High-Caliber Concealer

by Bethany Maines

  “Too true,” he agreed.

  “Nikki, walk him out,” Peg commanded.

  Nikki did as she was told, but promised herself to have a little talk with Peg later.

  “Peg’s not too subtle,” said Jackson when they were out on the porch.

  “I have a boyfriend,” said Nikki. “I guess I’m going to have to remind her of that.”

  “She knows,” said Jackson. “I’ve heard all about your ‘government employee boyfriend.’ I just don’t think she cares. And by the way, I don’t think she cares too much for government employees.”

  Nikki sighed. “Z’ev isn’t really…” she trailed off.

  “Isn’t really what?”

  “He’s not like other government employees,” she said. “He works for the state department and travels a lot. He’s not a cubicle dweller or anything boring.”

  “Hmm. Well, it might help if you actually let him meet your family,” suggested Jackson.

  “Yeah, the problem with that is I’d have to let him meet my family,” said Nikki.

  Jackson laughed.

  “I’d love to say that your mom isn’t that bad.”

  “But we both know that you hate to lie. Are you going to the Fernandez thing on Friday?”

  “Yeah. I was hoping to catch up with Donny. I’ve barely gotten to see him since he’s been in town. Are you going? Do you want me to pick you up on the way down?”

  Nikki nodded, making the date without thinking. “Yeah, sounds good. I ran into Donny at the grocery store. He said something odd. I didn’t have a chance to follow up at the time because Kristine Pims showed up. Is she just a mega-bitch or does she reserve that for me?”

  Jackson shrugged. “I’ve seen her be nice to people.”

  “I also ran into Ylina—the girl from the bar. She seemed kind of freaked and she implied that the sheriff was kind of a hard ass about illegal immigrants.”

  “He’s the sheriff. He gets paid to be a hard ass about illegal immigrants.”

  “Yeah, but last night, after he took those two goons away, I saw the one in the Carhartts out on the street.”

  “Well, Ylina did steal his car and pot is legal now, so he probably didn’t have anything to hold him on.”

  “What’s pot got to do with anything?”

  “Didn’t you notice? Well, maybe you didn’t, since you didn’t have to schlep him out to the porch. The guy reeked of pot. They both did.”

  “Huh. You would think that my statement about her being threatened and attacked would be enough to warrant an arrest, regardless of whether or not pot was legal or his car got stolen.”

  Jackson shrugged uncomfortably. “The sheriff is kind of a good ol’ boy. I’m not saying he’s a swell guy or anything, but people wouldn’t keep voting him in if he didn’t do his job.”

  “Arresting people who attack women in bars is his job,” said Nikki.

  “You didn’t suffer any from getting attacked.”

  “Oh, so I have to lose in order for them to be arrested? That’s a chunk of bullshit that would fertilize a whole vineyard. I was attacked. He didn’t arrest them. Next time, I’d think about voting for someone else if I were you.”

  Nikki marched back inside and managed, barely, to not slam the door behind her. She took a moment to count to ten. It was something her grandfather had always recommended, but she had never followed the advice until she started working for Carrie Mae. When she didn’t count to ten bad things happened, and when you carry a gun, bad things tend to be a little more permanent.

  There was a knock on the door. Nikki swung it back open prepared to continue the argument with Jackson.

  “So, pick you up around seven?”

  “What?”

  “The Fernandez Fiesta.”

  “Oh, yeah. OK.”

  “OK, see you then.”

  Jackson walked off the porch and climbed into his truck.

  “I’m still mad at you!” she yelled after him.

  “You bet!” he yelled back, which didn’t mean anything. Nikki glared after the dust trail left by the truck. The problem with being back in Kaniksu Falls was that it was too easy to forget that she wasn’t seventeen anymore. Old habits died hard, and Jackson was a habit that seemed particularly hard to break.

  Walking back down the hall toward the kitchen, she could hear her grandmother talking to someone on the phone.

