by Ann Charles
After another few seconds of studying Ronnie, Katie answered, “Only several calls to the Grand Canyon State Prison.”
“What? Which one?” There were several of those throughout Arizona.
“According to the operator who wanted to direct my call, I’d reached the Gila Flats complex.”
Gila Flats was the prison listed in the article Aunt Millie had given her, as in the place where the mule had been stabbed to death. Ronnie frowned at her hands, trying to line up the reels in her brain and land a jackpot with the diamonds, the mule, and Dory. “Dory called the prison?”
“Yep. He also received calls from the payphone there. It’s a separate number from the other one.”
“Did you tell Claire about this?”
“She was there when I made the calls confirming whose numbers Dory had in his phone.” Katie grabbed Ronnie’s chin and turned it toward her. “What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You and Claire are hiding something from me. What?”
So Claire hadn’t leaked the story about the murders in Mexico and at the prison. From the start, they’d agreed to shield Katie from this diamond mess as much as possible. There was even more reason to keep up that shield now. “Nothing.”
“You’re lying, Ronnie, just like Claire did when I questioned her.” Her sister’s face tightened, her eyes sparkling. “If you two won’t come clean, I’ll have to dig around myself and figure it out, the law be damned.”
“Katie, you’re making something out of nothing.”
“Then what has you both so scared that your eyes are darting all around? Does this have to do with the Polar Bear somehow? You think Dory is connected to him?”
Ronnie tried to hold her eyes still. “No, I don’t think either of those things.”
But she did wonder if Dory were somehow responsible for the death of the mule. Was he the one who’d killed those people in Mexico? She’d never seen Dory but imagined him as a burly, menacing tyrant hiding behind a Tucson Electric Power uniform.
Arlene joined them at the bar, taking the stool next to Katie with a weary sigh. “My dogs are barking something fierce after that run,” she said and squeezed Katie’s shoulder.
To Katie’s credit, she didn’t pull away. She reached up and patted the other waitress’s hand. “Maybe you should go home early tonight, Arlene. Get some rest.”
“You’re the one who should be resting, Katie-doll.”
“Nah, I’m good. I got lots of rest last night.” She shot Ronnie a sidelong glance and then asked Arlene, “How’s life at The Rowdy Coyote Motel? Any troubles with your neighbors there?”
“Nope. Everyone has been behaving themselves.” Arlene grimaced. “Although, I have heard talk lately about someone sneaking around the place in the dark, peeking in windows.”
“It’s probably a drunk stumbling through the neighborhood,” Katie said. “There’s a real seedy bar on that side of town. You should ask Butch for a raise, move somewhere safer.”
“Maybe I should buy a camper and set up in the Dancing Winnebagos R.V. Park. Then I can keep an eye on you until this baby is born, make sure you’re not pushing yourself too hard.”
“I think Ruby has monthly rates, doesn’t she?” Katie asked Ronnie, giving her a wild-eyed look that left Ronnie perplexed.
If Katie thought Arlene were up to no good, why in the hell was she inviting her to come live in their backyard? What was Katie’s angle here? Or was this “crazy” talk again, dancing with danger for shits and giggles?
A glance at her watch told her she had a few hours until closing. Whatever Katie’s reasoning was, Ronnie didn’t have time to sit here and play psychologist-slash-detective at the moment. There was a pile of papers in Butch’s office with her name on it. “Listen, I’m supposed to be working on Butch’s bookkeeping. If you two can handle this for now, I’m going to go dabble in debits and credits in his office.”
They both waved her away: Arlene pushing to her feet and limping back toward one of her still-full tables, Katie grabbing a rag from behind the bar and a bottle of cleaner.
Ronnie hobbled back to Butch’s office and found him inside, lying on the couch with his arm over his eyes. His chest was moving up and down too fast to be sleeping. Electric Light Orchestra was on the stereo singing about an evil woman making a fool of them. Ronnie rolled her eyes. They needed to get over it.
