Dance of the Winnebagos

by Ann Charles

  Next, she examined the floor, hiking even deeper into the mine, but discovered only aged pieces of timber and a rusty pickax. Her feet heavy with defeat, she trudged back toward the mine’s entrance.

  After pouring over the pages of the day planner she’d found yesterday in Joe’s briefcase and finding no names or information whatsoever, Claire’s hope for saving Ruby’s land was sinking faster than a cement duck in a swimming pool. Maybe it was time to give up and tell Ruby to sell to the mining company. She recoiled at the thought of them destroying her grandmother’s burial ground, but Jess and Ruby’s welfares were at stake.

  As she lumbered along the rusty rails, Claire’s thoughts turned to last night’s phone call with her mom, and her right eye started its twitching.

  First she’d been chewed out for “forgetting” to call home last week. Then her stutter-filled yarn about there being no women prowling the campground, just the boys with their cards and cigars, earned her a lecture about lying to her mother—a skill she had yet to perfect, unlike her younger sister, Kate.

  Claire figured next week’s phone call would be about as fun as sticking a bobby pin in a light socket.

  As she drew closer to the shaft, she slowed. Guilt returned to gnaw on her stomach some more. Who paid five hundred dollars for a freaking compass? Hell, she could have gotten one for the cost of just two UPC symbols from a Fruity Pebbles box.

  She tiptoed to the edge of the shaft and shined her flashlight into it. The crystal clear water allowed a translucent view down to where the compass lay on a rock ledge about eight feet down. But watery depths could be deceiving.

  She glanced at her rope. Maybe there was a way she could rig some kind of scooping device. Mac’s jaw would surely hit the floor when she handed him back his expensive little toy ... uh, tool.

  Rolling up her sleeve, she kneeled at the shaft’s edge and stuck her arm into the water. The cold stole her breath. Her flashlight clenched between her teeth, she stared into the shaft while balancing her weight on one of the boards lining it. She’d been wrong. It wasn’t eight feet down. Closer to twelve from the looks—

  “Claire!” A high-pitched voice squealed from behind her.

  Claire jerked so hard, her teeth cut into the rubber grip on the flashlight. A loud crack resounded from the rotted board she clutched before it snapped off in her hand. She tottered over the rim of the shaft for a second before plunging head-first into the freezing water.

  Jess’s scream followed Claire into the dark depths.

  The cold water squeezed a gasp from her, and her flashlight slipped from her jaws and sank beyond reach. With water burning her sinuses, Claire struggled to the surface and burst through, panting, coughing.

  “God! It’s freezing!” She grasped the rusty ladder at the edge of the shaft, which squeaked in protest at being used as a life-ring. There was no way it would hold her weight if she tried to climb out.

  Jess hovered over Claire, blinding her with a bright beam of light. “Sorry ‘bout that. Are you okay?”

  Claire’s lower lip quivered from the cold. She shielded her eyes. “If you ever sneak up behind me and scream my name again, I’m going to tell your mom about you and your buddy trying a cigarette last year.”

  Jess grimaced. “I’m really sorry, Claire.”

  The humble tone in Jess’s voice along with the freezing water soaking into Claire’s pores tempered her anger. “How’d you find me?”

  “I was riding by on my bike and saw Ruby’s truck. Why did you park down in that ravine?”

  So nobody—namely Mac—would see what she was up to.

  Claire chose not to answer that question. “Where did you get the flashlight? And quit shining it in my eyes.”

  Jess lowered her beam to the water’s surface and dropped to her knees in front of Claire. “When I saw you climbing up to the mine, I grabbed it out of the glove box of the pickup.”

  So much for her commando-like attempt to sneak up the hillside without anyone seeing her. Claire hoped nobody else had been paying attention, especially now that Jess was with her.

  “How are you going to get out of there?” Jess asked.

  Claire glanced at her pack. Thank God she hadn’t pulled it down with her. “You can pull me out with that rope secured to my pack.”

  “I don’t know.” Doubt clouded Jess’s tone. “I’m not that strong.”

