Dance of the Winnebagos

by Ann Charles

  He walked away from her and started sniffing one of the car’s back tires.

  Turning back to the oil drum, she shined the light down into it. It was filled with rocks the size of her fist. She blew out a breath of relief, happy as hell not to find pieces of anyone floating in some kind of formaldehyde.

  She picked up one of the rocks and held it under her light. Purple-tinged crystals glittered in the veins coursing through the granite. Another rock was littered with speckles of turquoise, flecks of greenish-blue copper peppered it.

  The other two oil drums contained rocks as well, all similar in size, all with veins of turquoise or quartz of some kind. Sophy had been digging around in those mines for a while it looked like.

  What had she been searching for?

  Claire circled the rest of the car, her light bouncing off a roll of chicken coup wire, a weed eater, and several empty gas cans.

  Her disappointment welled with every step. She’d been so sure there was something in here Sophy hadn’t wanted anyone to see. Answers to all of Claire’s questions.

  She came to a section of floor along the wall where a hole had been filled in. The dirt was disturbed, not packed down like the rest of the shed’s floor. A two foot chain was still attached to an eyebolt screwed into one of the two-by-four supports.

  She squatted and lifted the chain. White hairs were stuck to the rust-flaked links. Her blood boiled. The odor of urine was strong enough to notice above the musty dirt, stale grease, and hint of Tabu. Claire dropped the chain. It rattled against the cedar wall, swinging by the eyebolt.

  Poor Henry. While he wasn’t her favorite dog, he didn’t deserve to be chained and forced to sit in his own piss.

  Something rustled in the canvas behind her.

  She whirled around. Henry’s little white ass and tail stuck out from under the canvas covering the back bumper.

  “Henry,” she whispered loudly. “Get out of there.”

  Henry ignored her, as usual. He crawled up over the tailgate and into the bed of the El Camino. The lump of his body under the canvas showed his progress, like Bugs Bunny tunneling for the South Pole, as he walked across the bed and stood on his hind legs at the back window.

  Then the lump disappeared, and Claire could hear him sniffing and scratching at something inside the cab of the car.

  “Shit!” She didn’t need Sophy finding any evidence of her being here, especially not dirty paw prints on the seat.

  She raced around to the back of the car and pulled at the strings that held the tarp on. Her fingers fumbled with the knot. She stopped, took a deep breath, and then untied the damned thing.

  After loosening the rigging, she unrolled the canvas a few feet over the bed. Blue paint, so dark that it looked black without the penlight, shined back at her. She let out a low whistle and ran her hand along the porcelain smooth surface of the tailgate. No wonder Sophy kept this puppy inside and under wraps. Claire knew a hand-rubbed paint job when she saw one.

  The muffled sounds of scratching and growling came from somewhere under the tarp, reminding her that she hadn’t come here for the car show.

  She rolled the covering back to the middle of the bed. Careful not to scuff the paint, she climbed into the bed and ducked under the tarp. The smell of dry-rotting canvas coated the back of her throat with a musty veneer, making her cough.

  She crawled along the grooved bed to the back window, which was open just enough for a beagle to squeeze through. She pulled it open wider and stuck her head inside, shining her light through the window.

  “Oh, you rotten little shit,” she whispered when she saw the clawed and shredded mess Henry had made of the cherry-red vinyl seats. Clouds of stuffing littered the cab. “Henry!”

  The dog paused, looked up at her, and licked his nose. Then he buried his snout back in the hole he was making and tore at the seat some more.

  Opening the window wider, Claire made a grab for him. But he dodged her hand and backed up against the passenger side door.

  “Come here.”

  He stared at her with small pieces of stuffing stuck in his whiskers and eyebrows. Add a few more tufts to his chin and he’d be Santa’s canine twin. She could have sworn he was grinning.

  Shoving the windows open as far as they would go, Claire squeezed her shoulders inside, but her hips didn’t make the cut, leaving her butt hanging out the window. She stuck the penlight between her teeth and reached for Henry again.

  He hopped to the floor.

