“Who says we did?”
“People who saw you and heard you.” The big man wasn’t averse to stretching the point a bit. “People who’ll swear you were beating him up. They’ll go on the witness stand and swear it.”
“Then they’ll lie,” she said.
“You can say that to me,” Shayne said. “I’m not a judge. I’m not a tough state’s attorney throwing questions at you. Oh, you can lie to me easily enough, Mrs. Mullen. But when your own neighbors get on the stand and throw those lies in your teeth, what can you do then? Can you lie to a jury? Well enough so a jury will believe you? Can you do that and will you bet your life that you can?”
“It ain’t no lie,” she yelled back at him. Her old face was contorted with a mixture of anger and fear. “I don’t care what nobody says. I didn’t kill John and I didn’t beat him up. How could I? An old woman like me—”
“Suppose you tell me what you did do then,” Shayne pressed her. “You were in the house all right. Don’t you try to deny that. If it wasn’t what they say, you better tell me now, and tell me the truth. Mind you. The truth.”
“All right,” she said. “I suppose I might as well. No telling what them lying neighbors will do to me if I don’t. I was up to the house, Mr. Shayne. It was early in the evening. Right after dark it was and John was alive when I got there and when I left.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Of course I am. It wasn’t me shot him, Mr. Shayne. I got no gun anyway.”
“Oh,” Shayne said. “So it wasn’t you that shot him. What do you know about his being shot?”
“Because that’s why he called me up there, you tarnation fool. Why do you think he’d let me in the house unless he was hurt first?”
“I don’t know,” Shayne said. “You tell me.”
“He came down here and told me to come. He needed help. I went back up to the house with him. He said somebody shot at him through the window. They missed him but the shot hit the heavy iron fire dog in the upstairs library and part of the bullet broke off and hit him in the back.
“I looked and sure enough there was a hole in his back. Twarn’t bleeding much though. I told him he needed a doctor. All he’d done was tie a towel around himself to stop the bleeding. He wouldn’t listen. Said he didn’t trust no doctor and one would charge him a fortune for tying up the wound, which I could do just as well.”
“The bullet was in his liver,” Shayne said. “Sooner or later it would have killed him unless a doctor took it out.”
“I thought something like that. I tried to tell him. The stingy old fool wouldn’t listen. That’s what we were hollering at each other about. I got real mad. I said he’d cheated me often enough. He could call a doctor now or die. I didn’t care.”
“But you didn’t think about helping him die?”
“Of course I didn’t. We was in the upstairs bath where he kept the medicine chest. I started to leave. He ran at me on the stairs to stop me and somehow he slipped and fell down to the landing. That’s all happened. I went on out. He was laying there cussing and groaning, but he sure wasn’t dead.”
Mike Shayne had a pretty good notion that old John Wingren might have been pushed down the stairs rather than “slipped and fell” but he wasn’t going to make a point of it right then.
The rest of the old woman’s story sounded reasonable to him, even the part about the wound feeling much less dangerous to the old man than it actually was. Besides, if she hadn’t been telling the truth, she probably never would have admitted knowing anything at all about the shooting part. That wasn’t the sort of story an old woman of her type would be likely to make up out of whole cloth.
“Suppose I believe you,” he said to her. “Not that I’m sure I do, but just suppose.”
“You better believe it,” she said. “I swear it’s the truth.”
“People swear all sorts of things to me,” Shayne said. “They been doing it for years. Did old John know who shot him?”
“He said he did, but he didn’t tell me. Said he’d settle that young feller’s hash by himself.”
“You sure he said a young feller?”
“Them was his exact words,” she insisted. “ ‘I’ll settle that young feller’s hash’ was his exact words.”
“Do you know if he had money of his in the house?”
“Everybody always said he had,” Mrs. Mullen said, “but Lord knows I never seen none. If he had it, then it was well hid for sure.”
“You say everybody thought he had it, though.”
“Sure. You know how people talk. You do believe me, don’t you, Mr. Shayne? I didn’t kill that mean old man. Maybe I thought about it a few times in the years gone, but I’m not a woman could go ahead and kill.”
“Well,” Shayne said, “do you have any idea who old John meant when he said ‘young feller?’ Has anybody you know been hanging around here lately? Acting suspicious? Anything like that?”
“Not like you mean, Mr. Shayne,” she said. “Of course there’s been young Cal Harris, but everybody knows what he’s doing.”
“I don’t,” Shayne said. “What does he do?”
“Oh, three — four times every week he comes by here and puts a curse on the old man. Course he don’t say, but we all know that’s it. He comes hobbling up the street on them two canes of his and just stands and looks at the big house with his face all black and hard. Cursing old John he was for sure.”
Shayne thought: “No wonder the cops are after that boy.” Aloud, all he said was: “Anything else?”
“Not unless you count Crazy Smith’s prowlers.”
“Who are they?”
“Lord knows. Old Corporal Smith says he sees them prowling all through here in the dark of the moon. Murdering, thieving robbers he calls them. Once in a while he even takes a shot at them with that old army gun of his. Never hit none, though. Not far’s I know anyhow.”
“Doesn’t anybody call the police when he shoots at things?”
“Lord no, Mr. Shayne. Ain’t no harm in old Buck. He just sees things. No crime in that.”
“Have you ever seen these prowlers? Last night for instance?” Shayne pressed her.
She turned her face away. “No. sir. I told you all I know about last night. You better believe me too, because it’s the Lord’s living truth. Every bit of it. Now go on and get out of here. Let an old woman get time to fix herself some supper. Get out now.”
Shayne could tell that was all she was going to say, so he left the house and walked across the street to old Buck Smith’s place.
The old veteran was in the kitchen boiling up grits and collard greens with fat pork. He let Shayne follow him back and sit at the kitchen table while he continued his cooking.
“Have a glass of cold buttermilk, Mr. Shayne,” he offered.
On his way to the kitchen Shayne had noticed that the old man’s Springfield rifle was missing from its place in the front room.
Mike Shayne accepted the buttermilk. He didn’t want it, but the gesture would relax the old man.
“I’ve just been talking to Mrs. Mullen,” he said. “She says you protect the block from prowlers.”
“I do what I can,” old Buck said. “Somebody’s got to watch out these days with all the young ones taking dope and fornicating out of wedlock and such like. Somebody got to be on the watch.”
“Too bad you didn’t see the killer go in or out of the big house last night,” Mike Shayne said casually.
Buck Smith was spooning out grits onto his plate. The big iron spoon clattered against his plate and he almost dropped it. At first Shayne thought the old man was going to faint. Then he pulled himself together.
“No, sir,” he said. “I sure didn’t. Man can’t be watching all the time. Dunno if I’d a done anything if I had. Oh, if I’d known it was a killer, then sure. But just a thief. Let him help himself. Old John had plenty and to spare.”