“I should ’a’ looked,” confessed Edina miserably. “I’ll never forgive myself for--for not lookin’.”
Billie’s grip tightened reassuringly upon her fingers.
“Let’s get this straight,” said Ray Carew. “Your story is that you took your purse from your locked trunk about two o’clock this afternoon. You don’t know that the money was there then, because you didn’t bother to look,” there was the faintest sarcasm in Ray’s drawling tones.
“I’m sure the money was there then,” Edina persisted doggedly. “Nobody could get into my trunk without breaking the lock--and the lock wasn’t broken.”
“Well, let’s say that the money was in your purse when you took it from the trunk,” Ray conceded. “You took the purse in your hand then. Was there anyone in the room with you?”
“Well, now, think hard. This may be quite important. Did you hold the pocketbook in your hand every moment from the time you took it from the trunk to the moment you opened it in the Molata bank?”
Edina pondered the question, brows knitted.
“Thinking won’t do,” said Ray inexorably. “Don’t you know?”
Edina thought again and finally shook her head in miserable bewilderment.
“I can’t be absolutely sure--I don’t seem to remember very well. I’m practically sure I didn’t lay down that there pocketbook for a minute, but----”
“Yes you did, Edina!” Billie cried triumphantly.
“You put it down on the table for a minute while you went to the bathroom at the last moment to wash your hands. Don’t you remember?”
“I can’t seem to think,” replied Edina hesitatingly. “If I only could be sure----”
Ray Carew turned a serious face to Billie.
Someone in the group snickered and a voice not hard to identify as Amanda Peabody’s said meaningly:
“If Billie Bradley was in the room alone with that money, what was to prevent her making off with it herself?”
For a moment there was such dead silence in the room that one could easily have heard a pin drop.
“Are you suggesting that I stole the Gift Club money, Amanda Peabody?”
“Because if you are,” cried Laura fiercely, “I’ll settle with you now, you miserable sneak, once and for all!”
“Girls! Girls!” pleaded Ray Carew. “Don’t let’s fight among ourselves. What Amanda just said is too silly to notice. I think you had better apologize, Amanda. You won’t be very popular until you do.”