The Last Embrace by Denise Hamilton Page A

Cohen’s name, Beverly gave a small moan. The detective turned to her.
    “What can you tell us about that?” he asked sharply.
    “I don’t know anything about gangsters,” Beverly said. “She told us she went there with a girlfriend.”
    “Ah,” Pico said. “What was her name?”
    Lily watched the girls ripple uneasily under the detective’s gaze. She felt the swirl and eddy of conflicted allegiances. The OSS had taught her to listen and observe, to be patient. Kitty’s roommates were afraid of something. They hadn’t told the detective everything they knew. From the way Pico’s thumb and forefinger tightened almost imperceptibly against his pen, Lily knew he sensed it too.
    “Kitty never told us her name,” Red said, looking around the room, as if defying anyone to contradict her.
    Pico raised one eyebrow.
    “Do you think there’s any connection to Mimi Boomhower?” asked Louise, practical once more.
    “Who?” said Lily.
    “Mimi was a Bel Air socialite and widow who disappeared several months ago,” Pico explained. “Left her front door open and her lights burning. No one’s seen her since. And no body’s turned up.” He grimaced. “Unlike your roommate.
    “Now,” he said, surveying the solemn faces, “I’d like to question each of you separately. And I want you to answer me as thoroughly as you can, thinking hard to dredge up every tiny detail you can remember, because it might be that one insignificant thing that helps us catch her killer.”
    “She was such a dear,” said Beverly with a sniffle. “If she caught a fly she’d release it outside. Some of the memories I’ve got, they’re almost too painful to recount.”
    Pico’s smile grew wider, his voice more expansive. “Well, take a couple aspirin for the pain and try, or I might think you’re withholding evidence.”
    At his words, Fumiko, who was peeling and chopping a gnarled brown root on a cutting board, cursed under her breath and popped a finger in her mouth.
    “Sorry,” she said. “I cut myself.”

    While Pico interviewed Kitty’s roommates, Lily went for a brisk walk to clear her head. As she slipped out, several men clutching notepads and cameras scurried toward her.
    “Miss, were you a roommate of Kitty Hayden? Can you tell us about her boyfriends? What was she like?”
    The questions came fast and furious, a barrage of words, the cameras exploding in front of her. Holding up her purse to block her face, Lily made her way down the street, but they followed her like a moving organism. Most persistent of all was a young blonde with coral lipstick and a matching jacket. At least she didn’t have a camera, just a notepad. The woman’s heels clicked conspiratorially as she whispered questions to Lily just out of reach of the men, appealing to their shared bond as young women. Lily put her head down and kept walking.
    Undeterred, the reporter trailed after her.
    “I’m with Confidential magazine, miss, and I’ve been authorized to offer you a onetime payment in exchange for an interview. Perhaps we could go somewhere private”—a meaningful look back to the men five paces behind them—“where we can—”
    “Please stop,” Lily said. “I don’t want to talk to the press.”
    Lily saw face powder dusting faint hairs on the reporter’s upper lip. The woman smiled, exposing small milky teeth. Reaching into a pocket, she pulled out a bill, snapping it crisply.
    Despite herself, Lily looked. It was a hundred-dollar bill.
    “I thought so,” the woman said with a laugh.
    Lily slapped the bill from the woman’s hand. “ That’s what I think of your foul offer.”
    As she ran off, the woman called out, “Violet McCree at Confidential. Call anytime, twenty-four hours a day, the service will find me.”

CHAPTER 8
    D etective Pico left the boardinghouse with only a pounding headache to show for two hours of questioning. Make that thirty minutes of questions and an hour and a half of leg-crossing,