by Ann Charles
While trying her damnedest not to act tipsy, she must have missed whatever had Ruby all riled up.
On the jukebox, Ronnie McDowell sang about older women being beautiful lovers. Claire blinked several times as she glanced around the bar for the man about to receive a beer shower. “Who’s Jerry Joseph?”
“That tall, gangly redhead leaning against the pool table, staring at me with that Jethro-like grin on his face.”
“That guy?” Claire frowned. The cowboy couldn’t be much older than her thirty-three years.
“Yep. He’s young enough to be my son, and just can’t get it through his dense skull that I’m not fixin’ to sleep with him.”
“You don’t go for the younger guys, huh?”
Claire couldn’t blame Ruby. She’d once dated a guy several years younger, and all he wanted to do was lie around in bed and lick peanut butter from between her toes. He might have smelled like sun-dried sheets and been red hot in the sack, but a girl can only stand so much sex before the need to eat interferes.
“No way. I’ve always liked my men older, more experienced. Joe was eight years older than me.”
Joe’s name brought to mind a question that had rattled around in her brain since Ruby had told her the story of his death. “What do you know about the history of your mines?”
“Only that Joe bought them from some old prospector when he first moved back to Jackrabbit Junction, and now they’re my headache.”
“Do you think the local library would have any information on them?” If she was going to try to deter the mining company, she needed to know the story behind those holes in the ground and if the femur played some part in that history.
“They might have some copies of the blueprints for the mines, but you’d probably have better luck diggin’ through Joe’s office in the basement. Don’t mind the dust, though. I haven’t had the time or inclination to clean in there since I hunted for Joe’s nest egg.”
Claire had planned on dragging her sorry ass back up to Socrates Pit tomorrow afternoon to take some pictures of Henry’s tracks and any other prints around them, but maybe she could do that after supper. It shouldn’t take her more than an hour. She could be in and out before the sun drooped behind the horizon.
The thought of hanging out in Socrates Pit after dark made her feel a bit skittish.
“Perfect,” Claire said, her voice back to speaking volume as Ruby’s song came to an end. “I plan on finishing up that woodpile fence in the morning. I’ll find you as soon as I—”
“That damned fool!” Ruby jumped up off the barstool. Older Women had started up again, drowning out the bells ringing in Claire’s ears. “He just doesn’t get that ‘No’ means ‘I’d rather eat raw toads and drink snake piss!’”
Ruby yanked her drink off the bar, spilling a third of the beer on the scarred oak.
“Wait!” Claire reached out to grab Ruby’s arm, but missed.
She overbalanced, tipped sideways off her stool, and torpedoed head-first toward the peanut shell and sawdust-covered floor.
* * *
Relief washed over Mac at the sight of Ruby striding in through the back door. The smoke and bullshit-filled air had his eyes and ears burning. The next time someone asked him if he knew how to play Bid Euchre, he would run the other way.
“Where’s Claire?” Mac asked Ruby, dropping his cards on the table. He needed to talk her out of going near the mines.
“Walking back to Harley’s Winnebago.”
Mac didn’t wait to say good-bye. He raced out the back door, catching sight of Claire at the edge of the General Store’s drive. “Claire, wait.”
She stopped and turned as he jogged up to her. The porch light colored her cheek with a yellow glow.
Frogs croaked their nightly tune down by the creek, joined by a chorus of crickets.
“I need to talk to you about something.” As he drew closer, he smelled The Shaft’s eau de toilette—a strong blend of cigarettes and alcohol, mixed with a hint of sawdust.
She looked at her wrist, where no watch existed and probably never had. “Okay, you’ve got five minutes before I turn back into a hairy godmother.”
Mac opened his mouth to correct her, but noticed an underlying smell drifting from her—a scent that reminded him of Mabel. He grinned. “Why do you smell like banana air freshener?”
“I didn’t want Gramps to know I was drinking.”
The air freshener wasn’t going to cut it. “But you told him you were taking Ruby to the tavern.”
“What’s your point?” Her words slurred a little.
