Free Death Was the Other Woman by Linda L. Richards

door.
    â€œSo you can read,” I said, matching his tone. “Am I supposed to be impressed?” I had my orders with regard to police officers too. Dex had told me long ago: never tell cops anything. Never offer and never volunteer. When it’s time to tell a thing, you’ll know it, he’d said. But in casual questioning, give them nothing at all.
    The flatfoot didn’t like my answer; I could see that on his ugly little mug. He looked at me evenly, as though deciding on the best way to proceed.
    â€œAll right then,” he said, “we’ll play it your way. Is he in?”
    â€œHe is,” I said, rising. “I’ll announce you.”
    â€œDon’t bother.” The tall cop spoke for the first time, then pushed past me into Dex’s office. I peeked in behind them, partly to check on Dex’s condition, partly to see if he wanted me to hang around.
    â€œSorry, Dex,” I called in. “They wouldn’t wait for me to see if you were free.”
    If Dex was upset, he wasn’t showing it. “It’s OK, Kitty,” he said, opening his desk drawer and pulling out a couple more glasses. I was probably the only one who would have heard the steel beneath his affable tone. “I haven’t seen O’Reilly and Houlahan for a while, have I, boys? They’ve just come for a visit, I guess.”
    â€œYou guessed wrong, Theroux.” The short cop didn’t mince any words. “We’ve got a bit of a mystery down at the station.”
    â€œYeah,” said the tall one, his voice as coarse as tires on gravel. “Someone told us about a corpse you’re supposed to have seen.”
    â€œGentlemen, have a seat.” Dex settled himself more deeply into his chair, while he pulled the stopper out of his current bottle of whiskey—Canadian Club today, I saw. He splashed some of the amber liquid into his own glass, then poured a couple of fingers into each of the clean glasses he’d taken from his desk.
    â€œWe’re on duty,” the tall one—O’Reilly—said, as he took a seat. Houlahan nodded his agreement, but pulled his glass closer while he sat down. Of this pair, I noted, Houlahan would be the easier to manage.
    â€œIf you don’t need me, Boss ...” I ventured, from the place by the door where I still stood.
    â€œOh, thanks, Kitty. Yeah, we’re fine. Can you finish that typing before the day is through?”
    I looked straight at Dex, but I couldn’t speak my thoughts, and he didn’t meet my eyes. I wondered why anyone would need to impress these mooks, then realized it was possible Dex wanted me to hang around, just in case.
    I didn’t say anything, just nodded. As I went back into the outer office, I left the door ajar slightly, hoping to catch snippets of the conversation while I performed my typing show.
    â€œYou were saying?” Dex’s voice was calm, assured and unaffected by whatever he’d been drinking.
    I rolled a clean sheet of paper into the typewriter and began hitting keys in a leisurely fashion, trying hard not to drown out the voices I could just make out from this distance.
    â€œWe got a report...” It was O’Reilly. I recognized his gravelly voice. “You told someone you saw a stiff... up close and personal like.”
    â€œAh,” said Dex. Silently I agreed. It was beginning to make sense.
    â€œThat’s right,” Houlahan chimed in. “At a house on Lafayette Square. But when we got there to check it out, guess what we found?” There was malice in the man’s voice. At my desk, I braced myself for the worst, absently hitting a smattering of typewriter keys into the silence.
    â€œA stiff?” was Dex’s guess. From where I was sitting, it was a good one. It would have been my guess as well.
    â€œGuess again.” It was O’Reilly this time. From the sounds of him, he was chasing his words with a sip of his