“Who’s this bird Orlando?” asked the sergeant suspiciously. “Sounds like an Eyetie, like that Pascoli. I figured he was in it someplace. You know sumpin we don’t, ma’am?”
“Orlando,” Miss Genevieve announced, “is a city in Florida. Which is south of New York, not in the West.”
Gilligan was indignant. “I know where Florida is!”
“I dare say.” Miss Genevieve sounded not altogether convinced. “However, the latter part of my remark was addressed to my sister. She has been trying to recall where Mr. Pitt told us he comes from.”
“The guy that had an argument with Carmody in thelobby? What he put in the register’s Eugene City, Oregon. That’s a hick town out west someplace, I guess.”
“Oregon is just south of Washington,” said Rosenblatt.
“That right, sir? Coulda swore it was out west someplace.”
“The state of Washington, not D.C.,” the Deputy D.A. explained impatiently. “Miss Genevieve, may I ask why Wilbur Pitt should have told you where he came from?”
“The subject arose naturally in relation to his literary opus, which I understood to be a more or less fictionalized version of his life in the wilds of the West.”
“He was a cowboy?” asked Gilligan with sudden interest. “That’d explain why he was packing heat.”
Daisy must have looked completely blank, because Lambert leaned over to whisper, “Carrying a gun.”
“Was he?” Miss Genevieve wanted to know.
“Geez, ma’am, how could he of shot Carmody if he wasn’t?”
“You have no reason to suppose he did shoot Carmody. As it happens he had been a farmer, logger, and miner, leading, as far as I could gather, a life of considerable hardship and singular dullness.”
“Rats! What did he have to write a book about, then?”
“Not much. He described it as Proustian.”
“Huh?”
“Since he can hardly have meant that it concerns the doings of Parisian high society, I imagine he referred to Proust’s custom of describing objects and sensations in obsessively minute detail.”
Daisy was impressed. She had once tackled Proust but given up after a very few pages.
“Geez, an intellectooal!” said Gilligan dismissively.
“So you don’t believe Carmody’s cousin was involved, Sergeant? I’m inclined to …”
“Wait a minute,” Rosenblatt interrupted. “He told you he was Carmody’s cousin?”
“Not exactly,” Miss Genevieve said cautiously, “but I certainly have the impression they were related.”
“You didn’t tell me that, Sergeant! What did Pitt have to say for himself?”
“I ain’t grilled him yet, sir.” He cast an accusing glare at Miss Genevieve’s bland face. “Ididn’t know they was cousins, so we ain’t been looking for him pertickler. He’s not the only guy had a beef with Carmody, not by a long shot.”
Daisy couldn’t help thinking that if she could work out, from Bridget’s report of the quarrel, that the men were related, the detective should have done likewise. It was his job, after all. Maybe he’d been sidetracked by assuming that Willie was William, not Wilbur, she thought charitably, but he ought at least to have been looking for a relative.
“How right you are, Sergeant,” said Miss Genevieve affably. “Wilbur Pitt was by no means the only person to dislike Carmody, and many had far better reason to hate his guts.”
“Oh sister!”
“Don’t be so mealy-mouthed, sister, or cover your ears again.”
“Oh dear!”
