by Ann Charles
“I know how to sweet talk the worst of them. After all of those classes Mom forced me to take on how to set the table and the proper way to curtsy, those old women didn’t have a chance against my charm.”
Arlene joined them, setting a glass of water in front of Katie. “You look hot, honey,” she pointed at Katie’s pink cheeks. “You’d better drink that up before you keel right over.”
Katie thanked her and took a long drink. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Did you find out anything about the watch?”
“No,” Ronnie lied again.
“You mean that pocket watch your other sister was shushin’ us about last time she was here?” Arlene asked, wiping down the bar in front of Katie.
“Yeah. Ronnie is helping Claire and me look into it more.”
Ronnie shot Katie a zip-it glare. She did not need Arlene blabbing to Sheriff Harrison about the stolen pocket watch. He would put two and two together and come up with four letters: J-A-I-L.
“Oh, jeez,” Katie said in reply to Ronnie’s unspoken shush. “Don’t tell me Claire and her hush-hush mantra has rubbed off on you about this pocket watch, too.”
“No, of course not.” Well, maybe a little.
If the Sheriff started digging, he might just tunnel right on past China and surface in Germany at a certain castle missing a particular pocket watch. Then the Feds would come, along with the threats and interrogations. Ronnie had lived this nightmare already. The last thing she wanted was a repeat, and she definitely didn’t want her family to experience the humiliation of being tied to crimes they hadn’t committed.
Not to mention what the Feds would do to Ruby’s R.V. park and mines, searching for the rest of the loot. The R.V. park would be shut down or worse, taken from Ruby. Eminent domain and all of that bureaucratic crap. Ronnie could hear it now. She had to keep this all under wraps until she figured out what to do.
Katie glanced toward the door, smiling and waving. “Natalie’s here.”
Ronnie followed Katie’s gaze. Their cousin led Chester and Manny her way.
“Your eyes look a little bloodshot,” Natalie said, sliding onto the seat on the other side of her. “What number are you on?” She pointed at the glass in front of Ronnie.
“This is only my third.” She had dumped most of her second one on a cowboy’s head.
“Which explains why she looks three sheets to the wind,” Chester said. “We’re grabbing a table,” he told Natalie and headed for an open one back by the pool table.
“Are you okay, chica?” Manny squeezed Ronnie’s shoulder.
“Yeah, sure.”
Katie stood. “No, she’s not. She just dropped a cowboy to the floor, twisted his arm around his back, rode him like a freaking horse, and threatened to hogtie him.”
“No shit,” Natalie said, chuckling.
Ronnie shot Katie a what-the-hell look.
“What? This is Jackrabbit Junction. Better they hear it from me now than tomorrow morning when the news of your takedown has made it clear to Yuccaville and back.”
Manny leaned toward Ronnie. “Did Kate just say you rode a cowboy like a horse?”
“Yeah.”
His smile widened under his salt-and-pepper moustache. “With or without a saddle?”
Ronnie elbowed him lightly. “Go sit with your buddy before I drop you to the floor next.”
“Okay, but I have my own saddle. Custom made.”
She stuck her tongue out at the old flirt. He laughed and patted her on the head, and then followed Chester.
“Where did you learn a move like that?” Natalie asked.
Here we go again, Ronnie thought, more dodging and weaving. “From Claire. What are you doing here with those two troublemakers?”
“Escaping your mother’s wrath.”
“Oh, God, now what?” Katie asked.
“Just your normal fun times with Aunt Deborah,” Natalie answered. “The three of us took the opportunity to run when she had Gramps pinned in the kitchen, chewing on him about not taking physical therapy seriously.” She grinned over at Manny and Chester. “Well, make that limp. Chester’s hip is hurting tonight.”
“His hip?” Ronnie frowned. “He didn’t fall did he?” Gramps’s bad luck seemed to be spreading to each one of them.
Natalie smirked. “No. He had a woman over a couple of nights ago and she got a little too frisky for him.”
“He should have borrowed Manny’s saddle,” Katie said. “Speaking of the old boys getting frisky, I’d better go over there and save Arlene.”
