The Widower's Two-Step

I ate some cheeseburger. I waited.

"They told her Les was already missing. For seven years. Seems a former girlfriend had the same problem with him disappearing, reported Les and forgot to let the police know when he'd come home. The Bureau never bothered to follow up, take him off the rolls. Can you believe that?"

"It's been known to happen. MPB is flooded with domestics that are resolved ninety percent of the time before they're even assigned."

"Yeah, well. This time Allison isn't in any hurry. Les joked from time to time about ru

Allison figures maybe he finally did it and she's not crying any tears."

"We're not talking just Missing Persons this time, Milo. Homicide is going to want to talk to Les. You've got to tell them."

Milo pulled on the back of his neck. "It's more complicated than that, Navarre. It's one thing for our clients to think Les is eccentric—that he slips out of pocket for a few days now and then. That his wife reports him gone after a fight or whatever. People can give him some slack there because he's Les SaintPierre. But the minute somebody hears a rumour he's honesttoGod missing—that I'm looking for him, that it's just Milo holding down the fort—"

He raised his hands off the table. "I need to find Les. Quickly and quietly. And I don't have time to shop around for help."

"You know how to flatter a guy."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a money roll only Milo could've carried without his pants bulging obscenely—fiftydollar bills wrapped as thick as a Coke can.

"Your boss doesn't like the case, we can cut out the middle man."

"No," I said. "I don't have my own license. At this point it looks like I might never."

"That's just as well."

"I told you, I'm thinking about getting out of this line of work."

Milo put the cylinder of money sideways on the table and rolled it in my direction.

"You're going to look into Kearnes' murder anyway, Navarre. You couldn't put down something that happened on your watch—I know you better than that. Why not let me pay you?"

Maybe I felt like I owed him. Or maybe I was thinking about how long I'd known him, off and on since high school, always reco

Or maybe I'm kidding myself. Maybe what swayed me more was that roll of money—the prospect of paying my rent on time for once and not having to borrow gro

cery money from my mother.

I heard myself saying, "What exactly do you want me to do?"

7

The Les SaintPierre Talent Agency was a gray and maroon Victorian on West Ashby, across the street from the Koehler Museum.

Even without a sign in front you could tell the old residence had been converted for business. The powercolour combination, the uniform blinds on the windows, the wellkept but totally impersonal landscaping, the Texas flag windsock hanging on the empty front porch—it all screamed "office building."

There were two cars already parked at the bottom of the hill in front. One was a tan Volvo wagon. When I met Milo on the sidewalk he was staring at the other— a glistening black pickup truck that looked like it had been converted at great expense from a semi rig. It had wheels just shy of monster size, tinted windows with security alarm decals on the corners, orange pin striping, mud flaps with silver silhouettes of Barbie doll women on them. The cab looked like it could sleep four comfortably.

Milo said, "This isn't my day."

Before I could ask what he meant, he turned and lumbered up the steps.

Inside, the Victorian was all hardwood floors and creamcolored walls. A staircase led up from the main foyer. The double doorway on the right opened into a reception area with a couple of wicker chairs, a mahogany desk, a fireplace, and a Turkish rug. A very big Anglo man in his early fifties was sitting on the edge of the desk, talking with Gladys the receptionist.

When I say very big and I'm standing next to Milo I have to correct myself. This guy wasn't like Milo, but he was big by any other definition. Tall and barrelchested. Thick neck. Powerful hands. He had the build of a derrick worker.

Despite the heat he wore a denim jacket over his white shirt, new blue jeans, black Justin boots. He was twirling a Stetson on one finger while he talked.

When he saw Milo, his smile hardened.

"Hola, Mario."

Milo walked placidly to the desk and picked up a stack of mail. He didn't look at his visitor. "Fuck you, Sheckly. You know my name."

"Hey now—" Sheckly spoke with the twangy, hard edged accent of a GermanTexan, someone who'd grown up in the hill country around Fredericksburg, where many of the families still spoke a brand of cowboy Deutsch. "Play nice with me, son. I just dropped by to see how things were coming along. Have to make sure you're doing right by my girl. You remind Les about that contract yet?"

Milo kept flipping through his mail. "Les is still in Nashville. I'll tell him you dropped by.

The contract's right next to the toilet where he left it."

Sheckly's laugh was a rich chuckle. He kept twirling the Stetson. "Come on now, son.

You want to dispute our agreement, you've got to put me in touch with the boss man.

Otherwise I'm expecting Miranda in the Split Rail studio come November first and I'll tell you what else—you send Century that demo and I'll send them a copy of my contract, see if they want to sink their money into a girl who's go

Milo opened another letter. "You know where the door is."

Sheckly got up from the desk slowly, told the receptionist, "You think about it," then started walking out.

In front of me he stopped and offered to shake. "Tilden Sheckly. Most people call me Sheck."

Up close, it looked like all the u

I told him my name.

"I know who you are," he said. "I knew your father."

"Lots of people knew my father."

Sheck gri

Most of them didn't contribute as much as I did."

Then he put on the Stetson and said goodbye.

When he was gone Milo turned to Gladys. "What did he mean, 'think about it'?"

Gladys said Sheck had offered her a secretarial job with a fifty percent pay raise. She said she'd turned him down. She sounded a little wistful about it.

Milo stared at the space on the desk where Sheck had been sitting. He looked like he was contemplating putting his fist through the mahogany. "You do those calls yet?"

Gladys shook her head. She launched into a long story about how some club owner in San Marcos had called and complained that Eli Watts and His Sunrisers had torn up the hotel room he'd rented for them and now he wanted the agency to pay the damages. Gladys had spent her entire morning trying to smooth things out.

I thought the desk was going to get it, but slowly Milo's meaty fists unclenched. He mumbled something under his breath, then led me down the hall and into his office.

Everything in the converted parlour had been custom made for Milo's comfort—two massive red leather chairs, a halfton oak desk with a twentyoneinch computer monitor and a candy bowl the size of a basketball, bookshelves that started as high as most bookshelves stopped and went all the way to the ceiling. The only thing small was Milo's rosewood Yamaha acoustic in the corner, the same guitar he used to bring on our drunken college road trips into the Sonoma wine country. There was still a crescentshaped dent near the sound hole where I'd thrown a beer can at Milo and missed.