  “No, Nell, it has to be done.” Hearing her mother’s name, Nikki paused outside the kitchen. “Well, I know you don’t want to, but it’s time. Look, she’s out on the porch with Jackson, so I don’t have a lot of time to discuss this. Jackson is a fine young man. I’ve never understood why you don’t like him. Yes, I know she has a boyfriend. Nell! Stop arguing with me and start listening. I will do it myself and if you don’t want me to, then I suggest you take a few days off work and get your fanny over here. Call me when you leave Seatac. I’ll head down to Spokane and pick you up.” Peg slammed the phone receiver, still attached to its rotary dial body by a long curling cord back into the cradle.

  Nikki pursed her lips, thinking about what she’d heard. Pre-Carrie Mae she would have barged in and demanded an explanation. But if she had learned anything from Carrie Mae, it was that a full frontal assault was not always the best strategic decision. Instead, she waited a second longer and then sauntered into the kitchen.

  “Did you have any thoughts about what you wanted to do for dinner?” she asked carrying the pie plates over to the sink. “I bought a few things, but I didn’t know what you wanted.”

  “I usually just make a sandwich,” said Peg, running a hand through her hair. “Cooking for one is always so difficult. So whatever you want is fine with me.”

  “I’ll probably make some chicken then,” said Nikki, her mouth on autopilot.

  “I’ll cook it,” said Peg. “But after I get back from the orchard. I should go check on things.”

  “OK,” said Nikki, with a smile that had been carefully crafted to look genuine. “I’ll probably go take a dip in the pond.”

  “Sounds lovely, dear,” said Peg, already moving toward the door.

  Nikki watched the door shut and tried not to grit her teeth. She was so tired of secrets.

  August X

  What a Girl Wants

  Nikki waited for Peg to leave then went upstairs to change. Her vintage outfit was going to have to be washed again. It smelled like smoke. She left it soaking in the sink as she changed into a swimsuit and shorts, grabbed a towel and headed for the pond. Her flip-flops smacked her heels, clicking along like her mind as she flipped through the theories of what Peg would think Nell needed to tell her. None of her theories seemed worthwhile. She stopped at the shed to retrieve an inner tube and noticed that her grandfather’s beat up old Ford truck was parked under a tarp. She lifted a corner and kicked the tires. It seemed functional. With a shrug, Nikki left it and booted her inner tube down the hill to the pond. It bounced in crazy arcs before entering the water with a splash.

  It was a manmade pond, fed by a re-routed creek that kept the water flowing and fresh. It had been intended for the cattle to use, but these days Peg didn’t keep more than the one horse and a grumpy goat. It was shaded on one half by a giant oak and was cold even on the hottest summer day. Nikki slathered herself in sunscreen, put on her sunglasses and lowered herself carefully into the inner tube, holding her phone high above the water. Then she kicked her way to the shady side of the pond and dialed Ellen.

  “Oh, thank God,” said Ellen picking up. Ellen always said that after spending more than three days with her daughters and their children. The daughters seemed like very nice people, but they had a very mistaken impression of what stage of life their mother was in. “You’ve got to help me, Nikki. They’ve started pointing out LifeAlert commercials to me.”

  “Did you tell them that they’ve got it backwards and that you’re the one who causes other people to fall and not get up?”

  “Martina actually said the words, ‘I’
m not as young as I once was.’” Martina was younger than Nikki and had a two-year-old daughter. “I wanted to smack her. And then she suggested that I should really consider end-of-life planning.”

  Nikki snorted and almost fell through the inner tube. “They do grow up quick,” she said, her voice quavering with repressed laughter.

  “No, they got old quick! How did I raise such fuddy-duddy daughters? It’s like they’re trying so hard to be adult and instead they’re just old, grumpy people complaining about the neighbor boy who won’t stay off their lawn.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “So, tell me if this is too bad. I invited the neighborhood boy in for cookies and then I went and played catch with him on their lawn.”

  “How did that go over?”

  “My son-in-law, George, joined in. I think I’m making a dent there. He seems to enjoy breaking a few rules. But I swear to God, I’m napalming the next set of khakis I see.”