Ronnie looked around at where Chester and Manny were sitting. Arlene was at their table, her hand in Manny’s, his smarmy wooing smile firmly in place. As she watched, Katie rushed over and pulled Arlene’s hand free, scolding the old lover boy with her order pad. Manny grinned and nudged Chester, saying something that made Katie jam her hands on her hips and stalk back into the kitchen, her nose and forehead red. Arlene followed in her wake, grinning.
Turning back to her gin and tonic, Ronnie asked Natalie, “Where’s Claire?” She wasn’t looking forward to answering her sister’s questions about the pocket watch, but she knew Claire well enough to know there would be no avoiding her. In the dictionary next to the word Relentless, Webster had Claire’s picture and bio posted.
“We left her back at Ruby’s.”
“Really?” It wasn’t like Natalie or the boys to leave Claire behind, especially with their mother on the prowl.
“Yeah, she told us to escape while we could, she’d run interference.”
“Claire said that?” Ronnie paused in the midst of lifting her drink, surprised.
Natalie nodded, and asked Arlene for a shot of tequila.
Lowering her glass, Ronnie shoved her drink away. All of a sudden she was thirsty for something more sobering. Wallowing in her fears no longer appealed, especially now that she had made a scene. She had a feeling Grady would somehow get wind of her actions and make an appearance before long.
“Claire’s taking one for the team tonight,” Natalie said.
“She’s probably hiding out in the Skunkmobile, smoking a pack of cigarettes.”
Natalie took a breath. “No, I don’t think so. Not this time.” She glanced at the door and did a double take. “Well, well, well. Look at what the cat dragged in.”
Ronnie didn’t want to look. She already knew who it was and wasn’t in the mood to face off against his shiny star again. “Is he coming this way?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Ronnie risked a glance over her shoulder. “Is that Jess’s dad?”
“In the flesh.” Natalie grinned. “I think you should throw this one down and hogtie him for real.”
* * *
“Life is like a hand of Bid Euchre,” Claire said, repositioning the cards she had been dealt by Gramps.
“Oh, yeah, Socrates,” Gramps said. “Please enlighten us.”
Claire ignored Gramps’s sarcasm. She doubted he could help it at the moment what with Deborah being his partner tonight.
“Sometimes you’re flush with trump.” Which she wasn’t, damn it. Not an Ace to be seen, either. “And sometimes you can’t score a single trick to save your soul.”
“Knock off the table talk,” Gramps said, figuring out her game.
Ruby, her partner across the table, winked at her and bid a conservative. “Three.”
“Four.” Gramps outbid his wife without hesitation.
Deborah’s lips tightened into that little pink, pinched circle that Claire knew too well and had grown to loathe during her teenage years. Chester was once on the receiving end of that pissy look until he’d told Deborah that her mouth reminded him of a cat’s asshole. Some days Claire wished she had Chester’s balls.
She replayed that sentence in her head and grimaced. Or maybe just his guts.
“I hope you’re not bluffing this time, Dad.” Deborah shuffled a few cards around in her hand. “You’re going to lose the game for us again if
you keep showing off and outbidding everyone at the table just because you can.”
“He’s not bluffing,” Jessica said from the couch, where she had a clear view of Gramps’s cards when her nose was not in the copy of Jane Austen’s Emma she was reading for her English Lit class. Claire wondered if Joe had a first edition copy of that book stashed away somewhere, too.
“Is Jess on your payroll?” Claire asked Gramps.
“Isn’t everybody around here?” Deborah asked, a sly grin curving the edges of her mouth.
“Meaning what?” Gramps took Deborah’s bait and tossed a Jack of hearts out on the table. “That’s trump.”
Deborah shrugged, her cream silk blouse making a slight swishing sound as she repositioned her cards. Her flowery perfume was extra strong tonight, which Claire figured had something to do with Jess’s dad being in the general vicinity earlier. “Just that you seem to be doling out a lot of money lately. It reminds me of when you owned your contracting business, what with everyone standing around with their hands held out for more.”
Ruby’s cheeks sprouted two bright pink flower-sized spots.
