The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan (14 page)

"Have a seat."

"But—" He pointed behind him. "You're
sure?"

I waved him toward the student's chair.

Mitchell checked his watch. He sat down reluctantly,
probably remembering what had happened the last time he sat there,
then unfolded Erainya's report and frowned at it. "Ms. Manos
seems to be urging us to end the investigation."

"Erainya would love to keep taking your money.
She's just trying to be clear with you. The State Licensing Board
takes a dim view of investigators who churn cases, string clients
along for more hours than necessary. If the police are right, UTSA
has nothing to worry about. Brandon's murder was some kind of
personal matter between Aaron and the man who killed him, Zeta
Sanchez. Sanchez is a former employee of the Brandons. He might've
murdered Aaron's father back in '93. If that's all true, you may wish
to discontinue your investigation."

Mitchell's frown deepened. "The death threats,
son. The bomb—"

"—could've been sent by Zeta Sanchez."

Mitchell studied my face. Apparently I didn't do a
good job looking convinced.

"You don't believe that," he decided. "The
letters started coming before Dr. Brandon was even hired. You know
that."

"One letter came to Dr. Haimer. A month or so
later, six more like it came to Brandon, then the bomb."

Mitchell rubbed his jaw. "You're saying someone
could've copied the style of the first threat."

"It's possible. When did Dr. Haimer report it?"

"He didn't. He merely threw it in his file
cabinet with all the other hate mail. Dr. Brandon came across it when
he took over the office, but he didn't report it to us until after he
received the second and third letters, addressed to him. That was the
first time we knew we had a credible threat. That was in February,
about five weeks into the term."

"So conceivably, anyone who saw that first
letter to Haimer could've decided to copy the style and continue the
death threats. A person who was after Aaron Brandon for another
reason might've found the UTSA controversy a convenient cover."

"This man, Zeta Sanchez, would go to such
trouble?"

"Doesn't seem likely," I admitted. "But
the police already have a lot of other evidence pointing to Sanchez."

Mitchell shook his head. "The only people who
could've seen that letter were University people, Tres. If something
happened as you described, I can't imagine it was done by a—"
Mitchell faltered.

"Gangster?"

"Yes."

"You want us to keep looking into the matter."

"I want Ms. Manos to look into it."

"That's what I meant."

Mitchell smiled faintly, checked his watch again.
"Are you sure you wouldn't rather—"

"One more question." I pulled out the
eight-by-ten carousel photo, held it up for Dr. Mitchell to see. "You
know these men?"

Mitchell shook his head. "Aaron's relatives?"

"This one is his dad, Jeremiah. The other is
Del, Aaron's brother. You ever seen the brother around campus? Maybe
visiting Aaron's office?"

"Not that I recall. Why?"

I was thinking about whether to mention the business
journal article when someone else knocked on the door. Professor
Mitchell looked at me with a silent warning. He mouthed the words:
She's drunk.

"It's okay," I promised.

Mitchell looked dubious, but he got up and opened the
door. He stuck his head outside, mumbled something to the person
waiting, then turned and said to me by way of reassurance, "I'll
be just down the hall."

He was replaced in the doorway by Ines Brandon.

Today she wore jeans and an army-green silk blouse
with a basket purse slipping off one shoulder. Her red-brown hair was
tied back in a stubby ponytail. When she saw me, anger filled her
like compressed air. "I don't believe this."

"You say that with such joy."

"Put it away," she demanded.

When I didn't immediately get her meaning, she walked
to the desk and tore the photo of the Brandon men out of my hand.

She ripped the photo in half, carefully aligned the
halves, and ripped them again, letting the pieces flutter to the
singed carpet.

"It's away," I said.

There was a leaden quality in her eyes, as if the
thoughts beneath were moving sluggishly. "Get the hell out."

"Can't. I've got a class in three hours."

Her hands worked into the smallest possible fists.
"You came into my house. Now you're sitting at my husband's
desk. You goddamn prying—"

"Mrs. Brandon — I work here."

"I don't give a—"

"As an English professor."

Her thin black eyebrows knitted into tilde marks.

She looked uncertainly around the office — the hole
in the window, the scorched papers, the stacks of files I'd been
sorting through. "I thought—"

"I told you I was a P.I. That's still true. So
happens I'm also—"

"You're Aaron's replacement?"

I nodded.

Ines Brandon studied my tie. She looked at the
upside-down family photo on the desk. The woman in it looked nothing
like her — hair longer, lighter-colored; body ten pounds heavier
and healthier; her smile sincere and warm.

"You can take whatever you need," I told
her. "I'm sorry."

Ines Brandon's fingers touched the glass over the
photo, trailed to the edge of the desk, and slipped off. "Everybody's
sorry," she said.

She swayed, then sank into the chair that was,
fortunately, right behind her. She curled forward, pinching her hand
over her eyes. Her purse tumbled into her lap.

The office got intensely quiet. The plastic on the
window ballooned inward with the breeze. The mesquite rustled.
Outside the door, two male voices approached and then receded down
the hallway.

Ines' fingers massaged small circles at the corners
of her eyebrows.

When she focused on me again, her eyes couldn't
target quite right. "Your name was Navarre?"

"Tres Navarre. Yes."

She mouthed the word Tres a few times, let out a sour
laugh. "The third. How perfect."

"I'm trying not to dwell on that."

She shut her eyes. "This isn't your fault. I'm
sorry. I don't have a box. I don't even know what things are his."

"Let it wait. His things don't have to go
anywhere."

