“No, you tell me, what’s wrong?”
“You’re wearing a turtleneck sweater, and you’re driving the Jaguar,” she said. “You always do that when something went wrong at work; it’s as if—as if it’s a symbol, that you don’t want to be a cop. At least then. And then you got into it with the kid who wanted to park your car, and then the headwaiter here ...”
“That’s very interesting,” he said.
“Now, I’m sorry I said it,” Barbara said.
“No, I mean it. I didn’t know I was that transparent.”
“I know you pretty well, Peter,” she said.
“You want to know what’s really bothering me?” Wohl asked.
“Only if you want to tell me,” she said.
“My parents called, just before I went to pick you up,” he said. “They told me I should go by Jeannie Moffitt’s house tonight. Tonight’s for close friends. Tomorrow, they’ll have the wake. And they’re right, of course. I should, but I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t.”
“You were a friend of Dutch Moffitt’s,” Barbara said. “Why don’t you want to go?”
“Did I tell you that I went in on the assist?”
“You were there?” she asked. She seemed more sympathetic than surprised.
He nodded. “I was a couple of blocks away. When I got there, Dutch was still slumped against the wall of the Waikiki Diner.”
“You didn’t tell me anything,” Barbara said. It was, he decided, a statement of fact, rather than a reproof.
“There’s an eyewitness, that woman from Channel Nine, Louise Dutton,” Wohl said.
“I saw her,” Barbara said. “When she was on TV talking about it.”
“I think she had something going with Dutch,” Wohl said. “I’ll bet on it, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh, my!” Barbara said. “And is it going to come out? Will his wife find out?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Wohl said. “The commissioner has assigned that splendid police officer, Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, to see that ‘nothing awkward develops.’ “
“You mean, the commissioner knows about Captain Moffitt and that woman?”
“Staff Inspector Peter Wohl, with the good of the department ever foremost in his mind, told him,” Wohl said.
Barbara Crowley laid her hand on his.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” she said. “But one of the main reasons I like you is that you are really a moral man, Peter. You really think about right and wrong.”
“And all this time, I thought it was my Jaguar,” he said.
“I hate your Jaguar,” she said.
“The reason, more or less subconsciously, that I wore the turtleneck and drove the Jaguar, was that I can’t go play the role of the bereaved close friend of the family wearing a turtleneck and driving the Jaguar.”
“I thought that maybe it was because you didn’t want to take me with you,” Barbara said.
“You didn’t want to go over there,” Peter said.
“No, but you didn’t know that,” Barbara said. When he looked at her in surprise, she went on: “You could go home and change. I’ll go over there with you, if you would like. If you think I would be welcome.”
“Don’t be silly, of course you’d be welcome,” he said.