by Ann Charles
Something bumped her wrist. “Got it,” she told him and grabbed the wire, pulling it through. “That’s one. Five to go.”
She climbed down the ladder and positioned it under the next hole. Chester took the other ladder he was using and set it up where she’d just been. He cut a length of wire and started up his ladder with it.
“I learned something last night,” he told her, shoving the wire through the hole and aiming it her way.
“Oh, yeah? Did one of the girls at Dirty Gerties teach you the half nelson in the mud pit?” She’d already heard all about the jiggling and bouncing fun he’d had over at the strip club during their breakfast of reheated coffee, toaster waffles, and the last of the brownies Ruby had made before heading north. A better breakfast for two people about to dabble with electricity she could not imagine.
“Nope. Tootsie wrangled me into a corner and used the double leg drop on me.”
“Tootsie? That sounds more like the name of a floofy white Pomeranian.”
“Nah, Tootsie likes to tan.” He snickered. “I’ll give you three guesses on how many licks it takes to get to her center and make her pop.”
Claire wrinkled her nose at him. “You do remember that I’m a girl, right?”
“I’d sort of forgotten again.” He wiggled his end of the wire around. “Anyway, by the time Tootsie finished, I was flat on my back and barely breathing.”
Searching around in the ceiling for the wire, she asked, “Isn’t the double leg drop a professional wrestling move?”
“It’s professional all right,” he climbed a step higher on his ladder, “but then I got my second wind. So I flipped her over and gave her the good ol’ Thomas piledriver.”
The piledriver was another professional move. Somebody was going to sprain a knee or crack a hip if those girls were performing those kinds of moves on golden oldies like Chester. “I thought the mud pits were for amateurs.”
“Who said anything about mud? Tootsie and I were in one of Cherry’s back rooms at the time. Her ‘Jiffy Stiffy Special’ is a fan favorite.”
“Jiffy Stiffy?” Claire scowled at him. “You’re making this shit up now.”
“You got me.” A grin split his whiskered cheeks. “I kept my piledriver in my pants last night. That was just a fishin’ tale.” He shook the wire in the ceiling. “Get it? Fishing?”
“You’re going to get it as soon as I get down off this ladder.”
“You talk big for someone who was wearing a dress the other night.”
“That was a skirt.”
“I thought you were allergic to girlie clothes.”
“I’m not allergic, just more comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt.”
“Then what was with the fancy get-up?”
“None of your business. Just fish me this damned wire.”
She didn’t want to hear a rash of ribbing about dressing up for Mac, who’d left before dawn this morning with a promise to take it easy on his shoulder and to call her later when he got a chance. They hadn’t cleared the air on his promotion opportunity yet. Claire had little doubt that she’d have to give him her feelings on it this week, and frankly she’d rather juggle scorpions than have that conversation.
Chester pulled the wire out, straightened it, and threaded it through the hole again. This time she felt it bump her hand first thing and pulled it through.
They waltzed with their ladders again, stepping to the next hole. Two done, four to go.
“You’re lucky I went to Dirty Gerties last night,” he told her as he climbed the rungs.
“Why’s that?”
“Because while I was asking around about Dory Hamilton trying to get the dirt on how he’s been blowing through cash like there’s no tomorrow, the bozo himself showed up.”
“Did I just hear you say you saw Dory Hamilton?” Ronnie shoved aside the curtain between the rec room and store. Judging from her yoga pants, torn gray sweatshirt, and bottle of water, along with her pink cheeks and windblown hair, she must have finished with her newest diabolical pastime: running. That was a hobby Claire was saving for when the zombie apocalypse hit.
“Aye, lassie,” Chester confirmed, pushing another piece of wire through the ceiling.
Ronnie plopped down on the barstool, wiping sweat from her face with her sweatshirt. “Did you ask the jerk why he prank called us?”
“He was a little busy.”
“Doing what?”
Claire rolled her eyes at Ronnie. “What do you think? Teaching the strippers how to knit their own string bikinis?”
