didn't seem willing to say much. 'I understand you knew Don Wolf?' I said for openers.
Latty took a deep breath. 'Yes,' she answered, almost in a whisper. 'We had been going out, but we had broken up.'
'Why was that?' I asked. I was reasonably sure I knew the answer to that question, but Tim Blaine didn't, and he needed to hear it.
Latty turned toward us from the window. 'He raped me,' she said.
Homicide cops aren't supposed to be taken unawares, but Tim Blaine was. His broad shoulders sagged under the weight of her words. The skin across his jawline tightened into a hard, grim line.
'But you shouldn't blame him,' Latty was saying. 'It wasn't his fault.'
'Not his fault!' I responded. 'How could that be?'
Latty shrugged. 'We had both been drinking and dancing and having a good time that night. I don't remember a lot of what happened after we left the dance to go to his office.' She looked at me with a momentary trace of defiance. When it melted away, she turned back to the window.
'I guess I was…well…drunk. I was probably teasing him before it happened, flirting and leading him on. I don't know. I don't remember.'
Latty may have forgotten, but the scene in Don Wolf's office was indelibly etched in my memory. Yes, they had both been obviously tipsy. But she was dead wrong about her leading him on. She had done everything possible to prevent the attack. When he had started trying to go further than she wanted, she had begged him to take her home.
'That's why this is all so silly, you see,' Latty said.
'Silly?' I asked.
'Stupid, then,' she returned. 'Aunt Grace thinks I killed him because of it, because he hurt me. But since I don't really blame him for what happened, why would I kill him?' She turned from the window and focused her troubled eyes on me. 'You do understand that, don't you?'
'Not exactly,' I said, in a reply which was, in fact, a gross understatement. I didn't understand at all.
'It happened at his office downtown,' Latty continued in an oddly dispassionate voice. 'We went there late in the evening because he wanted to show me the lights. What I didn't know at the time was that Aunt Grace had me followed that the night. The detective was evidently parked right outside the building when we came downstairs after it happened. My dress was torn. I lost my coat. I had to wear his jacket home. The detective must have figured out what had happened. She reported it to Aunt Grace, and the next morning, Aunt Grace came after me.
'I wasn't going to tell her or anybody else anything about it, but she seemed to know everything anyway. My lip was cut. I'm sure I looked awful. I had barely slept, and I had cried most of the night. She wanted me to go straight to the police to turn him in, but I wouldn't. Aunt Grace and I had a big fight over it. She couldn't understand why I was mad at her for spying on me when I wasn't mad at Don for what he had done.'
'Why weren't you?' Detective Blaine asked.
'Because I loved him,' she said. 'Or at least I thought I did. Even when she told me he was already married.'
'Is that when you first found out about his wife?'
Latty nodded. 'Aunt Grace gave me all the dirt that detective of hers-that Virginia Marks-had dug up. She warned me that a man like that was trouble and that I shouldn't see him again. I told her she was only my aunt, not my mother, and that if I wanted to keep on seeing him, nobody was going to stop me.'
'And did you?' I asked. 'Keep on seeing him?'
'Not right away,' Latty answered. 'I was hurt. I wanted to see if he'd call me first. When he didn't, I finally broke down and called him at work on New Year's Eve. I asked if I could see him later that night.'
'New Year's Eve was Sunday, but he was working?'
'Yes.'
'Doing what?'
'I don't know. We never talked much about what he did. It had something to do with finances, I guess. Something to do with raising investment capital for the company he worked for. He didn't seem to like his boss very much.'
'So you arranged to meet him that night? On New Year's Eve?'
'Yes.'
'What time?'
'He was busy earlier. Eleven o'clock was the earliest he could get away.'
'Busy with what?'
'He didn't say, and I didn't ask.'
'When you arranged this date, did you know his wife was in town?'
'No. I had no idea she was here.'
'And what did the two of you talk about when you finally got together?' I asked.
The room grew suddenly quiet. In the stillness, I gradually became aware of the stark ticking of a hand- wound clock that sat on the kitchen counter. Latty turned back to the window. Her answer, when it came, was almost inaudible. 'I asked him if he would marry me.'
'You what?' Detective Blaine and I both demanded in unison.
'To marry me,' she repeated. 'I knew about his wife, but since he was up here without her, I thought maybe, if they weren't, you know, getting along, that he might divorce her and marry me.'
There's a book that's supposed to be a very big asset to male/female communications, something like Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. Or maybe it's the other way around. Since I haven't read it, I wouldn't know. But at that precise moment, it would have made more sense if the title had been Women Are from Outer Space. That would have been closer to the truth, at least as far as Latty Gibson was concerned.
'So you're saying you didn't go there armed and ready to kill him?'
'No,' Latty said. 'I never did. I can't imagine why Aunt Grace and that lawyer of hers would even think such a thing.'
'And what did he say when you asked him?' Tim Blaine asked.
When she answered, Latty Gibson turned her fathomless blue eyes full on him. 'He said he couldn't. That he and his wife had decided to get back together.'
Tim's eyes widened slightly at that. He opened his mouth and then closed it again and waved for me to pick up the ball and run with it.
'How long had you known him before all this happened?'
'Three weeks is all. It was love at first sight, at least for me.'
'What about him?'
'I thought he loved me,' she answered.
'Did he fall in love with you before or after he knew about your Aunt Grace's little family home on the shores of Lake Washington?'
'Detective Beaumont,' Latty said, 'my aunt's home-wherever it is-has nothing to do with me. And it wouldn't have had anything to do with Don, either. I told him that. Aunt Grace is leaving everything to charity. And why shouldn't she? It's hers to do with as she likes.'
I tried changing the subject. 'Are you aware that yesterday at noon your aunt tried to confess to Don Wolf's murder? She wanted me to arrest her?'
'Yes. How could I help but? The phone rang here constantly yesterday afternoon and evening. I'm sure she was only doing it to protect me-because she thought I had done it. What I can't imagine, though, is how anyone could have believed she was serious.'
'For one thing,' I said quietly, 'she just happened to have the murder weapon that killed Don Wolf in her purse.'
Latty frowned. 'What murder weapon?'
'It's a handgun,' I answered. 'A Seecamp thirty-two auto.'
'Oh, no,' Latty murmured. Leaving the window, Latty stumbled toward the table where Tim Blaine and I were seated. She dropped heavily into one of the two empty chairs. 'Please, God. Not that one.'
'Which one are you talking about?' I asked.
