“Friends are notoriously unreliable witnesses,” Howard said. “Besides, it might have been that one affair you kept all to yourself, the secret little fling. Face it, Miss Thomas, you painted yourself into a corner. The facts are these. You say Frye was in this house tonight. But the sheriff says he was up there, in his own house, as of thirty minutes ago. Now, St. Helena is over four hundred miles by air, over five hundred by car. He simply could not have gotten home that fast. And he could not have been in two places at once because, in case you haven’t heard, that’s a serious violation of the laws of physics.”
Lieutenant Clemenza said, “Frank, maybe you should let me finish up with Miss Thomas.”
“What’s to finish? It’s over, done, kaput.” Howard pointed an accusing finger at her. “You’re damned lucky, Miss Thomas. If Frye had come to L.A. and this had gotten into court, you’d have committed perjury. You might have wound up in jail. You’re also lucky that there’s no sure way for us to punish someone like you for wasting our time like this.”
“I don’t know that we’ve wasted our time,” Clemenza said softly.
“Like hell we haven’t.” Howard glared at her. “I’ll tell you one thing: If Bruno Frye wants to pursue a libel suit, I sure to God will testify for him.” Then he turned and walked away from her, toward the study door.
Lieutenant Clemenza didn’t make any move to leave and obviously had something more to say to her, but she didn’t like having the other one walk out before some important questions were answered. “Wait a minute,” she said.
Howard stopped and looked back at her. “Yeah?”
“What now? What are you going to do about my complaint?” she said.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going to the car, cancel that APB on Bruno Frye, then call it a day. I’m going home and drink a couple cold bottles of Coors.”
“You aren’t going to leave me here alone? What if he comes back?”
“Oh, Christ.” Howard said. “Will you please drop the act?”
She took a few steps toward him. “No matter what you think, no matter what the Napa County Sheriff says, I’m not putting on an act. Will you at least leave one of those uniformed men for an hour or so, until I can get a locksmith to replace the locks on my doors?”
Howard shook his head. “No. I’ll be damned if I’ll waste more police time and taxpayers’ money to provide you with protection you don’t need. Give up. It’s all over. You lost. Face it, Miss Thomas.” He walked out of the room.
Hilary went to the brown armchair and sat down. She was exhausted, confused, and scared.
Clemenza said, “I’ll make sure Officers Whitlock and Farmer stay with you until the locks have been changed.”
She looked up at him. “Thank you.”
He shrugged. He was noticeably uncomfortable. “I’m sorry there’s not much more I can do.”
“I didn’t make up the whole thing,” she said.
“I believe you.”
“Frye really was here tonight,” she said.
“I don’t doubt that someone was here, but–”
“Not just someone. Frye.”
“If you’d reconsider your identification, we could keep working on the case and–”
“It was Frye,” she said, not angrily now, just wearily. “It was him and no one else but him.”
For a long moment, Clemenza regarded her with interest, and his clear brown eyes were sympathetic. He was a handsome man, but it was not his good looks that most pleased the eye; there was an indescribably warm and gentle quality in his Italian features, a special concern and understanding so visible in his face that she felt he truly cared what happened to her.
He said, “You’ve had a very rough experience. It’s shaken you. That’s perfectly understandable. And sometimes, when you go through a shock like this, it distorts your perceptions. Maybe when you’ve had a chance to calm down, you’ll remember things a little… differently. I’ll stop by sometime tomorrow. Maybe by then you’ll have something new to tell me.”
“I won’t,” Hilary said without hesitation. “But thanks for … being kind.”