by Ann Charles
“Shut it.” Sheesh, one miscalculated swing and everybody had a heyday with the wisecracks. “Why did Butch call you instead of Kate?”
“Because I’m helping him with his bookkeeping.”
Claire about fell off her barstool. “Since when?”
“Since Kate and you went up to South Dakota. I went to his office the day after you two left to chew him out about his responsibility as a soon-to-be-father. While I was there he offered me a bookkeeping job. So I took it.”
Tipping her head back, Claire let out a gut roll of laughter. “Well,” she said still snickering, “it sounds like you really gave him a talking to in that meeting.”
“Take your sarcasm and shove it up your ying-yang.” Ronnie used one of their childhood insults.
“Remind me, where exactly is my ying-yang?”
“I needed a job, you ninny.” Her sister nailed her with a squint. “With this gig I can keep an eye on the wallet of Katie’s baby-daddy in case she changes her mind about raising the kid on her own and decides to take Butch to court for child support.”
Actually, that was a pretty smart chess move. “I thought Butch had a bookkeeper.”
“No, he has an accountant, but with all of his traveling lately, he’s getting behind on paperwork and needs help. Katie told him about my organizational skills and he hired me on the spot.”
“Organizational skills?” She grinned at her older sister. “You mean your ability to sort your costume jewelry according to stone color?”
Ronnie pulled Claire’s hair in response.
“Ouch! Not so hard, you oaf.” Claire smacked Ronnie’s hand away as she tried to grab and pull again. “Seriously, does Butch know about your ex-husband’s money laundering skills and current prison sentence?”
“That dickhead was never officially my husband.”
“You’re splitting hairs.”
“Just because I was unofficially married to a lousy, no-good thief doesn’t mean I’m going to cook Butch’s books.”
“I’m sure you won’t. I was only curious what Kate has spilled about your current situation to Butch.”
As in Ronnie’s position way up shit creek thanks to her ex-husband skimming the money he’d laundered and sniffing it up his nose in the form of cocaine. According to the FBI, those goons he had stolen from were now coming for Ronnie, because they somehow had gotten the idea she knew where he’d hidden the dough. Unfortunately, there was no dough, and the only thing that had saved Ronnie from being in debt up to her zirconium earrings was nothing had been put in her name. Her lack of money didn’t matter to the men who wanted their pound of flesh, though. Her skin would do just fine.
Ronnie slid onto Gramps’s stool and spoke close to Claire’s ear. “Did you find out anything about the diamonds yet?”
“No, not yet.”
The diamonds Ronnie was talking about were goodies she had skimmed from a pair of rare artifact smuggling “mules.” The two mules had been staying at the R.V. park a month ago, helping an archaeology crew excavate one of their new step-grandmother’s mines. It seemed Ronnie had learned a thing or two from her ex-husband about borrowing from criminals.
Then again, maybe she hadn’t learned from her ex’s mistakes, because now Claire had more to worry about than the goons coming for Ronnie. Now she had to worry about someone coming for those missing diamonds, too.
Claire glanced around the bar, suspicious of anyone staring at her and Ronnie too long. “I told you not to mention those stones in public.”
Ronnie’s brown eyes widened. She scoped out the room. “You think someone in here is dirty?”
Downing her glass of beer, Claire scowled. “Yeah, I think most of the guys in here are dirty, especially those road crew workers. Stop looking so paranoid, you spaz.”
“I’m not paranoid.”
“Please. You think any man who looks at you is going to kidnap you and torture you for information on your ex’s hiding places when all they’re really doing is checking out your hooters.”
“Hooters? Nice language. Kiss your new grandmother with that mouth?”
“Only on the cheek.” Claire patted Ronnie on the forearm. “You know the first step to recovery is admitting you suffer from the affliction. Gramps told me you put up a trip wire alarm around his Winnebago last week while Kate and I were gone.”
“I was only being cautious.”
“The alarm woke up the whole R.V. park.”
