Southtown (Tres Navarre #5)(13)

I spotted Maia Lee at a balcony table overlooking the waterfal . Robert Johnson in his carrying case was tucked discreetly under her chair. Since Maia moved to Texas, we’d had to work out a joint custody arrangement. It was now my week to play servant to the Cat Almighty.

Maia was tapping her fingers on a menu, nursing what probably wasn’t her first margarita.

I was working up my nerve to walk over, formulating my most sincere apology, when the ma?tre d’ put his hand on my arm. “May I help— Whoa, shit.”

He was in his mid-twenties, stocky and bald, with freckles the color of nacho-flavored Doritos.

I spun the mental Rolodex, came up with a name. “Quentin Yates.”

“If I had a f**king gun . . .”

“Tough break,” I agreed. “How’s life on the lam?”

He started to make a fist.

“Careful,” I said. “Bet your employer doesn’t know your history.”

His orange brow furrowed . . . kil Navarre or stay out of jail. A decision that has troubled greater criminal minds.

“You gonna snitch me out?” he demanded.

“Of course I’m going to snitch you out. But I want to eat first. Gives you a good head start, doesn’t it? See you, Quent.”

I strol ed out to the balcony and sat across from Maia Lee.

She pretended to study her menu. “Trouble at the low-water crossings?”

“Don’t say those words.”

Under her seat, Robert Johnson said, “Row.”

Maia arched an eyebrow, glanced over my shoulder. “What’s your history with Freckles?”

Very little escapes Maia’s notice. I had no doubt that if the need arose three weeks from now, she would be able to tel me what I was wearing tonight, how much the meal cost, and what most of the people around us had been talking about.

“That’s Quentin Yates,” I told her. “He isn’t running away in terror yet?”

“No. He just . . .” She muttered what must’ve been the Chinese word for ouch. “He just seated an old lady, gave her the Heimlich maneuver. Now he’s glowering at you.”

“Quent was a buddy of mine for two weeks, a few years ago, while I was working undercover at his boss’s restaurant.”

Maia’s beautiful face turned grim at the word undercover. “Embezzlement?”

“Credit cards. Quentin was the bartender.”

“Capturing account information,” she guessed.

“Wel , hey—you got these perfectly good numbers, why not charge a home entertainment system or two?

After I turned him in, he skipped bail, beat up his ex-boss with an aluminum bat, threatened to come after me. Then he disappeared. Apparently Pig Fal s doesn’t do background checks.”

“You want to cal the police?”

“Dinner first. I’d recommend we pay in cash.”

“Sensible.”

Maia, I soon discovered, had already arranged things. At a nod from her, the waitress cranked into high gear, bringing plates of crabmeat flautas, bowls of tortil a soup, Gulf Coast shrimp with fresh avocado slices. Having spent the whole day staring at a computer monitor and sorting through paperwork, I should’ve been more interested in the food, except that Maia herself was pretty damn distracting.

You’d think, after twelve years, I would no longer stare.

Everything about her stil startled me—her glossy black hair, the caramel skin of her throat against the V of her silk blouse, her fingers, her lips, her eyes. She was a perfect mix of war and beauty, like a Zhou Dynasty noblewoman—one of the imperial courtesans Sun Tzu had trained to fight.

“It’s been too long,” I said.

She gave me a dry smile. “One week.”

“Like I said.”

“You could solve that problem. A hotshot attorney in Austin has made you a damn good offer.”

“Lee and Navarre . . . your stock value would plummet.”

“I beg your pardon. No one said anything about your name on the bil ing.”

Maia let her offer float in the air, weightless and persistent, where it had lingered during our last few dinners together. She snuck the cat a crabmeat flauta. Every so often, her eyes would track something behind me, and I knew she was keeping watch on Quentin, the glowering ma?tre d’.

“So, the Erainya Manos Agency,” Maia said, trying hard to keep the distaste out of her voice. “Things have been good . . . bounty-hunting and whatnot? Driving into floods?”

The stubborn side of me wanted to rise to Erainya’s defense, but Maia knew me too wel . She had trained me as an unlicensed investigator before Erainya turned me legitimate. During our years together in San Francisco, Maia had used me as a secret weapon to keep cases from going to court, taught me al the dirty, borderline il egal, ruthlessly effective methods of investigative blackmail that Erainya had tried so hard to erase when she got me licensed. Each woman thought the other unprofessional, mostly because they both kept bad company—like me.

“Erainya’s distracted,” I admitted. “Increasingly.”

“Maybe it’s her boyfriend. Men affect one’s judgment.”

I decided not to take the bait. I watched the swol en San Marcos River tumbling into the grotto thirty feet below us. The sky darkened. The water churned red.