Rick Riordan - The widower’s two step

"Can you do it?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Sure. I can do anything. But it's going to cost you."

"How much?"

"How about dinner?"

I plinked the rim of my beer bottle. "Kelly, your uncle owns a very large collection of guns."

"What-I can't ask you to dinner?"

"Sure. I just can't accept."

She rolled her eyes. "That's such bullshit, Tres."

I stayed quiet and drank my beer. Kelly stuffed the personnel files back into the folder and returned to typing. Every once in a while the fragrance of clipped honeysuckle would drift across the porch, a strange smell for midOctober.

I pulled five of Milo's bills from my backpack and handed them to Kelly. "You run into any unusual expenses, let me know." "Sure."

She dug back into the folder and pulled out Les Saint Pierre's photograph. "Yuck."

She tried to shape her expression like Les'. She couldn't quite get the eyebrows right.

Across the street a businessman stumbled out his front door and spilled coffee on his tie. He lifted both arms in a Dracula pose and swore, then walked more carefully toward his BMW. His duplex looked like it had been built in the last twelve hours-all white aluminium siding and the lawn still made up of little green squares that hadn't grown together. The house next to his was an old red shack with a store on the side that sold ceramics and crystals. Austin.

"What was it like growing up without your mother?" I asked.

Kelly lifted one eyebrow, then looked at me without turning her head. "What makes you ask that?"

"No reason. Just curious."

She stuck out her lower lip so she could blow away the strand of grapecoloured hair that was hanging in her face. "I don't think about it much, Tres. It's not like I spent my childhood thinking I was different or anything. Dad was always around? five or six uncles in the house. Things were just the way they were."

I swirled the last ounce of beer in my bottle. "You remember her at all?"

Kelly's fingers flattened on the keyboard. She stared at her doorway and, momentarily, looked older than she was. "You know the problem with that, Tres? Your relatives are always telling you things. They remind you of things you did, the way your mom was.

You mix that with the old photos and pretty soon you've convinced yourself you have these memories. Then if you want to stay sane you bury them."

"Why?"

" Because it's not enough. You grow up with men, you have to learn to deal with men.

The fact you don't have a mom-" She hesitated, her eyes still searching for some thing in the doorway. "With a mom, I guess you get some intuition, some understanding and talking. With a bunch of guys in the house, little girl has to take a different tack. Learn sneaky ways to get them to do what you want. Good training for working in law firms, actually. Or working for you."

"Thanks a lot."

Kelly smiled. She looked through the other documents in my packet, found little that would help her, then resealed the manila envelope. She closed the laptop.

"I'll call you as soon as I get something," she told me. "You're heading back to S.A.?"

I nodded. "You want me to tell your uncle anything?"

Kelly stood up so quickly the porch swing started moving cockeyed. She opened the screen door. "Sure. Tell him I'm expecting a dinner out of you."

"You want to get me killed."

She smiled like I'd guessed the exact thing she had in mind, then shut the door behind her and left me alone on the porch, the swing still zigzagging around.

There are two staterun rest stops between Austin and San Antonio, leftovers from simpler times before developers plopped convenience stores and outlet malls at hundredyard intervals all the way down the highway.

I resisted the urge to pull into the first, even though Kelly Arguello's Shiner Bock was working its way through my system, but by the time I'd passed through New Braunfels my bladder was twisting itself into funny little balloon animals. I decided to exit at the second rest stop.

I made such haste parking the VW and shuffling up the steps toward the john that I didn't take much notice of the pickup and horse trailer I'd parked behind.

Nor did I take much notice of the guy next to me at the urinal. He smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and the checkered shirt and the profile of his face looked familiar, but there is no space quite so inviolable as the space between two men at the pee trough.

I didn't look at him until we'd both suited up and were washing our hands.

"Brent, right?"

He clamped his hands on the paper towel a few times, frowning at me. He hadn't changed clothes since yesterday, nor shaved. The bags under his eyes were puffy, like the extra tequila from last night's gig had drained into them.

"Tres Navarre," I said. "We met last night at the Cactus, sort of."

Brent threw away his towel. "Cam Compton's forehead." "Right."

"I remember."

Brent looked past me, out the entrance of the john. I was standing between him and the exit, which made it difficult for Brent to get around me. He obviously wanted to.

Two men having a conversation in the bathroom was only slightly less awkward than acknowledging each other at the urinal. Maybe I should compensate by offering him some Red Man. Mention the playoffs. Bubba etiquette.

"You with Miranda?" I asked.

He looked around, uncomfortably. "No. Just the equipment." "Ah."

He shuffled a little more. I took mercy and stepped aside so we could both walk out at the same time.

The rest stop was doing a pretty good business for a weekday. Down on one end of the grassy oval island the picnic benches were overflowing with a huge Latino family.

Fat men in tank tops drank beer while the women and children streamed back and forth between the tables and their battered station wagons, bringing ice chests and boxes of potato chips and marshmallows. A little dog was doing circles around the kids' legs. The far curb of the turnout lane was lined with semis, the cabs dark and the drivers inside sleeping or shaving or eating, staring at the horizon and thinking whatever it is truckers think.

A local Baptist church had set up an outreach table at the bottom of the bathroom steps. Several perky blondhaired women offered DUI fliers and free pocket Bibles and donuts and coffee. A green poster board sign announcing CHRIST LOVES TRAVELERS, TOO flapped in the humid wind.

Brent Daniels wasn't thrilled when he realized we had parked next to each other-my VW right behind his pickup and trailer.

Brent's rig was a white Ford with brown stripes. The windows were tinted almost pure silver, making it impossible to see inside the cab. The trailer was a onehorse job, brown metal, with the words ROCKING U RANCH thinly painted over in a beigebrown that didn't match the rest of the metal.

"Equipment in a horse trailer," I said. "Inventive."

Brent nodded. "Cheaper than a van. Willis got a good deal on it."

We stood there. I wasn't quite sure why Brent was staying to talk. Then I realized that for some reason he wanted me to leave first.

When you've got an advantage, I say press it.

"I was talking to Miranda about your music this morning. She said you wrote most of the songs. Said you were real supportive about her recording them."

Brent hooked his fingers on the door handle of the Ford and hung them there. His expression was hard to read, mostly gruff apathy with maybe a little dry amusement around the edges. With the facial stubble a day thicker I could see that some of the whiskers were coming up white, like his dad's.

"Supportive," he repeated. "That a fact?"

"She seems to think so. You ever try to record on your own? Make it in Nashville?

You've got some nice songs."

That brought the amusement a little closer to the surface. A tic started going in Brent's left eye, like he was trying to smile but was having a shortcircuit problem.