Chapter 6<\/b><\/p>\n
“How do you know elephants are afraid of commitment?”<\/p>\n
Rebecca just stared at me. I don’t think she was in the mood for a joke.<\/p>\n
Fortunately the chief saved the moment. “Because,” he jumped in, “wherever they go, they take their trunk with them.”<\/p>\n
She looked from me to the chief and back again. “Was that supposed to be clever?”<\/p>\n
“I’m not sure clever is the right word,” I shrugged. After all, maybe I was<\/i> afraid of commitment. Some joke. “We asked you here,” I said, attempting to move on, “to figure out what happened the night that Sam got shot.”<\/p>\n
“I really don’t know what you are talking about. Of course I am saddened that your friend was killed, but I cannot see how that has anything to do with me.”<\/p>\n
I had to hand it to her, either she was innocent or she was a very good liar. “I asked you the other night if you recognized the sequence of numbers 4514295. Got anything to say about that?”<\/p>\n
“I told you Mr. Smellephant, it’s just a meaningless string of digits.”<\/p>\n
“I figured you might say that. I asked the ferret here to get a certain book. You might recognize it. After all, it’s got your name on it. Also the last message of a shooting victim.”<\/p>\n
The ferret was only too eager to hand her the book. The publisher was Victor Gollancz of London, the author Daphne du Maurier, the title “Rebecca”. It was a first edition too, 1938, original dust jacket. I’d had the ferret bring it here from the city archives. Maybe that was my real idea of a joke. She turned it over in her hand, like she was afraid to open it.<\/p>\n
“Go ahead,” I said, “read the first line.”<\/p>\n
“Last night,” she said slowly, reading the words aloud, “I went to Manderlay again.” When she looked up there were tears in her eyes.<\/p>\n
“Sam didn’t have the use of his right arm,” I said, more to the chief than to Rebecca. “All he could do was type a sequence of numbers on the adding machine. But maybe that was good enough to finger a perp.”<\/p>\n
The chief looked at her. “4514295, perfect match for the letter count of the words in the opening sentence. Not much chance it’s a coincidence. Rebecca, you got anything to say for yourself?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chapter 6 “How do you know elephants are afraid of commitment?” Rebecca just stared at me. I don’t think she was in the mood for a joke. Fortunately the chief saved the moment. “Because,” he jumped in, “wherever they go, they take their trunk with them.” She looked from me to the chief and back … Continue reading “A Nose for Danger, part 26”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10167"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10167"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10193,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10167\/revisions\/10193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}