by Ann Charles
“On what?” Jess plopped onto the barstool between Harley and Manny. The girl didn’t miss a thing, no matter how many times they sent her into the General Store on bogus errands.
“Never mind,” Harley and Mac said in unison.
Chester snorted.
Harley threw a Queen of diamonds in the middle of the table. “That’s trump.”
“What’s trump mean again?” Jess asked, leaning over Harley’s shoulder, frowning at his cards. Determined to participate in the game, she’d badgered Claire’s grandpa until he’d relented and started teaching her how to play.
“It’s the suit that has the most powerful cards in the game,” Manny answered for Harley. “And this,” he added, his grin wide as he tossed a Jack of diamonds on top of Harley’s Queen, “is the toughest hombre of them all.”
Mac surveyed the hand Chester had dealt him—a lousy combination of cards. Of the four suits, Mac held three, and Harley had picked the odd one out. Stone-faced, he laid down the nine of clubs.
Harley grunted. “Is that the best you can do?”
“You’re the one who called diamonds as trump,” Manny said. He’d been acting as Mac’s advocate for the last hour. Mac had yet to figure out what he’d done to earn it.
“That’s because he bid two.”
“What’s wrong with bidding two?” Mac tossed a few salt-free mini-pretzels in his mouth, crunching.
“I thought you said you know how to play Bid Euchre.”
“I do.” He’d learned from a guy back in college.
Harley yanked his cigar from his lips. “Then you should know that betting two is code for telling your partner you have a red Jack and a black Jack.” He shot Mac a glare. “Do you even have a Jack?”
“No table talk,” Chester said and threw out a ten of diamonds.
“Shit, boy. Everyone here has diamonds, but us.”
“You shouldn’t have outbid him,” Manny told Harley, chuckling as he collected the four cards from the middle of the table and stacked them in front of him.
“Two is a lousy bid,” Harley muttered.
“Two is a par bid,” Mac said. “You didn’t have to jump to four.”
“Chester always bids four. I had to beat him to the punch.”
Manny threw out the Jack of hearts to lead the next round. “And that’s the second toughest hombre in the deck,” he informed Jess.
“Damn you, Carerra.” Harley tossed out his Ace of diamonds with a defeated sigh. A smirk hovered on his lips as he eyed Mac. “I don’t know what Claire sees in you.”
Mac shook his head at the mirth twinkling in Harley’s eyes. “I told you guys, Claire and I are not an item.”
But he wasn’t blind to the way Claire kept looking at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. Or to how well she filled out a T-shirt.
Okay, so maybe he was a pushover. Agreeing to take that silly femur to his buddy to analyze for nothing more than a promise from Claire to drop the possible murder notions until they received test results probably wasn’t one of his smartest moves. But seeing her whole face light up when he’d consented had made him forget about Ruby’s flat tires—at least until he’d handed over the cash for them.
“That’s not what your cousin here told us,” Chester said, throwing down the King of diamonds.
Jess had the dignity to blush at Mac’s glare. “I only said it because Claire thinks you’re hot.”
She does?
“Jess,” Mac warned, wanting to put a cork in his cousin’s mouth before she said something else embarrassing.
“What else did Claire say, Señorita?” Manny asked.
Popping a bubble, Jess grinned. “That she really likes Mac’s butt.”
Wolf whistles and elbow jabs abounded from the three amigos.
Mac dropped his gaze to his cards, fighting the heat crawling up his neck. Damn Jess and her big mouth!
Still laughing, Chester crushed his beer can in his hand and cracked open another. “It’s your turn, sweet buns.”
* * *
The Shaft bustled with life. Amidst the cozy cocoon of second-hand smoke, stale peanuts, and overused pick-up lines, Claire stared across the smattering of cowboy hats.
A grizzly, barrel-chested man balanced on a tea-party sized chair while he bellowed along with Tanya Tucker blasting from the jukebox. Claire struggled to listen without wincing. Judging from the amount of lighters held up in the air with flames burning, the solo performance was a hit with the rest of the bar.