  “Damn you! That’s it. When we get home, I’m going to take you to the vet and tell them you want to be a girl-dog.”

  He whimpered, but didn’t budge.

  She lowered one hand to the shredded seat cushion and tried to pull her hips further through the window. Her hand slipped down into the hole full of stuffing, her index finger catching in a spring and bending backwards.

  “Ouch! Shit! Son-of-a ...” Her ring and pinky finger collided with something solid and cool.

  Bracing herself on the seatback, Claire carefully removed her index finger from between the coils, then pulled out several more tuffs of stuffing. “What have we here?” she mumbled around the penlight at the sight of a small black box.

  She pulled it out, gently maneuvering it around the coils. The box was heavy for its size, which was about the width of her palm and two inches high. A small pop-latch held it closed.

  The window sill was trying to slice her intestines in two. She un-wedged herself from the window, adding a few bruises to the growing list on her way out, and sat down in the bed.

  Penlight in one hand, she tried the box’s latch. It popped open. Her fingers shaking slightly, Claire opened the lid. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she whispered. A potato chip bag? She lifted the folded snack-sized bag from the box. Sour-cream and onion—Henry’s favorite. No wonder he was shredding the seat to get to them.

  But the bag was heavy and bulky. If it held chips, they must have turned to stone judging by the weight of it.

  She unfolded the bag and tipped it slightly toward her palm. Out tumbled several stones, pebble-sized. Her breath caught as they sparkled under the penlight.

  Henry whined beside her. She glanced up to find him panting, his head sticking out the window, staring all googly-eyed at the potato chip bag. Some people—or dogs, in this case—just had no will power.

  Claire picked up one of the stones and inspected it. It looked real enough.

  Holy Chinese chickens! Could they really be diamonds? A whole snack-bag full of them? Why else would someone have hidden them inside the seat cushion?

  Her heart rattled loud enough for everyone down in Jackrabbit Junction to hear.

  She dropped the three gems back in the bag and shoved it in the box. “Come on, boy. We need to get out of here.” Scrambling out from under the tarp, she held it up long enough for Henry to follow her.

  He paused at the edge of the tarp and growled.

  “Come on. I’ll buy you a bag of potato chips on the way back to Ruby’s.”

  He still didn’t move.

  “Jumbo-sized,” she added.

  Something clicked behind her and the light overhead flickered on.

  Claire’s heart stopped beating.

  Henry whined.

  “I warned you about trespassing.” Sophy’s voice, hard as the diamonds Claire clutched in her hand, chased the blood out of Claire’s face. “I guess you need me to show you what I meant.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Mac was sitting at the kitchen table, eating the last of his bacon while waiting for Jess to come down for breakfast, when all hell broke loose.

  “Jessica Lynn Wayne!” Ruby yelled from the rec room. Mac nearly knocked over his cup of coffee in surprise. “Get your ass down here this instant!”

  The I’m-gonna-kick-some-ass tone in his aunt’s voice left little room for doubt that she was about to go off on her daughter like a stick of dynamite.

  Jess hit the bottom stair step at the sam
e time Mac crossed over the threshold into the rec room.

  The girl’s eyes were wide, startled, as she stared at Ruby, who stood in the middle of the room, looking as if she was about ten seconds away from critical meltdown. When Jess’s gaze landed on the paper clutched in Ruby’s hand, her face paled.

  A pepper-red blotch dimpled both of Ruby’s cheeks.

  “Care to explain why I found this in your backpack?” Broken glass couldn’t compete with the sharpness in Ruby’s voice. The paper shook in her fist.

  “I ... I ... uh,” Jess wrung her hands together.

  Mac risked a step closer to Ruby, trying to see what was written on the piece of paper. One of Ruby’s Betty-Boop checks was stapled to the bottom of it.

  “You what?” Ruby asked through clenched teeth.

  “What were you doing touching my backpack?” Jess crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin. “You have no right to be digging through my stuff. That’s an invasion of my privacy.”

