“The girl’s uncle? Why, he’s to meet Little here. Little talked to him on the phone before he called me.”
“He did? So Drake was telling the truth,” Shayne said slowly. “How does Little explain the cock-and-bull story he told me in Miami?”
“I haven’t discussed it with him. I thought you’d want to do that.”
Shayne’s voice was grim when he said, “I do. One-thirty, then.”
When Shayne hung up and turned from the telephone he saw a platter of hamburgers in the center of the small table, flanked by a large wooden bowl of tossed salad and a dish containing three baked yams. Lucile came in with a bowl of gravy spiced with barbecue sauce and set it beside the platter. She apologized for baker’s bread, saying, “I’d like to have made cornbread but my oven’s so small I can cook only one thing at a time.”
Shayne said, “Don’t apologize,” and helped himself to a hamburger and ladled the sauce over it as she poured the coffee. He sniffed the sauce, then tasted it, raised his bushy brows and asked, “Garlic?”
“Just a smear. And lots of other things. It’s my own concoction. If you don’t like garlic—”
“I do,” Shayne said emphatically, and broke a hamburger easily with his fork. Juice flowed from it and he said unbelievingly as he tasted it, “Do they have a special brand of hamburger cows here?”
She laughed delightedly and sat down opposite him. “I call it poor-girl steak. It’s neck meat, the cheapest cut, and I have the butcher grind it twice with a little piece of bacon for extra flavor.”
“You’ve been wasting your talents in an office,” he told her as he speared a yam. He sighed with contentment and went to work with knife and fork.