  “I thought you liked khakis?”

  “On me! Down here I feel like I’m living in a frigging Gap Outlet.”

  Nikki laughed. “Jane must be rubbing off on you.”

  “Or maybe she’s on to something. Maybe it’s a truth that we should universally acknowledge: the Gap should be fire-bombed.”

  “Did they try to make you go to the Community Center again?”

  “They tried to sign me up for square dancing, with a lovely gentleman who is eighty if he’s a day. Square dancing, Nikki. Square dancing! Who do they think I am?”

  “You’re grandma, and grandmas stay home and bake things and nap. And apparently like square dancing.”

  “Is your grandma napping?”

  “She should be,” said Nikki. “She got up at six to go supervise work in the peach orchard, baked a fresh pie, made me breakfast, tried to teach me to shoot, had her hair done, and is now back out at the orchard. That’s a busy day. I want a nap.”

  “She tried to teach you to shoot?”

  “It was kind of adorable. She has this ancient .357 and was hell bent on teaching me gun safety.”

  Ellen laughed. “What’d she think of your gun? Which one did you bring?”

  “The SIG Sauer. She liked it, but she worries about cleaning and loading.”

  “It is harder to screw up a revolver. And if she’s not worried about reloading speed, then it could be the right gun for her.”

  “The right gun is the gun you practice with. I’m not about to try and get her to switch guns. Stick with a system that works.”

  “She sounds like the kind of grandma I need to hang with. I mean, I love all you young people, but I wouldn’t mind hanging out with a few more of my own cohort.”

  “What? Who would teach you what twerking was if you didn’t have us?”

  “I actually wish I could blot twerking from my brain,” said Ellen.

  “Some things you can’t un-know.”

  “Sadly. But I’m assuming you didn’t call to rub in your sweet vacation?”

  “No, I called to ask for advice.”

  “Advice, I have. I am full of advice. This afternoon, I advised my five-year-old grandson to build a rubber band gun and shoot his mother in the rear.”

  “By advise, I assume you mean, ‘helped build’?”

  “So I prefer the CIA’s interpretation of the word ‘advise.’ What’s your point?”

  “No point, that’s just an example of why I love you. But that may be the kind of advice I need.” She filled Ellen in on her adventures in Kaniksu Falls. “So what do you think?” she asked when she was done.

  “I think that’s weird. If he wasn’t going to arrest them, then he should have said so at the time he took them away. Also, if your grandma doesn’t like him, then I would trust her opinion more than Jackson’s. She’s lived in that town a long time, and what did you say? He’s only been back a few years? Yeah, I wouldn’t be swayed by that opinion. And then there’s Donny. He’s a cop. If he thinks something’s up, then there’s probably something up.”

  “That is probably totally unrelated,” objected Nikki. “He’s a narcotics cop. He probably spotted some sort of local drug dealer or something.”

  “OK, leaving out Donny,” agreed Ellen. “But any which way you slice it, I find the situation suspicious.”

  “You think I should investigate?”

  “Well, speaking as someone who just went rogue and helped the worldly exit of a serial killer, I think we can safely assume that my answer will be yes.”

  “Two days, Ellen,” said Nikki. “I was gone for two days. You couldn’t wait until I got back?”

  “Lives were in danger and you were out of cell range. I thought Darla was covering for her Canadian friend, and the best thing to do was save the girl and worry about the paperwork later.”

  Nikki sighed. “Yes, of course, the answer is always save the girl. But you can’t go out on your own like that.”

  “Oh, please,” said Ellen. “You break rules all the time.”

  “I do,” said Nikki. “And I know this is unfair, but the difference is that I don’t get caught. You have to have an eye on the bigger situation. Mrs. M has a hard enough time wading through Carrie Mae politics without us handing weapons to her enemies.”

  “Are things really that tough?”

