. Matt knew him. He waited until D'Amata had taken a quick look around inside, and then gone to the body in the parking lot, and then walked up to him.
"Hey, Joe."
"Matthew, my boy," D'Amata said, smiling. "Don't tell me you did this."
"I came in to get a dozen eggs."
"You see what happened?"
"No. But I know who owns this car, the one he ran into."
"Oh?"
"She's a librarian at U of P. Nice lady. She saw the body and she' s nearly hysterical."
"I would be too," D'Amata said. "Do you think she saw anything?"
"She saw what I saw, zilch. We were in the back of the store."
"We'll need your statements," D'Amata said. "But I don't see why you couldn't take her to the Roundhouse before the mob gets there. I' ll let them know you're coming."
"I owe you one, Joe."
"Yeah. Don't forget."
Matt went back to his Bug and got behind the wheel and turned to Mrs. Glover.
"What happens now?" she asked.
"I know one of the Homicide detectives. He's fixed it so that we can go to the Roundhouse now, before the crowd gets there, and make our statements."
"But I didn't see anything."
"That's your statement. And they'll want to know about your car."
"What am I going to do about my car?"
"They'll want to take pictures of it. Maybe, if we're lucky, we can get them to turn it loose when they're finished. We can ask."
"What would have happened if you weren't here?"
"They'd have taken you, when they got around to it, to the Roundhouse in a car."
"What's this 'Roundhouse' you keep talking about?"
"The Police Administration Building. At 8^th and Race. That's where Homicide is." He paused. "You all right, Mrs. Glover?"
"I'll be all right," she said.
He started the Bug and drove downtown to the Roundhouse.
It was quarter to twelve when they left. Captain Quaire, the commanding officer of Homicide, had come in, and he authorized the release of Mrs. Glover's car to her when the Mobile Crime Lab was through with it.
When they got back to the Acme parking lot, they were told that it would be at least an hour before the car could be released.
"I'm sorry," Matt told Mrs. Glover. "But that's the way it is. I' ll take you home and then bring you back in an hour."
"You're sweet, Matt. I appreciate all this," Mrs. Glover said, and touched his arm.
He started the car and asked her where she lived. She gave him an address in Upper Darby Township.
"It's not far," Mrs. Glover said. "But I appreciate the offer to take me back there."
"I'll take your husband back," Matt said. "What you should do is make yourself a stiff drink, and then go to bed, and forget this whole thing."
He saw they had crossed into Upper Darby Township. "You're going to have to start giving me directions."
It was a fairly nice ranch house in a subdivision, the sort of house he would have expected people like the Glovers to have. He remembered hearing that Mr. Glover, probablyDoctor Glover, was some sort of professor. There was a light on in the carport, and there were lights in the living room, behind the curtain that covered the picture window.
"I don't see a car," Matt said. "It looks like Dr. Glover's not home."
"Not here, he's not," Mrs. Glover said, more than a little bitterly.
Oh!
"Could you use one of those stiff drinks you recommended for me?" Mrs. Glover asked. "Or are you on duty?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Well, you're going to have to watch while I have one, I'm afraid. I'm shaking like a leaf."
"I meant that 'no drinking on duty' business is only in the movies, or on TV cop shows. And anyway I'm not. On duty, I mean."
She got out of the car and went to the door that opened off the carport into the kitchen. He followed her inside. She snapped on fluorescent lights and pulled open a cabinet over the sink.
"I'm not much of a drinker," she said, taking out four bottles. " But this is an occasion, isn't it?" She turned to him. "What do you recommend?"
There was a bottle of gin, a bottle of blended whiskey, a bottle of Southern Comfort, and, surprisingly, an unopened bottle of Martel cognac.
"The cognac, if that would be all right," Matt said.
"I've even got the glasses for it," she said. "They're probably a little dusty."
She went farther into the house and returned with two snifters that were, in fact, dusty. She wiped them with a paper towel and set them on the kitchen counter.
"Do you need a corkscrew?"
"No, I don't think so," he said, and twisted the metal foil off the neck. The bottle was closed with a cork, but the kind that can be pulled loose.
He poured cognac in both glasses, and handed her one.
"You don't mix it with anything?"
"My father says it's a sin to do that," Matt said. "But my mother drinks hers with soda water."
"I've got ginger ale. Would that be all right?"
"That would be a sin," he said.
"I think I'll be a sinner," she said, and went into the refrigerator and took out a bottle of ginger ale, and poured some into her glass. Then she held the glass out to touch his.
"I'm glad you were there, Matt," she said. "This whole experience has been horrible. I would have hated to have had to go through it alone."
He smiled and took a sip from his glass. She took a tentative sip of hers. She smiled. "That's not so bad."
He took another swallow and felt the warmth course through his body.
"Funny," Mrs. Glover said, "you don't look like a detective."
"Probably because I've only been a detective a couple of weeks."
"Or a policeman," she said. "I thought you were one of those who was going in the Marines?"
He was surprised that she had paid enough attention to him to have known that.