“Good ol’ Fernando Tortuga,” Ruby said in her soft southern drawl as she slid onto the stool next to Claire. “He can’t sit through Delta Dawn without joinin’ in at the top of his lungs. Butch keeps that song on the jukebox just to hear Fernando sing along.”
Claire shot her a skeptical glance.
“Entertainment in Jackrabbit Junction is sparse as glacier water.”
From her barstool perch, Claire had a territorial view of the bar’s cluttered landscape and the gaggle of liquor-happy patrons wandering around on wobbly legs. As she scanned the room for the jerk who’d wanted to take her out to his truck and show her his power drill, her gaze landed on a bouffant-haired brunette in painted-on red Wranglers weaving her way toward the other end of the bar. The woman’s white shirt plunged hooker-low in front.
“Who’s the busty bombshell with the rock-star red lips?”
“You mean the busty old bombshell,” Ruby corrected her. “That’s Sophy—spelled with a y, not ie. Sophy Wheeler. Joe told me she changed the spelling to make her name unique.”
Claire frowned at Ruby. “You mean, Joe, your husband?”
“One and the same.”
“Why would he know that?”
“Because she used to be Sophy Martino before Joe divorced her. But I usually refer to her as ‘The Bitch.’”
Claire sat up straight. Things were finally getting exciting. “How long were they married?”
“Long enough to want to kill each other.”
Claire watched as Sophy blew a goodbye kiss at the bartender, then sashayed out the door into the night with a drooling admirer in tow. The woman appeared to have a master’s degree in the art of flirting. Claire would have to keep an eye on Gramps if Sophy ever stepped into his radar range.
“So, what’s their story?” she asked Ruby.
Ruby sipped from her glass of beer. “They were livin’ in Phoenix while Joe went to college. Accordin’ to Joe, Sophy got tired of waitin’ for him to finish and ran off to Las Vegas with some cowboy who promised her glitter and gold.”
The hum of music and conversation around her faded as Claire’s attention focused on the words spilling from Ruby’s lips. “How’d Joe and Sophy meet?”
“They grew up here. Wheeler’s Diner, across the street, belonged to Sophy’s parents. I’ve never heard what went down in Vegas, but when the golden-tongued cowboy pushed her aside, he left her penniless on the street.”
“She scampered home with her tail between her legs and went back to working tables for her parents. They died a few years later and left her the diner. She’s been here ever since.”
“Did Joe move back here after college?”
“No. I think he lived in L.A., San Diego, then Dallas for a while. But most of what he did involved travel, so he wasn’t home much. I met him back in Tulsa. He was there on a business trip and came into the restaurant where I worked. When I gave him the bill, he asked me out and wouldn’t take No for an answer.”
“What did Joe do for a living?”
“I’m not sure what he was doin’ back then. He never wanted to talk about it. We saw each other off and on over the next six months. Then one day, he came to my door and told me he’d bought an R.V. park for me to run in the same town in Arizona where he had an antique business. Then he handed me a bouquet of the prettiest pink roses I ever laid eyes on and asked me to marry him.”
Ruby’s eyes sparkled a little in the dim light.
“He owned an antique business
here in Jackrabbit Junction?” Claire pointed down at the bar.
“Yep.” Ruby drained the last of her glass of beer and lowered it to the bar with a clonk. “Shared the same building as the hardware store. That side of the building is still empty.”
“Jackrabbit Junction isn’t the most fertile place to start a business. There isn’t no Wal-Marts or Taco Bells knockin’ on the mayor’s door.”
“How long were you two married?”
“We were two weeks shy of our fifth anniversary when Joe passed. The first four years were good, the last one pure hell.”
“Did he stop traveling when you got married?”
“Not right away. He balanced running the antique store and burnin’ up the road for some company out of Phoenix for over a year. Selling tools to manufacturing plants all over the West.”
Ruby rubbed her fingertip over the lip of her glass, a faraway smile on her lips. “He never liked to talk much about his traveling job. Said bringin’ his work home made his ulcers flare up real bad-like.”
