by Ann Charles
“Do you think she needs help?”
Ruby shook her head. “I think she needs a father, but there’s not much I can do about that right now. I’ve got my hands full with stopping the bank from rippin’ this place out from under me.”
“I know you don’t want me to sell the mines, but with the profit I’ll make, I can keep the park going and provide more opportunities for Jess’s future—like a private school.”
The air conditioner kicked on, rattling loudly until Ruby walked over and punched it.
“Sounds like you need a new air conditioner,” Claire said.
“Nah. It just likes attention. It takes after Joe.”
That reminded Claire of another question. “Did Joe keep paperwork anywhere else around here? You know, stuff from when he was a salesman?”
“Not that I know of. What he didn’t keep in his office, he carried with him in his car.”
“The one he totaled?”
“Yep. He had this fancy metal briefcase with a motion detector and alarm. If some guy stole it from him, he could pull out a remote, click a button, and zap him through the handle with one hell of an electrical shock. He told me he bought it on a whim at a sportsman’s show. Was real proud of it, too.”
Something told Claire that Joe had stored more than just sales contracts in that briefcase. “Do you still have it?”
“It disappeared the last year he was alive. I figure he forgot where he put it. His memory was so sketchy at the end.”
“What happened to the car after Joe totaled it?”
“I cleaned out the glove box and trunk, and then we sold it to ol’ Monty Kunkle. He owns a junkyard east of Yuccaville.”
“Did you find anything interesting in the glove box?”
“Nah. Just the usual stuff—registration, nail clippers, pens.”
Damn. “What about under the seats? In the trunk?”
“The trunk had a spare tire and a jack. I only glanced in the back seat. Why?”
“No reason,” Claire lied. “Just curious.” And suspicious as hell, but Ruby didn’t need to know that yet.
“You’re welcome to take a look for yourself.”
Claire frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The car is still sittin’ out back in Monty’s junkyard. He couldn’t find it in his heart to crush such a classy car, so he’s been partin’ it out piece by piece over the Internet for the last two years.”
* * *
Thursday, April 15th
“You look like you ate one too many chili peppers,” Manny told Claire as he dealt cards facedown around the table.
After spending most of the afternoon mowing, weed whacking, and stacking firewood, Claire’s skin glowed as red as a branding iron. With her head throbbing, the last thing she wanted to do this evening was sit stuffed between Chester and the Winnebago’s wall in a room choked with cigar smoke.
“I’ll bid two,” Gramps said, lowering his cards to the table. “I noticed a small scratch on Mabel’s back bumper.”
From under her eyelashes, Claire could see him staring across the table at her. She’d sooner offer to hand wash Chester’s boxer shorts than cough up any information on the origin of that scratch.
“I ran into Skinny Minnie at the General Store this afternoon,” Chester said while staring at his cards. “She was loading up on chocolate-covered cherries and Coors light. Three.”
“Maybe someone backed into Mabel when you were eating lunch at Wheeler’s Diner.” Claire moved a couple of cards around in her hand and avoided Gramps’s gaze. “I’ll pass.” She threw down her cards.
Gramps frowned. “That’s the fourth time in a row you’ve passed.”
And the fourth time in a row that he’d bitched at her about it. “I can’t help it that I have shit for cards tonight.”
“Skinny Minnie, huh?” Manny interrupted their bickering. He knocked twice on the table, passing as well. “Did you offer to help her with her cherries?”
Chester grinned. “She asked me to stop over later tonight for a nightcap.” He threw down a Jack of spades. “That’s trump.”
“Are you going to introduce Chester Jr. to the Señorita?”
“Hell, no,” Chester said. “She’s all skin and bones. Sex with Skinny Minnie would be like screwing a bag of antlers.”
While Manny and Gramps roared, Claire shook her head and threw out a nine of diamonds.
She gulped half her can of Budweiser. The taste of beer made her tongue happy tonight, but the rest of her wanted to crawl under some cool cotton sheets and not come out until morning.