“You okay?” she asked him, pausing on the threshold.
“When I close my eyes, I can still see burgers on the grill.”
Chuckling, she skirted his desk and grabbed the pile of papers on the corner.
“I wish I’d never decided to start offering gourmet burgers. It takes twice as long to make every damned sandwich now.”
“But business is booming.”
“I’m still not sure if that’s a good thing.”
“Mind if I work on your books while you lie there dreaming about charred meat?”
“Not at all.”
She sat in his chair, pulling out his general ledger and digging into the pile.
Ten minutes later, ELO had moved onto Strange Magic, but Ronnie was stuck in expenses.
“Ronnie?” Butch asked.
His arm still covered his eyes when she glanced over. “Yeah?”
“I don’t know if I have what it takes.”
“To run your bar?” He could always hire a manager.
“To make your sister happy.”
Ronnie lowered her pen, realizing that he was dead serious. She passed on several glib responses and asked, “You love her, don’t you?”
“To the moon and back.”
“Well, if that’s not enough, you can always take her out for ice cream. She’s been craving mint chocolate chip a lot lately, especially in the middle of the night.”
* * *
Tuesday, November 13th
The wind was blowing through Yuccaville’s streets this morning, dust billowing in the air like snow, making Kate hesitant to follow through with her plan.
“Maybe we should come back tomorrow,” she told Claire, who’d agreed to come along and play lookout for her.
“No, we have to do it today.” Claire parked Ruby’s old Ford opposite the Tucson Electric Power building and shut off the engine. “His truck is the one on the left.”
“How can you tell?”
“When we were following Dory yesterday, I noticed the ‘How’s my driving?’ bumper sticker was crooked.”
A blast of wind howled past, kicking a tumbleweed up the street like a soccer ball.
“It’s too dusty out today,” Kate said.
“It’s perfect. Anyone driving by will be too distracted by the wind and shit in the air to be looking around. Plus, it’ll drown out any sounds you might make.”
“What sounds do you think I’m going to make?”
“I don’t know. You have a way of getting caught lately.”
“I managed to sneak into the Sheriff’s office and lock up Deputy Dipshit without getting caught.”
“That’s true,” Claire said. “I’m just saying this weather gives us a good diversion. Nobody is going to want to go out in it if they see you sneaking around Dory’s truck.”
“Nobody is going to see me.” Kate zipped up the black windbreaker she’d borrowed from Ruby’s closet, flipping the hood up over her head. “But for the record I think my idea was better.”
She’d wanted to drop the phone in an envelope and mail it with an anonymous note saying she’d found it at Dirty Gerties.
“I disagree. We don’t want Dory asking around about it at Dirty Gerties.”
“Why not? Nobody will know anything about his phone disappearing. There’s no way to trace it back to anyone there either, so he’ll drop the subject and go on with his life.”
“Kate, I don’t want to put anyone else in danger.”
“What danger? It’s a cellphone, Claire, not those diamonds you and Ronnie took.”
Claire started
to say something else but then stopped, swallowing it. “Listen, this is better, trust me,” she said with finality. “Dory will think he misplaced his phone and that’s all. Now go.”
“Easy for you to say,” Kate grumbled, tucking her hair into her hood and tying the strings tight under her chin. “You’re not the one about to inhale a shovelful of dust.”
“Quit speaking in whine-ese and get out.”
Kate slid on a pair of Ruby’s cotton gardening gloves she’d borrowed along with the coat and shoved open her door. The wind promptly slammed it shut. “You see that?” she said to Claire. “It’s a sign not to do this.”
“It’s a sign that you’re being a wuss.”
“You do remember that I’m your pregnant sister, right? Do you really think this is a good idea in my delicate condition?”
Claire pointed out the window toward the two work trucks. “Now, Kathryn Lynette!”
“You have no respect for a pregnant woman.”
“I’m teaching your unborn child morals. Now go return that damned phone.”