She glanced at Claire. “You see, Joe was a stress case. He smoked like a diesel, drank ‘til his liver floated, carried sixty pounds more than his heart could handle, and battled high blood pressure. Potato chips were his kryptonite. Never could eat just one bag.”
Neither could Claire lately. She sipped her Corona fog, tasting the hint of tequila under the beer, and tried to picture Joe in her mind.
“After about a year of being married, he came home and told me he’d had a small stroke while he was in L.A. and decided it was time to retire from his travelin’ sales job. He wanted just to run his store and spend his golden years with me. Talked about a little nest egg he’d tucked away that’d keep us fat and happy.”
Cracking a peanut shell, Ruby frowned down at the nut resting in her palm. “Unfortunately, if there was an egg, he had it in some other nest and forgot about it.”
“A couple years after his retirement, Joe was drivin’ to Yuccaville for a carton of cigarettes, had a massive stroke, and rolled his Mercedes. The stroke paralyzed him on the right side, screwed up his ability to talk and write, and left his memory spotty at best.”
“I watched him disintegrate over the next year, while medical expenses ate up our savings and then some. Another stroke killed him in his sleep. The next day, I woke up alone and over my eyebrows in debt. He willed me the R.V. park, the mines, and everything that belonged to him—including his medical bills.”
“So he was a little too generous,” Claire said.
Ruby nodded. “First thing I did was sell everything in that antique store. Ol’ Bill Taylor is a real stickler when it comes to funeral costs. He threatened to dig up Joe and drop him off on my front porch if I didn’t pay him promptly for his services.”
“Joe had no insurance. He was only sixty when the big stroke hit, so he didn’t even have Medicare. He always said buying health insurance was like ‘pissing money down a drain.’ Guess he was planning on livin’ forever.”
A bad gamble on Joe’s part, and pretty damned selfish, too, in Claire’s opinion. “So, Sophy was back from Vegas and working the diner when you moved here?”
“Yep.”
“And Joe had been living here, too, running his antique shop?” Something about the two of them coming back to such a tiny dot on the map stuck in Claire’s craw. Her gut said there was something more between them than Ruby wanted to share. Or knew about.
“Uh, huh.”
“Sophy probably wasn’t beating down your door, offering any welcome-to-the-neighborhood casseroles or wanting to swap recipes.”
Ruby shook her head, chuckling. “Hardly.”
“And now that Joe is out of the picture, have things changed?”
“Yep. Her nails are longer and sharper.”
* * *
“So, are you one of those hombres who likes other hombres?”
Mac choked on his mouthful of Saguaro Ale. “No,” he answered after catching his breath. “I like women, and only women.”
The older man stared back, his brown eyes creased and piercing like a Mexican gunfighter of old. Mac could almost hear the cymbal sound effect used in old western movies to alert the audience that trouble was on the horizon.
Harley sure was taking his sweet time in the bathroom, and what was holding up Chester? How long did it take to grab another six pack of his favorite beer from his cooler outside the back door?
Jess snored lightly as she lay sprawled on the sofa, one leg dangling over the side, the stick of her grape sucker still clutched in her hand. She’d given up fighting the sandman right after Ruby’s clock cuckooed eleven times.
“Yet, you don’t like Claire,” Manny said.
That wasn’t necessarily true, but Manny didn’t need to know that. “Claire is not the only woman on Earth.”
Manny smiled. “No, but she’s one of the prettier ones.”
But good looks could be as deceptive as quicksand. “She’s a bit unstable,” Mac said.
“She’s got a lot of spark.”
“She’s too spontaneous.”
“She’s the life of the party,” Manny volleyed, his moustache twitching.
Mac crossed his arms over his chest. “She gives free reign to her emotions.”
“She’s warm-hearted and optimistic.”
Harley pushed through the green curtain, his usual scowl in place, and strode toward them. “Who you talking about?” he asked as he pulled out his chair.
“Claire,” Manny said as he started dealing out cards. “Mac can’t get her out of his head.”
Mac didn’t bother refuting it. His denials had been falling on hair-filled, near-deaf ears all night.
“We were discussing what a hot babe she is.” Manny added.
