“I get into little ventures every now and then. Investments. Land deals. That kind of thing.”
“It was sort of a gag, going to call on Taggart so late?”
“I guess you could call it that. She wanted to see him again, I guess.”
“You didn’t see anybody driving away from here or walking away from here when you drove up?”
“No.”
“Was he the kind of fella goes into a bar and gets in trouble?”
“Sometimes.”
“I’ll have to check this out with Mrs. Gardino.”
“Miss. She might be pretty dopey by now. Sleeping pills. It was a terrible shock for her to see anything tike that.”
“A knife is messy. There’s no big rush about talking to her. How about Taggart’s folks?”
“I wouldn’t know. I think he has some cousins somewhere.”
A man appeared at the window on Branks’s side. Branks turned the tape machine off.
“All clear, Ken. We got more prints than anybody needs, most of them smudged.”
“How about that end cabin?”
“A farmer from South Carolina and a half wit kid. They didn’t see anything or hear anything. No other cabins occupied.”
“How about the owner?”
“He should be here any minute. He lives way the hell and gone out.”
“Runs the gas station?”
“Yes.”
“Check him on anybody coming to see Taggart. How about Taggart’s gear?”
“I’d give you about twenty-eight cents for everything he owns, Ken.”
“Have Sandy tag it and take it in and store it, and arrange to have that heap driven in to the pound.”
The man went away. Ken Branks stretched and yawned. “He had a little over twenty left out of the forty, Mr. McGee. These things have a pattern. The way I see it, Taggart went out to do some cruising on your money. So he hit a few bars, and got somebody agitated, and that somebody followed him on back here and went in after him with a knife. In the dark, probably. Taggart did pretty good. The place is pretty well busted up. From the wounds, the guy was hacking at him, and got him a dozen times on the hands and face and arms before he finally got him one in the throat. So somebody left here bandaged up and spattered all to hell with blood. It won’t be hard, I don’t think. Leg work. Hitting all the likely saloons and finding where the trouble was, and who was in it. We’ll pretty Taggart up for a picture we can use to show around here and there. Don’t expect to see your name in the paper. Or Miss Gardino’s. It won’t get big coverage. The season is on, you know. Can’t upset the sun-loving merrymakers.” We got out of the car.
He shook his head and said, “Some poor son of a bitch is out there tonight burying his clothes, throwing the knife off a bridge, trying to scrub the blood off his car seat, and it won’t do him a damn bit of good. By God, nobody can get away with making a pass at his girl. She can drive up to Raiford once a month and pay him a nice visit. You can take off, Mr. McGee. If I remember something I should ask you, I’ll be in touch.”
As I drove away, my neck and shoulders felt stiff with tension. I was under no illusions about Mr. Branks. I remembered how he had maneuvered me into the light to give me a thorough inspection. And I pretended not to see the flashlight beam as somebody had checked my car over while he was talking to me.
Branks would check me out with care and precision, and Nora too, and when his estimate of the situation did not pay off, he would go over us again.
A single lamp was lighted in Nora’s living room. I saw Shaja, still in her blue robe, get up from the chair and come to unlock the door. I followed her into the living room. “How is she doing?”
“She fell to sleep, not so long ago.” I noticed that she had brushed her hair, put on her makeup. “Such a wicked think,” she said. “My hoosband, yes. One could expect, from a prison sickness. Some kind. Her Sam, no. Please to sit. You drink somesink, maybe?”
“If you’ve got a beer.”
“Amstel? From Curacao?”
“Fine.”
She went to the kitchen and brought back one for each of us, in very tall tapered glasses, on a small pewter tray.
“About him returning, she was so excite. So ‘appy. It breaks my heart in two.”
“Shaja? Is that the way you say it?”
“For friends, just Shaj. It comes from a girl in an old story in my land. For children. A princess turnink to ice slowly.”
“Shaj, I had to tell the police she went there with me.”
“Of course!”
“The way I told it, I made Sam a lot less important to her. I’ll tell you exactly what I told them, and you remember it and tell her as soon as she wakes up. A man named Branks will come to see her. She should tell him exactly the same thing. It shouldn’t be hard, because most of it is the truth.”
She agreed. I repeated what I had said to Branks. She gave little nods of understanding.
When I had finished she frowned and said, “Excuse. But what is wrong to tellink this man she was in love with her Sam, all the three years he was gone? Is no crime.”
“There is a reason for it. You see, there is something else too.”
I saw a little flicker of comprehension in her eyes, product of a mind nicely geared to intrigue. “Somesink she does not know yet?”
“That’s right.”
“But you will tell her?”
“When she feels better.”
She was thoughtful for long moments. She looked over at me. “You do not see her often, but you are a good friend, no?”
“I hope so.”
“I am her friend too. She is good to me for a long time now. I can do all the work of the shop, completely. Those girls obey. What you will tell her, maybe it takes her mind from the work. But you should know, it will be no harm to anything.”
“You’re a nice person, Shaj.”
She smiled, perhaps blushed slightly. “Thank you.”
I leaned back into heavier shadow and sipped the beer. The light came down over her shoulder, backlighting the odd pale hair, shining on the curve of her broad cheek. This one had the same thing Nora had, such a total awareness of herself as a woman, such a directed pride in being a desirable woman, that every small fastidiousness was almost ritualistic, from stone clean scalp to glossy pedicure, all so scented and cared for that, as is the case with the more celebrated beauties, the grooming itself forms a small barrier against boldness, against unwelcome intrusion.
Around us was the night silence ticking toward three in the morning. In a nearby bed slept the drugged woman, unaware for a little time of the depth of her wound. In that silence, which seemed more difficult to break with every passing moment, I felt the slow increments of awareness. That sort of awareness is an atavistic thing, a man-woman thing on a wordless level, and when it occurs in just that way, you know that she, in the cat-foot depths of the female heart, is just as aware of it as you are.
She lifted the glass to her lips, and I saw the silken strength of the pale throat work as she swallowed.
“What made the princess turn to ice?” My voice sounded too loud.
She stared across at me. At last she said, “Breakink a sacred vow.”
“Was she forgiven?”
“Not at all. Her heart turns to ice. Her tears turns to ice. And where she is, on a high mountain, it then begins to snow, and forever, even in summertimes, the mountain there is white.”
“It seems like a sad name to give a little girl.”
“It is not my name.”
“No?”
“My name is Janna.”
“Where did you get Shaja then?”
“My hoosband call me that as a love name, because to him, in the beginning, I was of ice. But then not.”
“Why do you call yourself that now?”
She came to her feet with a slow lithe grace. “Perhaps for rememberink at all times such a sacred vow. A vow to a man who throws at tanks little bottles of fire. Perhaps you should go and sleep a little, and come back here at almost nine when I must leave, because if she is not awaken then, she can sleep more and you can be here to tell her all those thinks, no?”