‘Would you like some tea?’ she asked. ‘Please, take off your coat. It’s too warm.’

So far as Abe knew, he was the only male tea drinker on the force. He thought about declining, then realized he would enjoy watching May Shinn move around. ‘That would be nice,’ he said. He folded his coat over his end of the couch, thinking if she kept this up, he’d be stripped before long.

She walked into the kitchen, open from the living room, and he watched her back, the straight shoulders, tiny waist, womanly curve of her hips. Even barefoot, her ankles tapered, thin as a doe’s.

She poured from a bottle of Evian into a kettle. ‘Owen’s dead,’ she said.

‘Yes, ma’am. Somebody killed him.’

He kept watching her closely. She was taking down some cups, placing them on a tray. If her hands were shaking, the cups would betray her, but they didn’t. She stood by the stove, turning full to face him. ‘I read that.’

Glitsky sat forward on the couch, elbows on his knees. ‘The suitcases,’ he said. ‘You were going somewhere.’

‘Japan. On business,’ she added, spooning tea into the cups.

‘You have business over there?’

She nodded. ‘I buy art. I am a – a broker for different friends of mine.’

‘Do you go over there a lot?’

‘Sometimes, yes. It depends.’

Glitsky would have time to pursue that if he had to. He decided to move things along. ‘We found your gun on Mr Nash’s boat. On the Eloise.’

‘Yes, I kept it there.’

‘We’re reasonably certain it’s the gun that was used to kill him.’ She seemed to be waiting, immobilized. ‘When was the last time you saw him, Ms Shinn?’

She turned back to the stove, touched the side of the kettle with a finger and decided it wasn’t ready yet. ‘Friday night, no, Saturday morning, very early. He stayed here.’

‘In this apartment?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then where did he go from here?’

‘He said he was going sailing. He sailed many weekends.’

‘And did you go with him?’

‘Most times, yes. But not Saturday.’

‘Why was that?’

She tried the kettle again, nodded, then poured the two cups. She brought the tray over and set it on the low table in front of them. ‘He had another appointment.’

‘Did he tell you who it was with?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Or what it was about?’

‘He didn’t say. He only said it was clearing the way for us.’

‘What does that mean, clearing the way for you?’

‘I don’t know. I think he needed to be alone. To think it out.’ She seemed to be searching for words, although not the way a foreigner would. She appeared to be a native speaker of English, but there was a hesitation, a pause. It threw Abe off – he couldn’t decide when, if, she was editing, when she was telling the truth. ‘We were going to be married.’

‘You and Owen Nash were going to be married?’

‘Yes.’ Keeping it simple and unadorned. The best kind of lie, Abe thought. And this, he was sure, was a lie. Owen Nash, internationally acclaimed tycoon and business leader, intimate of presidents and kings, did not marry his professional and well-paid love slave. Period.

‘Had you set a date?’

‘No,’ she said. She picked up one of the teacups and held it a second, then put it back down. ‘It is still too hot,’ she said. ‘We only decided, finally, last Friday. It was my ring.’

‘The snake ring? The one on his hand?’

‘Yes, that one.’

‘Then you’ve known since Monday that he was dead?’ Or since Saturday when you shot him, he was thinking. ‘Why didn’t you call the police?’

She picked up the teacup again, perhaps stalling. ‘When it doesn’t burn the fingers, it can’t burn the mouth,’ she said. She handed him the cup.

It was strong, excellent green tea. Abe sipped it, not really understanding why you could drink hot tea on a hot day and feel cooler. ‘May, why didn’t you call us, the police?’

‘What could they do? He was already dead. I knew it was Owen. The rest didn’t matter. It was his fate.’

‘It wasn’t his natural fate, May. Somebody shot him.’

‘Monday I didn’t know that. I only knew it was Owen’s hand.’

‘What about today? Did you read the paper today? Or yesterday?’

‘Yes.’

Glitsky waited. ‘Just yes?’

May Shinn sipped at her own tea. Carefully she put the cup down. ‘What do you want me to say? My instinct, after all, was not to call the police. Whoever killed Owen will have to live with himself and that is punishment enough.’

Abe put his cup down and walked back to the turret window. Across the street was another apartment house, the mirror image of this one. A cable car clanged by below. The sun was still fairly high, slanting toward him. There wasn’t a cloud clear to the horizon.

From behind him. ‘Am I a suspect, Sergeant?’

Glitsky turned around. ‘Do you remember what you did last Saturday, during the day?’

‘An alibi, is that right? I am a suspect, then.’

‘It’s an open field at this point, but unless you have an alibi for Saturday, I’m afraid you’re in it. Did you kill him?’

Just say no, he thought, I didn’t do it. But she said, ‘I was here Saturday, all day.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes, alone. I was waiting for Owen to come back.’ A little short there, exasperated. Deny you did it, he thought again, just say the words. But she said, ‘I loved the man, Sergeant.’

‘Did you make any phone calls, order out for pizza? Did anybody see you?’

Finally it was getting to her. She sat on the front three inches of the couch, ramrod straight. ‘I got up late, around nine. Owen had left sometime around six. I took a long bath. I was nervous. Owen was doing something to make it so we could get married -deciding, I think, that he was going to go through with it. He thought best out on the water. I waited. I paced a lot. When he wasn’t back by dark, I went to bed. I couldn’t face anybody. I was crying. I thought he’d decided not to.’

Glitsky put his jacket over his knees. ‘I think you might want to put your trip on hold,’ he said. ‘And maybe see about retaining a lawyer.’

He thought about taking her downtown now, but knew that he’d be asking for repercussions if he did. It was premature. He really had no evidence. It had been a week since the gun had been fired, and even the most sophisticated laser analysis wouldn’t show powder on the hands after that long. What May had told him was plausible, though pretty unlikely, and there was still plenty of legwork to try and verify her alibi or not, maybe neighbors hearing her walking around and so forth. If she agreed to put off going to Japan, there wasn’t any risk of imminent flight, and he didn’t really have any probable cause.

Plus, she being Oriental and he being half black, he didn’t want to give anybody any ammunition to be able to accuse him of hassling her on racial grounds. She had invited him, without a warrant, into her apartment. It was bad luck to arrest somebody under those conditions. Now if she took flight, it would be a different story.

But she was standing, too. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I understand.’

Glitsky was picking up his shoes. ‘Can you get a refund on that ticket? If you can’t, we may be able to help you.’

She shook her head. ‘They should refund it. God knows I paid full price, they should.’

So she’d bought the ticket recently, Abe thought. Probably since last Saturday. He hesitated. Strike two and a half. Tough call, but he was still an invited guest in her house, and she’d promised to stay around. He’d really prefer to have an indictment before he decided to arrest somebody on a murder charge.

He thought he’d bring his suspicions to Hardy and Hardy could decide whether they wanted to try to persuade the grand jury. But he doubted there was enough yet. Two and a half strikes didn’t make an out.

He said goodbye and she closed the door, gently, behind him.