by Ann Charles
Well, he was right about one part of that. She was on the run.
“What I want to know is if you are running because of something he did.”
She licked her lips and set his glass back down. “An interesting question,” she said. He had hit the bullseye with that one, sort of.
“Or was it something you have done?”
The only thing she had done was listen to her mother about marrying a “real gentleman” who would treat her like a queen. In the end, it turned out she was treated more like a high-priced whore that he cowered behind when the devil came calling to collect on outstanding debts.
She squared her shoulders, months of anger and frustration welling up in her gut. “I am sorry to disappoint you, Sheriff, but you’re sniffing around the wrong tree.”
“I don’t think so, Mrs. Jefferson. There is something going on with you that feels not quite right.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out his wallet. “You know I thought you had a screw loose when I pulled you over the other day.” He tossed several bills on the table. “But then you came running in here today with a look on your face that said otherwise.”
“And what look was that?”
“The look of a woman in deep sh—trouble,” he corrected at the last moment.
No, he was right the first time, she was in deep shit. Over her head in it, to be truthful. But it was her shit, and he needed to keep his crooked nose out of it.
She stood, slinging Kate’s backpack over her shoulder. “You are mistaken, Sheriff.”
“About which part?”
“Well, I am a woman.”
His gaze held hers, steady as a riverboat gambler. “Yeah, I noticed that.”
“It’s good to hear that you’re not completely comprised of stone.”
“You think I’m made of stone?”
“I do. It explains how you can see a woman who you think is in deep shit and yet still give her a speeding ticket and then threaten her with jail time.”
“You are hardly a sad, helpless waif, Mrs. Jefferson.”
“You’re right. That being said, I would appreciate it if you’d let me go on my way and take care of my own difficulties without interfering.”
His grin came slow and sat crooked on his lips. “But it’s my job to interfere. I believe you mentioned last night that as a tax-paying citizen, you are compensating me to do just that.”
Damn, he got her on that one.
He pointed at the bag she was holding. “What’s in the backpack?”
“Library books,” she lied without a hitch.
“I didn’t realize you were a card-carrying member of the Yuccaville branch of the Cholla County Public Library.”
“I’m returning them for my sister.”
He smirked. “Claire found a way to sneak books out after being banned?”
It figured he knew about that, too. “No, Katie’s taken up reading.”
“Really? What kind of books does she like to read?”
“Ones with a lot of pictures of the latest fashion designs.”
His gaze measured her up and down. She must have added up to the right numbers because he nodded, seeming to accept what she said at face value.
“If you’re done with your questions now, Sheriff, I’ll be on my way.” She started backing toward the door.
“Sure, but don’t get too comfortable, Veronica.” His use of her first name did not go unnoticed, nor his threat. “You and I are far from being done with this subject.”
“That’s just peachy, Grady.” She needed to thank Mac for helping level the playing field on the name game. “Because I do so enjoy our little conversations.” She glanced down at the table where his belt buckle was in view. “Be sure to let me know if you need to borrow my tweezers.”
With a wink and a coy smile, she bowed her way out the door and practically ran back to Katie’s car. Her breathing did not slow until she had reached the city limits at the edge of Yuccaville.
“Great,” she growled and hit the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. “Just fucking great.”
Now she had the damned Sheriff of Cholla County riding her ass, too. Who was next? Jabba the Hutt and his slew of intergalactic bounty hunters?
* * *
“Claire,” Ruby called from the front of the unfinished restrooms.
Lowering the torch she was using to finish soldering an elbow joint onto a copper pipe, Claire looked over her shoulder.
The older woman leaned against the roughed out door frame, holding bottles of soda pop in each hand. “Why don’t you take a rest for the evenin’, mosey on out here, and share a drink with me for a spell?”
There was a hardness in Ruby’s soft drawl that made Claire take a closer look at her step-grandmother. Maybe it was the brassy orange tint coming from the sun as it sank toward the horizon, or the after effect of staring at the hot end of a blowtorch for too long, but Ruby seemed worn, faded into a dull sepia version of her vibrant self.