Ronnie flipped her off. “What I meant,” she said to Chester, “was did you notice anything suspicious about Dory?”
“Besides the fact that he tucks to the right?”
The wire poked Claire’s palm. “He’s been on this R-rated bender all morning,” she told Ronnie, pulling the wire down into the room and then moving her ladder to the next hole.
“What’s suspicious about tucking to that side?” Ronnie pursued.
Claire paused climbing up the ladder. “I’d advise you to take a different tack.”
“I’m serious,” Ronnie leaned back against the bar. “Is it a trait like liars who break eye contact during interrogations?”
“Nah,” Chester said, moving his ladder. “It’s more of a personal prejudice I have against right tuckers based off an asshole who stole my fiancé while I was away at boot camp.”
“Did Dory do anything dubious while he was at Dirty Gerties last night?” Claire tried to steer the conversation back to the problem at hand—that phone call.
“Not so much while he was there, more like when he left.”
“What do you mean?” Ronnie asked.
“He drove off in someone else’s truck.” Chester angled the wire through a hole.
“Whose?” Claire pushed her hand up through the cut out in the ceiling. “Tootsie’s?”
“She’s got too much good taste to dally with Dory.” Chester pushed more wire through. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure it was Sophy’s.”
Claire did a doubletake. “Sophy Wheeler?”
“Yup. As in your nemesis.”
“Why would Dory have Sophy’s pickup?” Claire could hear the wire scratching its way closer.
“Could it be as simple as he bought it from her?” Ronnie threw out.
“Sure.” Claire’s fingers brushed the wire. It was through with a tug. She moved her ladder to the next to the last light.
“Or maybe not.” Chester climbed down the ladder and moved it to the hole she’d just vacated. “Could be there’s something else going on.” He cut more wire, made a hook out of the end, and held it up. “Something fishy.”
“Here we go again,” Claire muttered. She caught the wire quickly this time and left it dangling for Chester.
“There seems to be a lot of fishy stuff going on these days,” Ronnie said, crossing one leg over the other.
“Like what?” Chester asked from the top of his ladder.
“Last night Katie sneaked over to The Rowdy Coyote Motel and spied on the Polar Bear.”
“The Polar Bear is the killer who is supposed to be coming for you, right?” Chester asked, moving his ladder to go wire fishing once more. Claire had gotten the old goat caught up this morning on what they knew about the Polar Bear, just not the latest details from Kate’s field trip last night.
Ronnie nodded at him. “She found something fishy in his room—Arlene’s favorite hair scarf.”
“Arlene the waitress?” Chester’s forehead crinkled up. “In the Polar Bear’s motel room?”
“Yep.” Ronnie’s leg bobbed. “Claire and I knew there was something suspicious about her from the start.”
“What?!” Claire stopped mid-climb to gape at her sister. “I’m the one who kept warning you and Kate to be careful about what you said in front of her, and you guys thought I was being paranoid.”
“That’s not the way I remember it.” Ronnie finished off the last of her water, capp
ing her empty bottle.
“That’s probably because you spent your first couple of weeks here half-schnockered on gin and tonic every night.”
Ronnie stuck her tongue out at Claire.
“Is Kate sure she was in the right room?” Chester asked, sending the final length of wire through the ceiling toward Claire.
“She said she was in Room 9,” Claire shoved her hand up through the ceiling cut out, “which matched his room key that she supposedly saw when he was at The Shaft.”
“I still think Butch might have a point,” Ronnie said.
“About what? You heard Kate, she was positive it was Arlene’s scarf. She could even smell her perfume on it.”
“Arlene’s hair scarf could have flown out of her car one day when she got out and this guy found it and took it inside. It is made of silk.”
She said “silk” as if it were one of the top five precious metals.
“Things aren’t always as they seem,” Ronnie said. “Take Katie’s shenanigans at the Yuccaville Sheriff’s office last night.”