“It wasn’t my fault Gramps’s dog slipped his collar and came to visit me.”
That damned beagle would have given Houdini a run for his money. “What about the eight canisters of pepper spray you have all over the Winnebago?”
“You never know when a grizzly bear might cross your path on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.”
“There are no bears in Jackrabbit Junction.” Well, except for Kate’s polar bear.
Ronnie shrugged. “You don’t know that for certain.”
“I’m 99.9 percent positive. Besides, Gramps’s R.V. has a bathroom.”
“It could be occupied.”
“At two in the morning?” Claire shook her head, dumbfounded. Was something in the water around here making everyone wacky?
“You’re in my seat, Ronnie,” Gramps interrupted them, patting her shoulder. “How about you scoot over one?”
Ronnie stood. “That’s okay,” she said as Gramps slid back onto his barstool, “I need to grab my order pad and help Katie.” She peeked at Claire over Gramps’s head, pretended to be looking through binoculars, and mouthed diamonds.
Claire rolled her eyes and returned to her grandfather. “So what did you want to talk to me about tonight?”
“I want to take Ruby up to South Dakota for a couple of weeks.” He stared down at his beer before taking a drink.
“You want me to watch the R.V. park for you two?”
He nodded. “And Jessica. Teenager that she is, she doesn’t want to come with her mother and me. She’d rather stay here with you and your sisters.”
Claire thought about the responsibility Gramps was asking her to shoulder. “Did anyone talk to Mac about this?”
She had a feeling her boyfriend wasn’t going to be thrilled about Claire running the park on her own with all of the near-death shit that had happened over the past few months. Nor the fact that it would mean she’d be staying in Jackrabbit Junction a while longer. Earlier today, Mac had been working on convincing her to come back to Tucson with him for a solid month now that Gramps’s leg was doing better.
“Not yet.” Gramps cut through her worries about Mac. “Ruby wanted to see if you were game first.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Great, then you can let Mac know.”
“What! Come on, he’s Ruby’s nephew.” Their family tree was beginning to look more like a family vine with the relationship branches growing all twisted together since Claire’s grandfather had married Mac’s aunt.
“Yeah, but you’re the one sleeping with him.”
Not often enough thanks to the miles keeping them apart.
“Fine, I’ll break the news to him,” she said, “but you need to let me drive Mabel around for a week in exchange.”
Gramps had named his 1949 souped-up Mercury “Mabel” after his first wife, Claire’s grandmother. With twenty-five coats of hand-rubbed paint and a pristine white leather interior, he got persnickety any time anyone even got skin oil on his baby.
“I’ll tell you what. If you do this, I’ll let you have Mabel for the whole time we’re gone.”
“Really?” Wow, he was desperate. She should have bargained for more. Wait a second … “You’re not leaving that damned dog of yours behind with me, too, are you?” Gramps’s beagle turned his little black nose up at her every chance he got.
“He’s coming with Ruby and me. If I leave him behind with you, he’d probably ‘disappear’ again.”
“You know that wasn’t my fault. Not entirely anyway.”
>
“Let’s just hope you don’t manage to lose Jessica.”
“You’re a real hoot. So when do you plan on leaving?”
“This week. We want to beat the snowstorm that’s supposed to hit the Black Hills next weekend.”
Claire pushed her empty beer glass around. “I’ll call Mac tomorrow and let him know we’re bunking in your room for the next couple of weeks.”
She couldn’t wait to get a break from the R.V. where she’d been holed up with Ronnie and Kate for the last few weeks. There’d been so much sisterly bonding lately that she didn’t think even a jackhammer could split them apart.
Gramps ordered her another beer without asking her.
Claire frowned. “I was gonna head home and crash. Working on that back ditch area all day wiped me out.”
“Not yet.” When the beer arrived, he shoved it in her direction. “Drink up.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Why are you pushing alcohol on me?”
“Because there’s something else I need to talk to you about.”
“What?”
“Your mother.”