He glanced at the store’s second-story windows and saw Jess peeking out through a split in the curtains. Ruby must have roused her from the couch and sent her to bed.
Great, an audience. He didn’t need Jess hearing what he was about to tell Claire. Jess shared secrets in tabloid style.
“Never mind.” He drew Claire by the arm into the shadows under the willow tree. “Listen, I want to talk to you about tomorrow.”
“Let me guess, you need another ride?”
“Not quite. I need you to stay away from the mines.”
“No. Why?”
“Because ...” He hesitated, not sure how much he should tell her about his suspicions.
While the shadows blurred many of her features, her eyes glittered up at him. He didn’t need to see the determination in her gaze—he could feel it in the rigid muscles of her upper arm, which he still held.
He might as well spill the truth. “Because I think someone is trying to stop me from working in the mines. If they see you going in them, they may think you and I are working together.”
“I can handle myself.”
“That’s the alcohol talking.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Why should I believe you’re looking out for my welfare? This could be your way of keeping me from interfering with Ruby selling those mines.”
“If I thought you even had a chance of saving Ruby’s ass, I’d—”
“Wrap me up in a blanket like a burrito and drop me off on the other side of the border?”
He frowned down at her. “No, I’d help you. You think I want to see Ruby lose her land?”
“You’d really help me?” Her voice had lowered, turned silky.
Mac didn’t like the way his pulse picked up speed at just the sound of it. He lifted his hand from her arm. “Of course, but there’s no way out of this for her.”
She smiled, her teeth white in the dappled shadows. “Says you.”
“Stay away from those mines.”
“No, Ruby gave me permission to trespass.”
“Damn it, Claire. Stop being so—”
She grabbed him behind the neck and pulled him down to her level. “Shut up, Mac,” she whispered, all breathy.
Then she smothered his lips with hers.
Chapter Nine
Tuesday, April 13th
Sophy dried a rack of coffee mugs, one at a time, as she stared blindly out at the tables she’d waited since her tenth birthday.
Wheeler’s Diner had been established two months after her father crawled off the train that carried him home from the war. He’d pinched, he’d saved, he’d planned. First, the marriage to her mother; second, the diner; third, a child. He’d succeeded—his blue-collar American dream.
Now it was Sophy’s inherited, blue-collar American nightmare.
With its grease-hazed air, sun-faded curtains, brass hanging lamps, and the longhorn skull over the door, the diner weighed heavy on her shoulders. She knew every crack in the water-spotted ceiling, the yellowed linoleum, and the orange vinyl booth seats.
The early afternoon sun spotlighted the old radio she’d bought her father the year before his heart gave up the fight to keep pushing blood through his hamburger-clogged arteries. Glen Campbell sang about being a rhinestone cowboy.
Vegas ... With a hungry sigh, she placed a white mug on the shelf and picked up another wet one. Glen wasn’t the only
one who wanted to be where the lights were shining on him.
Joe ... She rarely thought of the neon lights without feeling the pinch of losing him. Thirty-five calendars had hung on the diner’s wall since that first summer. At twenty-three, Joe had been thick with rip-cord muscles he’d built from swinging a pickax every night at the mine. With his slicked-back, black hair and movie-star eyelashes, he could make girls swoon with a wink.
Growing up together in the choke-hold of Jackrabbit Junction, Sophy had spent most of her early teens engraving Joe’s name on crispy paper napkins, tracing it in the warm sandy banks lining Jackrabbit Creek, scribbling it across the narrow lines of her diary.
Every day, she’d stare out the fingerprint-smudged diner windows, watching for his midnight blue El Camino to race up and down Interstate 70. Every night, she’d pray he’d push through the glass door, sweep her up, and make her his.
Joe ... His neck laden with purplish maroon love bites, a pack of cigarettes wrapped mummy-tight in his shirtsleeve.
During the summer of her seventeenth birthday, while the sun fried the blacktop until it rippled, sticky and gooey, like flypaper under foot, her body budded, blossomed, and dangled fruit. Tank tops became outer layers of skin, nipples hard as juniper berries. His brown eyes seared her skin through the flimsy cotton.