Manny dropped a Queen of spades on the pile. Gramps tossed a Jack of clubs on Manny’s card. The frown he’d been wearing all evening was firmly back in place.
As Chester raked in the cards, someone knocked on the door.
“It’s open,” Gramps called.
Jess stepped into the Winnebago, waving her hand in front of her face as she walked through the wall of smoke. “Hi guys.” In her pink, pansy-covered pajamas, she barely looked twelve, let alone fifteen going on sixteen.
Claire smiled at the kid. “Hey, girl.” What was Jess doing out this late on a school night? Claire opened her mouth to ask, but then thought better of it. She didn’t want to embarrass Jess in front of the “old dudes.”
“What’s up, chica?” Manny asked.
Jess shrugged, sidled up to Gramps, and stared at his cards over his shoulder. “Mom’s on the phone with Dad, yelling at him something fierce, so I decided to come see what’s happening with you guys.”
Claire grimaced at Jess’s situation.
Except for Elvis Presley singing “Suspicious Minds” on the kitchen radio, and Henry—stomach up, legs splayed —snoring as he lay sleeping on the couch, they played the next two rounds in silence.
Chester won both with high, non-trump cards, and the wrinkles in Gramps’s brow sank deeper with each card Claire threw down.
“What’s your cousin up to?” Claire asked Jess, trying to sound cool and casual and not desperate for any word on the guy who’d occupied her thoughts all afternoon. She ignored the big smile that creased Manny’s lips.
“He’s still in the mines. He didn’t even come home for supper.”
Chester started the next round with the ten of spades. Claire dropped her King of spades on top of the ten, and then lifted her beer to her mouth.
“Damn it, Claire!” Gramps shouted.
Claire jerked in surprise and spilled beer down her T-shirt.
“What are you thinking, girl? Why did you throw off trump on that first round if you had that King setting in your hand?”
She wiped her shirt. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Well, you’d better start.”
She slammed her cards down on the table. “I don’t know what crawled up your ass and died tonight,” she told Gramps, “but I’m tired of you taking your frustrations out on me. Move it, Chester.”
“You can’t leave in the middle of a game,” Chester said, rising.
“Watch me.” She slid across the booth seat.
“Claire, where are you going?” Gramps asked. The anger sapped from his voice. He sounded tired, worn smooth.
She grabbed her jean jacket from the peg and opened the door. “For a walk. Don’t wait up.”
With a goodbye nod to Jess, she stepped outside.
The breath of fresh air in her lungs unlocked the tension pinching her neck. Her shoulders dropped an inch at the sight of Ursa Major hanging out in the sky. A near half-moon painted the trees, tumbleweeds, and picnic tables in shades of gray.
The dirt poofed from under her tennis shoes as she passed in front of the General Store. The lights were on inside. Ruby paced behind the counter, the phone pressed to her ear.
Claire kept to the shadows and marched across the bridge and out of the park. She barreled along, thigh muscles humming, her sunburn keeping the need to slip on her coat at bay.
The chirping of crickets faded wi
th every step away from the creek, replaced by the rustling of sage bramble as the desert breathed around her.
Since she’d arrived at the Dancing Winnebagos R.V. Park, her days had been filled with dead-ends and frustration. First the bone, then Henry, then Mac, then Joe; now Jess, and Gramps, and Ruby.
She rooted through the pockets of her jacket. Where was that emergency cigarette she’d tucked away? She searched each pocket twice, marching past the junction for the road heading to Socrates Pit and Rattlesnake Ridge mines.
Seconds later, she heard a vehicle approaching from behind. She glanced over her shoulder at a familiar white pickup. Her heartbeat picked up the pace.
Mac rolled down his window. “What are you doing out here?”
“Taking a walk.” Alone! She’d met her quota for frustration today, both sexual and platonic.
He stared at her, his eyes seeming to search her face for something. “Hop in the truck. We need to talk.”
