Dance of the Winnebagos

by Ann Charles

  He pulled a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wrapped it around her hand. “It looks like you’ll live. Now quit wasting your energy telling me where and how I can shove it and pay attention to where you’re stepping.” He hiked back up the tailings.

  Claire flipped him off behind his back before following.

  Ten minutes later, Mac crested the top with Claire right behind him—clutching onto his belt. He’d pulled her along the last half of the climb like a ship dragging anchor.

  “Dang, woman,” Mac said as he grabbed her hand and hauled her to the solid rock lip jutting out from the mine. “I think you’ve severed my spleen.”

  Claire collapsed onto the ground. She looked up from where she lay, sprawled at his feet. “A gentleman,” she said between gulps of air, “would never make such a comment to a lady.”

  Mac squatted next to her. He brushed her hair out of her face. “A lady would never curse Mother Nature, the North Star, and all four-legged animals in English, Spanish, and ... what was that third language you swore so eloquently in?”

  “Canadian.”

  A grin spread across Mac’s face. The shadows from the glow of the flashlight gave him a craggy, rugged look, and in her oxygen-deprived state, Claire found him kind of hot. Too bad he seemed to be cinched up on the inside tighter than a corset.

  She’d once had a boyfriend who’d dusted three times a week, showered twice a day, made sure the food on his plate never mixed, and used a protractor to line his ties up straight. Rather than kill him in his sleep, she’d walked out on him and moved back in with her mom for two months.

  Make those two torture-filled months with the woman who bore her, pointing out all of the ways Claire was living her life wrong. Needless to say, she’d learned her lesson about uptight men.

  Mac stood. The bastard wasn’t even breathing hard. “How about you just lie there while I go inside the mine and look around for any sign of your dog?”

  Gulping cool air she hoped would douse her flaming lungs, she stared up at the black sky full of glittering rhinestones. “Okay. I’ll hold down the fort out here and fend off any ravenous coyotes that come our way.”

  “You do that,” he said with a chuckle. “Just don’t go dying on me while I’m in there.”

  * * *

  Sophy clamped her hand tight around the dog’s muzzle and squeezed his wiggling body against her chest. She slipped deeper into the dark tunnel, using the damp, jagged rock wall as a guide. Turning on her light would give her away.

  “Henry,” a man called out in low, hushed voice. He was either nervous or knew better than to shout in an old mine.

  The varmint in her arms stilled.

  “Henry?” Footsteps thudded on the stone floor behind her.

  Sophy grimaced as the dog wiggled against her stomach, slicing her with his toenails. If “Henry” didn’t want to end up roasting on a stick on the other side of the Mexican border, he’d better calm his little ass down.

  She tore open the last of her supper with her teeth. The smell of teriyaki-marinated beef made her mouth water. It’d been over five hours since she’d eaten that last piece of key lime pie back at the diner.

  Henry stopped thrashing about. She heard him sniff several times.

  “Henry?” The man’s voice was closer now—too close.

  Inching several more feet along the wall, she turned into a side tunnel. Seconds later, a flash of light bounced off the walls at the junction to the main tunnel. Sophy tightened her grip on the dog, in case he got any ideas. Where was the woman who’d been calling for the dog? There must be two looky-loos out searching.

  Henry rubbed the end of his muzzle against the jerky. Food apparently ranked higher in priority than being saved.

  “Henry!” The guy’s voice was so close she expected him to round the corner and nail her with the light at any moment. She could hear him breathing, slow and steady. Sinking against the wall, she ignored the sharp stone digging into her upper vertebrae. If she could only get to her pack and the 8-inch-blade combat knife inside of it.

  The light at the mouth of the tunnel grew brighter.

  Then the footsteps stopped. The light dimmed a bit. “What’s this?”

  What’s what? She’d tried to be careful over the last few months and not leave any traces of her trips in and out of the mine. Nobody needed to know she’d been digging around in Socrates Pit.

  “I’ll be damned.” The light dimmed even more, followed by the sound of his footsteps fading. He was heading back toward the entrance.