Claire threw down a nine of hearts, one of two trump cards she held in her hand and then aimed a frown at her mom. “It’s your turn, Mother.” So shut up and play.
Eyeing her cards like they contained complicated calculus problems, Deborah took her sweet damned time picking out one to add to the pile. “I can understand bankrolling Claire. After all, she is going out of her way to help you build that restroom since you’re on the gimpy side currently.” She pulled a card and dropped it on top of the other two—the Ace of hearts.
Claire had a feeling she should throw in her cards now and call it a night. Deborah seemed to be building up to something, and Claire would rather not be sitting at ground zero when she dropped the bomb. She glanced across at Ruby and puffed her cheeks with a breath, remembering the vow she had made not to leave Ruby’s side, especially when Deborah seemed to be arming her torpedoes.
Gramps growled in his throat. Claire was not sure if it was because of what Deborah was insinuating about his state of health, or lack of it at the moment, or because of her bad choice in card play. It was probably both.
Ruby threw out a ten of clubs, apparently flush out of trump. “How was dinner last night, Deborah?” she asked. “Jess tells me Steve took you out dancing afterwards.”
“She said Dad’s a smooth dancer,” Jess spoke for Deborah, her nose in her book. “They did the two-step and some other foxy dance.”
“The Fox Trot,” Deborah supplied with a wistful smile as Gramps collected the pile of cards he had won this round and threw out the Ace of spades to start the next. “Steve is so charming.” She sighed like she was a poodle-skirt wearing teenager all over again. Claire half-expected her to rest her cheek on her hands and smile with love struck cow eyes. “His moves on the dance floor just took me away.”
They had Ruby, too—right to the bedroom almost seventeen years ago and then left her pregnant with Jessica.
“Too bad his moves didn’t take you right back home to South Dakota,” Gramps muttered.
Claire grinned and hid behind her cards. She peeked over the top of them at Ruby, catching the quick squeeze she gave Gramps’s wrist.
“Aren’t you the funny one, Dad.” Deborah’s snippiness said she thought otherwise. “I can’t believe you let Steve slip through your fingers, Ruby. He’s a real keeper.”
“You think so, huh?” Ruby stared hard at the Ace Gramps had tossed out like she was waiting for it to move so she could whack it.
“With those long eyelashes and wonderful cheekbones,” Deborah fanned the flames, “he would have been a real trophy.”
“I’d like to put him on a shelf all right,” Gramps said.
Claire tried to focus on the cards in front of her, but she could not stop watching the mix of emotions rippling across Ruby’s features. She trumped Gramps’s Ace with the ten of hearts, her only other trump card.
“You have no spades at all, Claire?” His blue eyes looked more bloodshot than normal, even though neither of them had lit up tonight and the alcohol had been poured only into Deborah’s wine glass.
“I know how to play the game, Gramps.”
He grunted his doubts.
Deborah touched the top of her cards, pretending to consider each one. Claire knew better and worried her lower lips about her mother’s next move—with Ruby, not the cards.
“Not to mention …” Deborah pulled the Queen of hearts trump card and placed it on top of Claire’s ten with a haughty smile. “Steve is much closer to your age.”
Claire had been expecting her mother to bite onto Ruby’s hindquarter; instead her teeth had sunk into Gramps’s hide with that one. She checked his ears. They were red but not smoking … yet.
“Dad is actually five years younger than Mom,” Jessica said, her wistful smile a mirror image of Deborah’s earlier one. She turned to her mother. “Does that make you a cougar, Mom?”
“It makes me wonder what I was thinking at the time.”
“You had your beer goggles on that night,” Claire reminded her.
“More like beer blinders.” Ruby slapped down a ten of spades. “I’ll follow your lead, honey,” she said, reaching over to pat Gramps’s cheek.
He watched Deborah rake in the cards, her sharp pink nails scraping across the card table. “Right,” his voice sounded tired, a tad wheezy. “Pushing my wheel chair as you go.”
Ruby’s brow wrinkled. “You’ll be back on your feet in no time, Harley.”