  “Carrie Mae was founded with the idea of small actions making a difference. Tiny missions, usually performed by one to two agents. Mrs. M and a few others have pushed Carrie Mae into the twenty-first century by using larger weapons, bigger teams and going after major issues. Which means that we’re leaving a more extensive footprint and costing more money than we used to, and it means that some of the older leadership people aren’t really comfortable with what we’re doing.”

  “They want to shut us down?”

  “They want to refocus and recommit to our original ideals.”

  “They want to go back to the sixties,” translated Ellen.

  “Yeah. We have to be careful until we get women in positions of power who can help push our agenda forward.”

  “Like Darla,” said Ellen.

  “Right. And we have to at least look like we’re trying to keep Carrie Mae flying under the radar. I’m not objecting to what you did. I’m saying that maybe there were better ways to do it, that didn’t put our team, Mrs. M, and our branch in hot water.”

  It was Ellen’s turn to sigh. “Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. I guess I got really focused on the mission, forgot there might be a big picture.”

  “Well, it’s your job to get mission-focused and it’s part of my job to worry about the big picture. But that’s why next time you should make a bigger effort to call me.”

  “Right. Check. Note taken.” She sighed again. “What are you going to do about the sheriff?”

  “I have no clue. I’m not even sure what there is to do.”

  “Well, call Jenny and Jane. Maybe there is some sort of technological wizardry that Jane can come up with that might help. Jenny will probably say to kick his ass, but she might have more useful thoughts after she gets that out of her system. If nothing else, you should consider going to look at the auto-body shop. Seems kind of suspicious that Milt, or whatever you said his name was, walked into a closed store.”

  Nikki grunted. “Yeah, maybe. I’ll think about it. You know, I really did just want a nice vacation.”

  “Hey, Mom, come on, we’re about to play Jenga!”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I get off the phone,” said Ellen brightly. Nikki could hear footsteps retreating in the background. “And I would like it if my daughters weren’t so monumentally boring, but we can’t always get what we want, now, can we?”

  August XI

  Captain Beaumont

  Nikki checked the Indiglo on her watch: 11:05 p.m. Peg would have had enough time to enter REM sleep. She waited another ten minutes to be on the safe side and then swung the door to the old shed open. She opened the door to the Ford and began to push it out of the barn. About twelve feet later gravity caught up a
nd the truck began to roll on its own. Nikki hopped in and steered it to a safe stop down by the gate to the property. She opened the gate and then went back to the truck. Time to practice those hotwiring skills.

  She turned on the flashlight app on her phone and looked under the dash.

  “What are you doing?” demanded a male voice.

  Nikki immediately turned her phone toward the voice, blinding the speaker, and prepared to look helpless and cute.

  “Oh, it’s you. Jackson, what are you doing here?”

  “Captain Beaumont and I are out for a run.”

  “Who’s Captain Beaumont?”

  In response, a black lab jumped up and put his paws on the window frame, panting in Nikki’s face.

  “He’s Captain Beaumont. What are you doing?”

  “I’m hotwiring grandpas’ truck.”

  “OK, but why?

  “Because it’s a pre-90s vehicle. Cars post about 1994 have the automated key fobs, which are harder to hotwire.”

  “OK, but why not use the key?” He reached in and flipped down the visor. The truck key tumbled down into Nikki’s lap.

  “I think Captain Beaumont is laughing at me.”

  “Probably,” agreed Jackson. “Seriously, though, what are you doing that you can’t use your car or borrow Peg’s?”

  “My car is too easy to spot and Grandma always puts her keys in her purse and she puts her purse in her room. I think Mom used to steal the car when she was a teenager.”

  “Much like you appear to be doing now. Where are you going that you don’t want your car remembered?”

  “Jackson, this is really one of those times that you should ask yourself if you really want to know?”

  “You’re not stealing more pigs again, are you?” Captain Beaumont pushed away from the truck and began to sniff around the tires.

  “Oh, my God, you steal one pig, one time, and no one lets you forget it.”

  “Hey, I was very helpful in the porcine theft department if you remember. It was Donny that got us caught. Just tell me what you’re doing.”