"WILHELM, KATE - JUSTICE FOR SOME" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

"Dawn or even earlier tomorrow. Oh, come on. Just so I get to the beauty
shop by four."

He glanced at his watch. "Plenty of time." "Benny's?" she asked,
glancing toward the coffee shop across the street.

"Too noisy. Let's go to your place. You can kick off your shoes and
we'll talk. You have air-conditioning, don't you?"

When she hesitated, he patted her shoulder. "You just go on ahead and
I'll be along in ten minutes. See you."

She watched him as he went back to the courthouse and entered; then she
got in her car and turned on the ignition. He wanted a private talk, she
understood. It was all right for him to be seen talking with anyone
briefly at a party, in the parking lot, even in a restaurant with
others, but this was something else. In a town like Pendleton everyone
would know if they sat in a booth in Benny's and discussed anything of
substance. There was nothing of substance for them to discuss, she told
herself, and engaged the gears, started to drive.

When Blaine died three years earlier, it had been Dirk who came to talk
to her, offered her the appointment to finish Blaine's term as county
judge. She had been too numb to respond, and he had returned in a month,
and this time she had said yes. She had seen him infrequently since
then, and always at an official function at the side of the governor, or
a senator, or a foreign dignitary, never alone.

She had been driving automatically, she realized when she started up the
bluff road to her house. No doubt she had nodded to people, or waved,
smiled, but she had no memory of them. What did Dirk want?

Were they going to call in their chips? Try to call them in?

The narrow, twisting road demanded her attention now. The pines in the
valley below did not try to climb the dry hills; instead there were
dusty cottonwoods, and dustier junipers with a straggly sparse
understory of sagebrush. No houses were visible from the road, but here
and there lush green grass and shrubbery stood out glaringly, as out of
place in this and land as sequins on cowboy boots, and as durable. She
turned into her own driveway at the sumiit of the bluff.

The house and the dry grass might have been painted with the same
camouflage brush; the building was low and almost as unadorned as
Blaine's office at the courthouse. There were native grasses and sage,
contorted juniper shrubs and trees, but when she went into the house the
drabness changed. Here were new colorful pottery vases, some taller than
Sarah, glazed with brilliant green and copper finishes, with plumes of
pink pampas grass, snow white grasses. The furniture was covered with
fine glove leather, mahogany-red in the living room, and bright yellow