Sophy picked up another cup, her towel now damp throughout.
Joe ... His palms scratching over her inner thighs while The Great Escape crackled through the drive-in speakers. A hint of Brylcream sweetened the sweltering air.
Those sultry dog days of August with Sophy lying on a buttery soft cotton blanket under the stars in the back of Joe’s El Camino, still breathless from his skilled hands. He whispered Vegas sweet-nothings in her ears. High-rise condos, bright lights, and fancy five-star hotels—her imagination painted the rest. She cut out color pictures of Vegas from her parents’ Life magazines and tacked them to her bedroom walls.
His words became her bible. He’d lobbied that high school was for girls with nothing to offer the world. With her experience at the diner, she could land a job anywhere in the big city.
She threw her American Lit textbook out the El Camino’s window at passing greasewood trees on their way to Phoenix. The memory of her pop’s fury and mama’s tears a passing cloud.
Three months later, struggling under the weight of two greasy-spoon jobs while Joe juggled full-time classes at a community college, she shared her secret with him—the one growing inside of her, a reason to stay at Joe’s side forever.
“Order up!”
Sophy jerked back to the present, a mug nearly slipping out of her fingers. She carefully placed the cup on the shelf with the rest of the mugs and threw down the towel.
But she’d lost the baby, and forever had only lasted a handful of years. Baskets of burgers, plastic ketchup bottles, and pastel pink and blue sugar packets had filled her days for the last thirty years.
Carrying two plates loaded with the usual Tuesday special—meatloaf, Sophy weaved through the tables. Chester Thomas lounged in a booth, his arm drooped over the back, across from a skinny blonde.
He winked at Sophy as she placed his plate in front of him. Two years back, she’d given in to his pestering and made the mistake of sitting next to him in a dark theatre. Before the second movie trailer had finished, Chester had a sprained wrist and a black eye. It had cost her a broken nail.
She hoped the blonde carried mace.
At the corner booth, she paused, her order pad in hand. “What can I get for you boys?”
Manuel Carrera’s puppy love gaze worshipped her 36 double-D’s. “Do you know how to tango?”
“Only between the sheets, sugar, but don’t pop any Viagra on my account.”
She’d had her share of men over the years. Age and color made no difference to her, but the Latin lovers she’d had tended to chatter away from the first drink to the kiss goodbye, and she preferred not to mix words with sex. It ruined her fantasy.
“I’ll have the special.” Harley Ford was a “usual” kind of man. He liked his coffee black, his eggs scrambled, and his pie without the a la mode. She’d already told the cook to prepare a plate of meatloaf for him.
“I’ll take a fry bread taco with pork and a side of you, minus the apron.” Manny winked at her as she took the menu.
“Sweetie, you’re too much man for me,” she lied, but added more umph to her sway as she walked away from his leer. Nothing wrong with wetting a man’s whistle.
“Ay, mi corazon. I’ve changed my mind,” he called after her, “bring the apron, too. I’ll wear it.”
Sophy pushed through the kitchen door. “Add a pig in a Navajo rug to that meatloaf order,” she shouted to her line cook over the constant whir of the stove hood fan. She raced for the safety of her office, her soft-soled shoes crunching across ever-present crumbs.
The hollow wooden office door dulled the clattering sounds of the kitchen. Sophy painted on another coat of lipstick, smacking her lips together, then spritzed the back of her knees, the inside of her elbows, and the shadow of her cleavage with Tabu.
Joe hadn’t been able keep his hands off her when she doused herself with Tabu, even after he’d moved back to Jackrabbit Junction with that no-good, rat of a cousin. At least not until he’d dragged that redheaded whore from Oklahoma to town.
First Ruby, then her nephew.
Sophy yanked open her desk drawer, needing something for her frazzled nerves. She’d almost driven into the ditch when she saw Ruby’s old blue Ford bouncing along the old trail leading to Two Jakes mine this morning. Tossing three ibuprofens in her mouth, she chased them with a hit of vodka.
