'I don't know. Why?'
'Could rent a car if he had a credit card. Hard to do without one.'
'I never thought…' she said.
The waitress hurried back. Put a white mug of decaf in front of me, and a Diet Coke in front of Marcy.
'Be good to know how he got out to Pemberton,' I said.
'He says he wasn't there.'
'Be good to know where he was.'
'He says he was with a woman, doesn't know her name. Her place. Can't remember where it was. They were drinking.'
'Hell of an alibi,' I said.
'Don't you think if he'd done it, he would have had a better one?'
'Not necessarily. Not everybody in jail is a thinker.'
I drank a little coffee. It was just as good as if it were caffeinated. Or almost just as good. At least it was hot.
'What was the case against Ellis?' I said.
'Two eyewitnesses picked him out of a lineup.'
'Two?'
'Yes, a Pemberton undergraduate and her boyfriend. They said they saw him drag Melissa Henderson into a car near the campus.'
'They call the cops?'
'No, not then,' Marcy said. 'They thought it was just some kind of lover's quarrel, and they didn't want to seem racists, you know, a black man and a white woman?'
'Which was a racist thing to worry about,' I said.
Marcy frowned, and looked puzzled, and looked as if she wanted to argue. She settled for a shrug.
'But they appeared after Melissa turned up murdered,' I said.
'Yes. They went to the Pemberton Police and reported what they'd seen.'
'How'd they connect to Ellis?'
'Pemberton Police got an anonymous tip.'
'And they grabbed Ellis and put him in a lineup and the two witnesses pick him out.'
'Yes.'
'And the arresting officers find the victim's underwear in Alves's room.'
'Yes. The DNA tests proved they were hers.'
'What's Ellis say about that,' I said.
'Says the police planted them.'
'They ever find the rest of the clothes?'
'No.'
The waitress rushed by again and dropped off some carrot soup for Marcy and a ham sandwich for me. There was a small paper cup of coleslaw on the platter beside it. Marcy got a dinner roll with her soup.
'There's something else,' Marcy said. 'It sort of got me what you said about the eyewitnesses not calling the cops-that it was a racist assumption anyway.'
'You sort of thought deep in your heart that Ellis was guilty,' I said. 'So you overcompensated because you know that it was an impure racist thought that you were harboring.'
'How did you know?'
'I'm a trained sleuth,' I said.
'I was terrified of him, too.'
'Probably with good reason,' I said.
'Maybe, but I was, no, I am, ashamed of it.'
'Well, you've confessed it to me,' I said. 'Maybe that'll help. You got a home phone in case I need to reach you after hours?'
'Yes. I've written it out for you. And I wish you wouldn't laugh at me.'
'Sorry,' I said. 'It's a character flaw. I laugh at nearly everything.'
She handed me a piece of lined yellow paper with her name and address and phone number handwritten on it with a felt-tipped pen in lavender ink. Maybe Marcy was more exotic than she looked.