  Claire grunted, trembling in the cold water, fighting back the urge to splash the kid. “Okay, then tie it to one of those beams—”

  “Hey!” Jess leaned over the shaft and shined the light into it. “There’s some kind of treasure down there.”

  “—and I’ll p-pull myself out,” Claire finished, her voice starting to waver from the icy cold seeping into her bones.

  “What do you think it is?” Jess continued, seeming to ignore the fact that Claire’s toes were turning into frozen tater tots.

  “Mac’s compass.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I was here when it f-fell into the shaft.” That was a nice skewing of the truth. She’d have patted herself on the back if she wasn’t busy turning into a human Popsicle.

  “What’s that other black thing on the shelf?”

  “What black thing?” Claire stared past her waterlogged tennis shoes.

  “That square black thing sitting next to the compass, close to the wall.” Jess angled the beam slightly. “See it?”

  Claire did, despite the fact that the water was growing slightly murky from her splashing around in it. She stopped kicking for a few seconds. The ladder groaned in protest at the added weight.

  That “black thing” looked like a box. Claire’s heart picked up speed. “Jess, you think you can hold that light still for twenty seconds?”

  “Probably, why?”

  “I’m going to d-dive down and see what it is.” And grab Mac’s compass while she was at it.

  “What if something grabs you while you’re down there?”

  Good question. Panic rose up from her frigid toes, but Claire slammed the door on her imagination before things got too freaky. “Nothing is going to grab me. Just keep the light on the box, okay?”

  “Ten-four.”

  After a deep breath, Claire performed a little dolphin dive and kicked toward the shelf, her hands in front of her. Her eyes burned in the mineral-laden water. She avoided looking into the blackness further down.

  The light grew matchstick dim as she neared the shelf, and pressure had her ears aching.

  She grabbed the compass, then the black box, only it wasn’t hard like a box. It was soft, like leather. With her lungs nearing a campfire-hot intensity, she kicked for the surface.

  “Now,” Claire said between wheezes as she handed Jess the wallet and the compass, “help me out of this damned hole.”

  Jess tied the rope to a beam and dropped the other end into the water. Claire’s whole body shook uncontrollably from the cold as she braced her feet on the inside edge of the shaft.

  With a lot of heavy breathing, she hauled her waterlogged ass out with help from Jess, who almost yanked Claire’s arm out of its socket in the process.

  As Claire sat at the shaft’s edge, shivering, she held out her hand. “Let me see the wallet.”

  Jess obliged and spotlighted the black leather. “You think somebody dropped it in the shaft by accident?” Jess asked. “What if there are thousands of dollars in it? I could buy my own ticket to go see my dad.”

  Claire held her tongue, not wanting to thunderstorm on Jess’s parade. She sat up and unfolded leather. A California driver’s license, still in perfect shape thanks to lamination, sat behind a clear piece of plastic.

  “Well?” Jess’s voice brimmed with excitement.

  Claire stared at the face in the picture, her forehead tightening. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  * * *

  Warm fingers of afternoon sunshine reached inside the mouth of Socrates Pit where Mac kneeled, studying an old map of the mine.
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  A lot had changed since the map had been created, and none of those changes appeared on the paper in front of him. Piercing crow “caws” in the valley below added to the frustration making his head throb.

  Despite the mine’s cool dampness, his shirt was soaked, and he stunk like the inside of a boxing glove.

  Over the last hour, he’d hiked through one side tunnel after another and found no sign of Sophy—no boot prints, jerky wrappers, or cigarette butts. Either she’d stopped visiting Socrates Pit, or one of the dozen unmapped tunnels held all of the answers.

  Mac sat back on his heels. With Ruby’s deadline just a day away, he should be researching the gem stone market and checking out that third tunnel in Two Jakes, not hunting Sophy’s trail.

  Maybe Claire was right. Maybe selling to the mining company wasn’t Ruby’s best bet. With the stash of amethyst in Two Jakes, and whatever booty Socrates Pit held for which Sophy was willing to kill, these mines could be worth more than the mining company was offering. Hell, the mining company execs could even be trying to put one over on a desperate widow, morality taking a back seat to greed.