“I hope you’re not rushing him, Ruby. I know you need him to clean up this place, but he’s not exactly a spring chicken, anymore.” Deborah wrinkled her nose when she said that last part. Claire thought about rolling her cards into cigarettes and cramming them up her mother’s nostrils. “Maybe you can see if Steve could help out.”
“He’s leaving,” Claire reminded her mother.
“Not soon enough,” Gramps said.
Jess sat up, placing her book facedown on the couch. “He told me today that he’s thinking about sticking around for a few months so he can get to know me better.”
Ruby’s eyes widened. The hand she was using to hold her card lowered, her cards on display for the whole table to see. “He said what?”
“Perfect.” Deborah said. Or maybe she purred. She was being so catty tonight that Claire half-expected her to lift up her arm and start cleaning herself. “He can help Claire when Natalie goes home next week.”
“Mother,” Claire said, “having a penis does not automatically mean you can build shit.”
Deborah narrowed her eyes. “Watch the language, Claire.”
“What? I used the ‘p’ word.” She shifted her cards around. “Where is Jess’s dad, anyway? I thought you three were going to go to a movie tonight.”
Ever since Steve had shown up, Deborah had been fawning all over her stepsister, aka Jessica. Normally, her mother could not stand to be in the same room as the teenager. Now Jess seemed to do no wrong, something Claire had never experienced. Ever. She had been a constant screw-up since birth in Deborah’s eyes.
“He said he was tired and went back to his hotel room,” Jess answered.
“Claire doesn’t need any help,” Gramps said.
He was wrong. Claire did need help, especially with some of the finishing touches like the crown molding Gramps wanted hung. Those compound miters were a bitch, especially in the corners where she would have to cut upside down and backwards. But she was smart enough to keep her mouth shut at the moment.
“If Claire needs help,” Ruby stepped in, “Mac will be here.”
Gramps’s face darkened into a ruddy shade, his back stiffening visibly. “Your nephew has done enough for you,” he said to his wife. “He should focus on tending his own garden a little more before the dandelions go to seed.”
Ruby gaped at him for a moment before snapping her mouth closed and glaring down at her cards.
&nb
sp; Deborah looked at Claire, her brows raised. “Dandelions go to seed, huh? Are you and MacDonald having some relationship problems?”
“Uh,” Claire was caught off guard with the sudden shift of focus. Relationship problems? Honestly, she was still stuck on what a baby could mean to her own future. She hadn’t made it to analyzing how it could affect her relationship with Mac yet.
Earlier today, after her admission about the subject to Natalie, her cousin had tried to talk her into buying a pregnancy test. Claire had crossed her arms and dug in her heels. For one thing, she was not ready to face pregnancy head on if it were a done deal, let alone wait for that little stick to show its pink or blue lines. Her breathing grew raspy at just the thought of peeing on it. For another, she was on a first name basis with all of the employees who worked at Creekside Hardware Supply in Jackrabbit Junction, and they knew she was related to Ruby and Gramps. She might as well stand on the corner at the one junction in town with MIGHT BE PREGNANT on a sandwich board if she bought a test there.
In the end, Natalie had driven into town and bought the pregnancy test. She had returned with a nondescript paper bag, which she handed to Claire on the sly when the boys were not looking. Claire had hidden the unopened box still inside the bag under the sink in the Skunkmobile’s bathroom, burying it in the back corner behind the drain cleaner and rolls of toilet paper.
Jessica joined them at the table, standing over her own mother’s shoulder. “I heard Manny say Claire and Mac were having some problems in the bedroom.” She leaned down and pointed at one of Ruby’s cards. “Play that one next, Mom.”
Ruby shooed Jess’s finger away.
“Mac and I are …” possibly pregnant, “… doing fine,” Claire announced, dealing cards around the table.
“Are you angry with Mac for some reason, Harley?” Ruby asked Gramps, her gaze locked onto her cards. “Did he say something to upset you?”
Claire watched Gramps, waiting with all ears to hear his answer. Mac had not mentioned anything to her about a problem with Gramps, but he had been less than thrilled with the idea of sticking around the R.V. park an extra day, which was not normal for him. He usually wanted to stay at his aunt’s as long as possible, especially when Claire wasn’t going home to Tucson with him.