“You teaching morals? Oh, that’s rich.” She wrinkled her nose at Claire and then pushed her door open, keeping her back to the wind. Dust peppered the nylon windbreaker, sounding like thousands of tiny pellets bombarding her. She rounded the back of the Ford.
Looking up and down the street to make sure the coast was clear and nobody was watching, she jogged over to the back of Dory’s work truck.
Coughing on a gust full of dust that slammed into her, she frowned back at Claire, who gave her a thumbs up. With a thumbs down back at her sister, Kate slipped around the right corner of the tailgate, hiding between the two work trucks as she sneaked up to the passenger side door handle. The door opened with relative ease since the wind was partially blocked by the other vehicle.
Kate pulled Dory’s cellphone out of her pocket, but it slid out of her gloved hand and crashed onto the gravel.
Shit!
She bent down to grab it and a gust blew the pickup door shut.
Damn it.
Growling under her breath, she flipped the phone right side up, grimacing at the scratch in the lower right screen. Had that been there before? She rubbed the screen on her yoga pants. The cotton and spandex mix smeared things around, but took care of most of the dirt. Yep, that was definitely a new scratch.
Crud!
She opened the pickup door again, blocking it with her body. The smell of stale French fries and musty dirt was the same as yesterday. So was the litter of papers and wadded up foil wrappers from the mini-mart. Apparently Dory liked to stop for snacks on his way out of town—a lot of snacks.
She shoved several of the wrappers and papers aside and laid the phone on the floor. The new scratch was plain as day in this light. She flipped the phone over, screen down, but then realized it was lying on a rubber floor mat. That wasn’t going to work because she needed something to justify the scratch.
Bending down, she scooped up a handful of gravel from the parking lot.
The wind blew the door shut again.
“Son of a crikey!” She shook her fist at the sky.
When she yanked open the door again, a gust blew into the cab whipping the papers and wrappers around, filling the rig with a cloud of dust.
“Now you’re just being an asshole, Mother Nature.”
She blocked the wind as much as she could with her body and shoved wrappers back down onto the floor.
“It’s perfect,” she mimicked Claire’s comment about the wind from earlier in Ruby’s Ford. “The stupid freaking dust storm is anything but perfect.” She scattered the dirt and gravel on the passenger mat and placed the phone screen down on top of some rocks.
Collecting the wind-blown litter from the dash and the driver’s side of the pickup, she stretched across the seat to get a French fry wrapper plastered to the speedometer. The sight of the door to the building opening made her freeze for a split-second, her heart latching onto her ribcage like a startled cat.
A hand wrapped around the edge of the building’s door, pushing it open against the wind.
Kate dropped down below the dashboard and melted backwards out of the pickup to the ground. She closed the pickup door quietly, the sound muffled by the wind whistling around the side of the building.
The boom of a metal door slamming shut made her peek under the pickup. A pair of black work boots were coming toward the trucks. On her hands and knees, she back peddled. The gravel poked through the knees of her pants, making her wince and curse under her breath.
She paused waiting for Dory’s boots to turn toward the driver’s side door, but the boots kept coming around the front of the rig. Why was he not … then she realized it must not be Dory’s boots.
Shittle-de-doo! It was the other guy! She shot a look to the driver’s side door of the other pickup. He was going to round the front of Dory’s truck in a second and see her hiding down here.
What should she do? Fake dropping a contact? Roll over and play dead like a possum?
A horn honked loud and long behind her.
The boots stopped and turned in the direction of the sound.
Kate backed around the tail of Dory’s truck, glancing over her shoulder at where Claire was hitting the horn and ending up with a face full of dust as another gust rolled passed.
“Excuse me, Mister,” Claire yelled through her open window at Dory’s coworker. “Can you tell me if I’m close to Sunflower Street?”
“Sunflower is two blocks up to the left.”
“Great. Thanks for your help.” Claire waved at the guy as she rolled up her window.
