They sat together on the stdne wall, where they could watch the people.
“I’m telling you, did you see her get
almost wiggly when
Jo Jo bought some cider?“
“Oh come on.”
“I’m telling you, there’s
something there.”
“You can tell by just looking.”
“Absolutely,” Jesse said. “I am
wise in these matters.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I am blessed with a penis,” Jesse said.
“Yeah, and you think with it,” Abby said.
“Like every other man I know.”
Jesse ate some donut and took a sip of cider. The leaves had begun‘ to gather on the ground, yellow mostly, but with enough red and partial green to give it the New England effect. The smell of them mixed with the smell of the ocean. The ocean smell was so pervasive, Jesse thought,
,96
P.Of‘ . Ps//’JtO‘ that unless
it were offset by something else you didn’t notice it.
“Any progress on the killing?” Abby said.
“Not in the sense that you mean,”. Jesse said.
“What other sense is there?”
“Well, like any investigation, each time you eliminate a suspect that’s progress. You’ve narrowed the pool, so to speak. But progress in the sense of a solid lead to who did it, no.”
“Who have you eliminated?”
“Her ex-husband. He’s got a verifiable
alibi for the time she was killed and several hours each side of it.”
“And I suppose the ex-husband would always be the prime suspect in a case like this.”
Jesse nodded.
“We like to start simple,” he said.
“So has the pool now narrowed to everybody but her ex?”
“Well,” Jesse said, “sort of.
But there’s odd-looking bits and pieces sort of floating up, nothing like a nice hard clue or anything, just odd things that don’t look like they’re part of the soup.”
“Like what?”
Jesse shrugged and finished his first donut.
“You know the old instruction on how to sculpture a horse out of granite. You take a piece of granite and chip away everything that doesn’t look like a horse.”
“What the hell kind of answer is that?”
Abby said.
Jesse drank some cider.
“I was trying to be folksy,” he said.
Abby leaned away from him and stared at his face.
“Jesse, you don’t want to tell
me,” she said.
“Talking about a case doesn’t usually do the case much good,” he said.
“Goddamn it,” Abby said. “You
don’t trust me.”
Jesse didn’t say anything. The paper cup from which he’d drunk his cider was empty. He crumpled it and tossed it into a green trash barrel.
“Two,” he said.
“Jesse, you can’t not trust me.”
He turned to look at her.
