by Ann Charles
He strolled up to Claire and dropped a quick kiss on her mouth, stealing her breath and leaving the minty taste of toothpaste on her lips. Then he grabbed her hand with the Moon Pie in it and took a bite of her breakfast.
She frowned, glancing toward Ruby. “Ixnay on the isseskay.”
He waved her off, leaning against the counter. “Ruby probably knows already.”
“Humpf. Well, she does now.”
“Mac’s right,” Ruby called over her shoulder as she headed toward the bathroom in the back of the store. “I’d have to be blind as a mole not to notice the way Mac ogles your backside every time you leave the room.”
The bathroom door slammed behind her, leaving Claire alone with the hazel-eyed devil.
“Not to mention that love bite on your neck.” Mac pinned her against the wall.
“I have a hickey?” Great. She was walking around, looking like some billboard for Sex-on-the-Sly, Inc. Claire’s cheeks burned hotter.
“Not yet, but you will in just a second.” He pushed aside her lapel and nipped her collarbone.
“Mac.” Her gaze darted to the closed bathroom door.
He slipped his hands under her shirt, his calloused fingers skimming across her stomach and ribs.
Claire’s knees wobbled and trembled, joining the mutiny the rest of her body waged against the voice of reason shouting orders from the helm of the ship—as it sank.
“I can’t stop thinking about doing all kinds of wicked things with you,” he murmured against her flesh. His tongue seared her skin as his lips trailed across her shoulder.
“So quit trying.”
He pulled back and stared down at her, his eyelids lowered to half-mast. “You are such a Siren.”
Sandwiched between him and the drywall, she wrapped her arms around his neck and nibbled on his smooth-shaven chin. “Say I were to take off my shirt.” The spicy aroma of his aftershave made her toes tingle. “What would you do next?”
With her lips pressed against his throat, she felt the rumble of his groan as much as heard it.
“Okay, you two. I’m coming out,” Ruby yelled from the other side of the bathroom door.
“Ah, hell.” Mac planted a kiss on Claire’s lips before stepping back. “You and I are going to continue this when I return from the mine tonight.”
“Tonight?” She frowned up at him while straightening her shirt, trying to look like she hadn’t been rubbing all over Ruby’s nephew. “I thought we were going to search for more bones this afternoon.”
“Here I come,” Ruby yelled, opening the bathroom door.
“I want to finish with Two Jakes first.”
Fine. She’d just go out on her own.
“Don’t even think about going without me,” Mac warned.
“Going where?” Ruby asked as she neared the counter.
“Stop reading my mind,” Claire told him. He was welcome in her pants, but not her brain.
“I mean it, Claire. If I hear you went out searching alone, I’ll rescind my offer to help.”
She huffed a sigh. He didn’t play fair. The male protective gene was overrated. “Okay, I’ll wait until tomorrow, but after that, I’m going with or without you.”
“Good,” Ruby said to her. “Because I need your help here, today. Jess has to have a physical before she can go to this new school.”
Claire winced to herself at the scene that was sure to preclude the trip to the doctor.
“And while I was in the bathroom just now, I remembered something I forgot to tell you about Joe and his store.” She smiled at Claire, her eyes sparkling.
Claire wasn’t so sure if Ruby’s sudden interest in helping her solve the mystery surrounding Joe was a good thing or not, but she leaned forward despite her reservations. “What?”
“There’s a box of stuff from Joe’s store that he kept in a locked filing cabinet. I sold the cabinet right after his stroke, but I think the box is still in the attic.”
For such a small town out in the Arizona boonies, people here in Jackrabbit Junction sure liked to use locks.
Claire glanced at Mac and found him staring back at her with a thoughtful frown on his face.
“I’ll go up in a bit and see if I can find it,” Ruby told her. “You can look through it this afternoon while holdin’ down the fort.”
* * *
Later that afternoon, Claire sat next to the cash register, papers spread over the counter and on the floor behind her where the afternoon blasts of hell-furnace air had blown them. A drop of sweat ran down her back. Her deodorant had melted an hour ago.
