Day 12

“So,” she says at last, just when I feel like a specimen beetle in a box, “Are you one of those hard-boiled detectives?”

“Um, uh, no, Miss Gunner,” I stammer, “I suppose I’m more a soft-boiled one, a few minutes short of hard.”

She blinks at me for a moment; now she’s unsure. She’s unsure about being unsure.