3.
“I wish to have nothing to do with this,” Mrs. Snowdon said when Molly showed her a picture of Crow.
“Have you ever seen him before?” Molly said.
“No.”
They were in the vast Snowdon living room in the huge Snowdon house on Stiles Island. Mrs. Snowdon sat on her couch with her feet on the floor and her knees pressed together and her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Suit stood across the room by the French doors to the patio. Molly sat on a hassock across from Mrs. Snowdon.
She looks too small for the gun belt, Suit thought. But she’s not.
“Was he here with other men when they looted the island,” Molly said, “and locked you and your husband up in the lavatory?”
“Late husband,” Mrs. Snowdon said.
Her blue steel hair was rigidly waved. She wore a black-and-red flowered dress and a red scarf, and a very large diamond-crusted wedding ring.
“Was this man in the picture one of the men?” Molly said.
“I don’t wish to discuss it,” Mrs. Snowdon said.
“Are you afraid?”
“My husband is deceased,” Ms. Snowdon said. “I am a woman alone.”
“The best way to ensure your safety is to give us reason to arrest him.”
“I will not even consider it,” Mrs. Snowdon said. “It was a moment in my life I decline to relive.”
“Has he threatened you?”
“Threatened? He’s here? In Paradise?”
“Yes.”
“My God, why don’t you arrest him?”
Standing by the door, Suitcase smiled without comment.
“If you’d help us,” Molly said.
“I’m not a policeman,” she said. “It’s your job to arrest him.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Molly said. “But we’re not allowed to arrest anybody we feel like. At the moment our only hope would be that he could be charged with participating in a capital crime. Otherwise the statute of limitations applies.”
“He has to have killed someone?”
“Someone had to die in a criminal enterprise of which he was a member,” Molly said.
“Oh, God,” Mrs. Snowdon said. “Gobbledygook. A number of people were killed, weren’t they?”
“We have to be able to demonstrate this man’s involvement,” Molly said.
“Well, I’m not going to do your job for you,” Mrs. Snowdon said. “What kind of job is this for a young woman? Why aren’t you making a home for a husband and children?”
“I do that, too,” Molly said.
She and Mrs. Snowdon stared at each other silently. Molly looked at Suit. Suit shrugged.
“I don’t think you need to worry about him,” Molly said. “He doesn’t appear to have any interest in anyone from his last visit.”
Mrs. Snowdon sat rigidly and said nothing. Molly let out some breath and stood.
“Thanks for your time,” she said. “We can find our way out.”
Mrs. Snowdon didn’t speak, and they left her there, sitting in her iron silence.