Deborah’s presence usually had a way of making Ruby spit and sputter, bringing her fiery temperament out. Tonight Ruby’s white and blue checkered shirt had deep wrinkles set in it, her red hair spiraled out of the clip she had holding it back, and her smile sort of drooped at the outer edges.
The fact that she had come bearing one of Claire’s favorite drinks made her stomach jittery, like it was full of short-horned grasshoppers. Ruby knew she preferred to dilute bad news with heavy-duty carbohydrates.
Ruby held up the bottles. “It’s not quite as good as what’s on tap down at The Shaft, but I promise not to act like one of those yokels and invite ya out to my truck to diddle with my bits.”
Claire grinned and turned off the torch, setting it on the concrete floor. “You mean fondle your drill bits,” she repeated one of the many corny pickup lines that she had heard since frequenting The Shaft. “Give me a minute to put away my tools and clean up.”
“I’ll be sittin’ over where the boys usually do.”
Gramps and his cronies had grown bored with watching Claire plumb in the warmer than normal afternoon heat and had headed off to the rec room to play some cards in the air conditioning. With the three of them no longer harassing her about the way she was soldering each joint, she was able to make twice as much progress. But she still had another couple of days left of plumbing work before she had the pipes for the showers and toilets ready for final installation.
After doing a quick clean up and stuffing anything worth stealing into her toolbox, she headed out into the evening’s warm breeze and dropped onto the lawn chair next to Ruby.
She noticed a dusty patch of flour on her step-grandmother’s shoulder. Crud. Ruby had been baking—even in this heat. The older woman had a bad habit of mixing delicious concoctions of flour and butter and sugar when stressed, and Claire had a butt-widening habit of eating at least two of everything Ruby pulled out of the oven. Her jeans couldn’t handle another couple of weeks of Deborah hanging around, getting Ruby all worked up into a Julia Child frenzy again. It had taken Claire three weeks to lose the ten pounds she’d gained the last time Deborah had stormed into town.
Leaning back in Chester’s chair, Claire tipped up the bottle Ruby handed her. The first mouthful of Coke washed away the taste of solder smoke.
“Where’s Natalie?” Ruby asked, taking a sip from her own bottle.
“She had to run to Yuccaville. A couple of the J-boxes cracked while she was nailing them in place. Plus, some of the wire had splits in the casing.” Creekside Hardware Store down in Jackrabbit Junction closed early on Sundays, so Natalie had to head up the road to the mining town where a national chain hardware store stayed open until dark every day of the week.
“Do you think someone messed with our supplies on purpose?” Ruby asked.
Claire did a double take. Was Ruby getting as paranoid as she was? “Nah. Extreme heat for a prolonged period can do that to the wire casing and make the plastic on the J-box brittle. Nat figures Creekside had the supplies
sitting in the sun for too long at some point, either outside or in their front window.”
“Oh. Good.”
“Natalie said she’d stop at The Shaft on the way back to eat with Kate during her break, so I don’t expect her back until later.”
Considering that several of The Shaft’s male clientele had been trying to use free drink offers to coerce Natalie into playing pool the last time Claire was there with her, she wouldn’t be surprised if Natalie sneaked in with her work boots in her hands and her underwear tucked in her back pocket long after everyone else had crashed. A single woman with Natalie’s good looks and long legs drew men like fruit flies to a ripe, juicy peach. While Natalie had been avoiding men since her arrival for some unspoken reason, Claire knew her cousin well—abstinence did not make Natalie’s heart grow fonder. It only lowered her scruples and resulted in bad bedfellows and horrible hangovers.
Ruby took another sip, her green eyes creased and somber in thought as she gazed across the campground.
Shifting in her chair, Claire stretched her legs out in front of her, resting one tennis shoe on the upside down five-gallon bucket her grandfather used as a footstool. “Where’s Gramps?”
