The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

Miss MacDonald came down to breakfast in the morning, trim and white as a new candle. She ate heartily, complimenting the food. She asked after Danny, who had not come down for breakfast. She talked about how splendidly the high altitude and the marvelous Nevada air made her feel. She told us, who had lived here all our lives and didn't know it, that the air in Nevada was supposed to be the best in the entire United States for growing things. And, all the time, she was either not noticing, or pretending not to notice, how we were all hanging on her every word, and watching her every movement.

I guessed the others were doing as I was doing; watching for penetrating glances, and listening for catches in her innocent questions. But, at that, I blushed for them; particularly for John, who sat and stared at her as if she were something he had to learn by heart, before the meal was over. She caught him at it, several times; but, though he would then have the grace to blush, and go glancing about, he'd begin again, at the beginning, the minute she looked away.

When we had finally finished breakfast, she asked Sam if she might detain him. I stayed on, when the others had left the dining-room. She said pointedly, though politely and to Sam, not to me, that she wanted to speak to him alone.

I took myself off. But the open window in the pass pantry was too big a temptation; so I went in there, softly, and stood far back and to the side.

Her very first words took me right off my feet. "Mr. Stanley," she questioned, "do you trust your housekeeper?"

"Mary? " Sam drawled. "Well, now, I don't know as to trusting -- "

I don't know how to express what my feelings were when I heard Sam say that. Pulverized is a word that would edge it, I guess-as if I had been caught in a sausage machine, and ground up into small pieces, each one hurting on its own hook.

"But," Sam continued, "if Mary was going on a long journey, to indefinite foreign parts, and felt the need of my right eye to take along with her, I'd loan it to her for as long as she wanted it-no questions asked. I can't say that I'd go much further than that, though."

I was whole again, and warm and glowing. Sam, the old ninny, getting his dander up, and to a beautiful woman like that, just because she had asked him a simple question.

She laughed; a cheery, escaping sort of laugh, like something with bright wings suddenly flying loose.

"Come back into the dining-room, then, Mrs. Magin," she called to me. "You can hear better in here."

I came in, a mite shamefacedly. "It was my overweening curiosity," I explained.

Sam murmured, "‘Satiable."

"I like people with curiosity," she said. "I understand them, too; because, I suppose, I am one of the most curious persons in the world. Another thing, I have never found a truly curious person who was a wicked person. As much as any generalization can be made, all criminals are egotists. Curiosity means interest in the affairs of others. Of course, one has to be able to discriminate between innate curiosity and the slyness of self protection -- But, forgive me, Mr. Stanley, I am chattering away your time. Now then."

(Later we became accustomed to that brisk professional opening of hers, that "Now then," as a signal for getting right down to business, but it was as surprising, heard for the first time, as biting your tongue.)

"Gabrielle Canneziano was last seen, alive, where and at about what hour?"

We told her.

"Did she seem at ease, happy, untroubled?"

Sam said, "I was playing chess. I didn't notice."

"I did," I said. "She was unhappy, troubled, and frightened."