What in the hell happened to spring? Had she slept through it?
For the life of her, she couldn’t get Ruby’s damned air conditioner to kick on. The duct-taped piece of shit was just lucky her toolbox wasn’t close by, or she’d have gutted it and offered its innards to the sun god in exchange for a few clouds.
If Ruby didn’t come home soon and rescue her, the candy bars would be nothing more than pools of chocolate on the floor.
After covering her face with a cold, wet washcloth again for a few breaths, she returned to the general ledger propped open in front of her. Judging from the figures scrawled on the pages, Joe’s store had barely broken even. The pile of receipts and bills of sale on the counter seemed small for him having been in business for almost a decade.
Her first thought had been that Ruby had another box of Joe’s stuff shoved somewhere, but the papers’ dates spanned from the store’s opening until Ruby sold the remaining inventory for a paltry amount after Joe’s big stroke. Claire had seen garage sales that fared better.
The bells over the screen door jingled. Claire glanced up at a familiar pair of pale blue eyes and wrinkled brow.
“What are you doing here?” Gramps asked.
Claire sat up straight, stretching her lower back. “It’s good to see you, too, Grumpy Smurf.”
His brow crinkled even more. “You know what I meant. I just expected ...” He blinked, and then shook his head. “Never mind.”
“You just expected Ruby to be sitting here,” Claire finished, grinning at the way his face turned lobster pink.
“I said never mind.” He walked to the beer cooler and yanked open the door.
Claire dropped the general ledger on the pile of the other accounting paperwork in the box and dug under half a ream’s worth of sales slips, merchandise receipt confirmations, and quarterly tax statements.
Her fingers brushed against the corner of something hard. Carefully, she pulled out an eight-by-ten inch frame and stared down at a yellowed newspaper photo of Joe, looking younger than he did in the wedding picture on Ruby’s dresser. He stood in his antique store sporting a goofy smile.
Claire read the print below the picture.
Local Man Profits from the Past
Jackrabbit Junction’s first antique store is having its Grand Opening on Saturday, June 1st. Located next to Creekside Supply Company, Joe Martino offers great prices on late 19th and early 20th century American antiques. Be sure to come and check it out.
American antiques? Claire stared at the picture again, holding the frame so close that her breath steamed the glass. Her heart thudded in her ears. “Ah, ha.”
“Ah, ha, what?” Gramps dropped a six-pack of beer on the counter.
Claire lowered the frame and frowned at the cans. “I thought you didn’t like Miller Light.”
“It’s not for me.”
“Then who’s it for?”
“None of your business.”
Claire shook her head and rang up the beer. “You’re growing harder to live with by the day. What’s going on?” She had a feeling it had something to do with a certain redhead.
Gramps grunted. “Nothing.”
Bullshit. Claire decided to try another route. “Ruby must like Miller Light.”
“No, she likes Corona.”
“Really?” Claire smiled, taking the money he shoved at her. She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “What
else does she like?”
“Claire,” he warned.
“Okay, okay, I’ll back off for now.” She picked up the picture again. “But don’t think I didn’t notice the way you were watching her the other night.”
Gramps nodded at the picture. “What’s that?”
She held up the newspaper piece. “It’s Ruby’s husband, Joe.”
“I know what her husband looked like,” he said, nearly snarling, and then sighed. “Sorry.”
Claire grinned at the obvious jealousy. She pointed at the picture. “Take a look at the cupboard he’s standing next to.”
Gramps pulled his wire-rim glasses out of his shirt pocket and slipped them on, staring at the photo for several seconds. “What about it?” He looked over the top of the lenses at her.
“It’s a 19th century American jelly cupboard.”
“You’ve been watching too much of that damned antiques show your mother plays every waking moment.” He turned back to the photo. “Like I said before, what about it?”
“Its value is notably less than the 18th century French ...” she trailed off, suddenly remembering whose company she was in; or rather, whose company she wasn’t in. “Never mind.”
