The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(33)

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."

Nothing moved.

Outside the bedroom windows I could see the backyard — about twenty feet of grass, a barbecue pit, swing set, pecan tree. In the corner a wooden garage was topped with a second-story apartment. The day was sunny, but it felt miles away outside the gloom and the powder and the dust.

"Miguel!" Paloma called again.

This time sheets rustled in the corner. A little spherical dent appeared in them, slid toward the entrance, then emerged at the opening as the head of a five-year-old boy.

If I had not known he was half Latino, I never would've guessed it. His skin was paler than mine, paler than damn near anybody's. His eyes were blue like Aaron Brandon's, his hair reddish like his mother's.

He was wearing a T-shirt and underwear and nothing else. He peered up at me with mild curiosity.

"Miguel," Paloma said, "this is Senor Navarre. Senor Navarre is a college teacher like your papa."

Michael seemed to be trying to reach some conclusion about my face, as if he weren't quite sure if it was real or a pretty good mask.

"Hey, Michael," I said.

"This is my cave," he informed me.

"I can see that. It's a real nice cave."

Michael suddenly developed a keen interest in picking the skin off his knuckle.

"He needs to clean it up," Paloma grumbled, but not like she expected any action.

"What's with the powder?" I asked.

"It's fog," Michael said to his knuckle. "Makes you invisible."

"That's good," I said. "But just in case they get through, you zap them, right?"