The nephew, the dog, and now the brunette.
The lights of Vegas twinkled behind her eyelids, beckoning with every blink. She slammed the bottle down on her desk. Vodka splashed out onto her Tucson Electric Power bill.
Glaring down at her latest broken fingernail, she growled under her breath.
Where did Joe hide that goddamned loot?
* * *
Mac stomped on the brakes at the sight of Mabel parked in front of Wheeler’s Diner. Ruby’s new tires screeched in protest, burning a thin layer of rubber onto Interstate 70’s asphalt.
He and Claire had some unfinished business to argue about. He cranked the wheel and slid into the gravel parking lot. The old Ford shuddered to a stop. After having forced it part way up the rutted, wagon trail to Two Jakes mine, Mac expected steam to hiss from the radiator.
The plug wires for his pickup were supposed to be in today. Tomorrow, he’d scale the path to Rattlesnake Ridge in four-wheel drive style with all his tools in tow. There’d be no more half-ass prospecting.
Two Jakes had been a bust. Dead end tunnels painted pictures of repeated false starts. Four different shafts had been sunk off the main adit leading from the mine’s mouth, which was one more than was drawn on the blueprint he’d copied. Two of the holes brimmed with water, their sodden wooden ladders descending into the cold, inky depths.
To search those sections of the mine, he’d need scuba gear and balls of steel, neither of which he’d brought with him on this trip.
The other two shafts were filled with shadows and stale air, but Mac didn’t trust the toothpick thin ladders heading down into their pitch blackness. He needed some nylon rope, anchors, and the rest of his rappelling equipment to slide into those oversized snake holes.
A wake of dust drifted past him as he hopped out of the Ford. Inside the diner, the smell of hamburger, onions, and fries beckoned. His stomach gurgled.
“Mac!” two voices called out in harmony.
Shit.
Claire was nowhere in sight as he strolled over to the booth where Harley and Manny lounged, their plates scraped clean. Coffee steamed in front of them.
“Howdy.” Mac dug in his front pocket and tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the table in front of Harley’s coffee cup.
“What’s that for?”
“Gas money. Cl
aire’s been chauffeuring me around the last couple of days at your expense.”
“What can I get ya?” The red-taloned waitress with the Kathleen Turner voice had slipped up behind him, a stiff wallop of perfume her calling card today.
“Nothing. I was just—”
“Have you eaten?” Harley asked.
“Well, no, but—”
“He’ll have the special,” Manny said as he scooted across the booth seat to make room for Mac.
“Listen, guys, I need to—”
“And a coffee,” Harley added.
“Make it a Coke,” Mac told the waitress. Sometimes it was easier to drown than fight the undercurrent. He dropped onto the cracked vinyl bench. It creaked under his Levi’s. “And add their total to my bill, please.”
The hard, icy glare in the brunette’s eyes didn’t match the warm, flirty smile on her lips. “Will do,” she said tightly, quickly bussing the table before sashaying back into the kitchen.
From the radio next to the cash register, Johnny Cash cranked out complaints about the hardships for a boy named Sue.
“She must not like the way you part your hair,” Manny told Mac.
She probably hadn’t appreciated the way he’d rammed into the parking lot. Some women didn’t take kindly to testosterone displays, unintentional or deliberate.
Mac shrugged off her coolness.
“If you’re buying me lunch, take your twenty back.” Harley pushed the money toward Mac.
“Speaking of Claire,” Manny said, grinning.
“We weren’t,” Mac interjected. He had learned his lesson—sex and Claire were two subjects to shun in the company of these men.
“I hear you two got caught locking lips last night.”
Heat shot up Mac’s neck, frying his cheeks.
Not a single doubt clouded his mind about who had played the town crier. Jackrabbit Junction’s nosiest nark had made it her business to see exactly what was going on under that willow tree, her mouth a geyser of fable, fiction, and fantasy whenever she had an attentive audience. Unfortunately for him, this time she’d been spouting facts.