“Must be expensive, though… keeping a hophead happy.”
“How’d you know that?” She looked honestly surprised and puzzled.
“Eyes… skin. Everything.” Shayne waved a big hand. “Old friend of yours?”
“He drifted into town a few months ago. Hitch-hiking home from the Derby.” She poured white liquid into the glasses and said in a matter-of-fact tone, “If you’re one of those damyankees who has to mix gingerale with good liquor, you’ll have to go out and get some.”
“I’ll take it straight.” He got up, went over and picked up one of the glasses, sniffed the pungent odor, and his belly muscles contracted in sharp protest. But he nodded and smiled, resettled himself in his chair and took a preliminary sip. It was like liquid fire in his throat.
Shayne set the glass aside and watched Ann Cornell take a swallow from her glass. She had, he realized, the faculty of making a man feel at peace and at home with her emotional placidity and the absence of affectation. She certainly was not beautiful, and she employed none of the artifices with which so many women try to conceal their lack of beauty. She gave off an aura of sensuality in a healthy, animal sort of way; but she was also able to make a man feel completely at ease with her, just sitting and talking, and perhaps drinking. She could easily become a habit with a man. One that would be difficult to break away from.
She must be about thirty, he decided. Old enough for any man, and young enough for any man.
Angus came to the door. He had taken off his apron and was rolling his sleeves down on moist forearms. He hesitated diffidently in the entrance and looked at Ann Cornell with question marks in his shoe-button eyes.
She said, “Come in and sit awhile, Angus, if you’re done with the dishes.” She took a big gulp of corn and added, as though it were a casual afterthought, “Mr. Shayne is a detective from the city.”
Angus was sidling across the room toward a chair in one corner. His hands hung open and lax at his sides. When she spoke, they closed into tight, quivering fists. His back was toward Shayne, and it stiffened as he hesitated a moment before seating himself. Shayne glanced swiftly from him to Ann and surprised a look of innocent pleasure on her face. The same look with which a two-year-old might contemplate the death throes of a butterfly whose wings have just been pulled off.
“From Miami,” Shayne corrected. “I haven’t been around the Main Stem for fifteen years.”
Ann Cornell laughed softly and emptied her glass. She frowned at Shayne’s glass and asked, “Don’t you like my corn?”
Shayne picked up his glass, drew in a deep breath, and took two long swallows in quick succession. Fire kindled in his stomach and spread over his body. When he could speak, he said, “It’s damn good liquor. George Brand must have been a frequent visitor.”
“He dropped in right often,” she said, indicated the jug of corn and added, “Help yourself.”
Shayne grinned and said, “I’m supposed to be working on a murder case.”
He was watching Angus out of the corner of his eye as he spoke. The little man sat stiffly erect with his hands folded tightly in his lap. His left eyelid was twitching and sweat stood on his forehead, but he looked steadily at the floor and gave no evidence of interest in what was being said.
Ann Cornell asked, “What do you want from me?”
“Everything that happened last night.”
“I told Chief Elwood everything I know. My radio was on loud all night. I keep it loud so I can hear when I have to go to some other room. I didn’t hear any shot. I didn’t see anybody around until Seth Gerald knocked on my door about four o’clock to ask if I’d seen Mr. Roche or Brand. It was about an hour later when I saw Brand drive up to his house… just like he said in the paper.”
“How much did you see and hear, Angus?” Shayne shot the question at the rigid figure.
Angus jerked his head up. His eyelid stopped twitching. He looked shocked and stupid, and had difficulty getting his head turned to look at Ann Cornell.
“He didn’t hear anything,” she said to Shayne, and for the first time he detected emotion in her voice. “He was in his room… asleep.”
“Loaded?” Shayne asked casually.
“To the gills.”
Angus got to his feet unsteadily. His thin face was twisted and his body was trembling violently. Tears streamed from his little black eyes. He jerked out spasmodically, “You don’t hafta… I’m goin’ in an’ lay down.” He relaxed suddenly, and his short thin legs became rubbery as he placed one highly-polished shoe before the other until he disappeared through the door.
Ann Cornell watched him, an amused smile on her full, un-rouged lips. “He gets touchy as hell with strangers. Almost time for him to have a shot,” she added softly, like a young mother announcing that it was nearly time for her baby to have his bottle.
“He’s jealous,” Shayne warned her. He was leaning forward, his gray eyes very bright. “One of these days he’ll blow up higher than a kite.”
“Angus jealous?” She threw her head back and laughed heartily. “Just about like a stray pup. Say, in this hot weather a gal needs somebody to wash dishes and clean up.” She stopped laughing and stared at the strange expression in Shayne’s eyes. “God,” she breathed, “you don’t think I sleep with the guy, do you?”
Shayne settled back, tugging at his left earlobe with right thumb and forefinger. “I guess you can handle him, at that,” he muttered. He picked up the glass of corn and drained it, turned it around in his hand for a moment, set it down with a thump and said:
“About last night. If you did know anything you didn’t tell the police, how much would I have to pay for it.”
“Look, none of this is any good,” she said wearily. “If I swore in court that Brand was in bed with me when it happened, they’d still convict him.”
“Was he?” Shayne asked lazily.
“No.” Her voice was quiet, without emphasis.
“If Brand is telling the truth…”
“No one will ever know what the truth is,” she interrupted casually. “Charles Roche is dead, and whoever killed him isn’t going to talk.”
“You don’t believe it was Brand?” Shayne got up with his glass in his hand, went over and poured a couple of inches into it from the jug.
“Of course it wasn’t. Nobody believes that. But they’ll stretch him for it.” Her voice was getting thick.
“What about the three witnesses who claim they were playing poker with him?” He was standing before her, looking down at her thickly coiled braids.
“Them?” She didn’t look at him. “How long do you think they’ll stick to their stories. Just about this long.” She snapped her fingers contemptuously. “After Elwood gets to work on them.” She lifted her eyes and added, “This is Centerville, Mister.”
Shayne took a couple of steps backward, felt for his chair, and sank into it. “Was Roche making a deal with Brand to end the strike?” he asked.
She nodded. “But no one will ever be able to prove it.”
“You sound very sure.”
The calm, indifferent, and casual manner she had maintained during their conversation left her. Her full upper lip curled back and her blue eyes flashed angrily. “Brand boasted about it to me, and Jimmy suspected his brother was going to give in, too. That worried Jimmy. That horrible old man should have left control in Jimmy’s hands… if he wanted the world kept safe for capitalism.” She spat the words out, leaning tensely forward.
Shayne sat very still, kept his eyes half-closed, his face expressionless. He said, “I take it Jimmy Roche likes your corn, too.”
“That… and other things.”
“But you were in sympathy with the strikers?” Shayne probed.
“Look, Mister… I take care of number one. That’s all I’ve got to worry about. Anybody fool enough to dig coal for a few lousy bucks a day is welcome to do it.”
“Did you know the men are going back to work tomorrow?”