Blood on the Street (A Smith and Wetzon Mystery, #4)

your drunken state last night?” Smith bristled malevolently.
    “No, we did not. Will you kindly shut up and look at it closely.” Smith gave her an exasperated look and bent closer, rubbing the splintered opening with her fingers. “I was out here last night around eleven, and somebody took a potshot at me. At least, I think—”
    “There’s a bullet in there?” Smith was incredulous.
    “A ballistics expert could tell, I suppose. It’ll have to be dug out.”
    “Dug out? What about my house?” Wetzon could see Smith calculating the cost of replacing the shingle. “I think whatever it is is now a permanent part of the house.”
    “Smith, I think you’d better alert your local police or state trooper. This is serious. Someone is trying to kill me. I’m going to call Marissa Peiser when I get back to the city.”
    “Nonsense. You’re overdramatizing everything, as usual. Even if it was a bullet, it could have been a stray. Hunters.”
    “Hunting what? Fish? I’d love to believe that, but Penny Ann and Barbie both knew we were here. That means Rona and Dr. Jerry also knew. For all we know, Maglia could have been up here last night to see Rona. You never got an answer from Barbie, if you recall.” And Richard Hartmann must surely have known.
    Smith groaned. “You should never have gotten us into this mess.”
    “I didn’t get us into this, you did. I was the one who suggested they go to the police about Tabitha.”
    “Oh, for pitysakes!”
    “Breakfast!”
    Twoey’s cheerful shout cut off Wetzon’s retort, but Smith managed to snap, “Not a word to Twoey about this.”
    They settled at the table over onion, bacon, potato omelets, and the sticky buns Wetzon had brought from the city. Smith put a carafe of fresh coffee and another of orange juice on the table and sat down. Wetzon saw with satisfaction that Smith was rattled. Twoey looked from one stony face to the other and shrugged. “Come on, girls. Get over it. Dig in. Breakfast’s getting cold.”
    “I’d like to take an early train back,” Wetzon said.
    “What?” Smith looked up, startled.
    “I said I want to take an early train.”
    Smith smiled lazily. “Take the Jag. I’ll come back with Twoey.”
    “Good idea.” Twoey, blooming with good health, could have posed for a milk ad; he never looked dissipated. There was no sign of the amount of liquor he’d put away yesterday.
    Wetzon, on the other hand, knew she wore her boozing on her face, especially around her eyes. Women of a certain age should not drink, she thought regretfully. She looked from one to the other. They’d probably get back into bed the minute she left.
    So it was that an hour later Wetzon was flying down I-95, the temporary mistress of her universe in outrageously expensive, imported wheels.
    Why did she know that Smith would do nothing at all about the bullet in the shingle? Because it was not the kind of local notoriety she wanted, for one.
    Traffic was spotty heading into the City; there was much more headed out to see the fall foliage or to spend one of the last nice autumn days in the country, visiting friends with fireplaces and trees. And guns.
    She turned on the radio and found a classical music station near where WQXR hung out on the dial and listened to Glenn Gould play one of Bach’s Brandenberg Concertos.
    It could have been anyone last night, even Maglia. It could even have been an accident. Well, couldn’t it? Barbie was a nut case; Penny Ann wasn’t glued together really well. Rona? Dr. Jerry? He was just too perfect to be true. But what would be his motive? She was thinking that the same person had to have killed both. Was Hartmann left-handed? Why hadn’t she thought to ask Smith?
    Traffic merged at the Cross Bronx Expressway where the repair work was perpetual, and she slowed down to a crawl. That’s when she realized that it couldn’t have been Dr. Jerry. He’d been doing his second show from ten to midnight.

52.
    S HE LEFT THE Jag in Smith’s garage and walked down Third Avenue carrying Barbie Gordon’s hatbox. At Ecce Panis, a small Italian bakeshop owned by the Sign of the Dove restaurateurs, she stopped and bought an olive focaccio and a chocolate bread, and one slice of cherry focaccio because she was hungry. She’d only nibbled halfheartedly on the omelet, and Twoey had finished both hers and Smith’s.
    It was warm and sunny in the City, and everyone was out promenading. At noon on Sunday, restaurants were doing their