  Mac rolled his eyes. When confronted with a pissed off grizzly, only a teenager would be stupid enough to reach out and give it a hard pinch.

  “I was taking care of your dirty jeans and T-shirts—the ones I asked you to throw in the wash three weeks ago!”

  “I told you to stay out of my backpack,” Jess continued recklessly. “You know it’s off limits.”

  “As long as you live in my house under my care, nothing of yours is off limits. Now quit trying to change the subject and tell me why in the hell you thought it was okay for you to steal this application out of the mailbox?”

  Jess’s eyes filled with tears. “Because I’m not going to that damned school of yours!”

  “Yes you are!”

  “No, I’m not!” Jess’s voice hit steam whistle decibels, making Mac wince. “And you can’t make me!”

  Jess ran over, snatched the application out of Ruby’s hand, and tore it in half and then in half again. “I hate you, Mother!” she screamed, tears streaming as bits of paper fluttered to the carpet like oversized pieces of confetti. “I hate you for ever having me!”

  Ruby’s mouth fell open as Jess raced out through the velvet curtain. The front door jingled and slammed, then footsteps pounded across the porch and down the front steps.

  The silence of Jess’s wake was pierced only by the bells still clanging in Mac’s ears.

  He rubbed the back of his neck as he walked over to his aunt, who stared at the shreds of paper on the carpet. “Something tells me she’s not very keen on attending that school,” he said, trying to lighten the heavy air.

  He scooped up the pieces of paper and dropped them in Ruby’s palm.

  Ruby’s shoulders slumped.

  In the blink of an eye, she looked every single one of her fifty-five years, and then some. “Do you think she really hates me?” The fire was gone from her voice. It sounded brittle, like someone had hollowed out her vocal chords and made the walls too thin in spots.

  “No.” Mac put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him in a gentle squeeze. “She’s just using the only method she knows to make you listen to her.”

  “What am I going to do? It’s too late now to get her into that school. We’ve missed the deadline.”

  “Enroll her in school in Yuccaville. Let her live here with you.”

  “I can’t give her what that private school could have.”

  “That private school can’t give her what she wants—you.”

  Ruby slogged over to a bar stool. “And what if she ends up living in Jackrabbit Junction for the rest of her life?”

  “She’ll still have you.”

  A diesel engine rumbled to life outside the back door. Mac’s ears perked, recognizing that gravelly purr.

  “Is that your truck?” Ruby asked.

  Jess must have grabbed his keys off the counter.

  “Shit!” He sprinted for the back door.

  * * *

  Sophy stood just inside the open shed door, a double-barrel shotgun in her hands. Claire wasn’t sure how Henry felt, but she didn’t plan on sticking around long enough to find out what gauge of shells were in the chamber.

  “Nice car you have here,” Claire said, patting the dusty canvas tarp covering the bed, as if they were just two people shooting the breeze and she hadn’t been caught breaking and entering. “A real classic.”

  Some way or other, she had to distract Sophy long enough to run for her life with her tail between her legs. “Did you buy—”

  Sophy cocked the shotgun.

  Claire gulped. Her mother was going to be mortified when the paramedics called and explained that her daughter’s body had been found wearing no underwear at all.

  Henry whimpered, leapt to the ground, and scuttled behind Claire’s legs.

  Great. Splendid. What a brave guard dog Gramps had. Lassie and Rin-Tin-Tin just rolled over in their graves.

  “It’s Joe’s.” Sophy stepped further into the shed, bracing her hip against the front quarter panel of the El Camino.

  The length of the car separated them.

  A breeze drifted through the door, carrying a whiff of Tabu Claire’s way—she was really starting to hate that perfume. “Joe’s what?”

  “Joe’s car.”

  “You mean Joe Martino?”

  “Yes, Joe Martino, you two-bit idiot.”

  “As in your ex-husband?”

  Sophy sighed. “As in the bastard who promised me glitter and gold, but didn’t deliver horseshit.”

  “How’d you get his car?” Had she stolen it from Ruby? That would explain why she was hiding it behind a padlock.

