'Late. I went right to bed.'

'I could have picked you up.'

'You mean if I'd called?'

'No, I meant—'

'My schedule's not too predictable these days.'

'I just didn't know when you were coming. That's what I meant.'

'I heard about you tearing up Brian. What started it?'

'The conversation got out of hand.'

'He won't file charges. His career's unraveling on him. He's one step from Fargo, North Dakota, already.'

I felt my palm squeeze involuntarily on the telephone receiver.

'Can you take a cab out to the house? We can drive back into town together,' I said.

'I have a bunch of incoming calls,' she said.

'I see.'

'Some people in my office weren't comfortable with me coming back here.'

'Yeah… I understand. I appreciate your doing it.'

I felt foolish and stupid, a mendicant holding a telephone to his ear as though it were a black tumor.

'When do I testify?' she asked.

'Probably this afternoon. Mary Beth, is it the career? Or am I just the wrong man for you?'

'I don't know how to say it, Billy Bob.'

The house seemed to fill with the sounds of wind and silence.

'You always think of yourself as an extension of your past,' she said. 'So every new day of your life you're condemned to revisiting what you can't change.'

'I'll be at the office directly if you have a chance to drop by,' I said.

After I replaced the receiver I walked to the library window and looked at the darkness over the hills. The pages of my great-grandfather's journal fluttered whitely in the rush of wind through the screen. The silence in my head was so great I thought I heard the tinkling of L.Q. Navarro's roweled spurs.

An hour later Mary Beth walked from the hotel to my office. She wore a pink suit and white blouse with a purple broach and looked absolutely beautiful. But if I had expected to mend my relationship with her at that moment, the prospect went out the window when Temple Carrol came through the door thirty seconds later.

The three of us were standing in a circle, like people who had met inconveniently at a cocktail party.

'Y'all know each other, of course,' I said.

'Sure, the lady who pops in and out of uniform,' Temple said.

'Excuse me?' Mary Beth said.

'Billy Bob kicked the ass of a federal agent. Has he told you about it?' Temple asked.

'No. Why don't you?' Mary Beth said.

Tags: James Lee Burke Billy Bob Holland Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net