“So you’re driving along Grove,” Marino got her back on track.
“Of course, I drove right on past my Apartment building, trying to figure out where to go to get away with him. And I don’t know how I thought of it, but I suddenly cut over to the left and did a U-turn. Then I drove to where Grove ends at Three Chopt and took a left, him still behind me. The next right was the Country Club of Virginia, and I turned in there and drove straight to the entrance where the valets were. Needless to say, whoever it was vanished.”
“That was damn smart of you,” Marino said. “Damn smart. But why didn’t you call the police?”
“It wouldn’t have done any good. They wouldn’t have believed me and I couldn’t have described a thing, anyway.”
“Well, you should have called me, at least,” Marino said.
“I know.”
“After this where did you go?” I asked.
“Here.”
“Rose, you’re scaring me,” I said. “What if he was waiting for you somewhere?”
“I couldn’t stay out all night, and I went a different route home.”
“Any idea what time it was when he vanished?” Marino asked.
“Somewhere between six and six-fifteen. Oh, dear Lord, . I just can’t believe when I pulled up to that store she was in there. And what if he was? If only I’d known. I can’t stop thinking there must have been something I should have noticed. Maybe even when I was in there Tuesday night.”
“Rose, you couldn’t have known a damn thing unless you’re a gypsy with a crystal ball;” Marino told her.
She took a deep, shaky.breath and pulled her robe more tightly around her.
“I can’t seem to get warm,” she said. “Kim was such a nice girl.”
She stopped again, her face contorted by grief. Tears filled her eyes and spilled.
“She was never rude to anyone and worked so hard. How could anybody do something like that! She wanted to be a nurse! She wanted to spend her life helping people! I remember worrying about her being .alone in there so late at night, oh, God help me. It even crossed my mind when I was there on Tuesday but I didn’t say anything!”
Her voice tumbled as if it were falling down a steep flight of stairs. I came over and knelt beside her, pulling her close.
“It’s like when Sassy wasn’t feeling well . . . so lethargic and I just thought she had eaten something she shouldn’t have . . .”
“It’s okay, Rose. Everything’s going to be okay,” I said.
“And it turned out she’d somehow gotten hold of a piece of glass . . . My little baby was bleeding inside . . . And I didn’t do anything.”
“You didn’t know. We can’t know everything.” I felt a spasm of grief, too.
“If only I’d taken her to the vet sooner . . . I’ll never, ever forgive myself for that. Poor little girl a prisoner in a little cage and muzzle and some monster hit her with something and broke her nose . . . at that goddamn dog track! And then I let her suffer and die!”
She wept as if outraged over every loss and act of cruelty the world had ever suffered. I held her clenched fists in both of my hands.
“Rose, now you listen to me;” I said. “You saved Sassy from hell just as you’ve saved others. There’s nothing you could have done for Sassy any more than there was anything you could have done when you stopped to get your shortbreads. Kim was dead. She had been dead for hours.”
“What about him?” she cried. “What if he had still been inside that store and had come out just as I had pulled in? I’d be dead, too, wouldn’t I? Shot and dumped somewhere like garbage. Or maybe he would have done awful things to me, too.”
She closed her eyes, exhausted, tears sneaking down her face. She went limp all over as the violent storm passed. Marino leaned forward on the couch and touched her knee.
“You got to help us out,” he said. “We need to know why you think your being followed and the murder might be connected.”