by Ann Charles
Gramps visibly bristled. “Ruby is not your chauffeur. She’s a busy woman.”
“Where is she?” Deborah arched a plucked brow.
“In Tucson.”
“For how long?”
“All day. She had some errands to run.”
Claire narrowed her eyes, wondering what Gramps was up to. His story had changed since they’d shared a moment waiting on the coffee maker this morning.
“I thought you said she took Jess shopping.” Manny had replaced Cosmopolitan with Vogue.
“Really? Shopping? Did you sponsor this trip, Dad?”
Gramps turned a dark shade of pink.
“It figures.” Deborah tapped one of her long, sharp talons on the countertop. “You see, this is exactly what I was talking about last night. You’re so blinded by this woman that you can’t see that all she’s after is your money. You’ve been putting out her fires with your cash ever since you stepped into the picture.”
Gramps’s face darkened even more, now almost as red as Deborah’s boots.
“Mom,” Claire started, intending to veer her mother off course before Gramps turned purple.
“Stay out of this, Claire Alice!” Deborah practically snarled.
Closing her mouth, Claire touched the top of her head to make sure it hadn’t actually been bitten off.
“How many times is Ruby going to have to ask for money before you wake up?”
“For your information,” Gramps said, “I sent her to Tucson this morning with Jess.”
“Is that what she made you think? Oh, she’s good.”
“I sent her there to get her away from you. And yes, I did give her the money, because whether you like it or not, she’s going to be my wife in less than a week.” He pushed away from the counter and hobbled toward the front door, his shoulders rigid.
“Have you thought about how selfish you’re being?” Deborah threw at his back. “She’s young enough to be your daughter. It’s only a matter of time until she’s left nursing another invalid.”
Claire gasped.
“Hoooooo!” Chester shouted, a look of disgust on his face.
Gramps paused with his fists clenched at his sides. His pale blue eyes were mere slits when he turned around. “Nobody invited you down here, Deborah. Go home.”
“I’m sorry if the truth hurts, Dad, but somebody has to talk some sense into you, and Claire certainly isn’t capable of it. She’s too mired in her own mess.”
Claire searched the counter for something to whack her mom upside the head with that wouldn’t cause permanent damage.
“Hey, guys.” Kate breezed in from the rec room, smiling and bouncing with every step—clueless that she’d just walked into the middle of a gunfight. “Have any of you seen my phone?”
* * *
“Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after me,” Chester told Manny while dealing cards around the table.
The ringing of Ruby’s wall telephone interrupted Manny’s reply.
Claire looked up from the Jack of hearts and Queen of diamonds in her hand.
Kate stared back at her with raised brows.
“Well, don’t any of you get off your butts to get that.” Claire pushed back her chair, taking the potato chips with her.
Chester and Manny had moved the card table into the back of the store. This made it so Claire could watch the cash register and sit in for Gramps, who’d grabbed Henry and spun out of the R.V. park after his row with Deborah.
Nobody seemed interested in enlisting Deborah to play, especially Claire. Her mother had returned to her bedroom after the big showdown, probably to file her teeth into sharper points.
Claire picked up the receiver on the fourth ring. “Dancing Winnebagos R.V. Park.”
“Miss me yet, Slugger?” The sound of Mac’s voice coming through the receiver brought a smile to Claire’s lips.
“More than you can imagine.” She wiped her greasy fingers on her jean shorts. “Hold on while I switch to the phone in the rec room.” She laid the receiver down on the counter. “Kate, hang this up as soon as I pick up in the other room.”
As Claire slipped through the curtain, she heard Kate tell the boys, “She’s always been that bossy.”
Claire picked up the other phone. “Can you take Friday off and come back early?”
“Things that bad there?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t been able to see the mushroom clouds from Tucson.” The sound of heavy breathing came on the line. Claire covered the mouthpiece. “Manny Carrera, hang up that phone right now!”
“Spoilsport,” Manny yelled back, then Claire heard a click.
“Are the boys keeping an eye on you?” Claire could hear the grin in Mac’s tone.
“Are you kidding? The only time they leave my side is when I have to use the bathroom, and Manny even tries to follow me in there.”
She glanced around to make sure her mother wasn’t hovering nearby in the shadows before asking, “So, what did you find out about the lawyer?”
“Nothing.”
“Didn’t you go to his office?”
“I tried, but I must have the address wrong, because I ended up at a strip mall with a tattoo parlor, a cheap cigarette store, and an adult video mart.”
“Sounds like my kind of mall.”
“Do you know where Ruby stashed those letters?”
“I think so.” Claire circled the bar, taking the phone with her, and started pulling open the drawers. She found the envelopes on her third try. “Here they are.” She pulled one out. “Do you have a pen handy?”
“Yep. Shoot.”
She rattled off the address.
“Damn, that’s what I have. Is there a different address on the other envelopes?”
“No, they’re all the same. Maybe there are two streets in Tucson named Chuckwalla Wash Drive.”
“I doubt it, but I’ll check again.”
Claire grabbed a pen from the drawer and drew hearts and smiley faces on the back of an envelope. “Did you go to Phoenix yesterday?”