Harley shot a poisoned glower at Manny, then picked up his cards. “Claire is a sweet girl, and sharp, too.” He moved the cards around in his hand. “She’s taken more college classes than both her sisters combined, and when she’s not out finding trouble, she has her face shoved in a book like a good child.”
Good child? Mac had trouble buying that, although, her intelligence was evident in her speech—when she wasn’t swearing. “What’s her degree in?”
“She doesn’t have a degree yet.”
“Yet?”
Harley nodded. “The world is Claire’s oyster. But,” he emphasized the conjunction, “she can’t decide which tool to use to pry it open.”
“She’s a free spirit,” Manny said warmly.
“She’s indecisive.” Mac pinpointed.
“Her mother and aunts say she’s a screw up,” Harley said. “They constantly nag the poor girl, trying to bully her into taking one path in life and sticking with it. But Claire is like a dandelion seed. Her course in life is determined by the wind. In that way, she takes after her grandmother.” A smile curled the edges of the old man’s lips.
Chester burst in through the back door. “Hey! Guess who I just ran into outside?”
“Your ex-wife,” Harley answered, grinning. “She wants your other testicle.”
“A real Bob Hope, aren’t you?” Chester flopped down on his chair and wiped the dripping beer can on his T-shirt. “It was Eve, all warm and pink from the shower, smelling like a bouquet of posies. She agreed to go to lunch with me tomorrow.”
“Eve? Is she the retired flight attendant?” Harley asked.
Manny nodded. “A real blonde, too! Or so she says.” He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “Oh, dios mio. How I’d love to take a peek under her fig leaf.”
“You and me both, you lousy dog.” Chester lit a cigar, squinting through the puffs of smoke at Harley. “What’s the latest on Henry?”
“Claire’s heading back out tomorrow to the place where he was nabbed. She’s pretty determined to find the old boy.”
Mac stared blindly down at his cards, hearing the confidence in Harley’s tone. Claire’s words about not wanting to let down the only member of her family who still had faith in
her replayed in his head. He could see her point now.
“She asked if she could borrow my digital camera,” Manny said. “Mentioned something about wanting to take pictures in some old mine.”
Mac’s forehead tightened. The cut spark plug wires and flat tires had been a not-too-subtle hint. Somebody wanted him to stay out of those mines. If Claire started poking around out there, she could be in danger, too.
“Pictures of what?” Harley asked.
“I didn’t ask. You think she’d let me take a few shots of her wearing that tool belt?” Manny grinned wide, tossing a wink in Mac’s direction.
Mac knew better than to respond. Manny had been poking at Claire’s grandpa throughout the night. Seemed to be some kind of game between the two of them. At least he hoped. The guy was old enough to be her ... he looked at Harley ... well, her grandpa.
“Carerra,” Harley warned.
“What? I was just thinking of Mac. He’s still young enough to pitch his tent without the help of Viagra.”
Harley glared at both of them in turn.
Mac shook his head, beyond embarrassment after three hours of jabs and jokes on his account. At least they’d saved the worst for after Jess fell asleep.
“Harley, are you going to bid sometime before I turn eighty?” Chester asked, tapping his fingers on the table.
Harley turned his gaze back down at his cards. “I thought Mac and Claire were not an item.”
“We’re not,” Mac confirmed. But the memory of her smooth thighs and purple toenails made him wonder what she’d been hiding under her Oscar the Grouch pajama top. Did she smell like watermelon all over?
“Right,” Harley said, sounding unconvinced. “Well, while you’re busy not being an item, you’d better be sure to treat her with respect. I may be old, but I can still pull the trigger on my shotgun.”
* * *
“If I hear this damned song one more time,” Ruby groaned, “I’m gonna dump this glass of beer over Jerry Joseph’s head!”
Claire rubbed her eyes, trying to clear the alcohol from her eyesight. Right now she had about 20-80 vision—twenty percent alcohol, eighty-proof tequila. She had switched to water a half hour ago. Much more of that Mexican fire in her belly, and she’d be adios-ing the Pleasantly-Numbed-Lips city limits and stumbling across the Can’t-Find-My-Pants county line.