Mrs. Valentine shrugged, as if the question were negligible. "I don't keep track," she said.

When she wasn't speaking she kept her lips slightly apart and her tongue moved restlessly in her mouth. "And I am certainly not going to have him beset with some wild accusations from a man known to be a criminal."

"I didn't say who my employer was," I said.

"I know who it is, it's that Mr. Lipshultz. He approached me directly and I let him know then what I thought of his cock-and-bull story."

I took Lippy's IOU out of my inside pocket and held it up for her to see.

She shook her head angrily. "He showed me that, too," she said. "I don't believe it. It's not Les's signature."

I got up and walked to one of the artsy framed photographs on the wall. In the lower right corner they were signed Les Valentine in the same innocuous cramped little hand that I had on the IOU. I held the IOU signature beside the photo signature. I held the pose for a minute with my eyebrows raised.

She stared at the two signatures as if she'd never seen either one. Her tongue darted about in her mouth. She was breathing a little harder than she had been.

She rose suddenly and walked to the bleached oak sideboard under her father's picture.

"I will have a drink, Mr. Marlowe. Would you care to join me?"

"No, Ma'am," I said, "but I'll smoke my cigarette now, I think."

I shook one loose and lipped it out of the pack. I lit it and drew in a lungful of smoke and let it out slowly through my nose. Mrs. Valentine poured herself some kind of green liquor and sipped it two or three quick times before she turned back to me.

"My husband enjoys gambling, Mr. Marlowe. I know that, and I hoped to prevent you from knowing that."

I worked on my cigarette a little while she drank most of the rest of her green drink.