Claire took a drink. Bitter, just like her mother. “What about her?” Ruby had mentioned that Claire’s mom was in Tucson for a long weekend. They’d both warned Mac to keep his head low.
Gramps grimaced at the suds on his glass. “While you and Katie were in South Dakota something happened.”
“Did Mom buy another pair of fake alligator skin boots?”
“No. She took a little trip.”
“She’s tripping all right.” Her mom had been bitchier than ever since signing those divorce papers. Claire envied her father and his newfound freedom.
“I mean an actual trip.”
“Really? She hates to drive long distances. Where to?”
“Vegas.”
That was even weirder. Gambling wasn’t really her mother’s thing, but whatever. Claire wasn’t sure why Gramps was making such a big deal of it. “Okay.”
“She didn’t go alone.”
Claire shrugged. “The more the merrier I always say.”
“She eloped.”
Time screeched to a halt. A clanging racket filled her ears.
“Come again?”
“Your mom got married in Vegas.”
The room tipped, slipping off its axis. Claire clutched the bar. “What did you say?”
“Congratulations, Claire.” Gramps lifted his glass of beer in mock cheer. “You have a new daddy.”
Chapter Two
Monday, November 5th
Kate Morgan was going to kick somebody’s butt, as soon as she finished puking her guts out.
Sitting back on her heels, she grabbed a wad of toilet paper and wiped off her lips. “This pregnancy business isn’t for wussies,” she told the gleaming white porcelain toilet, aka her breakfast partner these days. Especially one wussy in particular who had no full-time job or health insurance and lived in her grandfather’s Winnebago with her two bossy older sisters.
Actually, Claire wasn’t normally bossy. At least she hadn’t been before Kate’s baby had come along. Lately though, Claire’s normal attitude of swing-first-and-ask-questions-later seemed to have traded places with Kate’s tendency to retreat in a cloud of dust.
Take last night at the bar with that polar bear biker dude. In the past, Claire would’ve been all squinty-eyed and hovering over him, demanding he fess up to his reason for being in Jackrabbit Junction. Instead she’d dragged Kate from his table and had sent her home with Gramps to be locked away for safekeeping, insisting she finish Kate’s shift and stay to help Ronnie close the bar.
Kate used the toilet paper holder to stand up. Another bout of nausea threatened, but she kept it down, blinking through the accompanying tears. “That’s enough for today,” she told her stomach and took a few deep breaths.
Thankfully the restroom in this section of the R.V. park was brand new, so the place smelled like fresh concrete and vanilla thanks to the air fresheners attached to the wall above the stalls. The only thing lurking in the corners and behind the toilets were dust bunnies.
Her hand trembled as she wiped the sweat off her brow and tucked back the loose tendrils of hair that had escaped her ponytail. Pregnancy had shaken the shit out of Kate’s universe, sending her tumbling ass over teakettle. But she was done starring in the real life version of Linda Ronstadt’s Poor Poor Pitiful Me.
Something inside of her had snapped while she had been up in South Dakota with Claire last week. If it weren’t for the threat of a restraining order, she’d send a Thank You card to that dickhead bartender whose snide comments had lit a wildfire that now raged inside of her. For the first time since she’d found out she was carrying Butch’s child, she felt ready to face the world.
And maybe a little crazy.
But crazy was better than night after night filled with self-pity parties. Crazy was energizing, fueling Kate to start moving forward again instead of standing there catching flies.
The substitute teaching job in Yuccaville was the first step. Next came moving from the couch in Gramps’s Winnebago to an actual bed.
But not Butch’s bed. No way. No matter how much the panicky voice in her head tried to convince her that running back to him would solve all of her problems, she would not give in to it. After his comment about not having time in his life for kids with starting a new business and traveling, she refused even to daydream about what life could be with him.
But he said that before he knew …
No! Kate squelched that thought, stomping it out before it could catch flame. There would be no future with Butch. Period. Especially if his heart wasn’t in it.
