“No.”
“Do you believe that Gooney Bud killed her?”
“That harmless idiot? No.”
“So, you suspect someone else. Who?”
“I’d never tell you.”
“Even under oath on the witness stand?”
She shook her head of glorious white hair. “I wouldn’t incriminate my friends.”
“Like Reede Lambert?”
“Like Reede Lambert,” Nora Gail repeated firmly. “We go way back.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Nora Gail’s husky chuckle brought Alex’s head up. “Does it bother you to know that Reede and I used to screw our brains out?”
“Why should it?”
Without taking her eyes off Alex, Nora Gail sent a plume of smoke ceilingward and ground out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray. “You tell me, sugar.”
Alex drew herself up, attempting to reestablish herself as a tough prosecutor. “Was he with you the night my mother was killed?”
“Yes,” she answered without a second’s hesitation.
“Where?”
“I believe we were in my car.”
“Screwing your brains out?”
“What’s it to you?”
“My interest is strictly professional,” Alex snapped. “I’m trying to establish Reede Lambert’s alibi. I need to know where you were, what you were doing, and for how long.”
“I fail to see the relevance.”
“Let me decide the relevance. Besides, what difference does it make if you tell me now? I’m sure you gave the answers to the officers who questioned you before.”
“No one ever questioned me.”
“What?” Alex exclaimed.
“No one ever questioned me. I guess Reede told them that he was with me and they believed him.”
“Was he with you all night?”
“I’d swear to that in court.”
Alex gave her a long steady look. “But was he?”
“I’d swear under oath that he was,” she said, her eyes openly challenging.
That was a dead-end street. Alex decided to stop butting her head against the bricks. It was giving her a headache. “How well did you know my mother?”