Free Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) by J. Mark Bertrand Page A

shrugs. “While we were talking inside, I looked through the window and saw her. She got out of the car and was standing on the curb, talking on her phone.” Her eyes moisten. “That’s who you should track down. She’d know better than me where Brandon’s been.”
    I ask her to describe the woman.
    “She wasn’t pretty,” she says quickly. “Kind of small and bony. Androgynous. She had choppy blond hair, and kind of dressed like a man . . .”
    “Did you ask your boy—Tate? Did he know her name?”
    Her face hardens. “She told them to call her Trixie.”
    “Like in Speed Racer ?” I ask, showing my age.
    She just shrugs. I thank her for the information and promise to get back in touch if we learn anything more.
    On the way to the car, Lorenz scribbles down the name. “It’s not much to go on.”
    “No, it’s not,” I say.
    But it is. Given the fact that I met the woman she was describing just a few hours earlier, and that Trixie must be a preferable nickname for a woman whose parents saddled her with a name like Beatrix.

CHAPTER 6
    As biker bars go, this one’s pretty tame, sandwiched between a supersized Spec’s Liquor and a retail chain cantina. The crowd packed onto the outdoor deck doesn’t look particularly tough, mostly white suburbanites. The only cowboy boots are on the miniskirted ladies, the only motorcycles plastic imports with bold racing stripes. I pick my way through, dodging a waitress loaded down with sweating Dos Equis and Coronas.
    The music inside is live. That’s all it has going for it. Even the early evening drunks are having a hard time with the dancing. There’s a lot of neon on the walls, a lot of yelling from table to table. It takes me a moment, scanning the darkness, to single out Bea Kuykendahl.
    She may be small, but she knows how to take up space. She sits in a lazy sprawl, one arm draped over the back of her chair and her crossed legs resting on the opposite seat. Thick-soled work boots, faded jeans, and a tight, cap-sleeved black T-shirt revealing more muscle definition than I would have expected, reinforcing my earlier impression that she looks more like a teenaged boy than a grown woman.
    Circling around, I approach her table from the side. I grab the back of the chair her feet are under, then yank it free.
    “Hey, that seat’s taken!” she barks. Then: “ Oh .”
    I spin the chair around and sit, crossing my arms over the back. “You can say that again, Bea. Or do you prefer to go by Trixie?”
    “You followed me here?”
    “I’m a man of many talents. I think we need to have a talk. I figured we might be able to converse a little more freely outside the office.”
    She leans forward over the table. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I don’t intimidate very easily. Throw your weight around all you want, Detective. Just be careful you don’t throw your back out.”
    For a crazy moment I wonder if she’s heard of my fall. But there’s no way that could have reached her. Just a lucky jab.
    “That story you told me, it doesn’t add up. When I got back to the office, we had a match on Brandon Ford. I have a hard time believing you’ve got enough pull to make the computer spit out false identifications. If you could, why bother bringing me and my lieutenant into the picture at all?”
    “You tell me,” she says.
    “At first I thought you had to, because with a little digging we’d have poked enough holes in the cover story to realize Brandon Ford wasn’t a real person. But he is real, isn’t he? I spoke to his ex-wife today, then I walked through his house. After that I did some asking around. The local gun dealers say he’s been around on the scene a couple of years. Either this is the most elaborate cover story in history, or . . .”
    “Or what?”
    “Or you lied to us this morning.”
    “I lied to you? Knowing that you’d see right through me the moment you did a cursory check. Give me more credit than that.”
    “Ford’s