  Sophy frowned in the growing darkness. Slowly, she loosened her hold on Henry’s muzzle.

  The dog chomped on the jerky like it might run away at any moment. With the mine silent and black again, she took several deep breaths. Henry gulped down the last of her supper, then cleaned her fingers with his leathery tongue.

  Now that she’d fed the dog—twice, she was in a bit of a pickle. Not only did Henry know how to find Socrates Pit, he’d probably associate it with food. She had a feeling he might stick to this area like flies on shit if she let him loose. Or, worse yet, lead his owner back here. She didn’t need any visitors. There was no way in hell she’d share any of the loot when she found it.

  “The question is,” she whispered, pulling the flashlight from her utility belt, “what am I going to do about you?” She directed the beam on the dog. Only one answer came to mind.

  Henry stopped licking his chops and whimpered.

  * * *

  “You are sexy as hell,” Mac said to the 1949 Mercury beauty as he caressed her sleek curves with his palm while circling her. He licked his lips, entranced by the feel of her buffed, smooth surface.

  “Yep. Mabel’s a guaranteed testosterone rocket,” Claire told him, leaning against the driver’s side door of the chopped top, two-door car with painted flames shooting up the hood and sides.

  Mac shined his flashlight inside the passenger side window. Flawless, diamond-patterned, white leather seats and door panels; cherry red carpet; chromed dial casings; manual three-speed transmission on the floor; and a custom flame design on the dashboard.

  This car was a dream.

  “Mabel?” he asked.

  “That’s her name.”

  “You named your car Mabel?” Mac stepped back and ran his light along the length of the Merc. Player spoke wheels in front, skirts on back, shaved door handles, and side pipes.

  This car was a wet dream.

  “No, Gramps named his car Mabel—my grandma’s middle name.”

  He walked around the front of Mabel and admired her huge chrome grill.

  “We should have poked around that mine some more,” Claire said.

  Her miffed tone was back. Oh, joy. He’d been subjected to it all the way back down the hillside and across the valley floor.

  “Henry still has to be in the area. For crissake, his legs can’t be more than six inches long. How far can a short-legged dog run?”

  “Apparently a lot farther than a certain long-legged woman can,” Mac answered without looking up from the grill’s teeth.

  “Good looks and a comedian, too.” Her sarcasm made him smile. Her compliment didn’t go unnoticed, either. “I wouldn’t quit your day job, though, whatever it may be, Mr. Mysterious.”

  “Building walls.” Mac slipped around to the driver’s side, noticing the high gloss on the front quarter panel. “She must have several coats of paint to make her this smooth.”

  “Twenty-five coats, hand rubbed,” she answered as if every car coming out of Detroit received the same treatment. “What do you mean building walls?”

  “That’s what I do for a living.”

  “In houses?”

  “No. Retaining walls. I’m a geotechnician for a private engineering company in Tucson, but we do a lot of state work.”

  “So you build those walls along freeways?”

  “That’s one example. We also work on maintaining and replacing the hundreds of miles of aqueducts and tunnel
s, and thousands of miles of canals coming from the Colorado River.”

  “Do you do the design work or the actual hands-on work?”

  “Both.”

  “Then what are you doing out here?”

  Mac looked up at her. The flashlight reflected off the side of the car and cast her in a dim glow. She had a cute nose, with a little uplift at the tip, placed perfectly on her face. If only she’d stop trying to shove it into his business. “Stuff.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Yep. Just some stuff.” He flashed her a drop-it smile.

  She placed her hands on her hips, her grin cocky. “So we’re back to that again, are we?”

  “Back to what?”

  “You brushing me off.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want you to vary from your routine.”

  He ignored her comment. “Listen, it’s late. I’m tired. You’re tired. Can we head back to Ruby’s now?”

  “Sure, on one condition.”

  Mac narrowed his eyes. This couldn’t be good.

  “You agree to come with me tomorrow and search for Henry.”

