Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson Page B

this—that it’s not your problem anymore.”
    “Giving me my walking papers?”
    She shook her head. “I’m relieving you of the responsibility of the sad ending of a very unhappy man’s life.”
    “Are you planning on having this same conversation with Lucian Connally?”
    She smiled. “I was kind of hoping you’d save me from that.”
    “I see.”
    “Not knowing him very well, I was hoping I could just talk to you.”
    “You’ve discussed this with your mother?”
    The smile faltered. “Not at length; I thought I would speak with you first.”
    I folded my arms, listening to the creaking of my sheepskin jacket sounding like bark tightening. “I’ll tell you what, you get her to tell either Lucian or me to drop it and we’ll call it off.”
    She studied me and for the first time I noticed she had brown hair and chocolate eyes—not sweet chocolate, but the bitter kind that bakes. “Why can’t you just take my word on this?”
    “Because we agreed to do this investigation with her. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it works; she has to call it off.”
    Her eyes flared a bit, and the chocolate bubbled. “Some kind of code you sheriffs have?”
    I smiled back. “Something like that.”
    “I’ll speak with her tonight.” She paused for a moment more and then walked past me to the door. “You might want to think about it . . . I’ve seen what those codes can lead to.”
    —
    “You want a cup of coffee?”
    I glanced over at the brand-new urn at the bar-back of the Aces & Eights. “No thanks, but I wouldn’t mind a beer.”
    His fans at the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office had dropped off the old sheriff, and I’d found him seated on a bar stool when I got back from Arrosa—I was going to have to find something to distract him as I investigated or every appliance on the high plains would be in peril.
    “Hey, Haji.” He raised his voice to the Indian bartender who had replaced the morning Hispanic girl in an attempt to be heardover the small crowd that had filtered into the tiny bar, mostly workers from the nearby oil refineries, their companies seeking lodging wherever they could, the tang of petroleum and dirt strangely comforting. There were four of these men seated by the door, who were laughing loudly at a story one of them was telling.
    I leaned into him. “Lucian . . .”
    He gave me the horse eye. “What?”
    “You can’t go around giving people names according to their nationality.”
    The small young man, dark-haired, with an enormous if crooked smile, approached from the back, and the old sheriff gave him the high sign for two more before leaning into me and whispering fiercely, “Damn it, his name really is Haji.”
    The bartender in question, who indeed had a name tag that said
Haji
, sat two more Rainiers on the bar along with a bowl of stale peanuts. “How are you?” He smiled an enigmatic grin and disappeared into the back as I took a sip of my beer in an attempt to wash down the nutty meal in my mouth.
    “Where the hell did you go all day?”
    I pointed toward the coffeemaker as the bartender reappeared and studied the oil workers with a worried grimace. “Kmart, for one . . .” I sipped my beer again. “Met with Richard Harvey, Gerald’s replacement.”
    He nodded. “The pointy-head from New Mexico?”
    “Yep.”
    “Never have figured out why they call that state by that name, it ain’t new and it ain’t Mexico—am I right, Haji?”
    The bartender nodded and smiled again.
    “What’d pointy-head have to say?”
    “We just discussed the cases Holman was working on.”
    He pursed his lips and readjusted his prosthetic leg on the bar stool. “Like what?”
    “A couple of missing persons; three women from this vicinity and all in the last year.”
    He grunted and gave the oil workers a dirty look as another outburst of braying erupted from their table. “Hey, you assholes wanna keep it down over there? We’re tryin’ to have a