a purse from somewhere. This booth was apparently her between-sets office. She got out Paddlewheel matches and a pack of Virginia Slims.
She offered me a smoke and I declined. When a waitress came over, my new friend indeed ordered a Perrier and I had the same. She got a cig going, waved the match out and gave me a skeptical look.
“You aren’t gay, are you?”
“No. Why?”
“You’re about…Beatles age, I’d say. Rolling Stones. Your idea of a female singer would be, what? Petula Clark? Dusty Springfield?”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Nothing. But most guys your age who think Cole Porter and Rodgers and Hart are the shit are gay.” She nodded toward where her piano player sat with another young guy at a table. “Lonnie’s gay, as you might have guessed. Where would I find a straight kid who could play like that?”
I skipped any comment on Lonnie, and went to her first point. “Maybe I just have a healthy respect for professionalism.”
She seemed to like that.
I sipped my sparkling water and hauled out the charming smile again, which was getting a workout tonight. “My next line is, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’ ”
She blew a smoky kiss at me. “I’m part owner of it. I can do what I like.”
“Part owner? I, uh…I came in on your act. I didn’t catch your name. Mine’s Jack, by the way. Jack Gibson.”
“Two of my favorite things-money and a mixed drink.” Her laugh was husky as she extended a hand for me to take and shake. “I’m Angela Dell.”
“I thought this place was owned by a guy named Cornell.”
“Dickie is my husband. Dell is my stage name-a shortened version of my maiden name. I used it before I met Dickie, and I’ve kept it.”
“You’ve been doing this a while.”
“Singing? Oh yes.”
“Do any recording?”
She nodded, twitched a smile that was more for her than me. “Had a contract with Verve back in the ’60s.”
“No kidding?”
That was a big deal-Verve was a jazz label and very picky about the artists they signed.
I went on: “I’m surprised I haven’t heard any of your records.”
“They just put one album out, and it sank like a stone.”
“I’d love to hear it.”
She shrugged. “You can buy it at the bar-I got the rights back to put it out on CD and cassette. There are two newer ones, too, recorded with just Lonnie on the piano.”
“You’ll sign them?”
“Sure.” She tapped her cigarette into a glass tray with a Paddlewheel logo in its bottom. “What do you do, Jack?”
“Nothing very interesting, I’m afraid. I sell veterinary medicine.”
“Really? What kind?”
“Do you know anything about farms?”
“No. I have a cat, though.”
“Well, I strictly sell to vets who service farms. Pretty boring.”
“But you’re on the road a lot?”
“Yes. You must’ve been, too, at one time.”
She nodded. “Until I married Dickie.”
I was trying to figure out a way to finesse this, to use my new acquaintance with the missus to get to the man of the house, or anyway of the Paddlewheel.
Then she said, “But don’t let that discourage you.”
There was something sly in the green eyes now, and the full mouth was twisted up at one corner.
“Pardon?” I managed.
“Dickie and I are separated. We…we’d probably have been divorced a long time ago, but I’m a Catholic, and I don’t want to go to hell…even if I do work in Haydee’s.”
“Oh-kay,” I said.
“We’re friendly, Dickie and I. Best of buddies. He’s got a great business head, and I add a little class to the joint. I don’t have any desire to do anything in life but sing for my supper. No ambition-not for a new man, or an old career. Anyway, a shopworn broad like me can’t make it in show biz these days, that’s for sure.”
“I’d think some lounge in Vegas would-”
“I worked a lounge in Vegas for six years. It wasn’t a bad life, but it was a dead end, and here I’m a coowner and making nice money and singing six nights a week. Satisfies my work ethic and my artistic cravings, and fills my bank account. I live in a nice apartment over in River Bluff, just me and my pussy…cat.”
That pause was promising.
“How long,” she asked, tapping her ash off in the tray, “are you going to be in town?”
“Not sure. Few days. Maybe we could get together. Have lunch or something.”
She shrugged. “I only have another half hour set. Why don’t you stick around? We could go over to the Wheelhouse and have breakfast. They’re open twenty-four hours.”
Then she smiled, sighed smoke dreamily, stubbed out her cigarette, and headed up onto the stage, swaying her hips a little, whether for the audience or me, I couldn’t say. But she had fine legs for a woman her age, strappy heels doing nice things to their musculature, her full caboose making the skirt twitch.
Warm applause greeted her, and she did “But Not For Me,” and I sat wondering how I’d managed to muff it so bad. Here we’d been having this nice friendly conversation, and I reflexively gave her the vet medicine cover story, before realizing I had no reasonable segue from that to asking her if she’d introduce me to her husband.
She would want to know why, and I couldn’t think of anything that made sense. I doubted Richard Cornell was in the market for animal tranquilizers.
By the time she’d started her next song, “You Do Something to Me,” I’d about given up. I figured I should just disappear before her set was over, though snubbing the boss’ wife (separated from him or not) was not exactly a great plan, either.
But I’d pretty much decided on skipping, and was maybe three seconds away from slipping out of the booth, when a six-footer slid in opposite.
He was dark-haired with some white coming in on the sideburns, a dark tan, lazy eyes and a smirky mouth, but handsome enough at about forty, attired in pale yellow slacks and a darker yellow-and-black checked sportcoat over a black shirt open a few buttons to display several gold chains and some curly black hair.
“My name’s Richard Cornell,” he said, and extended a hand. “I run the Paddlewheel. Did you and my wife have a nice talkie-poo?”
Chapter Four
I shook his hand. He smiled across the booth at me in a fashion that I’m sure fooled a lot of people, but I could see the coldness in the aqua-blue eyes, which were half-lidded and made his gaze seem casual when it was heart-attack serious.
“She’s a wonderful singer, your wife,” I said.
“Indeed she is.” The British accent was light but there, a touch of class that went well with his lilting baritone.
“Friendly, too. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Mr. Cornell.”
He leaned back, smiled on half his face. He’d blinked maybe three times since sitting down. “Angela’s a big