Her expression didn't change, but a thick tear traced
its way down the base of her nose.

She tried to stand and couldn't quite make it.

She frowned, looked into her purse, then fished out
an orange prescription bottle and stared at the label accusingly.

"How many?" I asked.

"They insisted. I broke a window."

"I remember."

"The doctor said the sedatives—" She
stopped, still frowning. "Two pills. I think I took two. I don't
remember."

She tried to put the bottle back in her purse and
dropped it on the floor instead. "I need to go."

"You're not doing so great. Is there anyone who
could—"

"Take me home?" she interrupted.

"Yeah."

She looked up at me wearily, her expression a mixture
of resentment and plea.

I suddenly realized I had just made an offer.
 

FIFTEEN

I had to wake Ines Brandon when we pulled in front of
her house on Castano. With some effort, I extracted her from the VW,
got her up the five steps, navigated her around the Big Wheel and the
street chalk.

Before I could ring the bell on the front porch, a
scowling woman opened the door.

"I tell you," she scolded Ines.

The woman's arms were beefy slabs. Her upper body was
stuffed into the world's largest black Papal Visit souvenir T-shirt,
the faded picture of John Paul II on the front unflatteringly
distorted by the bulges of the woman's breasts. Her stubby legs
threatened to bust out of turquoise sweatpants and her hair was
pulled back in a painfully tight bun. Her feet were bare. Her face
was as brutally sculpted as a Mayan pedestal — weathered and wide
and flat, designed to withstand several thousand tons. She smelled
pungently of cloves. She took Ines' arm and guided her into the
house.

"This is Mr. Navarre," Ines mumbled. "I
didn't have a box."

The woman cursed at her gently in Spanish, then
looked back at me and said in a stern voice: "Stay."

"Arf," I said.

The woman didn't react. She and Ines disappeared down
the hallway. I heard the sounds of minor protests, chastisements,
orders to take off shoes. Miniblinds were snapped shut.

There was even less to see in the living room than
there had been before. Most of the boxes were now taped closed. All
the framed photographs had been removed from the end table. The
broken window in the dining room had been covered with a piece of
cardboard.

The Pope-shirted woman reappeared from the hallway,
wiping her palms on her turquoise pants. Her squashed, disapproving
eyes zeroed in on me. "Thank you, go."

"You're Paloma?"

The woman gave me a grudging nod, then brushed past
and went to the front door. She opened it, looked at me expectantly.

I pointed down the hallway where Ines had
disappeared. "You get her to sleep all right?"

"No Ingles," Paloma suddenly decided. She
glared at me obstinately.

"No problema," I assured her. Then, still
in Spanish, "We had to leave Mrs. Brandon's car at UTSA. The
north visitors' lot. It'll be all right for this afternoon, but
someone should pick it up by tomorrow morning."

Paloma continued glaring at me, letting me know that
nothing could have insulted her sensibilities worse than a fluent
gringo.

"Thank you, go," she tried again, in
English.

"I bet you're great with solicitors. Those
aluminum-siding guys from Sears."

She shoved the door shut, irritated. "You won't
go. Why?"

"I'm curious."

"La policia." She scowled. "They were
curious. The reporters, tambien. No more. Senora Brandon needs
sleep."

"You've been with the family long?"

"Five years. Since Miguel."

"Since Michael was born — their son."

"Si."

"Is Michael here?"

"No."

As if on cue, a whirring toy sound wailed from one of
the back bedrooms, then died. It sounded like one of those sparking
ray guns.

Paloma's stone face darkened.

"Mira, Paloma," I told her. "I don't
mean to pry. I've been hired to take Dr. Brandon's job. I'd like to
know how he got himself killed. I don't want to follow in his
footsteps."

Paloma's eyes drifted away from me and fixed on the
fireplace. She scowled at the bullet holes in the limestone, as if
remembering exactly where she had scrubbed, and how hard, and what
the color of the water and the soap foam had been afterward.

"We're leaving this place," she mused. "For
now, an apartment. Maybe later, out of town."

"And will that return things to normal?"

Paloma made a sound deep in her throat, like stone
grinding. "You wish to see normal?"

She grabbed my wrist and tugged me down the hallway,
past a closed door on the right, past an open bathroom, to a door on
the left that was papered with foldout animal posters from various
scholastic magazines.

Paloma pushed me into the doorway and held me there,
her fingers digging into my shoulders. I was expecting to see your
basic boy's room, like Jem's — buckets of Tinkertoys and Legos,
miniature furniture, piles of little clothes and shoes. Everything in
primary colors.

What I saw instead were sheets. At least ten of them
— white, blue, daisy-patterned, brown — draped waist-level
wall-to-wall, covering everything. The cloth sagged in canyons, rose
here and there to peaks that were probably chairs underneath. Square
outlines hinted of tabletops, a bed. Where the sheet corners met,
they were weighted down by heavy books to keep them together. In some
places they were tied off or safety-pinned. There seemed to be talcum
powder everywhere — sprinkled liberally over the tops of the
sheets, gathered in thick drifts where the cloth sagged, hanging in
the air with a cloying scent. The room looked like it had been
commandeered for a Christo art event.

Three feet from the bedroom door was a small
triangular opening in the sheet tent. A toy ray gun lay on the carpet
next to an empty plastic Lunchables tray and a Toys "R" Us
circular with all the coupons cut out.

Paloma pushed past me and managed to lower herself
enough to scoop up the trash.

"Miguel," she grunted. "Ahi."