His eyes narrowed. “I know that look, Claire Alice Morgan. You’re getting into some kind of trouble again.”
She pulled the picture away from him. “I’m not.” At least not yet.
Gramps snorted.
“I’m just noticing some stuff in this old picture.”
He grabbed his beer. “Some detective you are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re so busy naming the furniture that you didn’t even notice the guy behind the counter in the back of the store.”
“Guy behind the counter,” Claire repeated, frowning.
“The one standing next to the picture of Johnny Cash.”
“I wonder who ... Hey, he kind of looks like ...” She squinted at the picture. The man looked a lot like that guy in the passport photos. An awful lot.
She glanced up. Gramps was giving her one of his suspicious, gunslinger stares.
“I wonder if Ruby knows who he is,” she said, trying to deter him.
“I doubt it.”
“What makes you so positive?”
“First of all, this picture is almost ten years old. Ruby has lived here for five. Second, she told me that Joe worked alone. He never had a partner.”
“When did she tell you that?”
He glanced at the screen door. “Lately.”
“When?”
“None of your business.”
Claire sighed. Spooning her way out of Alcatraz would be less maddening than interrogating Gramps. She’d have to corner Ruby.
“So how am I going to find out who this guy is?” she asked as Gramps pushed open the screen door.
“Well, if I were you, Kojak.” His smart-ass grin was back. “I’d visit Joe’s neighbor—the owner of Creekside Supply Company.”
* * *
Mac peered down at the map of Two Jakes mine. The light on his hard hat spotlighted the notes he’d made over the last two days about several missing tunnels and sub-chambers.
Pebbles rattled a few feet in front of him in the shadows. A rat the size of a brick watched him, eyes glittering. Mac grimaced at its hairless tail as it scurried away.
Damn, he hated rats.
With midnight quickly approaching, he needed more time. He had three more tunnels to map and who knew how many side tunnels shot off from those. But he’d promised Claire he’d help her tomorrow.
Besides, after her teasing this morning, he had plans involving a hotel room, a bottle of watermelon wine he’d found in Tucson a few days ago, and Claire—preferably unclothed.
He didn’t want anything to screw up his plans for getting her alone. Certainly not a musty old mine, and especially not three crusty old men.
He rolled up the map and started toward the main adit, following the orange spray paint marks he used as breadcrumbs.
A loud boom echoed through the mine.
He froze as the earth rumbled around him. Tiny pebbles rained from the ceiling, clattering on his hard hat.
Then the rumbling stopped, and a stale breeze whooshed past him, cooling the sweat that had sprung out on his flesh in the last few seconds.
Shit! Fear weighed cannonball heavy in his stomach. Clutching his pack, he sprinted through the side tunnel, his boots thudding on the hard-packed dirt. He rounded the bend where the tunnel attached to the main adit and raced up the slope toward the exit.
The dust, now fog-bank thick, coated his throat. Coughing, he turned another corner and slid to a stop.
His heart pounded, raged, then fluttered.
“Mother fuck!” he whispered.
A pile of rocks and timbers separated him from the rest of the world, entombing him under the desert floor.
Chapter Seventeen
Wednesday, April 21st
Claire marched into the General Store, chased by a midmorning breeze heavy with the scent of warm greasewood and filled with sizzling promises.
“Where’s your mom?” she asked Jess, who was sitting behind the counter with her school books scattered around her.
“In back.” Jess nudged her head toward the curtain without looking up from the colored pages of her U.S. History book. “She’s busy ruining my life.”
Spoken like a true teenager. Claire bit back a smile. Ever since Ruby and Jess had returned from Tucson, the decibel level in the house hadn’t dropped much below fire-whistle intensity.
Playfully messing up Jess’s hair as she passed, Claire pushed through the curtain, noticing the faint smell of cigar smoke clinging to the velvet—the same smell that permeated the sofa cushions in Gramps’s Winnebago. That might explain Gramps’s red cheeks last night when he’d scampered in with pink lipstick on his collar.