Kate peeked under the back bumper, waiting for him to climb into his work truck and close the door before slipping around the other side of Dory’s rig.
The sound of Ruby’s Ford starting up made Kate look across at Claire, who was pretending to fish in Kate’s purse for something. She made a show of it, appearing to haul everything out while the engine idled.
“That’s enough theatrics, Claire,” Kate whispered, spitting out the grit between her teeth thanks to that last blast.
As soon as the other work truck hit the pavement and rolled away, Kate stood. She shucked Ruby’s gloves and stuffed them in her jacket pockets, heading toward the street.
Down the block, a testosterone-ized pickup lifted so high a Great Dane could have run underneath it without breaking stride turned in her direction, coming up behind Claire. Kate waited for it to pass, frowning across the street at her sister, who was making annoying hurry-up hand gestures at her through the windshield.
The blue monster truck wanna-be rolled in front of her and then locked up the brakes, adding the acrid smell of burned rubber to the dust in the air.
Kate frowned at the oversized beast of a vehicle as it reversed, coming to a stop in front of her.
The driver’s side window rolled down and Deputy Dipshit’s meaty head poked out. “Well, don’t you look suspicious, Kate Morgan,” he hollered, lifting his sunglasses.
A glance toward Ruby’s truck showed it empty, or at least it appeared that way. Claire must have ducked down so the deputy wouldn’t spot her. Wonderful. That meant Kate was on her own.
“What kind of trouble are you getting into now?” he asked, all smug from high up in his perch.
The way he was looking down his snub nose at her kick-started her temper. She jammed her hands on her hips, ready to hit the dickwad with a verbal firing squad. “I’m jogging, Deputy. You should try it sometime. Maybe you could actually catch and hold onto a criminal then.”
His face scrunched like she’d reached out and pinched it. “You need to keep in mind that you’re talking to an officer of the law.”
“You’re missing your Sheriff’s truck, Ernie,” she emphasized his first name, “along with that tin badge that you like to hide behind. Why don’t you grab your ladder, climb down out of that ridiculous monstrosity, and face me here on the ground like the weasel that you are?”
He point
ed his finger at her. “You watch that smart mouth, harpy.”
“Are you on duty or not right now?” she asked, just to be clear.
“Not at the moment, but I will be later tonight.”
“Well, in that case I have something for you.” She pulled her hands from her coat pockets and gave him the old double bird. “Have a lousy day, Ernie,” she said, and took off jogging down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, the wind pelting her back with more dust.
Two blocks later, Ruby’s pickup pulled up next to her. Kate crawled inside, tugging her door shut in spite of the wind trying to rip it right off the hinges. She brushed the dust from her face.
“What did Deputy Dipshit want?” Claire asked as she pulled back out onto the street.
“To harass me. Same old, same old.” Kate untied the hood and shook out her hair. Her scalp felt like it was coated with dirt. “Apparently, I’m going to have to teach him another lesson about messing with a Morgan.”
Claire shook her head. “We’re going to need to set up a collection box to cover the cost of your bail.”
“I won’t get caught.”
“You will. Hell, you almost got caught back there at Dory’s truck. What in the hell was taking you so long? Were you crocheting him a doily to put under his cellphone before you left it in his truck?”
“I dropped his phone on the gravel, smarty. Those gloves are all cotton. I told you that you should have stopped at the store so I could buy rubber ones.”
“So you dropped the phone, oh well. You should have dumped it and left; then Deputy Dipshit wouldn’t have seen you there and we’d have made our getaway without a hitch.”
“It’s your fault,” Kate told Claire. “You’re the one who insisted we return the phone. If you’d have let me mail it, none of this would have happened.”
“Damn it, Kate, you don’t understand what’s at stake here.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re pregnant.”
“Here’s a newsflash for you: pregnancy does not cause temporary deafness.”
“No, but in your case it caused temporary insanity.”
Kate leaned over and socked her sister in the shoulder.