Was he still playing cards in the rec room? Was he smoking a cigar? Did he have something to do with the reason for Ruby’s visit?
“He’s runnin’ the store.” Ruby squeezed the back of her neck, but she still held back from sharing what had her all bunched up in the shoulders.
A thought hit Claire, almost taking her breath away. She jackknifed upright. “Is everything okay with Mac? Did he call to say he made it home okay?”
“Yep. He told me to let you know he’s fixin’ to call you tomorrow night when he gets home from work.”
Whew! Claire relaxed back into the lawn chair again. Her world returned to its regular programming. Maybe she would borrow Natalie’s cell phone later and whisper some more sweet nothings in his ear.
Ruby sighed. “Claire, I have a problem and I need your help.” The dam holding back whatever was bothering her had finally given way.
Just one problem? From where Claire sat, Ruby had a shitload of them. “What’s Mom doing now?”
Ruby waved in the air. “Deborah is a pain in my ass, but she’s not a threat.”
A threat? Had Claire’s nightmare finally come true and another one of Joe’s not-so-chummy buddies contacted Ruby about wanting his share of the fenced goods back “or else”?
Claire stuffed a sock in the mouth of the panicky voice yelling in her head about the sky falling. Tapping her bottle against her inner thigh she waited for Ruby to explain more about this threat.
“My problem has to do with my baby girl.”
Claire’s heartbeat returned to its steady chug-chug. What a relief. It was just Jessica again. She wondered what the kid had done now. In the few months Claire had known the teenaged spitfire, Jessica had caused some whopper headaches for her mother.
“I need you to do me a favor.” Ruby turned her creased forehead in Claire’s direction.
“Sure.”
“You should probably hear me out before you agree, honey.” Ruby patted her knee. “I’m not real proud about this, but I’m at the end of my rope here.”
Short of killing or dismembering someone, Claire still stood by her “sure” response. Although, using Ruby’s shotgun to dismember a few of the vulgar jerks at The Shaft might not be such a bad idea, like that fake cowboy with the fancy new hat and big ugly mouth from the other night. If Claire ran into him again she couldn’t be held responsible for where her knee decided to plant itself.
Ruby finished her bottle and set it down on the gravel, staring out at the twilight filled R.V. park. “I hate to ask this of ya, but I need you to keep a close eye on Jessica.”
Babysit a teenager? Claire had suffered through worse jobs, like that veterinarian at the dog kennel who’d assigned her the task of expressing anal glands. One dog later and Claire had been sitting back in the unemployment office with a number in her chapped hands.
“Also,” Ruby added with a grimace, “I want you to find out what sort of things she’s tellin’ her daddy.”
Claire planted her elbows on her knees, letting her almost empty bottle dangle between her legs. It was her turn to stare out across the campground with a wrinkled brow. “You think Jess said something to him about that stash of cash we found?”
It wouldn’t make Claire blink twice if Jess had told. The girl’s filter seemed to be permanently damaged, letting secrets leak out here, there, and everywhere. Then again, maybe Jess was too naïve to realize the trouble her chattering could get her family into thanks to Joe’s long history of thieving hands.
“That and then some,” Ruby said, her voice edged with a growl. “I think the reason that horse’s ass is finally visitin’ his daughter is because there’s money to be swindled. Of course I can’t even look at the guy funny or my daughter will crawl down my throat for trying to ruin what she thinks is the best thing since bubblegum was invented.”
Claire would have to make sure to keep her mouth shut about Jessica’s father when the teenager was within hearing distance.
Ruby continued, “His wife left him, ya know. Then he went and lost his job and pissed away his savings bettin’ on dog races.”
How did Ruby know that? Who was her source?
“I’m ninety-nine percent certain the lousy rat is here because he caught a whiff of some cheese, and now he’s gonna try to take every piece he can get his damned hands on.”
“Has he asked you for money outright?”
Ruby shook her head. “He knows better. But it’s not my money that I’m worried about with him.”
