Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

repeated the question and then added, “Did you see his house? Spotless; he wouldn’t stay in a place like this unless there was a reason.”
    He nudged the handle of his mug with a thick thumbnail. “Maybe he didn’t want to make a mess for Phyllis to have to clean up.”
    I sat there quietly for a moment. “Hey, Lucian?”
    “What?”
    “That story you told me in the Holman driveway about the woman you used to come over here and see on Sundays? That was Phyllis, wasn’t it?”
    “By God, I warned her . . .” He turned and looked at me again. “I told her that you were a force to be reckoned with and that if she didn’t want the answers, she better not have you ask the questions.”
    “You’ve got a lot of women in your past.”
    Absentmindedly, he lifted his mug and then slammed it down. “Yeah, and I’m pretty damned proud of it.”
    “Were you driving when she was hurt?”
    He pivoted on his stool to look at me, and his glare was like a blast furnace. “No, I wasn’t, and this doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the case.”
    I didn’t look at him but stared straight ahead and spoke in a low voice. “Maybe you better tell me the story, and I’ll decide if it does or not.”
    “You go to hell.”
    “It’ll be a matter of public record, but I’ll be wasting more time looking it up.”
    “Wasting time is right . . .”
    I didn’t move, and if I’d had more coffee I wouldn’t have drunk it. I did one of the things I do best; ask a question and then wait for the answer—something he’d taught me quite a few years ago.
    Our waitress passed through again, once more leaving our mugs like ships in the night. After a while he turned back and thumbed his coffee cup some more. He took a deep breath, and I could feel the emotion leave him. “But I was in the car.”
    I continued to wait and then listened.
    “We was headed down Route 59 for the rodeo in Cheyenne. Hell, I don’t know, she wanted to see men fall off horses or some damn thing. We’d been drinking. This is back before she was married to Gerald. Hell, they didn’t even know one another . . . You remember how it was, they used to hand you mixed drinks out of the drive-through in every bar in Wyoming—to-go cups.”
    “I remember.”
    He sighed. “She was in a hurry. Like a damn fool, I bet her a hundred-dollar bill that we wouldn’t make it and let me tell you, she put her foot into that Eldorado and we damn well flew.” His jaw moved up and down, chewing on the words he said next. “Wasn’t even another car involved. We came around one of those big, sweeping turns and the thing just decided it wanted to go to Nebraska . . . She didn’t have on her belt and flew out on the first roll.”
    He didn’t say anything more and just sat there.
    “You’re not doing this for him; you’re doing it for her.”
    He stared into the empty mug.
    I let the dust settle and patted the report. “No signs of drugs, alcohol—”
    “He didn’t drink.”
    “At all?”
    “Nope.”
    I dwelled on Phyllis Holman. “What did she say about him?” I leaned in closer. “Change in sleeping habits, lack of appetite, sex—disinterest in the job?”
    He shrugged. “You’ll have to ask her that.”
    “No, you will. You know her, and she’s more likely to open up to you.”
    The waitress passed us again and both of our mugs levitated from the surface like some magic act and hovered there before slowly returning, in tandem, to the counter.
    “I don’t think I want that.”
    I was getting a little annoyed. “Then what do you want?”
    He flipped his coat back again, and I thought he was going to rub his back some more, but instead, he quickly drew his service .38 from its holster, extended his arm, took careful aim at the coffee urn, and fired.
    The sound in the enclosed space of the café/bar was like a falling tree, and the thing bucked against the bar-back like a wounded felon before spouting a single jet of coffee out onto the