Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

safe. To look out for her.”
    I put a hand on his shoulder. “Well, that makes two of us. But I think this will be all right. She’s having a good time with it. If it were Charlotte in there and I was sulking like this, I wouldn’t hear the end of it. Now come on, let’s go back in.”
    He puts his glass in the sink and follows me.
    “All done,” Gina calls to us, sashaying up the stairs holding the sheet at the back. In the living room the photographer is packing up her things. Carter puts on a smile and goes to her assistance. While they chat, I check my watch and survey the mess. I should get going, but I want to say hello to Gina first.
    I’m going through her stack of schoolbooks when she returns wearing a knit dress that clings tight to her belly, both her hands on her hips for support. Her hair is clipped back and she makes a show of wiping sweat from her dry brow. “You’re still here,” she says. “I was afraid you were going to disappear on us.”
    “I was just in the neighborhood and wanted to stop in and say hi. Make sure you guys aren’t missing the old garage apartment and want to move back.”
    “Tempting,” she says. “In my condition, stairs aren’t a girl’s best friend.”
    Carter and the photographer start carrying gear out to her car. Gina eases herself into an empty space on the couch, then starts moving books over so I can sit, too. The one on top is Dante’s Inferno , the Robert Pinsky translation. It’s dog-eared and sticky-noted and creased down the spine. Gina is nothing if not a good student.
    “Let me do that.” I move the stack for her. “You like the Dante?”
    “I’m only halfway through.”
    “If that’s halfway, I don’t think the book is going to survive the experience.”
    “You’ve read it?”
    “Don’t sound so surprised,” I say. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t. But I knew someone once . . .” My voice trails off. “Let’s just say, I have a special relationship with that thing.”
    As I speak, the stack I’ve just moved topples of its own accord.
    I lean over to straighten the books. One of them is an old paperback with a Norman knight on the cover. The nasal piece on his helmet juts out and he presses a curved horn to his lips. “Well, well. This looks like my kind of reading.”
    She rolls her eyes. “ The Song of Roland . Don’t get me started. That was the first one we had to read. If that’s chivalry, then you can have it. That book infuriates me.”
    “Really.” I flip through the pages, many of which are underscored. I’m familiar with the story, of course, though I can’t recall having actually read the poem. In fact, before now I’m not sure I realized it was a poem, with all the stanzas and verses. “He’s supposed to blow the horn to signal the ambush, is that it?”
    “He’s supposed to blow it if they need help. Only Roland’s too proud for that, so he waits and waits until everybody’s basically dead. Does that sound like heroism to you?”
    “Actually, it kind of does.”
    She snatches the book in mock outrage. “It’s not bravery, though. It’s stupidity.”
    “Don’t let your professor hear you. That book’s a classic.”
    “It’s all right,” she says. “We’re allowed not to like them. It’s even encouraged.”
    I could sit and argue about books I haven’t read for hours. I want to stick up for my namesake, for the whole tradition of chivalry, for the stupid pride that would lead a man not to give his enemies the satisfaction of blowing the horn. At the back of my mind, some history stirs, something I saw on television or maybe read years ago in college.
    “Sir Francis Drake,” I tell her, “when he was sailing into some Spanish port or other, and all their cannon started firing at his ship—or maybe it’s Walter Raleigh I’m thinking of. Anyway, when the Spanish artillery opened up, instead of shooting back, he got his trumpeters on deck and had them blow a note.”
    “What?”
    “That was