  He didn’t have time to go trekking through the valley, scouring creosote bushes for a missing dog. The clock was ticking on Ruby’s deal, and he was too short on time already. “I really can’t—”

  “Come on. I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground out here. You’re the only one who can show me where the mine is that we climbed up to tonight. I need your help.”

  He wasn’t the only one. Ruby knew how to get up to Socrates Pit, as did Jess. But Ruby couldn’t leave the store for any length of time during the day, and Jess was supposed to spend her spare time working on the homework Ruby assigned to her each day.

  There was also his pickup to consider. First thing in the morning, he’d have to drag Ruby and her truck with him to tow his pickup back to the R.V. park. Since he didn’t carry around spare spark plug wires, he’d have to drive Ruby’s truck to Yuccaville and see if the Roadrunner Auto Parts store carried what he needed.

  Sometime between it all, he wanted to do some research on the old coin he’d found tonight up in Socrates Pit. It had to be rare. How much was an 1879 twenty-dollar gold piece worth nowadays? Ruby could use all the help she could get paying off her creditors.

  He opened his mouth to offer to show her the mine’s location on the map in Ruby’s rec room, but then he noticed the worry lines criss-crossing Claire’s forehead. He sighed, cursing silently. “I’m busy until after lunch.”

  “Me, too. I have to work for Ruby until two.” She pulled a key ring with a black plastic remote dangling from it out of her jacket pocket and pushed a button. Something clunked inside the Mercury and the doors popped open. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Feeling like a kid about to take a ride in his dad’s new car, Mac knocked the dust from his shoes before climbing in next to Claire. She turned the key. The V-8 rumbled to life. She whipped the car around and they bounced out onto the asphalt.

  A comfortable silence settled around him as they cruised toward the campground. Mac ran his hand over the leather-covered dashboard. The raised imprint of the flame design under his fingertips was soft as a lambskin jacket.

  The car smelled of sun-baked leather and bananas, no doubt due to the banana-shaped air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror. What he wouldn’t do to take her out on the open road, crank her wide open, and bury the needle on the speedometer.

  “Gramps is going to kill me when I tell him I lost Henry,” Claire interrupted his Route 66 fantasy.

  “You didn’t lose him. The dog ran off.”

  “Make sure you tell him that at my trial. Maybe he’ll consider using a firing squad instead of the noose. It’d be much better to die quickly, don’t you think?”

  “It’s just a dog. Surely you’re more important than Henry.”

  “One would like to think that, but Henry does things for Gramps that I won’t.”

  Mac stared across the car at the woman. He was afraid to ask, but did, anyway. “Like what?”

  “Well, he cleans the fried chicken grease off Gramps’s fingers.”

  That wasn’t so bad.

  “He licks the corns on Gramps’s feet to keep them from growing too thick.” She flashed a smile. “Henry has a pretty rough tongue.”

  Mac grimaced. That same tongue had been licking his face a short time ago.

  “He chases his tail on command, which entertains Gramps and his cronies for hours on end.”

  “Okay, but you are—”

  “Oh, and he eats bugs, lots of them. Especially those big, fat, black flies. They’re his absolute favorite—after sour cream and onion potato chips, of course.”

  “—his granddaughter,” Mac finished, happy to see the bridge to the campground in the headlights. “I’m sure he’ll understand it’s not your fault when you explain the circumstances.”

  “You don’t know Gramps.” Her voice sounded tired. The park’s gravel drive crunched under the tires as she slowed to a stop in front of Ruby’s place.

  Mac gazed at Claire in the soft green glow of the dash lights, liking what he saw too much for his own good. He needed to focus on dirt and rocks for the next three weeks, not Claire’s backside, even if it did look extremely touchable in her jeans.

  “I’ll meet you here in front of the store tomorrow at two-thirty,” she said, her smile back in place.

  Mac nodded. That would give him time to swing by the county library to see what he could dig up about the initial owners of the mines, and maybe find a book on old coins, too. “Good luck with your grandpa.”

  He stepped out of the car.

  As the red taillights disappeared around the bend, he mentally shook himself. Soft curves aside, Claire was trouble. A couple of hours with the woman and she’d already managed to completely rearrange his plans for tomorrow.