Chapter Twelve
Mac watched Claire settle onto the bench seat next to him. The dashboard lights cast a glow across her cheekbones and nose, softening the shiny sunburn he’d noticed under the dome light. Her white T-shirt hugged her chest, outlining her soft curves in the semi-darkness.
He groaned in his head, frustrated with wanting something he shouldn’t.
Claire turned and caught him staring.
At her raised eyebrows, he whipped his gaze back to the road, where it belonged.
Sage bushes, ghostly under the headlights, flashed past as he accelerated.
Silence reigned inside the cab, broken only by the thwump-thwump of the tires rolling over the tar-patched lines that criss-crossed the road.
Now that Claire sat within touching distance, smelling like watermelon and cigar smoke, Mac couldn’t find his tongue. He tapped the brakes as a coyote darted across the road. The pedal felt a little soft under his boot.
“So,” Claire said, “what do you want to talk to me about?”
“Henry’s dognapping.”
“Bzzzt. Wrong answer. After roasting my head under the freakin’ sun all day, wise-cracks and criticism could result in a sledgehammer to the knees—yours, not mine.”
Grinning, Mac glanced at her. She was busy massaging the side of her neck. His fingers itched to help her.
“How about we stick to the weather,” she said. “Or how many girlfriends you’ve had in the last decade. Your choice.”
Mac chuckled. Talking about his ex-girlfriends was the last thing he wanted to do while sitting in the dark with Claire.
He drummed on the brakes again, dodging a Texas-sized pothole that the county hadn’t bothered to fix since Nixon was in office. The brake pedal felt very squishy this time.
He pushed on it twice more, his stomach tightening when the pickup barely stuttered.
“But I know about the weather, so ...” Claire trailed off.
The sage bushes whizzed by faster as the pickup rolled down the four percent grade toward Jackrabbit Junction, less than three-quarters of a mile away.
Mac stomped on the brake. The pedal slammed against the floor—no resistance at all.
“Put your seatbelt on,” he told her.
“Why are you going so fast?”
“Just put your seatbelt on. Now!”
“Fine, but I think you should slow down.”
He waited until he heard a click. “I can’t.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her open-mouthed stare. “What do you mean you can’t?”
Up ahead, he could almost make out the STOP sign where the road dead-ended into Interstate 70. “The brakes are out.”
“Out? Brakes don’t just go out.”
“Well, these did.”
“Why don’t you down-shift into second?”
“We’re going too fast. I’d rather not leave my tranny in our wake.”
“Shit.”
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I have a plan.”
The seat shifted as Claire shoved back into the cushions. “If it involves opening my door and jumping out, I want to hear Plan B.”
“I’m going to use the emergency brake.” Mac just hoped it was still working. The STOP sign was visible now, a glimmer of red in the distance.
“Will it stop us?”
“Not immediately, but it should slow us down enough.”
“Enough for what?”
He pushed lightly on the emergency brake, feeling the minor effects of friction as the brake shoes rubbed the drums. “Enough for us to swerve without rolling the truck rather than crash through the front windows of Wheeler’s Diner.”
He pushed the emergency brake further. The pickup lurched, slowing down to the posted speed limit—about thirty miles per hour faster than he’d prefer this close to Interstate 70.
“Then how are we going to stop?”
“I haven’t worked that out yet.” He could just make out the letters on the STOP sign. They weren’t slowing fast enough.
“Uh, Mac.” Claire’s voice sounded a bit higher than normal. “We need to stop.”
“I know that, Claire.” He white-knuckled the wheel.
She grabbed his forearm and squeezed, hard, her fingers digging into his muscle. “We need to stop now!”
“What do you think I’m trying to do here?”
Her fingers burrowed deeper into his flesh. “Mac?” A humming noise started in her throat. She pointed out her window.
Mac glanced over for a split-second and nearly swallowed his tongue at the sight of an eighteen-wheeler, barreling down Interstate 70. At the rate they were slowing, they’d be in the middle of the intersection just in time for the rig to smash into Claire’s door.
