Read Online The Last King of Texas - Rick Riordan by Rick Riordan - Free Book Online Page A

rainstorm, houses perched atop
forty-five-degree yards on either side, the cars on the curb caked
with dried flood lines of oak leaves and pecan pollen.
    I parked on the street behind a red Fiat and walked
up the sidewalk, over a Big Wheel, through a scatter of street chalk.
    There was a brass mezuzah on the doorjamb.
    I was just raising my hand to knock when the door
swung open and a large Anglo man collided with me. He was maybe two
hundred pounds, my height, loud yellow shirt, and a square face.
    He muttered, "Damn, fricking—" then
pushed past in a wake of cheap sports cologne.
    I watched him lumber down the unlighted walk. The
back of his retreating head looked like gorilla-mask fur, greased and
combed. He skidded on a piece of pink street chalk, cursed, kicked
the Big Wheel, then kept trudging down the steps toward the Fiat.
    Glass shattered somewhere inside the house. A woman
yelled angrily. I took that as an invitation.
    The living room was stark white — carpet, walls,
sofa, molding. Against the right wall was the limestone fireplace I'd
seen in Detective DeLeon's crime-scene photo. The freshly scrubbed
bricks still retained the craters of two .45 rounds that had slowed
down not at all traveling through Aaron Brandon's body. Open moving
boxes clustered next to the sofa. Through an archway on the left, in
the dining room, glass shards of a newly broken window dangled from
the frame. At the far end of the sofa, a woman stood with her back to
me.
    She was leaning over an oak end table forested with
framed family photos, her hands clamped tightly on the table corners
as if she were contemplating a war map. She was a light-skinned
Latina, tall and slender, her hair shoulder length and silky
red-brown, the color of roasted peppers. She wore a beige blouse and
black jeans. If she'd been any more earth-toned she could've laid
down in a South Texas oil field and disappeared.
    I rapped on the doorjamb.
    "Forget something, Del?" Her voice was
small and cold. "You want my checkbook, too, you fucking
bastard?"
    I cleared my throat. "Wrong bastard."
    She whirled to face me.
    Her mouth was wide and pretty, her nose slightly
crooked, her eyes so large and brown the color seemed to tint her
corneas like a cinnamon overdose. It was the kind of face that
strikes you as beautiful because of a successful combination of
flaws.
    "Who—" She stopped herself, shook her
head vehemently. "No. I don't care who you are. What the hell
are you doing in my home?"
    I wasn't technically inside, but I remedied that by
stepping over the threshold. "Sorry to disturb you, Mrs.
Brandon." I plucked an Erainya Manos Agency card from my front
pocket, held it up. It was one of the granite-gray executive cards.
Somber. Professional. I tried to make my expression match the card.
"I came by to ask you some questions. Your brother-in-law Del
ran over me on his way out, then I heard the window break. I got
concerned."
    She made a little feral noise. "Another goddamn
cop. You people think you've been here so often you can just walk in
my front door now?"
    She picked up the nearest potential projectile — a
lead-framed photo. "Vete ya! No more questions. No more cops."
    The granite-gray executive approach didn't seem to be
winning me many points. I tried for a smile.
    "There's no need to break things," I
assured her. "Actually I'm not—"
    The photo banged into the wall two feet to my left.
Glass cracked when it hit the floor. Little pieces spiraled into the
air.
    Mrs. Brandon picked up another piece of ammunition.
She motioned toward the front door with the new frame.
    "You don't want to throw that," I told her.
    In fact, she did. I had to lurch forward and catch
her wrist before she could. She tried to hit me with her free hand. I
intercepted that too.
    We stood in that dance position for a few heartbeats,
Ines Brandon glaring up at me.
    Her breath smelled faintly of red wine. Close up, the
little crook in her nose looked like an old break, probably