“Did she confess to locking up Deputy Dipshit?” Claire asked.
“Not yet.”
Chester tsk-tsked. “That fool should have known better than to mess with a Morgan girl.”
Patting around in the ceiling, Claire looked over at Chester. “I’m not feeling anything yet. Are you wiggling it?”
“That’s the same thing I overheard your mother saying to Carrera the other night through his bedroom window.”
“Boo!” Ronnie said and threw her empty water bottle at Chester, who dodged it while guffawing.
Claire seconded Ronnie’s bottle with a roll of electrician’s tape, which bounced off Chester’s shoulder.
“What’s all the racket in here?” Kate asked, poking her head through the curtain.
“Well, well, well,” Chester grinned. “If it isn’t crazy big-nose Kate.”
“My nose isn’t big.”
“It sure seems big to me with all the trouble I hear it’s been getting you into these days.”
Ronnie hopped up and grabbed Kate’s arm, dragging her over to the bar. “I was about to tell Chester what happened at the Sheriff’s office in Yuccaville last night.”
Kate dug in her heels. “I need to go get ready for work.”
“It’s your day off.” Ronnie pulled her sister down onto the barstool next to her. “Are you forgetting that Claire and I were standing there with Butch last night when he threatened to lock you in his office if you tried to go into the bar today?”
“Fine, I’ll sit, but I don’t want to talk about last night. Otherwise you could be accomplices.” She looked over at Ronnie. “Especially you.”
“Why me?”
“Because you found the napkin and you didn’t tell Grady.” Kate crossed her arms over her chest. “Where did you and Grady go last night after I left?”
Claire felt the wire scratch the back of her hand. She grabbed it and tugged it through the last light hole.
“Which time?” Ronnie asked.
“After our talk with Butch.”
“Nowhere. Grady was wiped, I could tell, so I sent him home while I helped Claire close the bar.”
“Where was Arlene?”
“Butch let her leave early.” Claire answered while climbing down from the ladder. She pointed at the ceiling. “Okay, Mr. Electrician, it’s all yours.”
Chester dragged his ladder back over to the first can light hole. “Kate, where was this Polar Bear when you were searching his room?”
She shrugged. “The place was dark when I got there and his motorcycle was gone.”
“I can’t believe you broke into a strange man’s room.”
“Like I told Butch last night, there was no breaking in. The window was open a little. The screen popped off just like you showed me,” she said to Claire. “I was in and out of there within a couple of minutes. No harm done, no touching anything, just a quick looksee.”
That was the point where Butch had come unhinged and threatened to drag Kate up to a remote cabin in Alaska until the baby was born if she didn’t stop putting herself at risk.
Claire glared at Kate. “You do understand that being pregnant means you have a baby inside of you, right? You shouldn’t be doing this kind of shit.”
“Not alone anyway,” Ronnie said.
“Oh, get off my case both of you. I’ve already had several voice messages and texts from Butch this morning repeating his threat to haul me up to the frozen tundra. Excuse me for wanting to save you from a killer,” she said to Ronnie. “And as for you,” she pointed at Claire, “I tried to tell you this guy was trouble, but you were too busy insisting I was making something out of nothing.”
“If you hens are done squawking, we should probably figure out what we’re going to do next,” Chester said.
“You mean about the Polar Bear or Dory?” Claire asked.
“I mean about your mother.”
“What does Mom have to do with any of this?” Claire asked.
Chester pointed his wire cutters at the curtain. A shadow shifted behind it.
“Why don’t you ask her,” he said, “since she’s been standing there listening to the three of you bicker for the last two minutes.”
Chapter Sixteen
Claire’s mom was on a rampage.
A weirdly happy rampage full of giggles and drunken titters.
And flirting, lots of flirting with Manny as well as way too much touching.
“In fact,” Claire told Mac over the phone while sitting out on the front porch steps in the dark, “I’d say Mom is downright grab-ass happy.”
“Come on, Slugger. I’m eating here.”