Mac had mentioned zipping up to the state capitol to comb through public records in the state mining archives for information about the Lucky Monk.
“Yeah.”
“What did you find out?”
“Well …”
“What?”
“It seems owning this mine is hazardous to your health.” Mac’s voice sounded quieter, but closer, as if he were cupping the mouthpiece. “It’s passed through the hands of twelve owners, and none of them hung around long enough to receive Medicare benefits. One even disappeared entirely, never to be seen again. Joe has the current longevity record.”
“Do you think it’s cursed?” she whispered.
“Why did I know you’d ask that?”
“Because you have this bad habit of reading my mind.”
“No, Miss Superstitious. I don’t think it’s cursed. There’s probably a logical explanation for each death. But I do find it an ominous statistic considering Ruby is the current owner.”
She was for now, anyway, unless Leo Scott’s client stole it away. Claire scribbled some sad faces on the envelope. “What else did you find?”
“Several pages worth of information, but I haven’t had time to read through any of them yet. I’ll bring them on Friday, along with a suitcase full of your clothes. Tell me again which dress I’m supposed to pack for the wedding—the purple one with the low neckline that makes me drool and stutter, or the red one with the thin straps that makes me stutter and then drool?”
“Actually, I was thinking the green striped dress without a back to it. You know which one I’m talking about?”
“Mmmm, I sure do. No fumbling with zippers or buttons on that one. Maybe we should rent a room in Yuccaville that night.”
“Lord knows finding privacy around here is nearly impossible. Jess has been glued to my side since you left.”
“So I hear. Ruby and Jess met me for lunch today.”
Claire glanced toward the curtain at the sound of the bells over the front door jingling.
“Can’t say I blame them,” Mac said. “I’m enthralled with your backside myself.”
“Yeah, well you’re hopeless.”
“I can’t help it. I love you.”
Claire’s blood rushed in her ears. She opened her mouth and then closed it, not knowing how to respond.
They were back to the stalemate they’d reached a week ago, with Mac using the “L” word and her being scared shitless, struggling to catch her breath.
“I know you don’t want to hear that, Claire, but you can’t avoid it forever.”
She cleared her throat. “I thought most guys were happy to have a woman sharing their bed but not their name.”
“I’m not ‘most guys.’”
No, he wasn’t.
“Claire!” Kate pulled back the curtain and stuck her head through. “There’s a guy out here saying the toilet in the men’s room is flooding.”
“Son of a bitch.” Claire threw down the pen. “I gotta go,” she told Mac. “That damned toilet is overflowing again.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you later.” His voice sounded stilted, withdrawn.
She didn’t want to end the call with him feeling jilted. “I miss you, Mac.”
“Good. Happy plunging, Slugger. Stay out of trouble.” The phone clicked in her ear.
“Kate, watch the store,” she yelled through the curtain. Grabbing her tool belt from the cubbyhole next to the back door, she stepped out into the afternoon sunlight.
She had two hours to take care of this mess and get cleaned up before Porter would be waiting for her at the bar … well, he’d be waiting for Kate, anyway.
At least that was what his reply had been to her text message invite from Kate’s phone.
* * *
The Shaft shook, rattled, and rolled around Claire.
With Ladies’ Night in full swing, beer poured from the tap at half the price for anyone sporting a vagina. Outnumbering the women two-to-one, bucks butted heads for a chance to woo any woman brave enough to walk through the door.
Claire inhaled the secondhand cigarette smoke swirling above her head. The hankering to light up made her fingers itch.
She sipped on her Corona instead, savoring the cold bite, wondering if anyone would notice if she slipped the cool, sweating bottle down her shirt. Butch’s air conditioner couldn’t compete with the heat radiating off so much skin. Another hour in this humidity and she’d be steamed pink.
Across the table from her, Kate kept sneaking glances at Butch, who stood behind the bar, pouring drinks and listening to drunken yarns while sporting his usual friendly grin.
Leaning over her drink, Claire hollered above the din, “Porter is late for your date.”
Kate stared back at her for several seconds, her forehead wrinkling. “What date?”
“The date I set up for you.”
More wrinkles appeared, these even deeper. Any more, and Claire would expect Kate to start speaking Klingon. “That’s why you had my phone!”
“You should be more careful where you leave it.”
“Why am I seeing Porter tonight?” Her focus drifted back to Butch.
“I need you to find out why he was in Ruby’s office yesterday.”
Kate did a double-take. “He was?”
“Yep. Jess caught him down there.”
“Doing what?”
“Reading Joe’s first editions. I want to know what he was doing looking at those books.”
Flicking Claire’s suspicions off with a wave of her hand, Kate said, “You’re making too much of this. He’s an author. First editions of classics are probably his idea of bathroom reading fodder.”
“That still doesn’t explain why he went down to Ruby’s office. That’s where you come into the equation.”
“Why me?”
“Because he’s not trying to get into my pants.”
“Porter’s not like that. He hasn’t even tried to slip me the tongue yet.”
“All the more reason to be suspicious of him.”
Kate rolled her eyes. “What if I don’t want to see Porter tonight?”