  He’d give her one day to track her dog. After that, she’d have to find someone else with whom to play search and rescue.

  * * *

  Claire snuck inside the Winnebago and closed the door behind her with a quiet click.

  A strange smell, like a mixture of lilies and stinky shoes, greeted her. She didn’t want to decipher from where the smell came. Some things were better left a mystery.

  She tiptoed toward Gramps’s bedroom. For the first time since they’d left home, she found comfort in his chainsaw-like snoring.

  Glancing at the couch, she wished by some miracle she’d see Henry snoozing on the cushions. But the couch was empty, and she was in deep shit.

  If Lady Luck was on her side, Henry would find his way back to the campground and be scratching at the door when her alarm went off at five-thirty. And Gramps would never know any different.

  Yeah, right. And Tinker Bell would fly out her butt, too.

  Either way, now was not the time to bring up the missing dog. After all, Gramps probably needed his sleep after spending the evening romancing a woman.

  Claire crept over to the couch. Since Henry wasn’t going to be sleeping on it tonight, she might as well be comfortable. She grabbed a soft quilt her grandmother had made, draped it over the beagle fur-covered cushions, and tossed her pillow at one end.

  As she slipped into her pajamas and settled under the covers, Mac seeped into her thoughts. What had he been doing out in the desert so late on a Saturday night? She’d have to ask Ruby.

  Closing her eyes, she remembered the feel of his hands around her waist as he’d helped her climb up to the mine. He must have felt the roll of fat she’d acquired over the last month, binging away her problems with chocolate and caramel.

  That was it. As of tomorrow, she’d start exercising and eating healthier. She’d keel over dead from an overdose of shame and humiliation if Mac ever saw her naked.

  Her eyelids snapped open.

  Who said anything about getting naked?

  Chapter Six

  Sunday, April 11th

  “Where’s my
damned dog?” Gramps hollered.

  Claire jerked awake. She sprung from the couch and stubbed her bare toe on the side of Gramps’s boot. “Son of a—arrggghhhh!” She circled, limping, blinking away sleep.

  “Claire, where’s Henry?” Gramps watched her with a scowl.

  “He’s uh ...” A glance at the alarm clock made her grimace. Shit! She was late—fifteen minutes late. She’d forgotten to set the alarm last night. Running her hand through her bangs, she looked around for her Mighty Mouse cap. “He kind of umm ...” She scooped up her jeans from the floor and snagged her faded yellow Cheerios T-shirt from the stack of clean clothes piled on top of the television, then backed toward the bathroom doorway.

  “Claire!” His face was the same color as the string of red pepper lights hanging from Manny’s awning. He stepped toward her.

  “He’s kind of lost.” She ducked into the bathroom and locked the vinyl accordion door behind her.

  “Claire Alice Morgan!” Gramps pounded on the flimsy barrier. “Get your butt out here this instant and explain yourself!”

  “I can’t,” she yelled, yanking on her jeans. “I’m changing right now.” She tore off her Oscar the Grouch pajama top and pulled her T-shirt over her head; squirted a dab of toothpaste on her toothbrush and scrubbed her teeth long enough to taste the mint-flavored gel on her tongue.

  With nothing left to keep her, she took a deep breath and braced for the storm.

  She slid open the door. “Listen,” she pleaded, staring into Gramps’s icy blue glare. “It sounds worse than it actually is. He ran off and my flashlight died, so I lost him in the dark.” No need to bring up the coyotes at this point. Nor Mac. Both would only lead to more questions. “But I promise, as soon as I get off work this afternoon, I’ll go straight out to that mine and find him.”

  Gramps’s bushy brows furrowed deeper. “What mine?”

  Time was ticking and she was twenty minutes late already. Ruby was going to be sorry she ever hired her worthless ass.

  “I don’t have time to explain right now. Just trust me—I’ll find him.” Standing on her tiptoes, Claire dropped a peck on his stubble-roughened cheek, then slipped past him and grabbed her cap on the way out the door.