McKettrick's Choice - Linda Lael Miller [98]
“I’m rich,” Holt answered, and felt his boot heels press harder into the floor.
“Well, then,” Beauregard said, still sporting that infuriating little smile, “perhaps I have time to talk after all.”
“Why don’t you cowboys join us?” one of the women trilled, gazing at Holt and Rafe like they were water on a dry trail. Her face was painted, and she looked as if she’d been rode hard and put up wet one too many times. Holt didn’t reply.
Lorelei’s image flickered briefly in his mind, bright as a candle flame on a dark night, and he squelched it.
Beauregard’s mouth tightened. He gripped the edge of the table, which was burdened with food and drink, served up on fine china plates and in crystal glasses, and tried once more to stand. This time, he made it, though just barely.
“Cora,” he said, wobbling a mite, “Maybeline—if you’ll excuse us.”
Cora and Maybeline looked pouty, and their cheeks flushed behind thick circles of rouge, giving them a tubercular aspect that Holt found unsettling. Beauregard drew back each of their chairs, in turn, and they grabbed up their beaded handbags and sashayed toward the door.
They way they looked at Holt made him feel as if he’d been gobbled up whole, and he was glad when they went on past.
“Sit down,” Beauregard said, with a grand gesture.
“We’ve laid the roast duck to waste, I fear, but I’ll have another bottle of wine brought in.”
“Looks to me like you’ve had enough of that already,” Rafe said.
Holt gave him a sidelong glance.
“Ah,” Beauregard replied easily, “but I have an almost boundless capacity.” As if to give the lie to his words, his knees gave out, and he sank into his cushioned seat. “Usually,” he added, with good-tempered chagrin.
Scowling, Rafe dragged back the chair Cora had occupied, turned it around and sat astraddle, his forearms resting across the back. Holt sat more circumspectly, in Maybeline’s place.
With an unsteady hand, Beauregard drained the dregs of the women’s wine into his own glass and took a steadying gulp. After a lusty sigh of satisfaction, he turned his gaze on Holt.
“You’re not from around here,” he surmised.
“No,” Holt said. With Gabe’s life getting shorter by the minute, he was disinclined to clarify his connection with Texas. That could wait.
“You’re in some kind of trouble with the law?”
Holt shook his head. “I’m here about my friend, Gabe Navarro. He’s in jail up in San Antonio, sentenced to hang on the first of October.”
Something quickened in Beauregard’s hooded eyes. “I read about that case in the newspapers,” he said thoughtfully. “First-degree murder, as I recollect. Navarro was a Ranger once, wasn’t he?”
Holt nodded grimly. “Gabe and I rode together, under Cap’n Jack Walton. He didn’t kill those people.”
“He didn’t have to kill anybody,” Beauregard reflected, staring morosely into his empty wineglass. “All he had to do was get on Judge Fellows’s bad side for some reason. It wouldn’t take much.”
“You’re acquainted with the judge, then,” Holt said.
“Only by reputation,” the lawyer answered. “Navarro’s a Mexican, right?”
Holt felt his backbone roll out straight. “Part,” he agreed tersely. “His mother was half Comanche.”
Beauregard picked a piece of duck meat off a ravaged bone and nibbled at it. “Well, then,” he said, “I imagine that was crime enough, from the judge’s point of view.” He trained weary eyes on Holt’s face. “Your friend is in a peck of trouble, Mr. McKettrick. What is it you’d like me to do?”
“Get him a new trial. Here, or maybe in Austin or Houston. Anywhere but San Antonio.”
“You seem to be a very direct man. I trust you’ve already approached the governor,” Beauregard ventured, and though his voice was casual, his face indicated that his interest had gone up a notch.
“He’s in Washington, politicking,” Holt answered. “He won’t be back in time to save Gabe.”
“He could order a stay of execution by wire,” Beauregard answered.
Rafe moved uneasily on his chair. Either he was hungry—they’d missed supper, tracking down the lawyer—or he wanted