The Widower's Two-Step (Tres Navarre #2)(86)

During the conversation I sipped my iced tea and subtly moved Garrett's gift off the table, then into my backpack. Out of sight, etc.

When the food came Danny sat with us for a while. We ate Texicali burgers heavy with salsa and Monterey Jack and watched the afternoon traffic speed down South Oltorf.

Dickhead the parrot sat on Garrett's shoulder, holding a tortilla chip in his claw and eating it piece by piece. He hadn't yet learned to dip it in salsa. That would probably take another month.

After a while Garrett said he had to get back to work and Danny said he had to get back to the kitchen. A few raindrops started splattering the patio.

"Nice meeting you," Miranda told Garrett.

Garrett wheeled his chair sideways and the parrot shot its wings out, correcting its balance. "Yeah. And hey, little bro—"

"Say it and die," I warned.

Garrett grinned. "Nice meeting you, too, Miranda."

When we were alone I started shredding the wax paper from the burger basket.

Miranda put her boot lightly on top of mine.

Yes, I was wearing the new boots. Just happened to be in front of the closet.

"Hard to like them sometimes," Miranda said.

"What?"

"Older brothers. I wish I'd known—" She stopped herself, probably remembering my injunction to Garrett. "Here you drove all the way to Austin to pick me up, spent half your day."

"I wanted to."

She took my hand and squeezed it. "The taping went really well today. I owe that to you."

"I don't see how."

She kept a hold on my hand. Her eyes were bright. "I missed you last night, Mr.

Navarre. You know how long it's been since I missed somebody that much? Can't help but change my singing."

I stared out at the traffic on Oltorf. "Has Les contacted you, Miranda?"

Her grip on my hand loosened just slightly. She had trouble maintaining her smile.

"Why would you think that?"

"He hasn't then?"

"Of course not."

"If you had to get away for a few days," I said, "if you had to go somewhere safe that not too many people knew about, could you do it?"

She started to laugh, to put the idea away, but something in my expression made her stop. "I don't know. There's the show tonight, then tomorrow is free, but then the tape audition on Friday—you don't seriously think—"

"I don't know," I said. "Probably it's nothing. But let's say you had to choose between keeping your schedule and being sure you stayed safe."

"Then I'd keep my schedule and take you along."

I looked down at the table.

I turned over the bill and discovered that Danny Young had comped the meal. He'd written "Nothing" in black marker across the green paper. The Zen waiter.

Miranda turned my palm up so hers was on top.

Raindrops starting pingpinging more steadily, a slow threequarter time against the metal umbrella.

"Anyplace else you need to go in Austin?" she asked. "As long as I got you up here?"

I watched the rain.

I thought about Kelly Arguello, who would probably have some more paperwork for me. She might be sitting on her porch swing in Clarksville right now, clacking away on her portable computer and watching the raindrops pelt the neighbour’s yard appliances.

"Nothing that can't wait," I decided.

45

Two hours later we were back in San Antonio, in Erainya's neighbourhood. I had promised Jem I'd come by Halloween evening, but it only took Jem a couple of blocks worth of trickortreating to decide that Miranda was the one he really wanted to play with.

She raced him up each sidewalk. She laughed at his knockknock jokes. She showed the most appreciation for his costume. Jem was tickled to death when Miranda offered to be his Miss Muffett.

"She's good with kids," Erainya told me.

Erainya and I were sitting on the hood of Erainya's Lincoln Continental, watching the action.

There was plenty of it in Terrell Hills that evening. The neighbourhood Anglo kids were travelling in twos or threes, dressed in their storebought princess and ninja outfits, their pumpkin flashlights switched on and their plastic jacko'lanterns stuffed with candy. The bubba esque parents strolled a few feet behind, drinking their Lone Stars, talking on the porches, some of the dads with little portable TVs to keep track of the college football games.

Then there were the kids imported from the South Side travelling in groups of ten or twenty, unloaded from their parents' old station wagons into the rich gente neighbourhoods to gather up what food they could. They dressed in old sheets and maybe some smeared face paint, sometimes a plastic dimestore mask. The bigger kids, fifteen or sixteen years old, did their best to cover their hairy arms and their faces.

They let their younger siblings do the asking. The parents always stayed well back on the sidewalk, and always said thank you. No Lone Stars. No portable TVs.

Then there were the oddball loners like Jem. He was skipping awkwardly along in his bulbous homemade spider costume, the black fur coming off on the boxwood hedges and the wire arms flailing and catching on the paper skeletons people had hung from their mesquite trees. By the third block he didn't have much costume left, but nobody seemed to mind. Especially not Jem.