A Man for All Seasons Read Online Free PDF Page A

course it could,” Simon said with a grin. “Youknow how dirty politics is. But I don’t think sane people commit murder to cause a scandal.”
    â€œThere are a lot of insane people running loose in the world,” Brannon reminded him amusedly.
    Simon shifted, moving the prosthesis he wore in place of his left arm onto the desk while he lifted his coffee cup with the right. He and Brannon were distantly related, both with ties in Jacobsville. Simon’s four brothers lived there. Brannon had grown up there, and he still had a ranch in Jacobsville where his sister, Gretchen, had lived until her marriage to the ruling Sheikh of Qawi in the Middle East. She and the sheikh had a son now, and they were becoming well-known in international circles.
    â€œHave you heard from your sister, Gretchen, lately?”
    Brannon nodded. “She phones me every month to make sure I’m eating properly. She doesn’t think much of my cooking,” he added with a fond smile at the thought of his baby sister.
    â€œDoes she miss Texas?” Simon asked.
    â€œNot visibly. She’s too crazy about her little boy and Philippe,” he murmured, naming her husband. “I have to admit, he’s unique.”
    â€œWhy did you leave the FBI?” Simon asked abruptly, something that had bothered him lately.
    â€œI got tired of living out of a suitcase,” Brannon said evasively. “Two years was enough.”
    â€œI never could understand why you left the Rangers to begin with,” Simon replied, sipping black coffee. “You had seniority, you were in line for promotion. You tossed all that to go haring off to Washington. And then you only stayed there for two years.”
    Brannon averted his eyes. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
    â€œAnd it didn’t have anything to do with the Jennings murder trial or Josette Langley?”
    Brannon’s jaw clenched so hard that his teeth ached. “Nothing.”
    â€œYou work out of San Antonio, and she works here in Austin.” Simon persisted. “Under ordinary circumstances, you won’t have to see her, if you don’t want to. At least, not after she investigates this murder for me.”
    The odd wording of the remark went right by him. “I’ll do my job, regardless of the people I have to do it with,” Brannon said finally, and his pale eyes dared his cousin to pursue the conversation.
    â€œOkay, I give up. But you’d better know that I’m sending Josette to San Antonio tomorrow.”
    Brannon’s eyes glittered. “What?”
    â€œShe’s the only freelance investigator I have who’scognizant of all the facts. Wayne Correctional Institute is near there, where Jennings was located before he managed to get released…”
    â€œShe was involved in the case!” Brannon burst out, rising to his feet. “Two years ago, she did her best to get Bib arrested for old Garner’s murder!”
    â€œSit down.” Simon stared at him with steady, cold silver eyes.
    Brannon sat, but angrily.
    â€œThere are other people who maintain to this day that Jennings was nothing more than the fall guy in that murder,” Simon told Brannon. He held up a hand when Brannon started to speak. “Jennings and Josette had been invited to a party on Garner Lake with Bib Webb and Silvia and Henry Garner the night Garner died. Jennings was a nobody, but he had ties to the local San Antonio mob headed by Jake Marsh, and he’d threatened Garner over money. Recreational drugs were ingested at the party, the punch was spiked—even Bib admitted that, and I know Webb’s your friend. It might have passed off as a simple drowning except for Josette’s accusations and the knot on Garner’s head that was first thought to have occurred when he fell. Josette was the one who insisted that Garner hadn’t been drinking and didn’t accidentally fall off the