Claire shooed away a lingering fly. “You don’t think Jess was silly enough to tell him about what’s in the safe, do you?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I figure that he’s fixin’ to line up something more long-term.” She turned to Claire, her face creased with what looked like a volatile mix of heartache and fury. “I’m worried he’s gonna try to steal my baby girl from me.”
After years of pretty much ignoring every attempt Jess made to contact him, the ass had some nerve. She remembered her conversation with Gramps last week. “You’re thinking this is all about getting child support, right?”
Ruby nodded. “He’s not down here out of the goodness of his rotten heart. The way he’s buying Jessica clothes and nail polish—did you see the cell phone he gave her? It’s one of those smart ones. As if that child needs another distraction from her homework.”
Claire could not help but notice the expensive phone earlier this afternoon when Jessica shoved it in her face and danced a jig in front of her.
“The son of a bitch knows I can afford to pay him support now. If he can buy Jess from me with all of these trinkets, he’ll drag me back to court quicker than beer turns to piss. With your grandfather’s savings and that money we found, plus the value of my land, I’d bet my momma’s lucky toad’s foot that Jess’s daddy is fixin’ to really take me to the cleaners.”
“Shit.”
Claire had been so busy trying to figure out the history behind the pocket watch and Joe’s other fenced treasures that she had not thought about how figuring out their value could screw Ruby financially in this whole other way. Her focus had been on the enemies they could not see, not those standing right in front of them, wooing Ruby’s kid.
“Yeah, ‘shit’ sorta covers it and then some.” Ruby lowered her head into her hands. “I can’t lose Jessica, Claire,” she said through her fingers. “That girl may push me to my limits some days, but she’s all I’ve had for years.” Her voice hitched. “During the tough times, when money was as scarce around here as a jackalope and keepin’ my head out of the sand took all the gumption I could muster, her little freckled face kept me goin’. She was the sole reason I dragged my butt out of bed each morning and faced off with one creditor after another instead of scurrying down to Mexico for good. The notion of her bein’ across the
country from me turns my guts inside out.”
Claire squeezed Ruby’s shoulder, understanding why Mac dropped everything to help his aunt the few times she had broken down and asked. Seeing Ruby hurting like this made her want to grab a cannon and blow Jess’s dad to smithereens.
“If he’s planning to use Jess for child support,” Claire said, “he’ll probably revert to treating her like crap after he gets what he wants, too.”
Ruby looked up at Claire with watery eyes. “You and I both know he doesn’t care one lick about her. All she is to him is a cash cow.”
Claire set her bottle on the ground and kicked it over. “Makes me want to tie up the jerk, slather him in honey, and bury him up to his neck in one of those red ant hills back in the ravine.”
Sniffing, Ruby dabbed at the corners of her eyes with the hem of her shirt. “I’d love to fill him full of buckshot for messin’ with my kid’s emotions like this, but your grandfather keeps hidin’ all my shotgun shells.” The fire was back in Ruby’s voice, replacing the wavering pain.
Claire chuckled. “I’m happy to help you with Jess, Ruby. I don’t want to see anything bad happen to her or you.”
“There is one more thing.” Ruby sniffed again, and then cleared her throat.
Claire picked up one of the other soda bottles Ruby had brought and opened it. “What’s that?”
“There is a young man from the archaeology crew who has taken a shine to Jess.”
“You mean that beanpole with the glasses and braces?” Claire had seen Jess and the skinny Mariachi lifeguard walking around the R.V. park’s drive a couple of days ago, Jess’s mouth running a mile a minute while the beanpole smiled down at her like a big goof.
Ruby smirked. “Yeah, the beanpole who just happens to be twenty years old and smokes a pack a day.” When Claire shot her a raised eyebrow, Ruby shrugged. “I made him show me his I.D. to buy cigarettes.”
Smart thinking. Claire could use a cigarette herself right about now, but she had made a bet with Gramps earlier this afternoon that she could hold out longer than he could for a cigar. Little did he know that she had extra motivation at the moment.