“Too late, he just walked in the door.”
Amongst the sea of dusty cowboy hats, Porter’s white brim stuck out like a pristine sailboat illuminated by a ray of sunshine. Claire beckoned him over.
As he skirted the dance floor, she turned to Kate. “Now flash him those pearly white teeth and get him to spill.”
* * *
From the dance floor, Kate glared at Claire, who was chatting with Butch after exchanging her chair for a barstool—the seat where Kate wanted to be sitting, rather than swaying in Porter’s arms to the warm baritones of Don Williams.
Porter leaned closer. “I was surprised to hear from you. Pleasantly so.” His breath smelled minty, like he had a cheek full of Tic Tacs.
Me, too. Kate just smiled through her frustration.
“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
Behind her fake smile, Kate wished a plague of locusts on Claire. Some frogs, too. “That was some storm we had a couple of hours ago. Have you ever seen it rain so hard?”
“Yes. Texas has its fair share of severe thunderstorms, often mixed with hail and tornadoes.”
“Have you ever been in a tornado?”
“Sure, a few actually.”
Stall, stall, stall, her mind radioed to the frontlines. If she could keep him talking long enough, maybe she’d come up with a plan on how to do Claire’s bidding.
“What was it like?”
“Windy.” He chuckled. “I know you didn’t ask me here to talk about storm cells. What’s on your mind?”
She chanced a look at her sister for help, but Claire was too busy grinning at something Butch was saying to notice Kate thrashing around in the water. “Ummm.”
“Just spit it out, Kate.”
She contemplated throwing one of her sandals at Claire’s head, but decided on another course of action. “It’s Claire.”
Porter looked toward the bar. “What about her?”
“She’s very upset.”
Right then, Butch finished telling his tale. Claire threw back her head, laughing loud enough to be heard over the music.
Damn!
Porter turned back to Kate. “She doesn’t look upset to me.”
“She’s covering her pain with laughter. It’s a common trait of hers.”
“Why is she so upset?”
Scrambling, Kate blurted the first thing that came to mind. “It’s Mac. He dumped her like a block of Limburger cheese.”
Porter grimaced. “That’s too bad. He seemed pretty taken with her when they were dancing together last week.”
“Mac has a good poker face.” As the song on the jukebox ended, Kate stepped back. “Will you do me a big favor and ask her to dance? She could really use a distraction tonight, someone to get her mind off Mac.”
Porter frowned over at Claire. “It looks like Butch is already on the case.”
“Butch won’t do.”
“Why not?” Porter’s gaze returned to Kate.
She drew a blank and panicked. “He confided in me that he’s taken a life-long vow of abstinence.”
Porter’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“The way he acts around women is just a ploy to keep customers coming back.”
“Ah. That explains it.”
She started to nod, but stopped. “Explains what?”
“Why he always has women hanging on him, but never takes any of them home.”
“He doesn’t?”
“Not that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been hanging around here for almost two months now.”
Good! Kate shouldn’t feel like skipping after hearing that tidbit about Butch, but she did, damn it.
&n
bsp; Squeezing Porter’s forearm, she asked, “Will you please dance with Claire for a bit? It would mean the world to her.”
“And this is why you asked me to meet you here tonight? To dance with your sister?”
“Uh-huh. She’s been so depressed all day.”
“Okay. But where will you be?”
“I’ll just hang out at the bar.” And grill Butch.
* * *
Someone tapped Claire on the shoulder.
If one more cowboy asked her to chalk his cue stick, pet his Wookie, or try out his Artificial Insemination Home Kit, she was going to start dumping some beer over heads—and with drinks half-priced, she could afford plenty of glasses.
“Go away!” she barked without turning around.
“Tag,” Kate said in her ear.
She frowned at her sister as Kate dropped onto the stool beside her. “What?”
“You’re it.”
Porter leaned on the bar next to Claire. “Will you dance with me, Claire?”
Kate’s eyes sparkled with merriment.
“Uh, sure.” Claire kicked Kate in the ankle as she stood.
“Ow!” Kate yelped.
“I’m putting fire ants in your sheets tonight.” Claire spoke loud enough for Kate’s ears only.
“Try it and I’ll pour peroxide in your shampoo bottle. Now get out there; Porter’s waiting.”
Sure enough, Porter was already on the dance floor.
Claire forced a smile as she slipped into Porter’s arms. The scent of vanilla and cedar embraced her.
He led her away from the jukebox. “I’m sorry to hear about Mac and you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kate said that Mac and you are no longer a couple.”
Stumbling in surprise, Claire came down on his toes. “Sorry ‘bout that. What exactly did Kate tell you?”
“He broke up with you and you needed some cheering up.”
Fire ants weren’t going to cut it. Claire drilled Kate with a glare over Porter’s shoulder.
Kate just toasted her glass of beer.
* * *
Kate emptied her glass in three gulps, partly to draw Butch back down to her end of the bar, but mostly to calm the horde of butterflies bouncing off the walls of her stomach. Interrogating suspects was Claire’s forte, not hers.
Butch pointed at her empty glass. “Another?”