  Speaking of Claire, where the hell was she? When he left the store after lunch, she still hadn’t shown up. His gut instinct said she was out stirring up some kind of trouble, but Ruby’s Ford was nowhere to be seen.

  Mac checked his watch—ten after four. If Sophy stuck to her usual routine, she’d wait until nightfall to show up at the mine, which meant Mac had another few hours until he had to get the hell out of there. After the stunt she’d pulled at Two Jakes, he didn’t relish the idea of her finding him sniffing around in her lair.

  He focused on the map again and decided to start with the network of tunnels near where he’d found her cigarette butt weeks ago. Rolling up the map, he grabbed his pack and flicked on his flashlight. If only he had more time.

  * * *

  With the newfound wallet stuffed in the waistband of her jeans, Claire holed up in the only place she could think of to escape from Jess’s curious gaze, Ruby’s worried glances, and Gramps’s watchful stares—the Winnebago’s bathroom. Nobody dared to follow her into the stifling, cramped quarters.

  From where she sat on the closed toilet lid, she could hear the drone of the boys’ voices as they swapped anecdotes outside under the awning. Periodically, Jess’s high-pitched peals of laughter interrupted the hum.

  Sweat rolled down Claire’s spine as she pulled the wallet from her jeans. While the sun had almost slipped under the western horizon, the heat inside the motor home was still building after baking under the hot rays all day.

  She flipped open the wallet and fished out the California driver’s license. The man in the picture was the same man she’d seen in the three passports and the newspaper photo from Joe’s grand opening. Sidney Arnold Martino.

  How many other Martino family jewels could there be? Joe’s mom and dad were dead, and he’d been an only child, so this had to be the cousin she’d heard about.

  If this wallet did belong to Joe’s cousin, where was the guy now? Ruby hadn’t heard of him, so he must not have shown up at Joe’s funeral. Was he back in California? If so, why had his wallet been left to soak in a shaft? Had Sidney been up in the Rattlesnake Ridge mine with Joe at one time?

  A chill rippled down her arms. Or had Joe done something to Sidney to make him disappear, then ditched his wallet in the shaft to get rid of the evidence?

  That would mean Ruby had been married to a killer, and Claire wasn’t sure how to break the news to the woman. She couldn’t very well just say, “Oh, by the way, I found out your dead husband murdered his cousin,” over a beer at The Shaft.

  Claire dug through the rest of the wallet. Besides a wad of waterlogged twenties, she found a laminated membership card to Sugar Shack Adult Movie Rentals in Tucson; a red business card for Madeline’s Escort Service in Las Vegas; a Bank One Visa card for someone named Anthony Peteza (which Claire thought might be a name she saw on one of the passports); several illegible business cards all stuck together in a gooey paper glob; a red, white, and blue NRA membership card; a Nevada driver’s license with a picture of Sophy on it; and a ...

  Wait a second.

  She returned to the Nevada driver’s license. Sophy looked very pretty and much younger.

  Why in the hell was Joe’s cousin carrying Sophy’s driver’s license from Nevada?

  “Hmpff.” Claire sat back. Who said small towns were boring? Jackrabbit Junction seemed to be filled with closeted skeletons.

  From her shirt pocket, Claire pulled one of the crinkled cigarettes she’d found in Joe’s Mercedes—her emergency supply—and stuck it in her mouth, savoring the taste of tobacco. She needed a light.

  Reaching into the back corner of the under-sink cabinet, behind the rolls of toilet paper and bottle of Pepto Bismol, she pulled out her box of tampons. In the bottom laid Sophy’s two antique drawer knobs and the lighter Claire had found weeks ago lying in the sand.

  The metal casing felt cool in her hand. Then Claire remembered its lack of lighter fluid and groaned, frowning at the initials engraved on it. S—A—M.

  SAM? She blinked. “Well, shit,” she mumbled around the butt in her mouth. SAM—Sidney. Arnold. Martino.

  The slam of the screen door made her jump.