Ruby sat on a stool at the bar, pouring over a stack of papers, a pencil in her hand and a furrow on her brow.
“What are you doing?” Claire plopped onto an adjacent stool.
Ruby tapped the eraser on the bar. “This damned new school of Jess’s has more paperwork than an IRS 1040 with twenty attachments.”
Claire shoved the framed newspaper photo of Joe’s grand opening toward Ruby. “Do you know who this guy is?” She pointed at the man standing next to the Johnny Cash painting.
As she stared at the picture, Ruby’s frown deepened even more. She took the frame from Claire and lifted it closer to her face. Several seconds passed. “No. Who is he?”
“According to Willis Rupp,” Claire threw out the name of the owner of Creekside Supply Company, “he’s Joe’s cousin.”
Ruby’s gaze whipped to Claire. “Joe’s what?”
“Cousin. Did Joe ever mention having a cousin?”
Shaking her head slowly, Ruby handed the frame to Claire.
Claire sighed and tossed the picture on the bar.
She’d figured as much. Ever since she’d started digging into Joe’s past, there was something about Ruby and Joe’s relationship that had bothered her.
She took a moment to form her next question, choosing her words carefully. “I know you didn’t really get into Joe’s business dealings, but were you ever curious about where he was and what he was doing while he was off on his sales trips?”
“Of course I was curious.” Ruby rested her jaw on her palm as she leaned on the bar and stared at Claire. “But in a marriage, there’s a thing called trust, and I had a lot of it.”
Claire nodded. That made sense. Ruby had trusted her from the moment Claire had walked in carrying the Help Wanted sign. But still ...
“Plus,” Ruby continued, “I had this park to keep me busy. When I took over, the store was on the verge of collapse, the river flooded the campsites every spring, and the ground was riddled with rattlesnake holes. It took two years just to get the store and campsites back in shape.”
“Then we had the rare White
-Eared Hummingbird flutterin’ around that summer, and the bird lovers flocked here in masses to see it.” Ruby paused, staring down at the pencil in her hand. “My momma got sick the third year I was married to Joe, so I spent most of that winter driving back and forth to Oklahoma. She passed away in the spring, my pop followed nine months later.”
Her eyes a little watery, she looked back up at Claire. “By the time I found a spare moment and was fixin’ to get curious, Joe had retired from the traveling sales job and cut back on hours at the antique store.”
Claire pushed off her stool and nabbed a soda pop from the small fridge behind the bar. “What about after he’d had that last stroke?” She cracked open the pop and took a sip.
“What about it?”
“When you had to sell off his inventory and delve into his finances to pay off creditors, didn’t you wonder where he got the stuff in the office downstairs?” Stuff like all of the expensive antique furniture and books, or the $90,000-plus Mercedes Benz. Ruby was a smart cookie, she couldn’t have just overlooked all of these signs of hidden wealth.
“Wonder?” Ruby asked, her tone held a mixture of acid and soft, southern twang. “Had I had the time, I’m sure I would have enjoyed a moment to wonder about a lot of things. But my husband was wheelchair-bound and completely incapable of doing anything on his own, even emptyin’ his bladder, and we could only afford a nurse on a part-time basis.”
“Then there was Jess—acting up at school, fighting with other kids, stressing the hell out of me with her monkey business. Six months into Joe’s illness, I couldn’t afford to pay for help around this paradise of mine. Just keeping my head above water spiked my blood pressure to levels that made my doctor sweat.”
Hearing about Ruby’s rough-and-tumble history with the park lit a fire in Claire. Ruby was kind and generous, warm-hearted, quick to grin. She deserved better than a handful of memories of Joe and the huge mess he’d left behind. Mac’s willingness to come to Ruby’s aid, even if it meant helping her sell her land, made more sense every day.
Claire squeezed Ruby’s arm. “But you did keep your head above water when a lot of people would’ve drowned. That takes a hell of a lot of strength.”