The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(67)

On the kitchen counter, my aging Sears boom box was blaring out Son Becky's blues band, live from a San Antonio roadhouse in 1937.

I sized up DeLeon's outfit. "You look—"

"Different," she interrupted. "That's the point. Anybody asks who doesn't need to know otherwise, I'm your girlfriend."

"My girlfriend."

"That's right."

I started to laugh.

Her eyes flashed me a warning. "What?" she demanded.

"Sorry," I said. "You just don't seem like the girlfriend type."

"Oh really."

She came over and sank next to me on the floor. Robert Johnson evaporated from my shoulders. DeLeon calmly grabbed my neck with hard, warm fingers and pulled me forward. I figured my neck was going to snap like a twig.

It was a rough kiss, meant to cut off circulation rather than show affection. Her face smelled like apricot scrub. The force of her mouth left me seeing black spots, left my lips doing funny things for several seconds after she pulled away.

"What's the problem?" she asked. Her face was completely dispassionate, freezer steel.

I tried to say, "Wow." What came out instead was a muted honk.

"Sex crimes division, Navarre. Two years. I learned to play a lot of roles. A woman with her own identity, not belonging to anybody — people remember her. But somebody's girlfriend? Girlfriends are invisible."

"Invisible. Sure. Just don't ask me to stand up for the next ten minutes."

She tried to backhand me with her fist. I caught it.

"I'm your girlfriend," she repeated.

"Far be it from me to mess up a woman's cover."

I pushed her fist away.

On the boom box, Son Becky started pounding out eighth notes on his barrelhouse piano with enough gusto to put Jerry Lee Lewis to shame. "Black Heart Blues."

DeLeon looked down at my paperwork. "What are you working on?"

My body kept circulating blood around at unnatural speeds. Parts of me were just now feeling the punch of DeLeon's kiss, notifying my brain that she was still sitting there, shoulder to shoulder with me, and what the hell was I going to do about it? With effort, I focused on the stack of essays. "Grading."

Her lips pursed in a controlled smile.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing. You just don't seem like the grading type."

I showed her a hand gesture.

She picked up the paper I was halfway through, flipped back to the title page. She raised her eyebrows at me. ' 'The Symbolism of the Boiling Pot in Three Medieval Plays?"

"Aaron Brandon had a taste for the violent. I suppose it got the better of him in the end."

She pressed her mouth into an M. "I didn't tell you — I'm sorry about George. Kelsey caught the Hector Mara murder from the night squad this morning."

"That makes me feel tons better."

"Don't underestimate him, Navarre. Kelsey's dedicated."

I let it pass. "The shooting changed your mind about coming with us?"

"My mind hasn't changed. It's still a shitty idea."

"Then why?"

She got up from the floor, offered me a hand, then pulled me into standing position. "Besides the fact it beats you and Ralph Arguello on the loose by yourselves? Maybe if I had a few more months, I wouldn't do it. I'd keep picking away. But since I have exactly three days before they throw me to the cold-case squad, I feel the need to get inventive."

"Just let me get my baseball bat."

I capped my pen, threw it on the essays, then went to get my car keys and wallet off the kitchen counter. Son Becky's "Black Heart Blues" segued into "Midnight Trouble."

DeLeon walked over to the tai chi swords on the wall, dismissed them, then checked out the books on my shelf. She pulled a title — Marquez's Cien Anos de Soledad. Colombian first edition. DeLeon's eyes fixed on the bookplate on the inside cover — Ralph Arguello's inscription.

"Are you going to make me ask you again?" I asked.

She looked up at me, caught my meaning, then looked back at the book, flipping a few pages. "There's nothing to tell."

"How serious was it?"

"Ralph and I went out together. Once."

I stared at her.

"Go ahead and laugh. I'd never heard of him before. I ran his name and license plate through TCIC, came up with nothing. I was stupid. I didn't look any further."

"You wouldn't have had to look far — pawnshop detail, theft, vice."

If I hadn't spent some time around her the last few days, I probably wouldn't have noticed the hesitation.

"Ralph lied to me," she said. "I bought it. When I found out, I wanted to kill him. End of story."

I still couldn't get an image of DeLeon and Ralph together. I wasn't sure I wanted to.

DeLeon flipped the Marquez novel shut. "I told you that because now that we're about to see him it's less awkward to tell you than not."

"Of course."

"Now can we drop it?"

I held up my house key and locked my lips with it.

DeLeon put the book back on the shelf. She looked over at the futon, where Robert Johnson was kneading himself a sleeping spot. "My mother was a cop for twenty-seven years — one of the first women in the department to do something besides youth services. You know that? She expected me to follow in her footsteps, wanted me to be the first daughter to inherit her mother's shield number."