  She banged her elbow into the back of the plastic stool and pain shot down her arm. Yowch! She needed to get a handle on her nerves. She was getting as skittish as a three-legged cat in a dog pound.

  “Claire!” Gramps shouted from the other side of the bathroom door. “I need to use the latrine.”

  Claire shoved the cigarette back in her shirt pocket. “Why don’t you use the campground bathroom?” It wasn’t even forty feet from where he’d been sitting a moment ago.

  “Because I want to use MY bathroom.”

  “I’m busy in here.” She stuffed everything back in Sidney’s wallet as fast as she could.

  “Either shit or get off the pot, girl, because I have about a forty second window before my plumbing lets loose.”

  “Classy.” She shook her head at his brashness. She had no idea what Ruby saw in Gramps.

  Claire stuffed the lighter in her pocket, tossed the tampon box under the sink, and shoved the wallet back into the waistband of her jeans. She flushed the toilet for sound effect and slid open the door.

  “Jessica said you found a wallet in the mine this afternoon,” Gramps said as she pushed past him.

  “Jessica talks too much.” Claire grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. She looked back to find him watching her from the bathroom doorway, his blue eyes drilling into her.

  “What were you doing up in the mine?”

  “Looking for something.”

  “Looking for trouble?” Gramps pressed.

  She grinned. “I never go searching for it.”

  “But it always finds you.”

  She chomped her teeth together to keep from giving a sarcastic reply. Gramps being right all of the time was getting old. “Don’t you need to use the bathroom?”

  His lips thinned. “That’s it. You’re grounded, young lady. No more going to The Shaft unless I’m with you.”

  “What?” Her mouth fell open. “You can’t ground me from a public place. I’m thirty-three years old, you know.”

  “If that public place is frequented on a regular basis by Sophy Wheeler, I can do whatever I damned well please.”

  “You’ve spent too much time in the sun. It’s melted your brain.”

  “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be on this Earth!” he bellowed. “It’s my job to do whatever it takes to make sure you arrive back home in one piece.”

  With a parting glare, he stepped into the bathroom and slid the door closed with a loud thwack.

  * * *

  Sophy paused outside the mouth of Socrates Pit when the beam of her flashlight locked onto fresh tennis shoe prints in the sand on a trail she thought only the deer knew about. Those prints hadn’t been there l
ast night.

  Creosote branches on the hillside rattled in the cool, night breeze, drawing a shiver from her. Upon closer inspection, she recognized the shoe print. She’d seen it several times before: behind her diner, outside her home, and up close and personal while wrestling on The Shaft’s floor.

  Claire had been to the mine.

  Sophy’s face and neck steamed.

  Slinging her small duffle over her shoulder, Sophy trailed the shoe tracks to the mine’s entrance, where they disappeared on the rock outcropping.

  She hesitated, the desert fresh air blowing wisps of her hair around. Most likely, Claire was long gone, but it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious.

  A few minutes later, as she crept along the main adit, she heard the faint clatter of stones ahead of her. Her heart drumming in her ears, she lowered her bag to the floor and fished out her 9mm.

  A slug to the head should do the trick, then she’d dump Claire’s body in a shaft and get to work.

  She was out of time. Tomorrow, Ruby would sign over the land to the mining company and Sophy would be shit out of luck. No more Vegas hopes and neon dreams, unless she could find Joe’s stash tonight.

  With her 9mm leading the way, she inched deeper into the adit.

  That bitch should have known better than to play in a mine after dark.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “You’ve been a busy girl, Sophy,” Mac said, holding his flashlight beam on the stash of tools partially tucked away in an ore cart that probably hadn’t seen sunlight for over a century.

  He lifted the short-handled pickax, noticing a Creekside Supply Company price tag stuck on the handle, the black ink still crisp on the UPC number. The ore cart was old, but not the tools.

  He returned the pickax to where he’d found it next to a pry bar and shovel, then squatted to study the pile of igneous rocks on the other side of the ore cart. The ceiling of the chamber must have caved in, burying everything in the back of the cut out, but it was impossible to tell how long ago.