She grinned up at the starry sky. “At least I didn’t tell you what she was grabbing. She made Manny blush.”
“I didn’t think that was possible after all of his years of chasing tail.”
“Not with Chester, but apparently Manny still has some modesty left.”
“He’s a changed man since hooking up with your mother.”
Claire had noticed that, too. “I think she’s taken possession of his soul.”
Mac laughed. “You and your sisters should perform an exorcism.”
“No way. Then she’ll come after one of us.”
Deborah had already given them a royal butt-chewing earlier after eavesdropping through the curtain. Kate had taken the brunt of it, since she was with child and still considered the nearest-thing-to-perfect daughter because of her continued dabbling in the teaching profession. Although where Kate had been the golden apple in Deborah’s eyes months ago, she was now a bit bruised thanks to the out of wedlock pregnancy dent on her World’s Best Daughter trophy.
Lucky for Claire and Ronnie, Deborah had given up on either of them achieving great success in her lifetime. Their father on the other hand, had called recently and talked to Claire about coming to spend Christmas with his “wonderful” daughters—all three of them. Claire wasn’t sure if he intended to bring his new girlfriend or not, but she was positive that as soon as her mother caught wind of this possibility, Deborah’s head would explode.
“I learned something new about Humdigger mine,” Mac’s voice brought her back to the present.
“What?”
“The mine’s previous owner was found frozen solid in a deep freezer here in Tucson a couple of weeks after the claim transfer paperwork went through.”
Claire pressed the phone closer to her ear not wanting to miss a single detail. “You’re kidding me.”
“Nope and that’s not all.” She heard the sound of papers rustling from his end of the line. “According to the old news article I found on the internet, the guy who owned the freezer had a lengthy record of petty crimes starting when he was a juvie. But about six months prior to the body being found in his freezer, he turned state’s witness against a smuggler who’d been busted sneaking high-end stolen goods over the Mexican border. The smuggler was convicted with a twenty-year, no-parol
e sentence.”
“That’s an odd career coincidence considering Joe’s past.”
“Yeah, here’s another coincidence. They convicted the freezer owner and shipped him off to prison. About a year into his sentence, he was transferred. He landed in the same prison as the smuggler he helped convict.”
“Let me guess,” Claire said. “The freezer owner had a life-threatening injury a couple of months later.”
“Not months, weeks. He somehow managed to have a barbell fall on his throat and suffocate him to death before the guards could get him to the prison infirmary.”
A cool night breeze swirled over the R.V. park’s drive and headed for the cottonwoods lining Jackrabbit Creek. Their leaves quivered and rattled in response.
“Shit.” Claire rubbed her hand over her thigh, warming away the chills. “You think that Joe had a bigger part in this tale than just purchasing the Humdigger mine?”
“After what we’ve learned about Joe, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he masterminded it all out of revenge.”
“You mean revenge against the freezer owner for testifying against the smuggler?”
“Maybe. The smuggler who went to prison could have been a partner of Joe’s.”
“Or,” Claire said, an idea striking her, “maybe the smuggler paid Joe to frame the freezer owner and get him sent to prison where he could get his hands on him.”
“That’s another possibility,” Mac said. “Here’s one more—someone else paid Joe to set up the freezer owner, someone higher up the criminal chain than the smuggler.”
“Like the smuggler’s pimp?”
“For lack of a proper name, sure.”
Claire pondered this. The depth of Joe’s villainous potential reminded her of tossing a stone over the edge of the Grand Canyon. And the shit just kept getting deeper. “Criminy, Mac. Your aunt was married to this man.”
“I know. We need to protect Aunt Ruby from this if possible. She already beats herself up repeatedly for not seeing his many shortcomings.”
“If Joe had a hand in this,” Claire had little doubt otherwise, “why did he kill the previous owner of the Humdigger mine? Did he need a body for some reason and the mine owner was in the wrong place at the right time, or was there another purpose for removing him from the equation?”
