The Last King of Texas (Tres Navarre #3)(9)

"Gosh, thanks."

"And what I said about the sheriffs department — just because Ozzie's a mutual friend, don't get any bright ideas."

"You know I'll ask him."

"Let me pretend, honey. For my pride, all right?"

"Anything else?"

Erainya picked up the private school brochures again. She shuffled through them, contemplating each, then carefully dealt out three in front of me. "If you were choosing between those, which would you pick?"

I frowned at the brochures. Maroon, green, blue. All very slick. All sported pictures of venerable school facades and happy honors students, grinning and hugging their textbooks like old friends.

I looked up at Erainya. "I know nothing about schools."

"You know Jem?"

"I have that pleasure."

"All right, then. I'm asking you."

I picked up the brochures reluctantly. A weird memory came to me from thirteen years ago, when I'd looked through brochures for graduate schools. The forms, the spiel, the tuitions. These were about the same. "Eighty-five hundred a year? "

Erainya nodded. "Cheap."

"For New York, maybe."

"I want the best," Erainya insisted. "I'm not asking you about the finances, honey. I'm asking you about those three choices."

Hesitantly, I held up the green brochure. "This one. I've heard it's a nice place. Small. Got an arts program. It isn't Catholic."

"I thought you were Catholic."

"I rest my case."

Erainya took back the brochure. "I'll get Jem a visiting date. He'll want you to take him."

"Me?"

"You don't know Jem adores you, honey? You blind?"

"We need to work on the kid's taste."

"No argument." Erainya collected the brochures. "Now get out of here and rest. You got class tomorrow. And no poking around in George's case." "Suggestion noted."

Erainya shook her head sourly. She gazed at the gilded icon of Saint Sophia hanging on the wall next to her desk and muttered something, probably a Greek prayer to deliver the Manos clan from wicked, disrespectful employees. As I was going out, George Berton was fielding another call. He covered the receiver long enough to say, "See you tonight."

Kelly looked up from Jem's Tinkertoys. "I'll see you Thursday."  I agreed that he would and she would.

Then I ruffled Jem's hair and told him to keep at it with the perpetual motion engine. I anticipated needing one.

FIVE

By the time I got home the painkillers had started to wear off. The delayed shock of the morning's explosion was starting to do funny things to my brain. As I walked up the sidewalk of 90 Queen Anne, the backward-leaning facade of the old two-story craftsman looked even more precarious than usual. The purple bougainvillea around the awnings seemed fluid and sinister. When I got around the side of the building to the screen door of my in-law apartment, I had trouble making myself touch the latch.

Once inside, I settled onto a stool at the kitchen counter. Robert Johnson leaped up next to me and rubbed against my forearm. I ignored him. I was too busy trying to convince myself that the dots on the linoleum floor were not accelerating.

I pulled down the wall-mounted ironing board and picked up the phone, which is installed in the alcove behind for reasons known only to God and Southwestern Bell.

There was a message from my mom, wondering if I was going to make it for dinner. Another message from Maia Lee in San Francisco, asking if I was okay. Maia apologized for being out of town when I'd called her Sunday.

My finger hovered over the ERASE button for a good five seconds. I punched it.

I called Deputy Ozzie Gerson's cell phone number and found him working patrol on the far South Side. When I mentioned the Brandon murder he grumbled that he'd try to stop by.

Then I went back to the kitchen counter, snapped the rubber band on Kelly Arguello's files, and started reading.

Professor Aaron Brandon. Born San Antonio, 1960, graduated Churchill High in 1977. BA. at Texas A & M, M.A. and Ph.D. at UT Austin. First full-time teaching job: a year here in San Antonio, non-tenure track at Our Lady of the Lake University, 1992-93. Contract not renewed for reasons unspecified. After that, six glamorous years at UT Permian Basin, known among the region's academics as UT "Permanent Basement." Brandon had returned home to San Antonio last Christmas to accept the emergency opening at UTSA. He had been killed three weeks before his thirty-ninth birthday. He had no police record of any kind. His wife's name was Ines, age twenty-four, maiden name Garcia, born in Del Rio, also no police record. They had a five-year-old boy named Michael — older than Jem by two months.

The curriculum vitae Aaron Brandon had submitted to UTSA looked mediocre — a minimum of articles, published in lesser-known journals, a course load that was ninety percent freshman English and ten percent medieval, references that were no more than confirmations of his past employment status. The only violent edge in Brandon's life seemed to be the works he studied. He had an affinity for the more disturbing texts — Crucifixion plays, Crusade accounts of the Jewish massacres, some bloodier stories from Chaucer and Marie de France. The theses he'd written looked adequate if not brilliant. It made me feel just dandy to have been offered the same job as he.