Free Raylan: A Novel by Elmore Leonard Page A

take Harry,” Nichols said, “get him talking about African Americans and have some fun.”
    “It’s my case,” Raylan said, “I’m going with Elizabeth.”
    T he maid took Raylan from the front door and down a hall saying Ms. Burgoyne would see him in the sun parlor. They came to a room as high-end formal as the rest of the house and Raylan said, “Why’s it called a sun parlor? It doesn’t look like one.” He saw the maid in her yellow uniform look toward Elizabeth Burgoyne coming in from outside, her white cotton shirt hanging out of low-slung jeans.
    “It’s been the sun parlor for eighty-five years,” Elizabeth said coming in, the way it was done in the movies. “Why call it somethin else?”
    “It’s all right with me,” Raylan said and told her who he was.
    She said, “You want to know about Cuba Franks. Why, what’s he done?”
    “We think he’s stealing kidneys,” Raylan said. See what she’d do with that.
    She said, “Really?” Paused a moment and asked, “What would you like, iced tea or a martini?”
    “Whatever you’re having,” Raylan said and watched her hold up two fingers to the maid in her yellow maid’s outfit. He’d bet ten dollars they were having martinis.
    She said, “I’d like your opinion about something, okay? All of my horse-country friends call me Beth. I think cause my mother does when she comes to visit. But my older friends—from a different life you might say—call me Liz. Which do you think I am, Beth or Liz?”
    “You’re testing my power of observation,” Raylan said.
    “Come on, which am I?”
    “Liz,” Raylan said.
    “Why?”
    “Because you had more fun with your old buddies than the horsey set.” Fifty-five—she looked no more than forty. A lot of dark hair she stood twisting around her fingers. “You miss them,” Raylan said. “I wouldn’t mind hearing where you came from and how you met Harry—I bet it’s a good story. But I need to learn about Cuba. I think you got to know him better’n your husband did.”
    “Harry,” Liz said, “has no idea how to get next to people. His personality holds them off, his expression seems nailed on. Though he’s not as stuffy when he’s drinking, not nearly as boring. I think he’d love to be a stallion and get it on with the mares all day.”
    “What do you do,” Raylan said, “go to teas?”
    She said, “Yeah, I love tea,” and turned to the maid coming into the sun parlor with a pitcher of martinis and a bowl of anchovy olives.
    T hey were both on the sofa now with the drinks, a cushion between them, the pitcher on the cocktail table, Liz still talking about Harry.
    “He’d have a few and he and Cuba would do their Boss and Darky show. Harry scolds him for what he’s wearing, and Cuba says, ‘But, Boss, is your missus dresses me,’ and everyone in the Keeneland bar howls.”
    “Why don’t you get the horse people,” Raylan said, “to call you Liz?”
    She said, “It wouldn’t work. It would sound like Liz Taylor in Tin Roof . She had that Hollywood southern accent, like everybody’s from Virginia.”
    “You like acting a little nuts,” Raylan said. “So does Cuba, the kind of action he gets into.”
    “He was funny,” Liz said. “We had all day to talk, if we wanted, Harry at the stables. We didn’t meet to have sex, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
    He was, but shook his head.
    “Cuba was funny.”
    “I believe it,” Raylan said.
    “I’ll be honest with you,” Liz said. “It did happen now and then, but not on a regular basis. It would just, you know, happen, begin fooling around, you’d be crazy to stop.”
    Raylan said, “I’ve known that experience.”
    “You understand,” Liz said, “Cuba’s a street guy, but very natural about it. I never had to ask what he was talking about. He told me what it was like in prison. He told me the difference between black chicks and white girls in bed”—Liz grinning till she said—“he told me about meeting