  “I bought it after the asshole was worm food.”

  “Ruby sold it to you?” Claire had trouble believing Ruby would sell anything to Sophy.

  Sophy sneered. “Of course not. She sold it to a fella over in Yuccaville, or so she thought. But it was my money, not his. And now it’s my car.”

  Sophy must have bought the car not knowing about the diamonds hidden in the seat, which meant they’d belonged to Joe. Why else would Sophy still be slaving away in that faded diner every day?

  Claire squeezed the box tighter in her hands. If she could just get the stones back to Ruby ...

  Sophy raised the shotgun.

  Claire almost peed her pants.

  Henry zipped out from the other side of the car and beelined out the open door.

  “Sounds like your knight in shining armor just hightailed it on outta here,” Sophy said, her eyes never leaving Claire.

  “You should have shot him first.”

  “Why waste a shell? I’d rather save it for you.”

  Claire raised her free hand in front of her, as if her fingers could block the spray of lead when Sophy pulled the trigger. The sight of those two dime-sized barrels locked onto her chest gooped up the gears in her brain. She had to stall Sophy somehow.

  “Why’d you buy Joe’s car?” Claire waged her bet on spite.

  “Because he loved it.”

  Pay the winner, Claire thought. “More than his Mercedes?”

  “Joe didn’t love that Mercedes. It was just his way of flashing his dirty money in front of us poor rednecks. He thought expensive cars and Armani suits could make everyone forget his father slaved in the copper mines while his mother fucked any man with a five-dollar bill in his hand.”

  “Dirty money? You mean he stole money from someone?” Maybe, finally, she’d find out the truth about Joe.

  Who’d have guessed she’d be hearing it from Joe’s ex-wife?

  Sophy lowered the shotgun. “He fenced high-priced, stolen antiques.”

  Blood traveled north of Claire’s collarbone again. “For whom?” Claire pressed. The magazine article about those stolen gold boxes she’d found in Joe’s filing cabinet came to mind.

  “Some fancy suits out of L.A. They’d steal expensive antiques from ritzy houses throughout Europe and the United States. Joe would haul the goods here to hide in the mines until the insurance c
ompanies gave up the hunt. When the time was right, he’d move them to wherever the buyer wanted.”

  “Like Florida?” Claire was thinking of one man in particular who was currently serving time in a Florida prison while his mother took his phone calls.

  Sophy shrugged. “Florida, New York, South America, Mexico. You name it and he probably knew a buyer there.”

  Mexico? That hotel bill from the day planner had been from Mexico. It had mentioned something about ten “carrots” too, which made complete sense now that Claire was holding a box of diamonds in her hand, some of which were undoubtedly ten karats in size.

  But how did Sophy know so much about her ex-husband’s business when Ruby hadn’t even recognized Joe’s cousin in that newspaper article?

  Cousin ... a subject that might buy Claire even more time while she waited for some brilliant escape plan to pop into her head. Lord knew Henry, the chicken shit, wasn’t going to come back and save the day. “Did you know Joe’s cousin, Sidney?”

  “Maybe.” Sophy’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  Maybe, my ass, Claire thought. Sidney had had Sophy’s Nevada driver’s license in his wallet—that kind of connection didn’t just happen by chance.

  “Was he as dirty as Joe?” Those three passports sure made it look like it.

  “Dirtier. But dumber than an inbred chicken.”

  “He worked with Joe on this antique fencing business?”

  If that silver lighter with the S.A.M. initials was anything to go by, Sidney’s fingers had definitely been in somebody’s pocket. And if he’d been helping Joe move antiques in and out of those mines, that might explain the lighter lying in the valley below Rattlesnake Ridge. But there was still the matter of the man’s wallet. Dropping a lighter in the sand is one thing. Dropping a wallet down a water-filled shaft didn’t seem nearly as random.

  “Whenever Joe would let him.”

  “Then he disappeared,” she guessed, hoping Sophy would fill in the huge blank that had stumped Claire for weeks.

  Sophy nodded, a sharp-toothed grin on her lips.