The humming noise in Claire’s throat grew louder, higher.
Mac stomped on the emergency brake. It hit the floor.
The STOP sign was less than ten feet away, the rig seconds from crossing their path. Its headlights blazed into the cab.
Claire shielded her face and screamed.
The blast of an air horn drowned her out, and five sets of wheels thundered past in front of the windshield.
Mac jerked the wheel to the right.
The front left fender of the pickup skimmed the tail of the semi-trailer. They screeched sideways across Interstate 70 and spun into the gravel-filled parking lot in front of Wheeler’s Diner.
Mac turned into the skid, fishtailing. Gravel flew. He straightened out the truck just in time to swerve left to keep from crashing through Wheeler’s front door, but smashed into the Tucson Daily and Phoenix Sun newspaper dispensers. The boxes of metal and glass crunched, scraping through the gravel, stopping them before the truck reached Jackrabbit Creek.
Mac’s heart walloped in his chest as clouds of dust swirled around them. The smell of burnt rubber filled the cab.
Claire had stopped screaming. He looked at her. “You okay?”
A strangled squeak leaked from her mouth.
“Claire?” He pried her fingers from his forearm. Her breath came in short bursts. What were the signs of shock? Enlarged pupils? Mac leaned toward her, and then he heard the click of her seatbelt latch.
A split second later, she was out the door.
He pushed open his door. Claire was already halfway across the parking lot. “Where are you going?” he called.
“To get a drink,” she yelled over her shoulder, “and change my goddamned underwear.” She jogged across Interstate 70 and slipped inside The Shaft’s wooden door.
Running both hands through his hair, Mac slowly exhaled, happy to still be breathing; happier yet that Claire was still yelling and cussing, like usual.
He turned back to his Dodge, frowned, and grabbed a flashlight from behind the seat before scooting under the pickup. The gravel bit into his shoulder blades.
Everything looked fine where the brake lines came down out of the engine compartment.
He followed one of the lines to the caliper. “Son of a bitch,” he whispered and ran his i
ndex finger over two small punctures, not much bigger than the tip of a sharp punch, then rubbed the pads of his finger and thumb together. They slid smoothly over each other.
He sniffed his finger. Brake fluid. Holes that small would allow the fluid to drip slowly while his truck was parked, but spray out each time he pushed on the brakes.
Checking the other brake line connections, he found similar holes at each one. He crawled out from under the pickup and wiped his hands on his pants. Somebody had punctured his brake lines while he was parked out at the mine—probably the same person who’d flattened Ruby’s tires.
But why?
The thought of what could have happened to Claire tonight made him nauseated.
He threw the flashlight back into the cab.
First the spark plug wires, then the flat tires, now his brakes.
Somebody wanted him to go back to Tucson, and not necessarily in one piece.
* * *
Claire had downed half a glass of Budweiser by the time Mac pushed through The Shaft’s front door. Her pulse revved as he strode toward her, his gaze stormy, holding her prisoner.
She kicked out the chair across from her. “Have a seat.”
Mac spun it around and straddled it, resting his forearms across the back. With a lock of honey brown hair falling over his forehead, he could wipe the floor with Han Solo, although Brad Pitt—shirtless—still ruled.
Drawing invisible circles on the scarred tabletop, she tried not to ogle him.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I will be after another beer. How’s the truck?”
His lips thinned. “Somebody punctured the brake lines.”
“Jesus.” She took another swig. “I’m beginning to think folks around here don’t take kindly to out-of-towners.”
“Someone doesn’t want me in those mines.”
“Maybe you should consider hiring a bodyguard.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You applying?”
Her stomach flipped and flopped. She’d watch his body all right, but there wouldn’t be much guarding involved.
“I don’t think so.” She shoved her glass of beer toward him. “Have a drink. It’ll shave the hard edges off this evening’s events.”