The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(18)

I parked on the street behind a red Fiat and walked up the sidewalk, over a Big Wheel, through a scatter of street chalk.

There was a brass mezuzah on the doorjamb.

I was just raising my hand to knock when the door swung open and a large Anglo man collided with me. He was maybe two hundred pounds, my height, loud yellow shirt, and a square face.

He muttered, "Damn, fricking—" then pushed past in a wake of cheap sports cologne.

I watched him lumber down the unlighted walk. The back of his retreating head looked like gorilla-mask fur, greased and combed. He skidded on a piece of pink street chalk, cursed, kicked the Big Wheel, then kept trudging down the steps toward the Fiat.

Glass shattered somewhere inside the house. A woman yelled angrily. I took that as an invitation.

The living room was stark white — carpet, walls, sofa, molding. Against the right wall was the limestone fireplace I'd seen in Detective DeLeon's crime-scene photo. The freshly scrubbed bricks still retained the craters of two .45 rounds that had slowed down not at all traveling through Aaron Brandon's body. Open moving boxes clustered next to the sofa. Through an archway on the left, in the dining room, glass shards of a newly broken window dangled from the frame. At the far end of the sofa, a woman stood with her back to me.

She was leaning over an oak end table forested with framed family photos, her hands clamped tightly on the table corners as if she were contemplating a war map. She was a light-skinned Latina, tall and slender, her hair shoulder length and silky red-brown, the color of roasted peppers. She wore a beige blouse and black jeans. If she'd been any more earth-toned she could've laid down in a South Texas oil field and disappeared.

I rapped on the doorjamb.

"Forget something, Del?" Her voice was small and cold. "You want my checkbook, too, you f**king bastard?"

I cleared my throat. "Wrong bastard."

She whirled to face me.

Her mouth was wide and pretty, her nose slightly crooked, her eyes so large and brown the color seemed to tint her corneas like a cinnamon overdose. It was the kind of face that strikes you as beautiful because of a successful combination of flaws.

"Who—" She stopped herself, shook her head vehemently. "No. I don't care who you are. What the hell are you doing in my home?"

I wasn't technically inside, but I remedied that by stepping over the threshold. "Sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Brandon." I plucked an Erainya Manos Agency card from my front pocket, held it up. It was one of the granite-gray executive cards. Somber. Professional. I tried to make my expression match the card. "I came by to ask you some questions. Your brother-in-law Del ran over me on his way out, then I heard the window break. I got concerned."

She made a little feral noise. "Another goddamn cop. You people think you've been here so often you can just walk in my front door now?"

She picked up the nearest potential projectile — a lead-framed photo. "Vete ya! No more questions. No more cops."

The granite-gray executive approach didn't seem to be winning me many points. I tried for a smile.

"There's no need to break things," I assured her. "Actually I'm not—"

The photo banged into the wall two feet to my left. Glass cracked when it hit the floor. Little pieces spiraled into the air.

Mrs. Brandon picked up another piece of ammunition. She motioned toward the front door with the new frame.

"You don't want to throw that," I told her.

In fact, she did. I had to lurch forward and catch her wrist before she could. She tried to hit me with her free hand. I intercepted that too.

We stood in that dance position for a few heartbeats, Ines Brandon glaring up at me.

Her breath smelled faintly of red wine. Close up, the little crook in her nose looked like an old break, probably some childhood accident. She had the faintest white scar across the bridge, about where reading glasses would sit. Whatever she'd run into so long ago, she looked like she'd never quite gotten over the indignation.

"You can goddamn well let me go," she growled.

I released her wrist, took away the photograph she'd been about to throw. Mrs. Brandon stepped back and sank to the edge of the sofa.

Her eyes became hot and vacant, like jettisoned rocket rings.

"Well?" She gestured around listlessly. "Ask your questions. Search the house. What do I care? It's not mine anymore."

I looked at the photo — a wedding picture of her and Aaron, taken in front of a grimy adobe chapel with freestanding pink silk flower arrangements on either side. The setting, and the look of desperate, guilty excitement in the young couple's eyes, screamed bordertown wedding. I set the photo back on the table.

"RideWorks holds the lease on your house," I said. "Del's kicking you out?"

"That's my brother-in-law."

"Quite a human being. How's your son holding up?"

She pressed at the corners of her eyes. "Leave Michael out of this."

"He's here?"

"He's with Paloma. Our — my maid. I couldn't have Michael here with Del coming over. My brother-in-law and I — we aren't exactly cordial."

"Nice guy like Gorilla-Head? Hard to imagine."

She studied my face more closely.

"You were on the news today," she decided. "When they showed that man's arrest. You're with the sheriffs department?"