“A gun!”
“She wasn’t going to shoot me unless she had to. It was just to make me hold still so she could slug me with an ashtray. She wanted him to hear her version before ours. She broke her date with him for tonight and she told him she’s thinking of going to New York tomorrow. Where do we go from here?”
Trina bit her lip and sat down on a leather sofa, tucking her feet beneath her. Shayne sampled the brandy and let her adjust. The brandy was excellent.
“Naturally I wish it hadn’t happened this way,” she said. “It’s going to look like a bad case of interference on my part, and I don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“Would you like to hear my opinion?” Shayne said.
“Of course.”
“I think we’ll have to tell him the whole thing. He knows I hit her with something, and he’ll want to know what. I can keep on not talking, but I’ll be going home tomorrow. You have to go on living with him.”
“Oh God. You’re right, I suppose. But you tell him, Mike-I couldn’t. And just watch! She’ll wriggle out of it. He’s an imbecile as far as that woman’s concerned. He’ll forgive her! You liked her, didn’t you?”
“I like lots of people,” Shayne said, looking at his cognac. “That’s not what I meant. You thought she was very strong sexy stuff and you can understand how Daddy feels.” Shayne decided it was time to change the subject. “What’s this business with Senator Wall?”
“Oh, he’s the number-two man on the subcommittee. This investigation would have never got off the ground if it had not been for Tom. He’s a great believer in honesty in government, to the degree that I’m afraid he gets under people’s skin.” She added hastily, “By that I don’t mean that Daddy doesn’t believe in honesty in government. He just isn’t a fanatic about it. After his heart attack he can’t afford to be fanatical about anything.”
“Is Bixler trying to sell Wall the same thing he sold me?”
“No, I don’t think so, not from the way Tom talked about it. He kept saying it would blow the whole case sky-high. Well, maybe. Meanwhile, don’t you think we have to assume that the status quo still exists? That Daddy’s still their major target?”
She tasted her Cointreau and licked the taste off her lips. “What worries me-as soon as they hear that the Maggie Smith thing has fallen through, won’t they try some desperate last-minute move? What I’m getting at, couldn’t you stand by, as a sort of bodyguard, for twenty-four hours?”
“Not unless your father agrees.”
“Well, he wouldn’t agree. But couldn’t you watch him without letting him realize you were there?”
Shayne shook his head. “That only happens in books, Miss Hitchcock. I’m a stranger in town. And even if I’d worked here all my life, I’d need three other men and a couple of two-way radios, and I wouldn’t guarantee anything.”
She worried her lip for another minute. “But at least you’ll make sure Maggie Smith gets on a plane tomorrow? And if anything comes up before then, where will you be?”
“At the St. Albans,” Shayne told her, without adding that after he got to sleep it would take more than the ringing of the telephone to wake him up.
Hitchcock came in.
“Tom’s wonderful,” he said to his daughter, his usual good temper restored. “He’s going to be majority leader in ten years, or dead of a heart attack.” He knocked lightly on the desk top. “Knock on wood.”
“Don’t joke about it!” Trina said harshly. “It’s in terrible taste.”
“I had some mild heart trouble a while ago,” the Senator explained to Shayne. “I recommend it as a good way to get a sensible outlook. Trina, I’ll get around to you shortly. I want to talk to Mike privately first. Don’t go to bed.”
She stood up. “Daddy, I’m sorry.”
“I know you are, dear, and I hope not too much damage has been done.”
She smiled nervously and left them alone.
CHAPTER 6
10:05 P.M.
Hitchcock poured more brandy into Shayne’s glass and set the bottle beside his chair. “Help yourself when you feel like it. I have to deny myself hard liquor, but they’ve relented about cigars. Without cigars, I think I might have had to resign from the Senate. Will you smoke one with me? These are Havanas. I wish I could think they were part of a pre-Castro shipment. Actually, I know very well that they were smuggled in.”
As soon as their cigars were burning evenly, Hitchcock said, “Perhaps I should explain about my daughter. Her mother was an invalid for many years before she died. I was away much of the time, first in the legislature, then in Washington. Even after they joined me here we didn’t have much family life. She’s concerned about me. In my turn I’m concerned about her. I have a strong hunch that she and Tom Wall are having an affair. There’s nothing wrong with Tom except that he eats ravenously and never puts on weight. He’s too eager for my taste, and besides that he’s married. His wife isn’t here with him, but it worries me. Well, that’s neither here nor there. I’m already talking too much, but that’s a habit we find it easy to fall into. Maggie-ever since she was a young girl she’s been part of the theatre, and I don’t have to be told that few theatrical people live by traditional American small-town standards. Although some of the things that go on in American small towns! I know there have been men in her life. That has nothing to do with my feeling for her.”
He waited for some comment from Shayne, drawing on his long Havana, but the detective kept quiet.
“Our friendship has been entirely platonic,” Hitchcock said. “I wouldn’t expect Trina to believe that. I think what frightens her is the possibility that I might marry again. What frightens me is what Maggie would say if I asked her. Well, I know she’d be kind. I can’t seem to stop talking about her. She’s so alive! You saw that, didn’t you?”
Shayne nodded slowly, having no trouble remembering the way Maggie Smith had felt in his arms.
“What has your investigation turned up about her?” Hitchcock asked, too casually. “I really think you’d better tell me, Mike. Otherwise I’ll have to squeeze it out of Trina, which would be unpleasant for both of us. If you can drive Maggie out of town with it, it must be fairly lurid.”
Shayne swirled the brandy around in the big bubble of glass. “I hate to do it this way, Senator. She did something for Sam Toby once. I can give you the details if you have to have them, but I’d just as soon leave it at that. She didn’t deny it.”
Hitchcock’s face had gone very still. “When?”
“Eight years ago. I know people change, and I think she’s sorry. But it raises a big question. Apparently she’s pretty close to the rocks financially. You know this guy Sam Toby and the way he operates. Leaving personalities aside, do you think he’s capable of putting a hustler on you?”
“Toby is capable of anything if there’s enough money involved and he thinks he can get away with it.” He laid his cigar carefully in an ashtray and stood up. “Excuse me.” With his back turned, he poured a glass of water from a carafe on the worktable and swallowed two pills that he took from a small vial. Shayne was on his feet.
“Is there anything I can do, Senator?”
“No. This is precautionary.”
After a moment he turned, went to the phone on a small table beside the fireplace, and began to dial.
Shayne said, “Why not sleep on it? Let her call you.”
“Do you think I’d sleep?”
He waited. The phone rang a long time. Then Shayne heard the connection being opened and Hitchcock said quietly, “Maggie?”
There was a faint scratching noise. Hitchcock turned up a volume control and reached over to throw a switch so the conversation would be recorded.
Maggie Smith’s voice said, “-feel much better. The Senate ought to put up a statue to the man who invented aspirin. But about tomorrow. A call came through from New York just after you left. I have to run up to untangle a stupid legal snafu about some out-of-town performance rights. It’s too boring to go into. I may not be back for several days.”