Her mother could yap at her until her pink-painted lips fell off, but Kate had her mind set. She refused to end up in a loveless relationship, dragging her child down with her. She’d witnessed firsthand how that ended for all parties involved. She and her sisters were still screwed up after decades of their parents screaming and fighting into the wee hours.
With another round of morning sickness on the back-burner, Kate stepped out of the bathroom stall and crossed to the bank of lockers next to the showers. She double-checked under the stalls before pulling open the locker door.
Her hidden treasures were crammed together in a small basket. She fingered the note Butch had written to her after they’d first gotten together listing the steps to close up the bar. It was signed with a little heart and arrow in place of his name. She pushed aside the keychains he’d given her. One set held the keys to his house, the other had keys to his garage and the El Camino parked inside. She took out the stun gun she’d bought at a pawnshop in Yuccaville and tested it. She doubted it would drop a horse like the greasy salesman had said, but what about a man who called himself the Polar Bear? Maybe she could bribe Claire to let Kate test it on her. Better yet, she and Claire could test it on Jessica’s loser of a father.
She put the stun gun aside and took out an old picture of her early teenage self with her sisters and her cousin, up on Pilot Knob overlooking the Black Hills. She’d never forget that day—the warm sun on her head, the cool fall winds freshened with pine whipping her hair here and there, and the giggles and laughs with her three best friends. Leaning the picture against the back of the wicker basket, she pushed aside the empty Baby Memories book she’d found at a drugstore on the way home from South Dakota and pulled out her journal.
Flipping it open, she fanned through the pages of notes she’d made on potential criminals lurking around Jackrabbit Junction until she reached her entry from last night about the Polar Bear. She pulled the pen from the spine. Under her other notations about the brute and the motel he was staying at in Yuccaville, she scribbled: Driver’s license had somewhere in Illinois as address. South Barren-something, probably a suburb in Chicago.
Claire was wrong. That guy was up to no good, and Kate would bet it had something to do with the thugs who were coming for Ronnie and her ex-husband’s mythical hidden stash. Before the week
was out, Kate was going to have proof that her suspicions were spot on this time. Then maybe Claire would quit being such a chicken shit and help Kate send the Polar Bear whimpering home to the cave in Illinois he’d crawled out of.
Kate’s cellphone vibrated in the pocket of her pajama pants.
She closed the journal and shoved it into her locker behind the wicker basket, then fished out her cellphone.
The name on the phone’s screen made her breath catch.
Butch!
No.
Not now.
Her stomach roiled again.
Not so soon after worshiping the porcelain goddess, which had left her wanting to yell at someone while shredding the purple teddy bear her mother had given her as an early baby shower gift.
She let it go to voicemail, her hands trembling again for a whole different reason. Then she leaned back against the lockers, waiting to see if he left a message this time. The last few had been short, his voice terse.
A fly buzzed around the fluorescent light over the bank of sinks. Someone in the adjoining men’s restroom flushed the toilet. Another bout of nausea stampeded through her stomach, glazing Kate’s forehead with sweat before passing.
Her phone dinged.
Butch had left a message.
She hit the Play button, holding her breath as his honey-smooth voice filled her ear.
“Stop ignoring my calls, Kate. We need to talk. I’ll be home Wednesday night.”
Yep, still curt.
She puffed her cheeks and blew out a sigh. What was there to talk about besides her going part-time now that she had a substitute teacher gig in Yuccaville? She doubted he’d had a change of mind about playing Daddy. She’d learned early on that her life wasn’t a Disney movie. There’d be no hunky prince and ballroom dancing at the end for her.
Stuffing her phone back into her pocket, she grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste from the locker before closing it.
She had two days until Butch would be back in Jackrabbit Junction. That gave her a little over forty-eight hours to figure out how to face him without falling to pieces at his feet.
* * *
“Jeez-louise, Claire. Why are you driving so damned slow?” Ronnie leaned over to check the speedometer for the umpteenth time in the last few minutes. She sighed in frustration. “Hit the gas already, would ya? I could walk back to Jackrabbit Junction faster.”